San Diego Comic-Con unveiled a slew of new superhero trailers over the weekend, including ones for Justice League and Doctor Strange, but DC's Wonder Woman caught even the most fickle nerds' attention and provided a little more of what we can expect from Patty Jenkins's long-awaited film.

The trailer, which lands itself somewhere between Game of Thrones and Paths of Glory, opens with star Gal Gadot coming across Wonder Woman's, a.k.a. Diana Prince, future love interest, Steve Trevor, on a beach. It follows the leading lady as she leaves her home island, which is only inhabited by women, and enlists to fight in World War I. There is still a lot left up to the imagination as far as the actual plot, but you can certainly expect a whole lot of ass-kicking.

The trailer doesn't shy away from its feminist themes, either. The nearly three-minute clip ends with Prince meeting a secretary who explains that she does everything her boss asks her to do, a position Prince likens to slavery. While the trailer focuses a lot on the film's supporting male lead, played by Chris Pine, Wonder Woman is sure to bring the hard-hitting feminist superhero action we've been waiting for since Jessica Jones.

Read: Wonder Woman Was Created by a Feminist Bondage Fetishist Who Wanted a Matriarchal Utopia

Photo of 2015 Hemingway look-alike winner Charlie Bolce via Sloppy Joe's

History was made this Saturday when, for the first time in its 36 years, a man actually named Hemingway won the annual "Papa" Hemingway Look-Alike Contest held in Key West, Florida, the Guardian reports.

Dave Hemingway—who has no relation to the author—beat out 139 fellow doppelgängers in this year's contest held at the storied Key West bar Sloppy Joe's, where the writer himself used to regularly tie one on when he lived in the area in the 1930s. It was Hemingway's first win in seven tries, so we know he didn't win on the name alone.

Hemingway told the CBS Miami he believes his choice of wearing a wool, cream-colored turtleneck sweater, similar to one Ernest fancied, put him over the top this year. Even though the sweater was "really hot, it was part of my strategy," he said. "And I think it worked really well."

Spoilers ahead for the third episode of The Night Of.

The first episode of The Night Of asks the question: What would you do if you were accused of a horrible crime that you had no recollection of committing? By the third episode, which aired on Sunday night, we have our answer: It doesn't matter what you do. From the moment you are arrested, you give up control over your life.

The Night Of is about a murder, but it is not a murder mystery: The act itself, which formed the centerpiece of the fantastic first episode, has receded into the background. Even the police investigation appears to be essentially over, and we're given no new clues about that titular night. What's left is the long aftermath, which finds our major characters utterly helpless in the face of a system that has tightened around them.

First, there are Naz's parents, Salim and Safar Khan, played with a dignity that threatens to slide into confusion or anger by Peyman Moaadi and Poorna Jagannathan. They visit their son in Riker's Island, but there's nothing they can do. They are approached by John Stone (John Turturro), who offers to represent Naz for $50,000; they say nothing—who has that kind of money? A more polished lawyer from a big firm named Allison Crowe appears and says she'll do the case for free, and of course, they accept. Naz's father tries to get his cab back only to be told that since it was used in commission of a crime, there's a good chance he'll never see it again, unless he presses charges. The cop who tells Salim this is good-natured—sympathetic, even—but it doesn't matter what sort of face power has. The point is that it's power, and you can't change its mind.

Stone finds himself in similar straits. He starts the episode trying to wheel and deal his way toward the beginning of a plea bargain, but his sweaty, eczematic charm gets him nowhere with the prosecutors. He then does the legwork of a good, if under-resourced, defense attorney—visiting the crime scene, buying Naz socks—but loses his client anyway. He can't even do anything about the plight of the cat that lived in the dead girl's apartment, except bring it to animal control, where it's sentenced to be gassed to death in ten days.

But this is ultimately a show about Naz, and it's through him that we really get a sense of narrowed options and impossible choices. Riz Ahmed continues to be brilliant in his portrayal of the defendant, quivering with fear and nerves as he walks through a version of Riker's Island stripped of color. Other inmates, more experienced and violent than he, stare him down. The guards either ask him bureaucratic questions ("Homosexual?") or exist to do the bidding of the jail's prisoner-king, Freddy (played by Michael K. Williams, who also hosts a show on VICELAND).

It doesn't matter what sort of face power has. The point is that it's power, and you can't change its mind.

Without Freddy, this episode might have been a little dull. There is little in the way of movement on the case, no twists or reversals to drive the plot forward, so the introduction of a new predator into the ecosystem does a lot of work. In the show's understated way, we learn a lot about him in a few minutes of almost dialogue-free action: He's a former boxer who wields outsized power in Rikers—check out the collection of phones in his cell—and has a kind of intellectual self-confidence—look at his Norman Mailer book, or listen to the way he casually drops reference to the specific African region his ancestors hailed from. He's having an affair with one guard, apparently so she can smuggle goods for him, and keeps others in line by threatening their families on the outside. Freddy makes choices that matter; he gets what he wants.

Freddy's the sort of character who delvers koan-ish pronouncements about how the calves raised to become veal are kept in dark crates, the sort of character who is basically a mythological creature in a show about functionaries. (Try to imagine him and Stone occupying the same scene.) Williams served this function in The Wire, too, where his Omar broke every rule about the realism the other, less legendary characters had to follow, and he's a welcome presence in an episode that would otherwise lack much in the way of an antagonist (Bill Camp's Detective Box, who filled that role last time, is largely MIA here).

Freddy is the one who gives Naz his only choice of the episode. The young accused murderer doesn't get to pick where he sleeps or who his lawyer is or how the law will treat him, but he can accept Freddy's offer of protection or not. Naz is down the rabbit hole, but he's not himself ready to start a relationship with a full-blown gangster. Then, in the last scene of the episode, he walks from the bathroom to find a fire burning, the other inmates standing around it and staring him down, making various "I'm going to kill you" gestures. It turns out this isn't a choice either.

The system Naz has been taken inside is transactional in nature. No one does anything out of the goodness of their hearts, possibly because they don't have much in the way of either goodness or hearts. Crowe's proposal to represent Naz pro bono almost certainly comes with strings attached; that she brings a young South Asian lawyer (Amara Karan) with her to meet Naz's parents speaks to her extreme pragmatism, or her cold-eyed ruthlessness. Freddy, similarly, is not a man who does something for nothing. But your benefactors' motives don't matter when you don't have any other options. For now, the characters are left in the same position as the viewers: waiting for that other shoe to drop, and knowing that no matter how bad things are, they can always get worse.

Follow Harry Cheadle on Twitter.

Editor's Note: You might know Bun B as the Texas-based rapper, professor, and activist who's one half of the legendary Houston duo UGK. He's also VICE's political correspondent, reporting on the ground from the campaign trail of the strangest presidential election in recent memory.

By the fourth day of the Republican National Convention, I'm sore as shit. I forgot my knee brace, so the OG is having a rough go out here. But I'm not complaining. On one of my last night's in Cleveland, I stopped at a local bar called the Tick Tock Tavern, and ended up in a 45-minute discussion with some real people from the hood about how to better ourselves as a community—a spontaneous conversation I'll remember for all of my days. The people are behind me, so let me get up, get out, and get something, like Goodie Mobb said.

I started the last day in Cleveland on Fourth Street, just outside of the convention center, at the restaurant where MSNBC posted up all week. I was there to do an interview with Tamron Hall, but just before going on, I had a chance to talk with Darrell Scott, a Cleveland pastor and Donald Trump supporter who spoke at the convention. He told me he's known Trump for almost six years and considers him a friend, so when the RNC asked, at the request of the Republican nominee, if Scott would speak at the convention, he jumped at the chance.

I was curious how, as a black man and a pastor, Scott's support for Trump has been received, and he told me that he thinks that many people in his community agree with his positions, even if they won't come out and say so publicly. If you say so, Rev. More power to you. I wished him well and turned around to hurry my ass onto the set.

