Photo by Melina Mara/The Washington Post via Getty Images

As of this week, Hillary Clinton now leads Donald Trump in the popular vote by a record breaking 2.5 million votes, the New York Times reports.

Even though Trump won the Electoral College with 306 votes over Clinton's 232, her lead in popular vote has only continued to grow since November 8 as the numbers continue to trickle in from across the country. Even having lost traditionally blue states, like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, her almost 2 percent lead over Trump is nearly five times the lead Al Gore held over George W. Bush in 2000.

The fact that more Americans voted for Hillary Clinton than President-elect Donald Trump has some members of the public and politicians questioning the Electoral College process altogether. One petition on MoveOn.org received 584,788 signatures to abolish the Electoral College in the wake of the election results, and New York City mayor Bill de Blasio called for reform on Tuesday.

"I, for one, am very focused on this. I hope people are all over the country, because it's inconceivable to me that the will of 2.3 million people has been ignored in this result," de Blasio told CBS. "It doesn't make sense. And it's supposed to be in our constitution: one person, one vote. That's not what happened here."

Watch: VICE News Tonight Checked in on America After the Election

A different bunch of young scientists. Photo via Flickr user NTNU, Faculty of Natural Sciences and Technology

A few high school students in Sydney, Australia, managed to synthesize Martin Shkreli's infamous $750 HIV drug for under $20, the Washington Post reports.

As part of a high school science project, 11 students at Sydney Grammar were tasked with trying to recreate Daraprim, the drug that Shkreli's company Turing owns the exclusive rights to in the US. After purchasing the drug in 2015, Turing jacked the price from $18 a pill to $750, sparking public outrage.

But apparently the life-saving drug is so inexpensive to make that a group of 16- and 17-year-old boys were able to get their hands on all the necessary materials for just $15 and, following a patented recipe, synthesized 3.7 grams of the toxoplasmosis medication. Thanks to Shkreli, that amount of the drug would cost about $100,000 in the US market. Their total cost per pill was just $2.

Shrkeli, of course, wasn't too impressed. He was quick to defend himself on Twitter, telling one user, "lol how is that showing anyone up? almost any drug can be made at small scale for a low price. glad it makes u feel good tho."

Watch: VICE Meets Martin Shkreli

In 2014, Mia Hansen-Løve made what may turn out to be the definitive art-house dance-music movie: Eden, a loosely fact-based account of club kids coming of age in Paris in the 1990s, when electronica was ascendant and Daft Punk was literally playing at your house (and without masks). The film's focus on beautiful, bittersweet youth was of a piece with the French director's earlier work, which was similarly focused on the tender sensations of adolescence. If contemporary French cinema has a poet laureate of teenage melancholy, Hansen-Løve would be it: her movies resonate with the angst of kids either growing up too fast or not fast enough.

Pepper spray being rinsed out of a person's eyes and noses. Photo via Wikipedia

Conservative Party leadership candidate and outspoken politician Kellie Leitch is reportedly planning to endorse the legalization of mace/pepper spray in Canada, as part of a move for women to help defend themselves against violence.

Image via 'Moonlight'

The movie Moonlight has been garnering a steady stream of praise since its wide release this fall. The beautifully shot film follows a young black man through three stages of his life as he comes to grips with his identity and struggles to not just find, but accept himself. It's a raw and rare look at intersecting worlds that are too often marginalized in pop culture and it's having a visceral impact on audiences worldwide. TIFF artistic director Cameron Bailey felt that emotional pull the first time he screened the film and programmed it as part of 2016's Toronto International Film Festival. He's brought the movie back to the TIFF Lightbox and it's been the most successful opening in the theatre's history. I sat down with Bailey in Toronto to talk about why it matters to see these stories on the big screen, and what Moonlight could mean for diversity in Hollywood.

LOOK UPON THE FACE OF YOUR MONEY CANADA! Photo via flikr

The bloodlust of the average Canadian knows no bounds.

Cow, pig, moose, elk, seal, chicken, duck, fish—if it bleeds, we will find a way to use it for something. Typically we eat the tasty, tasty creatures but hell we'll use them for leather, comforters, soap, candles, or mount their heads on the wall to make love under—you know, Canadian things.

But as we just learned, we even use them to buy shit. On Wednesday, the Bank of Canada confirmed the inclusion of tallow, an animal byproduct, in Canadian banknotes.

"Our supplier of polymer substrate, Innovia Security, has confirmed to us that these additives may include extremely small amounts of tallow," reads a statement released by the Bank.

Just a couple guys. Photo by Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty Images

A major factor in Donald Trump's victory was the much-discussed "Rust Belt revolt," where the white working class in crucial Midwestern counties backed him rather than Hillary Clinton, despite their past preference for Democrats. Trump's appeal to those people, according to Trump's economics advisor Stephen Moore, is that he's a populist who will protect manufacturing jobs and force companies to remain in the US. (The working class as a whole was less enthusiastic about Trump and largely supported Clinton.)

Left-leaning commenters like Vox's Dylan Matthews remain skeptical of the idea that a billionaire TV star known for stiffing contractors will be a friend of the working man. Matthews recently wrote that thanks to Trump's plan to cut taxes and repeal the Affordable Care Act, the country is about about to suffer under "an economic agenda that will increase the ranks of the uninsured by tens of millions," will "eliminate crucial safety net programs," and will be "absolutely brutal for the poor and working class."

To talk through some of the implications of a Trump presidency for the lower and middles classes, I got in touch with Aaron Klein, a fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution. He wasn't extremely optimistic about average-income Americans benefitting from the Trump tax cuts, but he is holding onto some hope for the great Trump infrastructure reboot.

VICE: What's going to happen to people's pocketbooks under Trump?
Aaron Klein: If history is any guide, the Republican Party cuts taxes, and they do so in a way that disproportionally reduces taxes on the holders of capital. Particularly vulnerable—I think—is the estate tax, one of America's oldest taxes.

That's the one that taxes the money that the children of millionaires inherit. If it were completely gone, would that have any impact on average-income Americans?
The effect of repealing the estate tax for average Americans would be that children and their grandchildren have to pay the debt, and the interest on that debt, so that the children for he uber wealthy can be even wealthier. Or there will be fewer services, so that the standard of living for middle-income Americans—whether it's lower healthcare or less federal support for their public schools, worse healthcare for themselves or their parents as they retire—goes down.