Photo by Pete Voelker

Outside, I noticed a crazy-looking truck that I'd seen driving around downtown Cleveland all week. It's impossible to miss, plastered over with homemade posters and signs about God's wrath and Hillary Clinton's lies. Seeing as it was my last chance to find out who was responsible for this insane vehicle, I walked up to find the driver, but I couldn't see him anywhere. Where the hell did he go? I looped around the truck, and then boom, there he is, getting back into the driver's seat. I told him I was with the press and asked if he had a second to talk. He paused for a second and leaned in, cupping his ear. "Sorry, I don't hear so well," he said. "Could you repeat that?"

Eventually, he agreed to talk, and I started simply, asking where he was from. He replied, "I am... from..." Clearly, I had struck gold. He began to quote Martin Luther—not King Jr., but the German theologian, and as he's speaking, I realize why I couldn't find him earlier—he lives and works in the back of the flatbed truck. Inside, he's crafted an entire bed and home office setup—from where I stood, I could see a swivel chair and a desk, with a small filing cabinet and a bulletin board tacked up on wall. There's some kind of light coming from the back too, over what I imagined was his bed situation.

When I finally tuned back in to what the man was saying, I realized that he was mostly incoherent—and the shit I can make out doesn't make any sense. Plus, the smell coming out of the truck would have made a landfill vomit. So I thanked him for his time and exited stage fucking left, making my way to a protest that was scheduled to go down at Carnegie Bridge. As you may have heard, things were pretty tame in Cleveland last week—nothing came close to the shit people had been expecting to pop off around Trump's nomination. This was a last chance for protesters to make some noise, and I was going to be there in case anything happened.

Photo by Pete Voelker

I arrived just as the marchers were starting to make their way across the bridge. As usual, the Bible Thumpers were out in full force, shouting about faggots and dykes and heathens and sinning liberals. Nearby, I saw Nathan Stehouwer, a Cleveland doctor who helped organize the march.

The demonstration, Stehouwer said, was a "collective of people that cross the entire political spectrum—Democrats, Republicans, and Independents coming together against the racially divisive and anti-immigrant message that Donald Trump has been promoting." They'd chosen the color yellow to represent their group, and someone handed me a yellow shirt and requested I join them that night in Cleveland's Public Square, where they planned on holding a protest at the moment Trump took the stage.

Photo by Pete Voelker

At the other side of the long-ass bridge, I noticed an older woman pouring a cold bottle over her head and a younger man helping her find a place to sit. I assumed they were related, or at least friends, and walked over to chat. As it turned out, they were complete strangers: The young man introduced himself as Tim Schwartz, a first-time protester from Los Angeles, and told me that he came all the way to Ohio "because it's the first time he's seen something so hateful to so many people, and it's not right.

"As a privileged person with inherent privileges from living in America, we shouldn't be letting a person like this run our county," Schwartz added.

The woman was from East Lansing, Michigan, and though I couldn't make out her name over the noise of the march, I did hear her say that her first protest was at Kent State University, just outside of Cleveland, where national guardsmen fired on unarmed college students on May 4, 1970. She told me she was there that day, carrying her young daughter on her shoulders. Her daughter, now grown, had caught the protesting bug as well, and the pair had come out to the Republican National Convention to march together again this week, this time against the GOP's coronation of Donald Trump.

Photo by Pete Voelker

As the march wound down, no one seemed quite certain where the route was supposed to end, and eventually, everyone just decided to walk back across the bridge. But I broke off, hungry, and pushed my way back toward the Quicken Loans Arena, and a soul-food joint that a couple of locals suggested.

By 7 PM, I was in Freedom Plaza again, waiting for the final night of the Republican Party's show to start. There were all manner of talking heads and costumed delegates milling around, and I spotted Bakari T. Sellera, a former Democratic state legislator from South Carolina who'd gotten in a fight with Pastor Scott on CNN the night before over Trump's position on police brutality. I passed along my respects, and we both moved on: The convention festivities were about to start, and I had just enough to time to grab a Tito's-and-pineapple before I headed to the floor.

Photo by Jason Bergman

I'd just finished when someone came over the loudspeaker to announce that the speeches had begun. The Maricopa County sheriff, Joe Arpaio, my old friend from Arizona, grumpily took the stage and gave an angry endorsement of Trump. He's followed by Mark Burns, another black pastor who is a member of Trump's National Diversity Coalition. Sweating, Burns bloviated for about ten minutes, leading a call and response among the elated delegates.

Then former Minnesota Vikings quarterback Fran Tarkenton got onstage, and for whatever reason, told a story about Vince Lombardi. I'm not sure anyone else got it either. By this point, my feet and my ears were hurting bad, so I decided to find a good seat and get ready for the speaker we are all waiting for: Donald J Trump.

Photo by Jason Bergman

But what really did me in is the dancing. After four days, it was killing me. Not just because it was bad—and it was, really bad—but because of why they were dancing: For a presidential candidate that represents hate and racism and sexism and classism and fascism and every other shitty-ass ism you can think of. They were dancing in celebration of hateful language, and decisive rhetoric, and flat-out lies, yelling for unity while giving their full-throated support to policies of exclusion. They were celebrating Trump in all his arrogance, and smug conceit, and ugliness.

It was insulting, maddening, infuriating. As they danced, I thought of Dallas. I thought of Baton Rouge while they boogie-oogie-oogied, and of Minnesota while they shuffled. I thought about Orlando. The people in that room had the power to alter the course of history, and they were fucking dancing for a tyrant.

In the end, I couldn't take it. I was supposed to renew my floor pass for the Trump speech, but I decided against it, making up an excuse about my leg hurting. I made a couple of wisecracks to hide how disgusted I really feel, and waled out of the fucking place.

Photo by Jason Bergman

I was angry, but not just at the people inside the arena—I was angry at myself too, for not having the strength to stay or the fortitude to withstand the End Times anger filling up the room. I'd fought so hard to be in the room, to hear what Trump had to say, and witness in person his bold ascent to the GOP nomination. And I'd left. The Republican National Convention had taken its final toll on me. It's not like I'd planned on making some kind of political gesture or anything—but I was supposed to be able to take it, and I couldn't. And I wasn't entirely sure what that said about me.

I made my way back to Public Square just in time to catch the beginning of the "Love Trump Hates" rally. A white guy with dreadlocks down to his waist had been on drum duty all week, but that night was the first time I'd paid attention to him. For some reason, it calmed me. I stopped being quite so angry. And I knew that I wouldn't walk out of any other rooms again: Let them dance, let them sing, let them eat fucking cake. I'm going to be right there. See you in Philadelphia.

Follow Bun B on Twitter.

A second teaser trailer for Danny Boyle's Trainspotting sequel was shared by the Guardian on Monday, and it's just about as vague as the first one we got. Despite actually having new footage in it, this trailer is about as boring as watching trains go by, because it is literally just that.

The original film adaptation of Irvine Welsh's book Trainspotting was largely responsible for launching the careers of both director Danny Boyle and actor Ewan McGregor. This sequel, which was given the incredibly familiar title, T2, is said to be loosely based on Welsh's second Trainspotting book, Porno.

The new trailer has very little to offer beyond a single shot referencing the 1996 film. The four aged actor's faces are almost completely out of focus, making Spud, Renton, Sick Boy, and Begbie hard to make out, although they look pretty good for four recovering heroin addicts.

It's still unclear how faithful T2 will be to Porno, or quite frankly what the film will be about at all. Looks like we'll have to wait until January 2017 to find out.

She looks like she's having a great time. Photo by Flickr user Torba K Hopper.

Once, after my date told me he usually writes off his romantic outings as business expenses, I didn't think it could get much worse. I was quite wrong.

"Hey, do you think you could ever give up sweets?" he asked, watching me basically inhale my brownie sundae. "What?" I asked, with a half-giggle. "Why the hell would I do that?"

He sighed. "It's just that you'd be so much sexier if you lost weight. You're just pretty right now." I lowered my spoon and stared directly at him for a few moments. "Did I say something wrong?" he asked. I smiled and reached for the closest server. "Hi. Can we get the bills please? Separately." What the fuck else was I supposed to say? For an interaction where people are so concerned about making a good first impression, it always surprises me what some think passes as acceptable conversation or commentary.

I knew I couldn't be the only one with shitty stories to share.