What determines whether a tax cut will result in more debt or fewer services?
Is the tax cut deficit-financed—that's what I think is likely—or is it financed by cuts in services? You could say that more than half of discretionary platform.

A hypothetical reduction in programs obviously hurts the working class, but wouldn't it see any upsides from the tax cuts?
Maybe there's some compromise where a middle-income person sees some sort of reduction in their actual income or payroll tax.

How big of a reduction? Annually, let's say.
A couple hundred dollars maybe. It depends how you make your money.

One of Trump's tax proposals is to cut taxes on investment income. Is that going to matter to ordinary people at all?
During the Bush tax cut of 2001, there was this mythical waitress who made something like $50,000 a year, but it was $40,000 in earned income, and $10,000 in capital gains, and she was a mother of two. And I kept trying to understand who this person was, because from my back-of-the-envelope calculations, to make $10,000 in capital gains a year, at a 5 percent nominal return, you would need to have $500,000 worth of assets invested in bonds, or high-dividend stocks, not a $200,000 house. What single mother of two, who makes $40,000 a year, has $200,000 in their E-Trade account? Who is this person?

OK so working stiffs most likely get just the couple of hundred dollars in tax credits. What about Trump's infrastructure plan? Would that help us?
A large infrastructure package would be a very good thing for America. It could create jobs in the short run, particularly jobs in the construction and manufacturing industry. I've done research that shows that more than two out of every three jobs created by infrastructure is in construction and manufacturing. And America has a multitrillion-dollar infrastructure deficit.

Can you spell out how infrastructure helps average-income Americans who aren't lucky enough to get jobs building it?
The average American spends $500 a year on car repair bills just because of bad roads. It's like a very silent tax. They also spend 42 hours a year sitting in traffic. You could get some of that time back if they a smarter infrastructure system.

And are you optimistic that Trump will?
I've seen the desire to go big, which I think is the right instinct on infrastructure. But I haven't seen a realistic plan, and ultimately, you get what you pay for. There are no free freeways.

But in October, Trump released a paper explaining how he plans to fund it.
That paper doesn't make sense.

Why?
You can't say, "I'm gonna build a road, someone is gonna work on that road, that person's gonna pay taxes, those taxes pay off the road." You don't do that with schools. You don't say, "I'm gonna hire teachers; those teachers pay taxes; thus I offset it." That's not how it works. Money goes into the general fund of the government from your taxes. There are special funds for infrastructure—the highway trust fund, the airport trust fund, the harbor maintenance trust fund, and those are paid for by user fees—usually fuel taxes. But the idea that contractors make profit, and the profit will be taxed, and that pays for this, is just not how the government is accounted for.

That paper talked about a "private sector solution to the provision of public infrastructure." What's an example of private sector infrastructure work benefitting average people?
Amazon works because there's an infrastructure network for them to deliver the package to your door. If we could make that system better—make the delivery trucks faster, or allow drones and new technology to operate efficiently, and integrate it into our existing system—private enterprise can make things work better and faster.

If you had your way, how would you direct government infrastructure spending?
NextGen. We should devote significant resources to next generation air traffic control. Our air traffic system is using 1950s technology. A modern air traffic system could make planes faster, safer, and more fuel efficient. It would be unequivocally good. It's one of those things that would be good for everybody. It makes the airlines save a lot of fuel, so it's good for the environment. It makes the plane safer.

Trump has just picked Steven Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs banker, to be treasury secretary. What should we assume from that?
We shouldn't assume anything! There's a desire for more clarity than exists in reality. The reality is that the Trump platform and team is a mix of traditional Republicans, and then unorthodox thinkers, and I suspect that his administration will be similarly situated. But you don't know until you know.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

Image via Flickr users Gage Skidmore and Ben

Mike Pence's DC neighbors are trolling him with gay pride flags, ABC 7 reports.

The former Indiana governor is currently living in a temporary residence in DC's Chevy Chase neighborhood before he moves into the official VP pad at the US Naval Observatory.

When Pence—who has backed numerous anti-LGBTQ policies and once said that gay marriage would lead to "societal collapse"—moved into the northwest Washington neighborhood after the election, the gay pride flags began appearing at nearby houses as a subtle protest.

Immigrants wait at the Adelanto Detention Facility in California, the largest private ICE detention facility in the state. Photo by John Moore/Getty Images

After a two-month review, the Department of Homeland Security is expected to report Thursday that it will continue its widespread use of private immigration detention centers to house people who are under criminal investigation, waiting to get deported, or under consideration for asylum, according to the Washington Post.

After the Department of Justice announced it would rollback its use of private prisons in August, citing their safety shortcomings, an advisory council decided to take a look at the Department of Homeland Security's use of private facilities where roughly 65 percent of the country's immigrant detainees are housed.

The advisory council reportedly decided that immigration officials should continue to use the facilities, despite the high cost to run them and numerous human rights concerns, in order to "respond to surges in migration flows."

Private immigration centers would likely be a fixture of Donald Trump's mass deportation platform, as it's where the majority of immigrants would go to wait for a flight home. Since the election, the stock price for the two major companies that run the country's private detention centers jumped to more than 35 percent.

Watch: The Real Cost of Donald Trump's Immigration Plans

Like this, but the opposite. Photo of Legally Blonde from MGM

When I was 22, I moved to Chicago with $500, no job, and an English degree from a state school that impressed literally no one outside my extended family. After a few weeks of rejection emails from pretty much every job in the literary world, I decided paying rent was more important than impressing anyone back home. I got a job as a receptionist at a swanky salon in the Gold Coast, a neighborhood filled with million dollar brownstones, terrible nightclubs, and warring factions of high-class escorts.

My interview for the position was more like a casting call. I was required to include a headshot along with my résumé, and the hiring manager's first order of business was to compare my picture to my actual, in-person face. She asked me a few throwaway questions about my nonexistent experience as a receptionist, then deemed me pretty enough to start the following week. She made it clear that the girls at the front desk were walking advertisements for the salon. Our hair was to be perfectly done every day, our makeup, immaculate. If we showed up wearing something frumpy, we had to either go home and change, or buy something new to wear with our generous, $9 an hour salary.

I'll be the first to admit that working in this environment turned me into a narcissistic bitch. I was on the spectrum before, but it's hard not to become completely obsessed with your appearance when it's the only thing anyone talks about. On my first day, three separate people told me I would look a lot better if I dyed my eyebrows, and they were right. Turns out I looked great with dark eyebrows, balayaged hair, perfectly placed winged eyeliner, and the full spectrum of Aveda lipstick at my disposal. I wish I was kidding when I say I used to spend literal hours staring at myself in the mirror both during and after work. I was a fucking monster.

Luckily, my new raging ego was torn down on a daily basis. I'd waitressed during college, so I thought I knew what it was like to be treated like a piece of human garbage on the job. But the drunk patrons at my old Minneapolis sports bar had nothing on the entitled, wealthy housewives who frequented the salon. I rarely got through a full day without being called a stupid bitch for something that wasn't my fault. One rainy day, a woman in a fur coat remarked that the weather made her "melancholy." When I agreed, she rolled her eyes and said, "Oh, honey, don't pretend you know what that word means."

Every day featured some such indignity. The $10 blow dry charge the salon tacked on to hair services always set off the crazies. Guests were fine paying $200-plus for a haircut, but God forbid they pay a cent more to get it styled. I can't count how many times women carrying Birkin bags that cost more than my college education screamed at me over a miniscule $10 charge.

The salon was located in a part of the Gold Coast that locals call the 'Viagra Triangle.'

We also had a cash-only tipping policy, which resulted in fewer tips for the stylists who depended on tips to live. One repeat customer would get $400 in services every two weeks. After she checked out, she would claim she needed to run to the ATM across the street to get cash for a tip. Every damn time she'd leave the salon and—within full view of everyone at the front desk—slip into a cab.

The only thing rich people seemed to hate more than spending a cent more than necessary was having to wait. One day, I called a woman to tell her the appointment before hers was taking longer than expected, and asked her to come in at 4:20 instead of 4 PM. She informed me the 20 minute wait was unacceptable. She would come in for her scheduled time, and not a second later.

She showed up in a huff at 3:15, 45 minutes early for her original appointment. I'd told her my name on the phone, and when I politely repeated that, yes, she would still have to wait, she began yelling my name at the top of her lungs: "Well, CAROLINE, I don't know who was dumb enough to hire you, but you won't have a job in THIS TOWN for long. MY TIME IS VERY VALUABLE. I TOLD YOU ON THE PHONE."

The salon was located in a part of the Gold Coast that locals call the "Viagra Triangle" for its abundance of wealthy old men and the fake-breasted women they pay to accompany them to nightly dinners and, presumably, freaky hotel butt stuff. These women frequented our salon, treating themselves to full-body scrubs, replacing their long blond extensions, and buying thousands of dollars of product in cash. The highest rollers were in their mid to late 40s and botoxed to oblivion. They weren't all upfront about how they'd come into money to the girls at the front desk, but they gabbed with abandon to their stylists, who'd tell us all the dirt—the $12,000 weekends in Cabo, the million dollar apartments paid for by their longtime sugar daddies.

You had to be a little crazy to work in a place where every customer was a walking time bomb. One sweet baby angel, fresh off the bus from Nebraska, quit three hours into her first day when a disgruntled guest called her a dumb cunt over the phone. Nice girls dropped like flies in that place. Working there gave me a thick skin, but it also made me mean. I wasn't a saint before, but after just a few short weeks of having daily shit dumped on me by the filthy rich, I developed a flippant "fuck 'em before they fuck you" attitude. Combined with the full tilt narcissism the job all but required, and I had become a real treat to be around.

I was an asshole—working in an environment that was equal parts shallow and hostile facilitated it. If you treat someone like a piece of shit who's only valued for their looks, they're eventually going to start acting like one. I now go out of my way to treat every customer service professional like they've just given me my long-overdue Hogwarts acceptance letter. I'm a goddamn ray of sunshine.

I learned some basic life skills at that job: how to apply lipstick, how to calm down a menopausal psycho who's threatening to stab your co-worker with a pair of $100 tweezers, how to be cool while helping B-list celebrities find the perfect dry shampoo. But the most important lesson I learned from my year as a punching bag for rich housewives was simple: Don't be a fucking dick. No one owes you anything, least of all the girl ringing up your $800 skincare products. She probably drank a day-old cup of coffee for breakfast because she was too broke to buy a new one. She doesn't need your shit.

Follow Caroline Thompson on Twitter.

Check out Dame Darcy's website, Instagram, and Twitter.

Dr. Leandro Mena. All images courtesy of Tonic

There is a HIV epidemic happening in the United States among African Americans. Although we are 12 percent of the population, we made up more than 44 percent of all HIV diagnoses in 2014. While diagnoses among black women are higher than women of other races, the virus is raging particularly among gay black men. According to a study released by the Centers for Disease Control this year, half of all the gay black men in America will contract HIV.

In the age of treatment as-prevention and pre-exposure prophylaxis, when the risk of getting a positive HIV diagnoses has fallen for all US citizens over the past ten years from 1 in 78 to 1 in 99, why is the situation so dire for black guys who like to have sex with other black guys? Some people have attributed this disparity to the myth of the "down low," the idea that the HIV virus is spreading at an extreme pace among blacks because they're having secret sex with one another while remaining closeted and having sex with women. The truth is, numerous experts have gone at great lengths to dispel this myth, including the CDC, which found in 2009 that less than 2 percent of black men are bisexually active. Another idea is that it is the backwards black Christian church that is to blame because of its intense homophobia, which encourages gay black men to hide in the shadows and not get treatment. Of course, one only needs to look at a Westboro Baptists Church protest or watch Pat Robertson on the 700 Club to know that white Christians are intensely homophobic, too—but white gay men have a 9 percent diagnoses risk, versus the 50 percent risk facing gay black men.

The true cause of the racial disparity in the nationwide fight against HIV comes down to limited access to treatment and a lack of sex education. Nowhere is this more obvious than Jackson, Mississippi. The city is nearly 80 percent black and has America's highest rate of HIV diagnoses—four out of ten gay or bisexual men have the disease. Due to Mississippi state law, schools in Jackson are forbidden to discuss or demonstrate condom use, so many young people simply don't know how to protect themselves against HIV. Thirty-three percent of the black people in Jackson live in poverty. Many of them can't get access to treatment because they lack the means to pay for it and the transportation to get to a doctor. And often, when they finally do get treatment, their HIV virus has already caused them to get AIDS.

VICE's health website Tonic recently visited Jackson to get a sense for how bad things are down there. The one glimmer of light they found was the Open Arms Healthcare Center, which fights the HIV crises in Jackson by treating 165 people a day. This is the only federally funded clinic in the state focused exclusively on providing access to HIV treatment and education, leaving an undeniable impact on the community. To get a better idea of what Open Arms is doing right now and how that can be replicated in poor black communities across the nation, I called up the center's Medical Director, Dr. Leandro Mena. He gave me a lot to think about.