The worst thing you've heard on a first date?
After she came 30 mins late and asked hostile questions for the first 30 mins of the date she turned to me and said "So... I paid for this drink and that's not OK. You're lucky I'm still here but I'm definitely going to leave once I'm done this unless you get me another one. And you have to drink something other than Heineken. That's not a real drink people drink, that's just something people drink if they don't know what to drink."

And after?
I got another drink and proceeded to get verbally abused for the rest of the night.

- Mike, Toronto

The worst thing you've heard on a first date?
So, drunk me went to a club, made out with a random, and apparently gave him my number. I agree to go out with him and we get on the topic of different diets and he starts telling me how he was a raw vegan for a while. "Yeah, when I went raw, I became so horny. I was horny all the time because the sexual energy was just constantly flowing through my body. I had to release myself all the time." He later told me he was 44, and when I told him I was 21 at the time he yells "Oh my god, you're 21? ARE YOU A VIRGIN?"

And after?
We shared an awkward car ride him after he refused to "make" me take the subway. It ended with me half hugging him, thanking him for the meal and jumping out.

- Vanessa, Toronto

And after?
I went " to the washroom" ordered mozza sticks to go and a round of beers for the nearest table to the bar and put it on his bill, and left.

- Alexandra Morinello, Toronto

The worst thing you've heard on a first date?
"Why's your wallet so thin?"

And after?
I paid for my portion of the meal and dipped leaving her to pay the rest.

- Wize, Brooklyn

The worst thing you've heard on a first date?
The date itself was fantastic. He did everything right and I was really impressed. But then he mentioned his Soundcloud link and how when he went to follow me on Instagram he noticed who ELSE followed me. I already knew where this was going but I wanted to see if he really had the balls to get so outta pocket. He did. Few moments later he was asking me for "The 6ix God's contact"

And after?
I cut him off and asked what time it was, fake yawned, and abruptly left. I blocked his number and haven't spoke to him since.

- Jamz, Toronto

The worst thing you've heard on a first date?
After telling a man my family is from Guyana, he told me he heard all the women of Guyana have... and he began to make a vagina shape with his hands. I asked "what are you trying to say?" and he said ... "you know fat"...and he made the hand motion again as in "fat vagina." Then he smiled and said he would love to see it.

The thing you did right after?
I finished my drink and told him he was going to marry a woman who will probably poison him after one year and one child, and I thought that it was highly unfortunate that his future looked so grim. He attempted to awkwardly explain himself and his comment and then serendipitously enough his wallet happened to drop on the floor while he was frantically trying to "apologize." So I did what anyone would do, I stole $100 from his wallet when he wasn't looking then pretended I had a family emergency, bought a slushy and caught the bus home.

- Alicia Bunyan-Sampson, Pickering

Follow Sajae Elder on Twitter

Photo via Flickr user Marc Nozell

According to FiveThirtyEight political analyst Nate Silver, if the presidential election were held today, former real estate mogul and reality TV star Donald Trump would beat Hillary Clinton by 13.4 points, Politico reports. It's the first time Trump has passed Clinton in the site's short-term poll, which uses daily data.

Trump ended up coming out on top after the mess of the Republican National Convention, which gave the country plagiarized speeches, perceived Nazi salutes, and chants of "lock her up." He's currently leading Hillary Clinton in some recent polls, and now FiveThirtyEight's "now-cast" predicts Trump will take battleground states Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Iowa. It predicts Clinton would only nab Colorado, Virginia, and Michigan. Beyond winning the Electoral College and thus the presidency, Silver also has Trump narrowly grabbing the popular vote, too.

Silver and his team of data journalists have been wrong about Trump before, which was surprising for the team that's been notoriously accurate in the last two elections—Silver called 49 of 50 states in the 2008 election, and all 50 in 2012. Now, with the site's poll that uses updated daily data, they're taking Trump more seriously than before.

The numbers do account for a post-convention bump, and FiveThirtyEight still has Clinton winning in its long-term "polls-plus" forecast, which considers current polls and historic information. But Trump's short-term lead is a very accurate, very real look at where our country could be in the next four months.

Read: The Real Reason Why Donald Trump Will Never Be President

Rent is still too damn high. Photo via Flickr user Jake Warren

British Columbia's government has taken a lot of heat over the last few years—especially in the last six months—for ignoring Metro Vancouver's out-of-control housing crisis. Prices shot up a ridiculous 30 percent in 2015, and as far as anyone can tell, no one in the city got a 30 percent raise to match.

After spending years refusing to implement any new taxes on homebuyers, including flipping and speculation taxes proposed by Vancouver's mayor, the province announced today it would start charging a surprising 15 percent tax on foreign investors.

BC Finance Minister Mike de Jong told reporters the tax amounts to a $300,000 take on a $2-million home. According to a small slice of data collected by the government last month, foreign investors make up 5.1 percent of the Metro Vancouver housing market, which amounted to over $1 billion in property purchased between June 10 and 14.

For people who have been watching the issue closely, there's a subtle difference between "foreign money" and "foreign buyers." NDP Opposition Leader John Horgan told VICE the legislation's focus on "foreign nationals and foreign-controlled corporations" will let people with fancy lawyers and accountants slide their money right by it.

Read More: How Foreign Investors Are Using Drug Cartel Tactics in the Canadian Real Estate Market

"We've said for months and months that we need a speculation tax to focus on the money, not on the individuals," Horgan told VICE. "We don't want it to be a race-based debate, we want it to be based on how we stop this money that's distorting the market."

Observers like Ian Young of the South China Morning Post have maintained the luxury home market in Vancouver has been heating up in large part because of wealthy migrants to Canada, not overseas buyers. Those citizens and permanent residents obviously won't be affected by this new tax.

De Jong admitted foreign investment is "only one factor" driving up prices. "It represents an additional source of pressure on a market struggling to build enough new homes to keep up," he said in a statement.

Follow Sarah Berman on Twitter.

At the gates. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

On the road leading to the notorious Nomads' bunker in Carlsbad Springs, a sign for the local chip stand was advertising a "Biker Special." The friendly discount was kind of emblematic of the way this town of 500 reacted to the massive Hells Angels gathering taking over the area.

"Doesn't change much for us," the convenience clerk store told VICE with a shrug.

But in front of the compound's iron gates, a sprawling row of police vehicles hinted that authorities were taking the event a little more seriously.

The "Canada Run" convention, a gathering of Hells Angels and their affiliated clubs, takes place every four years and is an opportunity for the bikers to get out and be seen. Attendance is mandatory, and those who skip out must reportedly pay a heavy fine.

In the three days of the "conference," members were spotted at Ottawa-area shops and strip clubs, also making their way to Parliament Hill for the requisite tourist photos.

The billboards advertising The Thing begin about 40 miles outside of Tucson, Arizona. Sometimes they are so hidden by desert broom bushes and palo verde trees that you can barely see them as you barrel eastward on I-10. Other times, the signs come in clusters, an unavoidable swath of yellow in the otherwise barren landscape of the Sonoran desert.

"What is it? The Thing?" one of the billboards asked. "The Mystery of the Desert!" another answered. "It's a Wonder!"

As soon as you think there can't possibly be another billboard, there's another billboard. For all I know, the people responsible for these advertisements have circumnavigated the globe with billboards. They've hired a translator to phrase the questions in Russian, Spanish, Chinese. They've put a billboard at the bottom of the Marianas Trench and are currently in talks with Elon Musk to put a billboard on the moon.

Perhaps you think this is hyperbole. It's not.

This nonsense goes on from Phoenix, Arizona to El Paso, Texas, stretching 430 miles of interstate.

The Thing?

What is The Thing?

What is The fucking Thing?

By the time you reach the tiny town of Texas Canyon, Arizona—home of The Thing—the question will have driven you mad. And even then, you won't be much closer to understanding The Thing. Instead, you'll find yourself parked in front of a gas station and a bright yellow building promising souvenirs, T-shirts, jewelry, gifts, and a museum; The Thing, it suggests, is buried somewhere inside.

Before you can gain access to The Thing, you have to pay the attendant one American dollar. This is non-negotiable. When you do so, the attendant will tell you to enjoy the museum.