The Jackson skyline

VICE: Tell me about your work.
Leandro Mena: For about 14 years, my work has been focused on HIV and STD prevention and trying to understand the dynamics of HIV transmission among minorities in the South. We want to develop and improve healthcare systems to be able to deliver HIV/STD services to these communities.

HIV is a crisis, especially in Jackson. Our healthcare system, our community, and our public health officers have been slow to respond to this crisis and that has been disproportionately bad for our young black gays—and they are our most vulnerable population.

How do you reach out to this population?
We have to work in collaboration with the health department and the community. In 2007, when we recognized the great number of HIV cases among black men who have sex with men. We tried to understand the factors that lead to this. During that investigation, one of the things that came up was the issue of access to healthcare. We found that the people who had a primary care provider were about four times less likely to be infected than those who had no primary care provider.

It was obvious to me that we needed to create access to health services, and that access had to be something people were wiling to use. At the same time, they needed to be cared for by healthcare providers who were competent.

At Open Arms, we provide health services that include screening for HIV, primary care, and we offer prophylactics in a setting that patients can feel comfortable. We don't want people to feel stigmatized or singled out because of their sexual orientation or race.

When it comes to the HIV crises in the black community, we still hear about the "down low." As someone who is in the trenches, fighting HIV, what do you think about that concept?
I think there is a sensationalism about it that is not entirely relevant when we are talking about HIV transmission. You might say the down-low man is not entirely open about his sexuality. But very often, these are men who identify as gay and do not have sex with women. They just don't want anyone to share with other people that they are gay.

On the other side, there is this idea that the down-low guys are spreading the disease by infecting women. While I've seen some young gay people who will have sex with a woman very early on in their life because they are still exploring their sexuality, we know from our studies that these men are more likely to use condoms both with their male and female partners. They do not play a significant role in the transmission of HIV.

What is the story with black women in Jackson in terms of this HIV crises?
Certainly, it is not similar. HIV mostly affects men who have sex with men. Gay men represent only 2 percent of the population in this country, and they represent more than half of the diagnosis of HIV. But African American women are very frequent victims of HIV. The lifetime reach of HIV for a black woman is 1 in 48. The lifetime reach of HIV for a white women is 1 in 880. There is a huge disparity there. It is almost 90 times higher. So in Mississippi, where almost 80 percent of my patients are men, I try to remind people that one in five happen among a woman and most of the time that woman is a black woman.

How do you think the work you do will change under the Trump administration?
The clinic is funded through federal funds. Every time we have a change in government, there is always an opportunity to have a change in funding. But with Mississippi, we are such a poor state and we receive so little funding, I can't imagine that we will get any less than we already do. We have a lot of creativity extending the dollars that we receive to try to do the best we can.

How will Trump's potential repeal of Obamacare impact the HIV health crises in Jackson?
Nationwide, Obamacare has provided health insurance to more than 30 million people. I think Mississippi has the highest rate of individuals who are uninsured. If you think about black men who have sex with men, they are one of the most uninsured populations. This is bad because people with health insurance are less likely to become HIV infected.

What do you need more of to service your community?
To me, the biggest impact isn't always made by more funding. I think if we found a better way to administer the stuff we have and implement better policies, it would take us a long way.

Sexual heath education for adolescents is ineffective here. Mississippi only allows abstinence and abstinence-plus education. We need comprehensive sexual education that allows children to have a conversation about condoms. Think about how crazy it is that by law you are not allowed to do condom demonstrations in class. Just those issues represent an incredible challenge to address the education and sexual health needs of these young adults in places where we have the highest rates of teen pregnancy, gonorrhea, and chlamydia. And we have the second highest rate of HIV infection among men 18 to 24. So we have significant health problems that could be improved by having better sex education.

What do you recommend to others fighting this battle across the South?
When I used to think about the problems that we have like racism and homophobia and poverty and a lack of education, I would feel overwhelmed. How could you change things so big? Then one day, a friend of mine challenged me. He said, "None of these problems is going to go away. But what can you do in spite of them?" For me, that moment was transformative. It was almost like I saw the breaking down of a wall I had created in my mind.

Very often, the mentality in some of our communities is resistant to change, but we should think about all the opportunity there is to make a difference. We should challenge ourselves and continue to challenge one another from an individual level to an institutional level. We have to start looking at these things in a new way. For many years, we've been doing things the same. But now, we have the tools in our hands to really reach the end of the HIV epidemic.

We know that treatment is prevention. The challenge that we have is to create health systems that can bring those tools to the population. If we don't do that, I can tell you in a few years the disparities that we have now will get even bigger between the people who have access and the people who don't.

To learn more about theOpen Arms Healthcare Center, visit its website.

Follow Wilbert L. Cooper on Twitter.

By many measures, Cuba is doing a bang-up job of fighting HIV. The country has long boasted the lowest HIV prevalence of any Caribbean nation, and was recently celebrated internationally for becoming the first country in the world to eliminate mother-to-child HIV transmission.

Over the last five years, however, Cuba has seen a startling rise in the number of new HIV infections. The number of people infected with the virus there increased by almost 90 percent between 2010 and 2015, according to a Prevention Gap Report published earlier this year by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

The report noted that the annual number of HIV infections worldwide remained unchanged during the same interval. However, in Latin America and the Caribbean, new HIV infections have been rising steadily, increasing about three percent in the same time period.

While Cuba's increase in new cases is larger than that of any other country in the Western Hemisphere, its total number of cases is still relatively small. UNAIDS estimates only 22,000 Cuban adults are living with HIV—about 5,000 shy of the number in Miami-Dade County.

Cuba famously—and controversially—quarantined its entire HIV-infected population in specialized sanitariums from the late 80s through the early 90s, resulting in better early control of the infection. Though its sanitariums were converted to outpatient facilities in 1993, and only one of the original 14 still stand today, the country's aggressive approach to monitoring and treating its HIV-infected population remains.

When antiretroviral therapy (ART) for treating HIV became available in the mid 90s, Cuba's government was quick to acquire foreign-produced medications to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV. Soon after, the country began developing its own methods for producing versions of internationally-available generic drugs. In 2001, six locally-produced drugs were certified for use, and treatment was rapidly expanded. Although Cuba does not make public the proportion of its ART-treated population receiving locally made drugs, it attributes much of its relatively low HIV incidence to the free provision of locally produced ART.

By the mid-2000s, Cuba appeared to be a success story: In 2003, public health officials reported that 100 percent of HIV-infected people were being treated with ART. And in 2004, only 0.2 percent of Cuba's population was HIV-infected—far less than in neighboring Caribbean countries, where prevalence ranged from between one and three percent. But infections have crept upward since then, driven largely by infections among men who have sex with men (MSM).

And in the last decade, the increase in new HIV diagnoses has accelerated: According to the Prevention Gap Report, between 2010 and 2015, the number of Cubans living with HIV doubled. Over 80 percent of those currently living with HIV are MSM.

Why the meteoric rise? Dr. Cesar Nuñez, Regional Director of the UNAIDS program in Latin America and the Caribbean, attributes better testing. "In the case of Cuba, it's an epidemiological artifact," he said, "where we just see more new infections because we are looking more aggressively for new infections."

Whether Cuba's testing strategies have changed over the past six years—and if they have, whether for the better—is unclear. Early in the epidemic, Cuba practiced aggressive strategies to find and treat HIV-infected citizens, which required HIV testing for all pregnant women, sexual contacts of HIV-infected people, and people diagnosed with an STD. And between 2008 and 2013, only 10 percent of HIV cases in Cuba were diagnosed late in infection, suggesting that Cuba's testing program was robust enough to catch most cases early.

But in 2015, according to UNAIDS's open database, only 24 percent of MSM and 35 percent of female sex workers had been tested for HIV.

Watch "The End of HIV? The Truvada Revolution":

Not everyone is so certain about the reasons behind the increase. "We really don't know," said Dr. Vivian Kouri, a microbiologist at Havana's Pedro Kouri Institute of Tropical Medicine. The country's public health infrastructure mandates thorough contact tracing and diagnostic efforts for all newly diagnosed individuals, she said. Such efforts are a cornerstone of preventing the spread of HIV among sexual networks. And although condom use in the country isn't perfect, 78 percent of Cuban MSM (compared with 73 to 87 percent of American MSM) reported using condoms during their last sexual encounter.

Despite Cuba's early success at producing anti-HIV medications, Kouri thinks the problem may stem from viral resistance to drugs available in Cuba.

One of the goals of effective ART is "treatment as prevention," or suppression of viral levels to the point where circulating particles cannot be detected on blood tests. Having such low viral levels—known as an undetectable viral load—dramatically reduces the risk of transmitting the virus to others. But ineffective HIV treatments allow infections to smolder, resulting in higher viral loads and increasing the possibility of transmission.

Ineffective treatment can mean a number of things, including not accessing treatment to begin with, stopping treatment after starting, or taking a medicine to which one's virus is resistant, said Dr. Paul Sax, an HIV specialist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. "Any place where you have a higher community viral load because of , you have more viremia and more transmissions," he said.

How exactly Cuba's public health system will address the increase in new HIV cases remains an unanswered question.

Today, UNAIDS estimates that 69 percent of HIV-infected Cuban adults are taking ART. That's a substantially higher proportion than in other Latin American or Caribbean country, where on average approximately 55 percent of adults are on treatment.

But that number may not tell the whole story, Kouri said, because of high levels of HIV drug resistance in Cuba. An evaluation of Cuban adults diagnosed with HIV between 2006 and 2011 found that even before any HIV treatment, about 12 percent had a strain of the virus that would not be fully suppressed by antiretrovirals available at the time.

Cuba's capacity to produce the latest HIV drugs is unclear. The website of Cuba's Center for State Control of Drugs, Equipment and Medical Devices lists at least six antiretroviral drugs that are currently produced domestically. Absent from the list is tenofovir, one of the three drugs in the World Health Organization (WHO)-preferred first-line regimen. (Several WHO-recommended "alternate" first-line regimens can be constructed out of drugs produced domestically in Cuba, however. In 2012, most of Cuba's HIV-infected adults were taking one of these regimens.)

About 59 percent of Cubans on ART today are being effectively treated, according to UNAIDS's open database. One of UNAIDS's three major global HIV targets is achieving viral suppression among 90 percent of HIV-infected people taking ART by the year 2020.

An additional menace to HIV control is a clinically aggressive subtype of HIV unique to Cuba. As described in a presentation by Kouri at a November 2016 conference of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, the CRF19_cpx strain is the third most common HIV subtype in Cuba, and has been associated with rapid progression to life-threatening disease—within three years of infection, instead of the usual six to ten years. People with faster disease progression usually have higher levels of HIV in their blood and genitals, making them more contagious, said Sax. A population affected by a rapidly progressing strain could expect to see faster spread of disease than one without such a strain.

Of these other hypotheses, said Nuñez, "We were not aware." And how exactly Cuba's public health system will address the increase in new HIV cases remains an unanswered question.

However, the commitment to try is there, he said: "They are really aiming to meet the by 2020."

Keren Landman is a practicing physician who specializes in infectious diseases and public health. Follow her on Twitter.

Photo courtesy of VICELAND

The 2016 United States election was historic in a very obvious way—but it also had seismic effects on the ongoing movement to legalize marijuana in the country. Maine, Nevada, and Massachusetts all legalized pot for recreational use, while North Dakota, Montana, Arkansas, and Florida all passed measures in favor of medicinal marijuana. (Arizona voted against recreational pot use.)

What do these new measures mean for those who use marijuana, and for those looking to profit off of the US's growing acceptance of the drug? And what is the Trump administration going to do about weed? We talked to Weediquette host Krishna Andavolu about these topics; what follows is an edited and condensed version of that conversation.

VICE: Amid everything that happened in this election, there was also a lot of movement in terms of the legal issues surrounding marijuana regulation in America.
Krishna Andavolu: There's a huge amount of disappointment that I'm feeling about the outcome of the presidential election, but back.

Were you surprised to see the results in terms of marijuana regulation?
Massachusetts is a big college town—it's a blue state. Florida has tried to get medical marijuana before, but it requires a 60 percent supermajority, which it did not get last time, and if you think about how marijuana can be helpful for various conditions that the senior community faces, it's not surprising that the needle has moved there. You might say what Arkansas and North Dakota did sounds surprising, but their systems are really rigid—only certain debilitating, qualifying conditions can actually get you pot. Nevada was a bit of a surprise, because casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson donated a lot to fight against it because his son died of a drug overdose—so he's anti-drug in a very specific way. There's also a theory that the alcohol and gambling industries—which kind of control Las Vegas's entertainment value—are anti-pot because it's seen as a competitor.