Aha, you might think, The Thing is a museum. But this is a mistake. The museum is a thing, certainly, but not The Thing.

The museum is comprised of three long metal sheds painted with stripes of alternating primary colors. On the floor of these sheds are large yellow footprints, presumably made by The Thing.

The first shed is long and poorly ventilated. It houses some of the attraction's larger exhibits, such as a Rolls Royce supposedly used by Adolf Hitler. How the Hitlermobile wound up in Texas Canyon, Arizona, is not disclosed to the visitor. As if to assure the visitor that Hitler's ass once sat on the leather seats of the vehicle, there is a cracked, plaster version of the Führer partially leaning out the back window.

Farther down the shed, there is a still-life arrangement featuring a disfigured wooden mannequin staring at the roof, in a gesture that appears to be looking for God. Behind the mannequin is a four-poster bed outfitted with two dusty and sheet-less mattresses, and beside the bed is a chifforobe and an upright piano. There is a Persian rug on the ground, and the rug is littered with pennies tossed there by previous visitors to the museum. The scene, presented without context, is unsettling.

The second shed is about 50 feet from the first shed and much smaller. A sign next to the entrance warns visitors to be wary of Gila monsters, tarantulas, rattlesnakes, and other venomous animals that often used the shed to escape the heat, which can easily surpass 100 degrees in the summer.

Here, the walls are lined with small display cases, each containing an assortment of seemingly random things: Dozens of pieces of driftwood with painted-on eyes, mouths, and hooves. A Toledo cream separator surrounded by Hopi Kachina figures and Navajo pottery. A phonograph juxtaposed with a shattered mammoth bone. Old photos and paintings of England, France, and Italy. One sign describes its object as an "ancient churn made in Kentucky in the 1700s."

Another case displays 17th-century rifles from Spain and Constantinople. One of the rifles is identified as a matchlock from 1654, which wears a sign that says: "This is one of the rarest pieces on Earth and is the only one in the world. THIS IS BEYOND PRICE."

As you enter the final shed, a large, orange banner will announce that at long last you have made it to The Thing. Underneath the banner is a waist-high display case made of cinderblocks, and in the display case is The Thing.

At the risk of seeming anticlimactic: The Thing is a mummified mother and her child. Their wrappings are in tatters, and it is possible to see bones where the flesh and wrappings have decayed.

The only thing is, The Thing is none of those things. The Thing doesn't exist, and the questions have no answers. It is a simulacrum pointing to a nonexistent reality. It is not even The Thing, but one of many Things.

The Thing housed in a cinderblock sarcophagus in Texas Canyon, Arizona, was made by a man named Homer Tate, a jack-of-all-trades who got into the business of making mermaids, mummies, and shrunken heads from mud and bones in the 1940s. He would tote these around as roadside attractions, and sometime around 1950, a lawyer named Thomas Binkley Prince purchased The Thing for $50 and developed it into a permanent attraction.

Prince died in 1969, but before he was laid to rest, he had managed to accumulate all of the things that inhabit the museum today. Indeed, these historical items seemed to have no purpose other than serving as alibis for The Thing's authenticity.

The property was maintained by Prince's wife, Janet, for a number of years after his passing, but she eventually sold the Thing to a company called Bowlin, Inc. and moved to Baltimore. Based in Albuquerque, Bowlin specializes in keeping the Western myth alive and owns pretty much every themed trading post in the Southwest. It is the perfect corporate proprietor of The Thing.

The Thing doesn't get too many visitors. The gas station outside is regularly busy, but few of its patrons care to come inside. Perhaps they're afraid to discover what The Thing really is, or worse, to discover that The Thing doesn't exist at all. When people do come in, they're usually not from Arizona. Instead, they're headed out West in search of their own Thing: a relaxing vacation, an adventure, a better job.

Once you remove the hundreds of miles of advertisements, the promises that The Thing exists, the notion that The Thing can be obtained if you just pay the fee—once you toss all that out, you find that there was no Thing there to begin with. All you're left with is a pile of mud and bones to remind you of your origin and destination.

Follow Daniel Oberhaus on Twitter.

All screenshots by me, it's been quite the morning (via Channel 4)

We are – all of us, when it all boils down, when our flesh is melted from our bones and our brains are shot through to pulp – we are, all of us, little more than a set of dick and balls and/or a titty. Anna Richardson knows. Anna Richardson knows this.

And so to Naked Attraction, the most Channel-4-in-the-90s Channel 4 show of all time, where contestants take all their clothes off and stand goosepimpled in front of each other in an effort to win a date. This is 2016 and this is how we date now. Dating apps and dating websites have got us absolutely twisted to fuck. The only way we can find a life partner it to look at them in the following order: junk, tit area, face, voice.

It is the opening sequence, and "modern dating is complicated", we are told, while a load of girls with eyebrows and dudes with man-buns tell us Tinder is hard. With respect, Tinder isn't that hard, is it? I mean, an app where you can rapidly swipe through hundreds of people and instantly judge them on their face isn't that difficult in comparison to – AND I AM JUST PLUCKING AN EXAMPLE RANDOMLY OUT OF THE AIR – getting your dick and/or tit out on a television dating show. I just feel like the contestants on this show haven't fully explored every dating opportunity available to them. You very much feel that a lot of these application forms were filled in on a Wednesday after they'd all used up their super likes for the week and realised loneliness is inevitable.

Our first dater is Aina. Aina is 32 and harder than me. I can tell this. I can tell this immediately. Aina can Fuck Me Up. There is a montage where she giggles in a bar with a friend – "she's a strong girl so she'll need a strong man" – does some freaky yoga shit and listens to a song on large padded headphones in a dimly lit studio. This is the shape of the person we will come to know. This is everything Aina is. She likes music and strength. She wants a man who likes music and strength.

(I'll be honest: these dating show montages always freak me the fuck out, because if they had to make one about me, what would it be like? "Joel, 29, is a writer," a voiceover says, while I just sit in the reception area at work and just hold my head in my hands, then flick to Twitter. "And when he's not writing, he's—" what? What do I do? Would a tightly-edited two-minute video of me playing Rocket League, avoiding cleaning the bathroom and trying to fit into my trousers turn potentials dates on or off? It is impossible to know.)

"So why do you want to choose a date naked?" host Anna Richardson asks, possibly the most legitimate question ever asked by anyone in history. Anna explains that, after whittling the six potential dates down to two, Aina will have to herself get naked, and they'll all stand around in this curious nude safe space and say what they like about their bodies. Aina is nervous about getting naked but is going to do it anyway. "If it frightens you, go and do it," she says. Aina is a nihilist. She is immediately confronted with six dicks:

There's a curious undulating indelicacy going on, for what is such a cock and titty-heavy programme: Richardson ushers in the dicks with the words, "Can we please reveal... the bottom half of the bodies," which seems oddly distant and shy. Basically, what I am saying is that this show would be improved one-thousandfold if Anna just said, "SHOW ME THE JUNK!" in a "CAN YOU START THE FANS, PLEASE!" voice, but alas.

The bizarre balance between being frank and coy continues as Aina takes a few steps forward to really get some eyes on some dicks. "Nice willy," she says, of one. "Nice form, nice shape." Anna takes on a warning tone. "That's a very large appendage," she says. Aina, however, has seen some shit. "You think?" A guy with a not-even-complex elephant tattoo around his dick also has a prosthetic limb. "Let's discuss the leg!" Anna says breezily. It's so hard to tell what the tone of this show is: smutty, electrically charged, weird, funny, goofy? Let's discuss the leg? They discuss pubes. Aina has some. A small interstitial shows a whole mess of pubes forming the word "pheromones". Aina eliminates the dude w/ the smallest dick and says it's because his "stance" isn't strong enough. It isn't. It's because his dick isn't strong enough. Already, this show – which is about as erotic as watching a sex education tape on a big VHS player in a classroom with a teacher you once called "mum" – is amazing.

The first guy out, Muhammad, then does this weird sort of glamour pose in the middle of the studio, alone and fragile and naked, then says he had a great time, that he is confident now, loves his self and loves his body, and all I can think of throughout is: 'THIS DUDE IS GOING HOME AND HE BASICALLY GOT HIS DICK OUT ON TV FOR LITERALLY NO REASON. ALL HE SAID WAS "GOODBYE". THAT'S IT. I HAVE SEEN YOUR DICK, MUHAMMAD.'

Maxwell is next to go. Maxwell, a trainee zookeeper with the kind of eyebrows that can get your drinks bought for you all night if you put on a nice frock and take them to Aintree:

Still, the half-educational, half-cheeky sex chat continues apace. There's a moment where Aina and Anna stand and discuss bad kissing in front of a clearly naked and sleep deprived man, and he just smiles and nods along like he's trying to insert himself into a conversation at a party. Every man leaves and has to do a fully nude, don't-get-your-genitals-on-my-trousers hug with Aina. Anna tells them before they leave what Aina liked about them ("She liked your juicy bum") even though they have literally just heard everything she has said about them.

More and more, reality TV feels to me like some sort of peek at a vision of the future, a little glimpse of government-mandated dating in 2050, lining up the proles by their tit and dick size and telling them to have at it however they want. More and more, Naked Ambition feels like a precursor to two or three years in the future, where Kay Burley is stood in a hyper-CGI Sky studio reviewing intrusive camera footage of a potential love partner, asking Darren, 24, from Ashbourne, "And what do you think of her urethra?"

Weird thing is that everyone more or less says they had a great experience. That they do their genitals-apart hug and lingering-bum-shot walk out of frame, then go to a green room, where they are smiling, saying that even through they didn't get picked they had fun, that actually they'd never been all that comfortable with their bodies before today, that standing there with their dicks out and face obscured was liberating, almost, freeing. Nobody mentions what the smell in the boxes must be like, but I know already that it is "extremely savoury".

Aina, meanwhile, has whittled it down to two: Matty, a one-legged, elephant-dicked artist, and Rob, a self-deprecatingly funny dance teacher. She reveals herself nude to them both. Matty, on Aina: "Absolutely beautiful. Lovely curves. I love the hips, the breasts." I'm pretty sure this is no longer a dating show and is just a complex job interview for a role doing the headlines on the Sidebar of Shame.

It's really weird watching people make v. practical movements while totally naked: everyone here looks like they are assessing a boiler or a fucked fridge, squinting at bums, doing hand-on-face rigorous assessments of bellends, pubic musings. Anna asks the boys what they think of Aina's pubes and armpit hair. "You can do what you want with your own body," Matty barks. "If you're proud of it, you can do what you want." This is so fucking weird, man.

Eventually Aina picks Matty, and they have a clothes-on date in a bar. Unfortunately, Matty dresses like shit. Everyone on the show dresses like shit. Suddenly you see the appeal of a nude reality dating show to them: with every over-ripped jean and wooden necklace, you see why they are so comfortable being undressed. If there is a moral to this TV show, it's "take a chance on the badly dressed, they quite often have absolutely kicking bodies".

Second half and we meet Mel, who I'm pretty sure was Kingsley's girlfriend in series two of Fresh Meat. Mel is bisexual, which makes this show interesting: now she can play "Deal or No Deal but with fresh junk" with a combination of men and women.

As they walk around, Anna engages in half-sisterly, half-educational "have you ever had too big a willy?" chat, making the whole thing feel weirdly like unasked-for sex-ed with a very bombastic auntie. It's Christmas, mum's just packed all the dinner away. Dad's in front of the telly. Your fun aunt, Anna Richardson, is on her second bottle of red wine. You are 13 and just trying to work out where all the smells and hairs are coming from. And Anna Richardson sits opposite you, fag on the go, and asks: "NOW, DO YOU KNOW ABOUT ANALINGUS?" Back to the show, and Mel is two body parts in and really feeling the girl on the end in the green cage. "I am attracted to the tattoos on green," she says. Anna pauses. "Anything about the tits?"

Ruben is sent home because his dick's too big, and he makes this face about it:

As before, all of the post-bin off to-camera pieces are very #bodyposi, with everyone saying what a great time they had, what a babe their potential date was, how they're so happy they did this show, what an experience it was. Apart from Mark, who is an estate agent, and as such a dickhead. "She's very good looking," he says of Mel, who rejects him, "but I didn't like her legs." DRIVE A BRANDED MINI ABOUT IT, MATE.

They all have to stand and say what they like and don't like about their bodies at the end, which is very #solidarity, but leads to some really weird conversations – like literally never-had-before-in-the-history-of-the-earth conversations, such as this one, between Anna and two potential dates, as they wait for Mel to make her naked appearance:

"What do you think Mel will look like naked: pubes or no pubes?"
"I think she'll have pubes, but they'll be very well groomed"

Mel chooses Rebecca, all tats and tits, from the green box, and they have a laughter-and-tequila date at the same bar as before. Once again, everyone is thrilled they took their clothes off on Channel 4. "I wasn't thinking about every body part and wondering if she was judging each body part," Rebecca says of her date, "because she's already seen my body parts." In one-month-later vignettes, both couples are still together and look really loved up. Could... I mean... this insane system works. What in the fuck.

Remember the 90s? Blind Date and people saying mildly cheeky innuendos to Cilla Black's big pink face, and then Take Me Out happened, a human meat market with some bawdy Saturday night banter, and we thought: how bad can it get, how bad can it get? And now, both Undressed and this: people just straight up taking their clothes off on television – I mean, we are talking flaps and all – and somehow finding love that way.

Are we all broken inside? Are we so desensitised now – so porned up, so horned out, we've all seen so many dick pics we can't function – that this is the only way millennials can date? Or is it something deeper: that we are all so desperately searching for love, some holy once-in-a-universe connection with something real, that we'll do anything to find it; that we'll let Anna Richardson talk frankly about our bush? I don't know. I will be watching episode two of Naked Attraction to find out.

@joelgolby

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On Fire Island, the largest of the barrier islands outside Long Island, you'll find the Fire Island Pines. The hamlet serves as a community, cruising ground, and capital of high gay society. Lush with its namesake scrub pine trees and bordered by sand dunes, it's overrun each summer with queer men of all stripes, who flock there to find brotherhood and embrace.

Among America's gay communities, from Palm Springs, California, to Provincetown, Massachusetts, the Pines and its neighbor Cherry Grove have fixed themselves as a hedonist's mecca nonpareil in our national queer imagination. "The Pines is to gay people what Israel is to Jews," a resident once told the New York Times.

Since long before Stonewall, it's where gay men have sought sex and shelter from the outside world. The singular landscape has stained the works of Edmund White and Andrew Holleran. Its reputation as an essential destination for high gay society is said to have begun when W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood arrived costumed as Dionysus and Ganymede, "carried aloft on a gilded litter by a group of singing followers."

This weekend marked the 18th iteration of the Pines Party, an all-day, all-night dance and fundraiser where the magic of the island blooms into a bacchanal carouse. Photographer Nathan Bajar hopped a ferry to capture portraits of the attendees, aglow in the sun and drunk with passion.

The glory days of illegal downloading

It all started with Lars Ulrich. Before he sued Napster back in 2000 and won, illegal downloading wasn't even illegal, no one really knew what it was. But after that case, hundreds of aggrieved musicians, record labels and nation states tried to stop people like me downloading Limp Bizkit's back catalogue for free. Just yesterday Isohunt, a pirate website that didn't actually host any MP3s itself but just had a directory for websites where you could download them, was ordered to pay £38m to a music industry group called "Music Canada". The UK government is planning on putting the maximum sentence for online piracy up to 10 years inside for the most serious offences, according the Office of Intellectual Property.

Of course, when Napster launched, places like Virgin Megastores and Tower Records were charging in excess of £15 for an album, and often more for a film or box set. The entertainment industry generally treated the general public with disregard, and people felt ripped off. So there was a fair amount of delight in sticking it to them and downloading terabytes worth of free songs. If you need a comparison for this day and age, imagine if someone built a railway line right next to every Southern Rail train track and then ran the service for nothing, and then Southern Rail came out and said "yes we know the free track is there but the moral thing to do is support Southern Rail".