It was a bit surprising that Arizona wasn't for it, but Arizona is where the drug manufacturer Insis is located—they make the opioid patch for fentanyl, which has claimed thousands of people's lives. Insis donated almost $800,000 against the recreational marijuana bill there. In California, I think there's a big fear of new taxation as a result of , and whether people will be able to afford the pot that they smoke. The election is going to shape the next four to eight years of presidential politics, but its ramifications on marijuana will be much longer lasting.

What are the challenges that the marijuana industry faces going forward?
The challenges are localized—how to operate businesses at scale within artificial boundaries of states, which no other industry has to do. Taxation is a big issue still until it goes federally legal. It's a business that's going to be worth $50 billion and has to operate as if it was going to be a much smaller business. And the culture is going to change. The big brands that are trying to go out there and do stuff are poised to become players in the California market, which presents a cultural challenge: What kind of pot do you want, and who do you want to be growing it?

The Trump administration's attorney general, , but that memo can change at any point. While the Trump campaign said that they wouldn't do anything to the Cole Memo, that's not necessarily going to be the case. My hypothesis is that the FBI is going to take a bigger role in interstate diversion from legal markets, which is currently operated by local teams on a county-by-county level.

There was an episode in this season of Weediquette about how legal weed is affecting people of color in the industry. How does that stand to change after this election?
People of color were disproportionately arrested for pot possession, and as a result, they've been cut out of the legal market because of those convictions. The bigger structural issues behind that haven't changed—specifically, access to mass amounts of capital for the type of business connections needed to operate at scale and influence local lawmakers. In California, it's still county by county in terms of whether it can be produced and sold there—so lobbying local officials to get what you want is something that networks of professionals have more of an opportunity to do than people who have been in the black market for a long time. If anything, it just brings more money to the table, which is more likely to push out the small guy. That sounds like bad news, but the good news is that fewer people are going to go to jail—so it's a balance.

Screenshot via court video footage

Moazzam Tariq, the man found guilty of sexual assault in a 2015 incident in Toronto, has apparently fled the province before sentencing, 680 News reported.

On an all new episode of BALLS DEEP, Thomas meets up with a freshperson heading to college for their first year at Beloit College in Wisconsin to join the Class of 2020.

Then, on a new episode of Dead Set on Life, Matty travels to one of Canada's oldest Jewish communities in Montreal—and Rabbi Bernath, a.k.a. the "Hipster Rabbi," shows him around the kosher food community.

BALLS DEEP airs Thursdays at 10 PM followed by Dead Set on Life at 10:30 PM on VICELAND.

Want to know if you get VICELAND? Head here to find out how to tune in.

Images by Joel Benjamin

For the sake of my soul, I usually try to block out the contemporary jargon that I find most annoying—words like: "unpack" (when not referring to a suitcase), "lowkey" (everyone who uses this word seems like they're trying to get a VICELAND show), "trash" (as in referring to another human being as garbage), and "problematic" (we need to form splinter groups or subsets of this word, as pretty much all of existence is "problematic" but in vastly different ways). It's not the words so much that annoy me, but the way people use them to signify something about themselves: that they are cool or aware, creative or a tech CEO who attends the Disrupt conference. The use of trendy words to reflect something outré about the self is like buying alt shit from Urban Outfitters or Hot Topic. It's just a verbal costume.

Yet there is one hot word (or compound word) that annoys me more than all else, and that is "self-care." Why does "self-care" piss me off so much? Maybe, because it's been co-opted into something to be sold, like so much else that begins as a revolutionary act. Sorry, but it seems unnecessary to have to rebrand the action of taking a deep breath into a listicle. People have been breathing for centuries without a marketer telling them why and how they should do it. Or perhaps it's because I'm not good at doing things that nurture the self. Throughout my life, destructive things (like opiates) have always felt very nurturing to me. What's more, I can turn anything—even the most nurturing things, like eating healthily—into an addiction.

But it seems I have not given the commercial self-care "movement" a fair try. So I decided to research a variety of self-care tips found around the web at places like the Self-Compassion Project, Tiny Buddha, and Good Therapy to see if any of them could change my life.

1. Use a planner or a calendar to intentionally schedule "me time"
I'm a loner. Most of my life is "me time." If I get any more "me time," I will likely become feral and forget how to speak. On my to-do list, I actually have "talk to one real human being" as a daily goal that I don't always meet. So this is probably not the best idea.

2. Take a long, hot bath
I do this every day, but California is in a drought, so it's a dick move.

3. Get a manicure
OK, I definitely do this. But the idea of a manicure as self-care is kind of weird as it often means the person doing the manicure has to suffer toxic chemicals, shitty working conditions, and long hours. In other words, I'm practicing self-care at the expense of another human being.

4. Skip your morning coffee and donate the money to the charity of your choosing
Coffee gives me panic attacks, so I don't drink it.

5. Worry less about your bathroom scale or another appliance that makes you feel bad about yourself
I'm not allowed to own a bathroom scale, because it would destroy my life.

6. Do a soothing facemask
I have both sensitive skin and hypochondria. When I sit for 15 minutes with something on my face that is said to suck out impurities, purify or peel me, I begin to panic about a rash that will never go away.

7. Pet your dog
If you have to read a blog article to remember to pet your dog, you probably shouldn't have a dog.

8. Congratulate yourself for working hard and doing something difficult
Honestly, it's hard for me to not work hard. Work is such a perfect way to run from one's self, and to not have to feel feelings. If anything, I need to congratulate myself when I do absolutely nothing.

9. Drink lots and lots of water
Unless I'm really thirsty, water kind of depresses me. It makes me feel like I'm trying too hard to be good, or something.

10. Reflect on the struggles your ancestors endured so you could exist
When I think about what my ancestors went through in the shtetls of Russia so that I could tweet pithy aphorisms, it makes me feel like shit.

11. Run (or walk, depending on your current physical health)
I don't call myself a compulsive exerciser, but someone else probably would. I don't really exercise for my health. I exercise because I'm scared of what I will become without it. Like so many of my actions, my running practice is mostly compelled by fear. There is even a day once a week wherein I do the bulk of my running that I call "Body Dysmorphia Day." So for me, not running would probably be more of a "self-care" thing.