Eventually the music industry worked out that it couldn't just bash people with the proverbial stick, and created the carrot of way cheaper legal downloading and streaming services, while also going around closing down the websites that had almost destroyed their industry.

That tactic pretty much worked and today I, like everyone else, am more than happy to wrestle with the extensive catalogues of YouTube and Spotify rather than endangering my computer with dodgy software. But I do wonder what happened to those old pirate websites, whether they still exist in some kind of internet graveyard or whether they have all been expunged.

So, as I was feeling particularly blue this week, I decided to try download Simon and Garfunkel's "The Sound Of Silence" for free on every old pirate website, to see if any of them had sprung back up in my absence.

First up, the guys that started it all, Napster:

This is what you get when you get on to the Napster website these days, some generic looking music streaming site in the guise of Apple Music or Spotify. Apparently after getting chinned by years of high profile lawsuits, Napster decided to shut down its original pirate incarnation. But after getting bought out by US electronic retailers Best Buy, and later merging with Rhapsody, it has since rebranded itself as a paid for streaming service, (AKA sold out to the fucking system, man). I shan't be finding a free copy of a classic folk ballad here.

Next I tried Pirate Bay but when attempting to log in to their site, I just got a list of directories to other sites:

I clicked on some of the sexier sounding ones like 'fastpiratebay.co.uk' and the more official sounding 'thepiratebay.uk.net' but every time was met with a "site can't be reached" page. Turns out the Swedish site, after numerous raids on their offices, lawsuits and arrests, has been blocked in a number of countries and also banned from being mentioned on social media sites like Facebook. I mean, I could easily circumvent these blocks using TOR or any other kind of darkweb browser but dammit I'm not Jonny Lee Miller in Hackers I'm just in need of a quick fix of Garfunkel balm to ease my troubled mind, and so I moved on.

When I was growing up, the main bad boy of the downloading game was always Limewire. Sure, it had more viruses than you could shake a stick at and was horribly slow, but it was always user-friendly. So a massive shame when I tried to click on www.limewire.com only to be met with another 'site can't be found' page. I started having a look at various downloadable options and almost went for the one below, but then thought about how many viruses I used to fuck up my computers with back in the day and had a little pause:

Upon doing some research I found that Limewire had actually been shut down way back in 2010 after more lawsuits and court hijinks so there were no new working versions available. Various wikis explained that old versions not only don't work, but also have many trojan horses in them, and I didn't want to take the risk and not be able to finish the rest of this article.

So instead I tried Kazaa, the even more virusey Limewire alternative.

Oh right, bollocks.

Finally then, to Soulseek, trusty old Soulseek. Soulseek was the worst-looking, least user-friendly of the big P2P networks. It was the illegal downloading site your older brother used. Perhaps for that reason people didn't seem that bothered about knocking it off the internet and whaddayaknow, it's still operational.

It offered me a free download of the program. Upon opening the file, my firewall protector went a bit nuts, but was I about to back down now, when I was so close to the mellifluous sounds of S&G? Not on your nelly. So I proceeded to search for the seminal 1964 track and boy was I not, disappointed, a whole bunch of versions came up straight away.

And it wasn't like the old days either. No waiting around with a cup of tea for it to download, 30 seconds later look what happened:

Yes! Finally, after a whole three hours or so of being rejected by various old pirate website I was let back in by the sweet and loving embrace of Soulseek, and was now free to enjoy the tender and heartbreaking sounds of the "Sound Of Silence" at my leisure, just like I used to do with Limp Bizkit all those years ago.

So what do we know now? First, let me unreservedly apologise to Simon and Garfunkel, I have deleted the song off my computer and am now listening to it for free on YouTube instead, for which I'm sure you will receive 0.0003p. Second, the music industry have done a great job of making illegal downloading so hard and annoying and made streaming so easy that they don't even need to finish shutting down the remaining sites because who wants to spend three hours going through each one seeing which works. And third, this remains the greatest song ever written:

@TomUsher

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Photo via Facebook

It's difficult to think up an ad more predictably sexist, kitschy, and, well, Albertan than what the Canada Oil Sands Community unleashed into the world on Sunday night.

The ad, which has since been taken down, features two white feminine persons on the verge of kissing in what appears to be a high school hallway that unexpectedly transitions into an aerial shot of a boreal forest.

Adjacent to the photo is text in three different, increasingly cartoonish fonts: "In Canada lesbians are considered hot! In Saudi Arabia if you're a lesbian you die! Why are we getting our oil from countries that don't think lesbians are hot?!"

At the bottom of the rhetorical shitstorm is a plea to like the Facebook page so it can reach its goals of 100,000 likes (it's currently at 14,000, almost there b'ys!)

Lots of problems with this situation.

The photo's male-gazey and hyper-sexualizing as hell. The argument ignores the fact that many women who self-identify as gay or bisexual aren't "considered hot" by our racist, transphobic, ableist, and fatphobic culture.

Then there's the fundamental misunderstanding of the economic circumstances that encourage Eastern refineries to use Saudi oil (in short, oil from that region is really, really cheap to produce and transport compared to dilbit from Alberta).

And, as to be expected (and encouraged), the ad was swiftly destroyed on Twitter.

Cody Battershill, the founder of the embarrassing I Love Oil Sands campaign, rapidly distinguished his pet project from the ad. Eventually, Robbie Picard—the gay, Métis man who started Canada Oil Sands Community and used to lead Battershill's I Love Oil Sands campaign in Fort McMurray and Edmonton—issued an apology on the ol' FB last night.

"It was not my intent of demeaning women or any people of any sexual orientation," Picard wrote. "It's I believe in equality and human rights."

(A very cool commenter who lists "part-time drinker" as his job title responded: "as a straight guy I'm almost offended that women were offended by that picture" and "you don't support our oil you're a disgrace.")

Picard deserves the internet wrath he received. There's no excusing the sexism, objectification, and shitty design that he propagated.

But let's get real.

Picard's logic was totally in line with what politicians and pundits' have been selling to the public on this file for years, which have grounded arguments for the expansion of the tarsands and construction of pipeline projects like TransCanada's Energy East and Kinder Morgan's Trans-Mountain Expansion.

Think of Picard's ad as the most brutally honest representation of the level of discourse that technocrats have been spouting for the past half-decade.

Here it goes in its most extreme form: countries like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela have godawful human rights records, buying petroleum products from them directly and implicitly supports their behaviour and that we as good, moral Canadians should do everything we can to develop and consume our own natural resources, thus boosting our national economy and starving the economies of countries like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela (who will presumably stop beheading and starving its citizens, respectively).

Some, like former Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Rebel Media mouthpiece Ezra Levant, have summarized such arguments under the grandiose banner of "ethical oil."

"Canada is a very ethical society and a safe source for the United States in comparison to other sources of energy," said Harper in 2011.

More sensible politicians like Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Alberta Premier Rachel Notley don't openly reference the execution of LGBTQ people in Saudi Arabia or crippling levels of corruption in Nigeria when they talk about pipelines and the tarsands.

Directly, that is. And this is where things get especially troublesome.

Sure, part of the groundwork has already been completed by the likes of Harper and Levant and Picard via the "ethical oil" trope: while Canada is plagued with issues like secretive corporate lobbying and gutted low-income housing and all the rest, we can still Photoshop a dildo in Harper's hand and not get our kneecap shattered with a shotgun blast.

But there are serious and unchecked ethical assumptions held by Notley, Trudeau, et al, that allow for the very existence of the tarsands and export of associated products via pipelines and tankers, and that in unspoken terms justify development by choosing not to speak of the evils (as opposed to the former category who are clearer about the alternatives).

Namely, the theft of land from Indigenous peoples and contamination of what's left for them.

The tarsands operate in Treaty 8 territory, with its byproducts traversing (and sometimes spilling in) almost every other treatied area in the country.

It takes like five minutes of research to realize that treaties have been: a.) constantly broken, and b.) deeply misunderstood.

Many Indigenous elders and people contend their ancestors never agreed to "cede" their land as the signatories had little familiarity with Western concepts of property and were far more invested in principles like sharing and friendship and all those other things that white people supposedly learned as kids (not to mention language translation issues and the recent decimation of the buffalo, etc.).

There's a growing demand for conversations about "reconciliation" to include the return of land and acknowledgement of Indigenous nationhood, which would inevitably disrupt operations of the tarsands and other resource extraction projects.

But there's no word from the likes of Trudeau or Notley on such moving forwards on such subjects: the federal Liberals recently broke their pledge to implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

There are no black-and-white battlelines drawn here like with "ethical oil," separating the celebration of hot lesbians from guillotining their Saudi counterparts.

But politicians' tacit endorsement of projects like Energy East—which will plow through hundreds of distinct Indigenous nations and communities that oppose the pipeline—almost seems worse, concealing a phenomenally lucrative industry under the guise of normality and reasonableness and incontestability.

Trudeau and Notley simply don't need to embark on such campaigns: their arguments were won decades and centuries ago with the decimation of Indigenous peoples via disease and residential schools, and cultural genocide with the confinement on reserves and destruction of territories with resource development and institutional poverty and underfunding and hopelessness.

At least Picard let us know honestly how totally fucked up his ideology is.

Follow James Wilt on Twitter.

Michael Ford looks at a memorial left for his late uncle Rob Ford in March. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young

The heart of Ford Nation has a new leader and he's... a Ford.

On Monday, Michael Ford, 22, nephew of former mayor Rob Ford, who died of cancer in March, easily won a byelection for his uncle's council seat in Ward 22—Etobicoke-North.

Following his cancer diagnosis in September 2014, Rob Ford dropped his mayoral re-election bid and instead successfully ran as a Ward 2 councillor—the position he'd held prior to becoming mayor in 2010 and that his older brother Doug held during Rob's term as mayor. Michael Ford, meanwhile, won a seat as a school trustee in Ward 1. After his uncle's death, he gave up that post to fill Rob's council seat, which he won decisively, taking in 69.6 percent of the vote.

Michael Ford told reporters he's dedicated to reducing crime in the ward he grew up in. (His own family doesn't exactly have the greatest reputation in this regard. One of Rob Ford's closest friends, Sandro Lisi, was convicted of threatening to kill a woman, and a Globe and Mail investigation alleged several Fords were involved in drug dealing.)

"I will be at your door to serve you, just like my great uncle Doug has done and my uncle Rob," said Michael Ford, adding his deceased uncle would strike him with a "lightning bolt" if he failed to return a phone call.

Rob Ford prided himself always being available to answer constituents phone calls and it seems his nephew is echoing that philosophy. But in many regards, Mike Ford seems to have little in common with his infamous uncles, as media profiles paint him as more thoughtful and progressive.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Original image via Flickr user Emergency Vehicles

A woman has been arrested in Newmarket, Ontario for shooting a pellet gun at Pokémon Go players.

The opening night of the Democratic National Convention may have been as fraught with party tension as last week's calamitous Republican National Convention—but comparing the star wattage of the conventions' speakers so far is not unlike comparing a box of chocolate truffles to a bag of flaming dog shit.

Consider the evidence: Whereas the RNC's first night featured a forgotten TV sitcom star, an aging underwear model, and a hatemonger of a former politician who hasn't held office in a decade, the first night of the DNC featured performances and speeches from successful pop stars, firebrand statements from forward-thinking comedians, and Michelle Obama. This election might be the literal manifestation of the tagline for Alien vs. Predator, but when it comes to reputable guest appearances, it's not hard to see who has the advantage.

Reputation alone couldn't carry every one of the night's musical performers to victory, though. Boyz II Men's convention-opening performance of "Motownphilly" was plenty competent and a decent hat-tip to the DNC's Philadelphia staging ground, but the transition from Demi Lovato's touching speech on mental-health awareness to her performance of the title track on last year's Confident was a reminder that your typical political convention—even in an atypical election year such as this—doesn't have the polish and finesse of, say, the Grammys.

But it was Paul Simon's performance of "Bridge Over Troubled Water" that garnered the most musical social-media chatter. Simon's on a bit of a career bump right now—his latest solo album, this year's Stranger to Stranger, has been a solid critical success—but his vocal delivery at the DNC was a bit rough. The Democrats didn't seem to mind, though, swaying and singing along in a fashion that is likely the closest you'll ever come to seeing a bunch of delegates milly rocking on their block.

The night's comedic speakers were definitely more successful. Minnesota senator Al Franken went back to his Saturday Night Live days with a speech loaded with jabs at Trump and the RNC that landed somewhere between Jon Stewart-monologue-filler and the type of jokes you'll hear your father make around Thanksgiving. Corny and obvious, sure, but when the entire country feels like it's going down the toilet, corny and obvious will do.

For her part, Sarah Silverman kicked off her speech by telling Franken to "get out of way" and offered a necessary viewpoint—one of a Bernie Sanders supporter who's nonetheless supporting Hillary Clinton in the election. She also offered the most direct and cutting rebuke to the smattering of Bernie-driven boos that peppered the DNC's first night: "Can I just say—to the Bernie-or-bust people, you're being ridiculous," she mic-dropped near the end of her remarks, which was almost as perfect of a statement to make as the "Bababooey" she dropped beforehand (Stern rules!). "Thank God they can fix this in post," she cracked when the rancor grew louder after her speech; they obviously can't, but hopefully her remarks helped to fix the convention's ideological fissures.

Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren used part of her speech to continue spitting straight fire at Trump, a talent that has bizarrely eluded most prominent Democratic figures. (Trump has since fired back with, naturally, a response unsurprisingly racist and horrible.) But the night's star speaker was undoubtedly Michelle Obama, who could've fired her own jabs at the Trump family following last week's Melania Trump plagiarism fiasco but didn't. (Twitter did it for her, anyway.)

The first lady's speech drew on President Barack Obama's successes and how Clinton can continue the progress he's made during his eight years in office; she also addressed that being the first black first lady means waking "up every morning in a house built by slaves," potently employing that fact to highlight what she believes the US is capable of: "Don't let anyone ever tell you that this country isn't great, that somehow we need to make it again. Because this right now is the greatest country on earth."

It's a sentiment that even Susan Sarandon could agree on—even if she wasn't exactly having the best time. Sorry, Susan.

This article originally appeared on VICE Germany.

When I get out of the U8 train at Berlin's Kottbusser Tor station at 5 AM on a Thursday, three men dressed in rags raise their beer bottles to greet me. "Is this a nightcap or a good morning beer?" I ask. They don't answer but grin at me with the few remaining teeth they have. The sun is rising over Kotti (as the area is affectionately called in German), reflecting on the satellite dishes and the windows of the surrounding kebab joints and bars. There are hardly any people in the square—it's basically me and a guy manning a 24-hour vegetable stand. But the rubbish from last night that's still lying on the street tells stories: Someone spent the evening with a needle and a Capri Sun juice box for company; a few feet away is an installation made from an empty sparkling wine bottle and a mini bottle of chardonnay. Additionally, I count 17 empty vodka bottles; the brands are so cheap that I don't even recognize them from my days as a student.

The street cleaner, who begins sweeping everything up just before 6 AM, merely says: "It's dirty here. But for further inquiries, you have to turn to the mayor's public relations office." Kotti has been in the press a lot recently. In April, the Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote that Kottbusser Tor is Berlin's hardest drug market: "It doesn't really get more bleak than this." Two months earlier, the Tagesspiegel ran the headline: "(Kottbuser Tor) Is Too Crass Even for Kreuzberg Standards." According to the police, the number of muggings increased by 50 percent between 2014 and 2015. Theft increased by 100 percent.

But what's a lingering problem to some is a hotspot of Berlin nightlife to others. To many, Kotti is the perfect example of a place in which different worlds can coexist peacefully. Gay bar Möbel Olfe is just a few feet away from Cafe Diyar, populated mostly by very serious Turkish men who play okey. At night, African music blends into Turkish pop and techno. Is Kotti the cesspool of Berlin or a multicultural paradise? I'm going to spend 24 hours here to see what's up, from dawn to dawn.

The first dealers make their way to their posts for the morning shift around 6:30 AM. "Hash, hash?" one of them asks in a sleepy voice as I walk past the Istanbul Supermarket. Another yawns: "White, green, brown?" which apparently means "coke, weed, heroin." But I only got that by the end of my 24 hours at Kotti.