12. Take a quick nap
I take naps most days, but often they are, like, three hours.

13. Get dressed up and take some new profile pictures
This is probably the worst idea ever. Changing my profile picture means spending the rest of the day online, alternately waiting for likes and berating myself for letting people know that I care how I am perceived.

14. Listen to an album you loved when you were younger but haven't heard in a long time
When I listen to music that makes me nostalgic for a fantasy-version of the past, I am filled with insatiable longing and become convinced that the only way to relieve this longing is to contact an ex with whom I should not be in contact.

15. Do something you used to enjoy doing, whether or not you were good at it
The things I used to enjoy, like drugs, I can't do anymore or I will probably die.

16. Tell yourself something that resists self-criticism but feels encouraging
Whenever I try not to self-criticize, I end up beating myself up for how much I'm still shit-talking myself. It makes me dizzy.

17. Call your mom just to say hi
For me, self-care is about not calling my mom.

18. Make brownies and give them to a friend, family member, or neighbor
This is just reinforcing my weird, eating disorder-behavior of fetishizing foods I don't allow myself to eat, watching other people eat these foods and asking them if it's delicious in the hope that I can taste the food osmotically.

19. Get to know yourself intimately
If I go any further inward, I'll be in a coma.

20. Surround yourself with things that make you feel happy
Having sex with people I'm not supposed to be having sex with makes me feel happy.

21. For fun, dress your pet in a silly costume to make others smile
I did this on Halloween, and then I felt guilty about it, like people would think I was the kind of person who anthropomorphizes and tortures her pet for the sake of aesthetics and went into a shame spiral.

22. Remember that with just a little bit of self-care each day, the depression will lift
I think we've finally hit on what annoys me most about the commercialization of self-care: the idea that if we just take enough soothing actions then we won't be tormented by the horror of being alive. This is a fucked-up expectation to set up for any depressed person, not to mention a way to cause further shame when taking these actions doesn't work. Depression is an illness. No one would tell a person with cancer that if they just "inhale an upbeat smell" or "do a mini de-clutter" they are on the road to complete healing. So let's maybe let the depression sufferers, and our doctors, address the depression. And the self-care bloggers can stick to $75 cashmere socks.

If you are concerned about your mental health or that of someone you know, visit the Mental Health America website.

Buy So Sad Today: Personal Essays on Amazon, and follow her on Twitter.

Vulva cookies, a Hitachi Magic Wand vibrator and a dutch brownie cake emblazoned with the party's logo were essential ingredients for girlpile's tenth anniversary orgy this November. Illustration by Kelsey Beyer

To my right, a woman wearing a raccoon tail butt plug and insanely high heels is being flogged by a lady with short-cropped hair in a leopard print bodysuit. To my left, a group of writhing bodies snake their way down a couch, legs and arms akimbo. And I'm standing a few feet away from a woman who shrieks as she's lit on fire (consensually! And sensually!), the flames licking her skin in a trail along her back before another woman extinguishes them with the palm of her hand.

This is a tiny glimpse of the goings (and comings) of girlpile, the Bay Area's most popular all-girl orgy, which celebrated its tenth anniversary this November with—what else?—a pile of girls.

Girlpile has an air of lore and mystery to it, like Fight Club with more orgasms. The founder (who was 22 when she threw the first party and wishes to remain anonymous) wants it that way. About 60 to 70 women attend; it's an underground affair in the sense that to come, you must either hit on an organizer in person or be invited by a prior attendee. Girlpiles always take place in private homes, and the location changes from party to party. At prior gatherings, the founder has said that she started girlpile because she wanted "more hot girls to put out without drama." If you look at the party's FAQ, you'll find a different explanation: "Why did you start girlpile? Really. Why did you really start it?" Answer: "boobies."

Unlike lesbian bars, which have largely gone the way of the dodo, girlpile is a decade deep and more popular than ever. "Even the walk-in closet was full of fucking girls," Kate Sassoon, one of the party's stewards, said of the anniversary pile. How do they manage to grow and adapt at a time when queer spaces are diminishing, even digitally (RIP Afterellen)?

As it turns out, a LOT of pre-production is required to make an all-girl orgy successful, as Sassoon (a.k.a. Sassy), who's been helping organize the party since 2007, told me during a recent chat in Berkeley.

Surprisingly, fresh-baked cookies are vital to the success of a girlpile. "It's a fun and rewarding way to include all the shy and not-ready-to-get-naked-or-fuck girls in the party, at their own comfort level," said Sassoon. Such girls are offered a chance to socialize at their own pace by preparing cookies in the kitchen; finished cookies are then taken around the party to be offered to other girls, which encourages attendees to mingle (and provides an easy source of fuel for those who've worked up an appetite). Sassy also said that she sometimes purposefully omits key cookie recipe ingredients, which forces problem solving and creative cooperation to be, forgive me, baked into the experience.

A scene from last month's tenth anniversary girlpile, sketched by Kelsey Beyer

While Sassy and the founder use tricks like this to run the show at girlpile, "we hold it very much in service to the girls who attend the party," she said. "We solicit and incorporate feedback to make the space relevant and welcoming—for example, on trans and gender-non-normative inclusion."

Even when she's engaging in sexy times herself, Sassy always keeps one eye on the party, administering subtle behavioral or course correction to participants when (rarely) needed. In all her years of pilin', Sassoon said that such correction has become necessary only a handful of times; girlpile parties provide a safer atmosphere than possible at other similarly sized sexy functions, in part because participants are vetted by association. "I know many other girls find the sexual freedom and safety of girlpile to be a deeply therapeutic—some have even said sacred—experience," Sassoon noted. "And that shit carries over into our daily lives, in a big way."

Sassy helps set the mood in other ways, too—dropping toys into laps of people who need a boost, and, as mentioned earlier, lighting girls on fire.

Fire massage is one of the pile's most beloved rituals. It functions as a visual focal point for the party, a nudity instigator ("for fire safety, girls must be naked," Sassoon notes with a wink) and a sexual appetizer, giving participants something to watch, discuss, and try out if they wish.

Then there's the Cherry Book, which encourages folks to do things they've never done before, a few of whom are rewarded with prizes, usually sex toys, at the end of the night. "We don't define 'cherry,' which empowers participants to honor any new experience," Sassy said. "When reading out the cherries near the end of the evening—which is also a sneaky tactic to get girls to finish fucking and go home—I deliberately choose a 'biggest little cherry' as well as a 'most esoteric cherry' to award prizes. 'First time I kissed a girl ever!' is just as honored in our space as 'first time getting fisted while being flogged and spanked by eight girls.' And everyone feels celebrated for being brave in the ways that they are."

Girlpile attendees get down at last month's tenth anniversary party. Illustration by Kelsey Beyer

Because girlpile parties are held in homes, rather than commercial spaces, they feel intimate, which helps make the whole group sex thing a more comfortable affair, especially for first-timers. It also keeps costs low, ensuring that girlpile remains volunteer-run and donations-based—no attendee is ever turned away from a party for lack of funds. This "keeps it accessible to a demographic that, statistically speaking, has less money to spend on leisure (especially sexual leisure)," Sassoon noted. Unlike Skirt Club, an expanding sex party for bicurious ladies that can charge upward of $180 for admission, the suggested donation for girilpile parties is $10, which includes lube, latex gloves, dental dams, a Hitatchi vibrator plugged into every wall outlet, and, of course, copious amounts of sugar.

Last month's ten-year pile was especially decadent, held at a two-story Berkeley home outfitted with a hot tub, stripper pole, and fire pit; hors d'oeuvres included grilled oysters, a chocolate fountain, individually decorated vulva cookies, and a dutch brownie cake decorated in the shape of the girlpile logo. More than 90 came—"and came, and came..." Sassy joked. "And the house was spotless and empty by 12:30 AM. Turns out, a decade of this makes us pros."

Follow Anna Pulley on Twitter.

December 1, 2016 marks the 28th World AIDS Day. Since its inception, the event has served as an annual reminder of the massive global impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and the tremendous strides we've taken to eradicate the disease over the past 35 years. Today, over 37 million people are living with HIV/AIDS—and while effective and affordable treatment exists, most will not see medication in their lifetime.

With these stats in mind, U2 frontman Bono and activist Bobby Shriver founded (RED) in 2006. Through product sales and celebrity collaborations, the company has raised over $365 million to fight the AIDS in epidemic in Africa. This month, (RED) will continue to work towards their goal of ending the spread of AIDS from mother to child by 2020 through their annual holiday (SHOPATHON)RED, where limited edition products will be sold, and 100% of the proceeds will be put towards ending mother/child AIDS transmission.

Leading up to (SHOPATHON)RED's kickoff, we spoke to RED CEO Deborah Dugan about her organization's continued efforts to eradicate HIV/AIDS worldwide.

VICE: Tell me about (SHOPATHON)RED.
Deborah Dugan: It started with the idea of turning home shopping on its head and using it for good. As well as being fun, it also makes it easier to engage celebrities in promoting (RED) products to make money for the AIDS fight. As well as selling products, (SHOPATHON)RED also has celebrities "selling" themselves by offering unique, exciting, and irreverent experiences with them.

It also gets our partners really excited—they rush to make commitments before year's end. The Gates Foundation has been matching dollar for dollar, and media partners have jumped on board. Jimmy Kimmel's donated his entire show to (SHOPATHON)RED for the last two years, and AOL, iHeart, Wenner Media, and Vice have also been production partners in making great content. We're really grateful for everyone's participation, and along with making money, the concept pushes awareness through the roof. This year, we're lucky enough to be supported by extraordinary people including U2, Channing Tatum, Javier Munoz, Neil Patrick Harris, DJ Khaled, Liam Payne and so many more.

Is there a (SHOPATHON)RED fundraising goal for 2016?
We made $28 million last year. We want to do more than that this year, obviously, and I think we'll get there. This is also about keeping heat on an issue that's been around for 35 years and that can be a magnet for cause fatigue.

How does that number translate into the number of patients served and getting antiretroviral treatment?
Every dollar we make can provide 3 days of life-saving medication that helps a mom with HIV stay alive—and it also prevents the transmission of the virus to her baby, which is a double return on investment. This is what will get the world to an AIDS free generation by 2020—a critical UN milestone in the fight to end AIDS by 2030.

Can you share any stats on the number of mother-to-child transmission cases -- how many we've seen this year, how much they've declined since antiretroviral treatment became available?
We've been seeing a drop in numbers over the years since intervention started. In 2006, 1200 babies were being born every day with HIV—that number's now 400. We know that we can get that to near 0 by 2020.

If the majority of relief effort funding is coming from American taxpayers, where does government and the ONE Campaign fit in? What strides has the campaign made in 2016?
ONE was an important partner in the efforts to get the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria started in 2002. Before then, only 700,000 people globally were accessing ARVs, now that number is 18 million. This global health intervention is the greatest in history, mostly led by the US.

Every year we hear doctors and scientists say we're getting close to a cure. How far away are we?
The target date is 2030 to reduce prevalence to such a degree that we will have beaten AIDS.

What's the most commonly held misconception about HIV/AIDS and people living with it in 2016?
That the fight is over, or that it's such a big problem that it's unsolvable. Both could not be further from the truth.

What about the disease and RED's work do you wish more people knew about?
That, by 2020, the transmission of HIV from moms to their unborn babies can be virtually zero, and that by 2030 AIDS can be beaten once and for all.

For people who want to get involved, what do you suggest they do?
(SHOPATHON)RED isn't over tomorrow! You can do all of your Holiday Shopping on red.org through the end of December and gift chances for an Omaze experience at omaze.com/red.

Follow Aly Comingore on Twitter.

Photo via Flickr user US Central Command

As expected, President-elect Donald Trump has tapped the retired Marine general James Mattis as his secretary of defense, CNN reports. Trump is expected to make the pick official sometime early next week.

The well-respected combat commander served over four decades in the military and has extensive experience leading troops in the Middle East. In more recent years, Mattis has served as a NATO commander, then moved on to head the US Central Command under President Obama, before retiring in 2013.

Mattis will run the Pentagon and work alongside Trump's new national security advisor Michael Flynn and CIA director Mike Pompeo less than four years after leaving active service. Congress will need to pass special legislation so that the retired general can serve in the position, as ex-military officers aren't supposed to take the job unless they've been out of the game for at least seven years.

Mattis, like Trump, has made headlines for some controversial outbursts, like the time he said that "it's fun to shoot some people" at a panel in San Diego in 2005. He's also been an outspoken critic of the Iran nuclear deal and has given Trump some insight about waterboarding.

Mattis reportedly told Trump, "Give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers and I do better with that than I do with torture," according to the president-elect.

Watch: Donald Trump's Day One Agenda