A delivery truck drops off döner kebabs at 7 AM. The driver unwraps the giant meat cone and rests it on his shoulder. The image makes me think of a cave man carrying a mammoth's leg. "Do you think it's dangerous around here?" I ask him. "I've been delivering here for 11 years, and nothing's ever happened," he says. "But the situation has gotten worse over the last year, especially on weekends. I've seen fist fights and one stabbing in the past few months."

The morning rush hits Turkish bakery Simitdchi, Kotti's breakfast hotspot, at 9 AM. Students in pixie haircuts grab their coffees to go. Women in hijabs drink black tea from little glasses and eat simit—the Turkish version of a sesame bagel. An elderly person pushing an empty shopping cart locks it outside the store with a bike lock before going in to order. Another grandpa, wearing a John Deere hat and a crocheted shawl, reads the culture section of Die Zeit. A scrawny man walks up to me, rolls up his sleeves, presents me with the rash on his upper arm, and says: "I have AIDS, do you have money?"

Drug addicts, eccentrics, Turks, artists, and students make up the fauna at Kotti. If you climb to the roof of one of the social housing projects surrounding it, then you can see Kotti in all its glory at once. The expansive, ten-story monster called the Neue Kreuzberger Zentrum makes up the north side of the square. In front of it, there's a round, concrete labyrinth of shops, bars, snack joints, a hostel, and a casino. In the West, you have the Istanbul Supermarket. In the East, you have burger joint Burgermeister—a favorite for tourists. Every few minutes, the U1 train rattles into the station on the overground tracks. At night, it delivers the party crowds.

I decide to get a kebab for lunch. While I'm standing in line, a stranger puts his arm around my shoulder, causing my heart to skip a few beats. Is it one of the ambush thieves that the media writes about so often? Nah—he doesn't want my wallet. He wants my number. He gives me a piece of baklava as a parting gift and tells me he works in a corner store nearby.

Ahmet Tuncer

A local resident, Ahmet Tuncer, 63, will later tell me that I was lucky. His wallet was stolen once. He's also found a lot of gutted wallets on the ground and turned them in. The cash was gone, but the documents were still there. Tuncer, who has been living in Kreuzberg for 47 years, says that "it has always been a troubled place but also a lively, tolerant one." Nevertheless, he doesn't like using the term "multicultural" to describe the area. "The idea of Kotti as a cool neighborhood attracts young people, and young people attract drug dealers."

But criminality isn't exclusive to the square. It's just more visible here because of the subway station's central location. It makes Kottbuser Tor a meeting point. Tuncer also says he feels things have calmed down in the past couple of months. People who own retail spaces nearby pay a pair of private security teams, each composed of two men and dog, to patrol the area at night.

Moreover, Tuncer is active in the "Kotti & Co." initiative, which fights the rising rents in the area. Between 2010 and 2016, his own rent was raised by about $400. In spite of the negative headlines, Kotti is a coveted place to live, which means it's getting more and more expensive. In nearby Cafe Kremanski, a barista with a groomed beard serves a caffe corretto to a guy working with a MacBook that is charging an iPhone and an iPad at the same time. The cafeteria's menu boasts an "acerola power shake." Outside, a man of indiscernible age is having a different liquid afternoon snack: vodka. He offers me a sip when I come out. In general, I've been getting a lot of gifts from the snack bars and corner stores. By 7 PM, I've been given pistachio cookies, three glasses of black tea, a peach, and two bottles of beer. Maybe that's what makes people love Kotti in spite of everything. It's a bit like a big bazaar—lacking in rules and making up for it in improvisation.

Murat Cavan

"Kotti is its own country," says Murat Cavan, who is wrapping watermelons in saran wrap in front of Istanbul Supermarket. He's lived here for 18 years and doesn't "ever want to leave." He also says he's gotten used to the drug market blooming in front of him because "some just can't help it." The three dealers standing a few feet away all agree: "There are no jobs, that's why we're here."

For hours, they offer anyone who walks by "hash, weed, coke, ecstasy" in the muffled tone bullies used to insult you in high school—loud enough for you to hear but softly enough to keep them from getting caught. One of them is from Lebanon, the other from Egypt, and the third is Palestinian. The Lebanese guy says, "I would rather sell vegetables, but I don't have a work permit, so no vegetables." The Egyptian guy chimes in, "Life in Germany isn't as good as I thought it would be."

When the European championship game between France and Germany begins at 9 PM, everything suddenly looks like a stock image labeled "integration." Men with impressive mustaches are rooting for the German national team along with with muscleheads draped in German flags. People shout in German, Turkish, Arabic, English, and Russian when the German team misses a shot at the goal. Some guy who offered me heroin earlier is now cheering a few feet away from a group of private security guards on their cigarette break.

Violette Dieblume

Fifty yards away, French hairstylist Violette Dieblume is drinking with her gay male friends in Möbel Olfe. "For me, Kotti is the most exciting place in Germany." In nice moments like these, it seems like she might be right.

After midnight, however, the mood turns. A blackout drunk woman is dancing in front of a dozen men, who are sat on a step. She stumbles, sways, catches herself, and continues to dance. People's bodies seem to tense, and the mix of languages in the air has taken on an aggressive tone.

At half past midnight, a middle-aged guy in a track suit suddenly runs across the square, shouting in Russian: "I don't want any problems, I don't want crystal meth!" Everything happens in a blur. There is yelling and the sound of quick steps on the asphalt. A little group comes together next to the 24-hour vegetable stand. Three scrawny men push another, older man around; in the end, they manage to rip something out of his hand.

"The old man threatened us with a broken bottle," explains Seyar, 20. He is a sturdy guy with the nose and body of a boxer. It turns out he actually is a boxer. "How dangerous is Kotti?" I ask him. He points to the scar on his throat as an answer.

Seyar

Seyar sometimes speaks to me in English, sometimes in German, and sometimes in Russian. He says he's from Afghanistan and has had asylum in Germany for three years now. He takes off his T-shirt to show me a bunch of stab wounds distributed above his kidneys, larynx, and on his upper arm.

"They cut me open four times," he says.

"Who did?" I ask.

"It doesn't matter who."

"Why?"

"That's just how it is here."

Even with all these people warning me, I can't say I ever feel at risk in the area. But the people working overnight at Kotti complain a lot: about the criminality, the journalists who are obsessed with depicting the place as either a drug hole or a hipster paradise, and the politicians who seem to only care about Kotti when it makes headlines. "Someone should tie Mrs. Merkel up to one of the trees here, so she can see 'multicultural' for herself," one woman says.

It's 5 AM the next morning, and the area around the station is pretty empty. A punk girl with dreads is chasing her dog, to the sound of drunken France fans rowdily lining up for a falafel after a long night of victorious drinking. The döner guy, Mutlu, says that he recently found drug baggies in the flower pots in front of his shop: "They killed all my plants. I love Kotti, but sometimes I think it's hopeless." Still, that didn't keep him from planting new shrubs.

On Sunday evening, I visited three campgrounds in southern New Jersey, just outside of Philadelphia. The campsites—Timberlane, Four Seasons Family, and Old Cedar—were booked at or near capacity through the week with visitors for the DNC. As I walked around the grounds, weaving between trees and tents and larger-than-life effigies of Bernie Sanders, the lack of Hillary support was impossible to ignore. Signs, buttons, light boxes, T-shirts, and car windows branded with the Vermont senator's name littered all three sites, yet I wasn't able to find a single piece of Clinton paraphernalia. This is likely due to Occupy DNC, the group that organized the wooded getaway, and its unwavering support for Sanders. In addition to organizing the campsites for visiting activists, the group has developed a shuttle system to ferry demonstrators between their respective campgrounds and the DNC.

The mood at the sites was somber, and the people I spoke with were adamant that they would keep fighting and continue on with their revolution even after the convention. Whether or not this energy will be able to sustain itself throughout the general election with Hillary as the nominee and the magical Bernie train's memories fading from view remains to be seen, but for now, a bunch of diehard Sandernistas are keeping the dream alive in the New Jersey wilderness.