In the weeks following the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Florida last winter, something remarkable happened: Florida lawmakers delivered a bill to Governor Rick Scott that raised the age of firearm purchases to 21 and increased funding for mental health services, among other changes. The bill, the "Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Safety Act," marked the rare occasion when an episode of horrific gun violence resulted in direct and relatively speedy legislative action.

Even more remarkable was that it happened in Florida, a state that has been the crucible for so-called “Stand Your Ground” laws and other policies that embody the NRA’s vision of gun culture in the US. In the wake of the Parkland tragedy, the March for Our Lives movement that arose from it has given the gun debate a new significance, precisely because it shows that the voices of young people can result in direct political change.

The gun debate is incredibly complex and too often cast in black and white when, in reality, the political interests and opinions that drive the discussion tend to land in the gray. So over the coming days, I’ll be posting video thought-starters as part of a series called Maybe I'm Wrong that outline my stances on certain elements of the gun debate. I don’t believe I’m 100 percent right about anything, and I’m curious to see what you guys think might be flawed or biased or straight-up wrong with my POV.

Then, later this month, I’ll be hosting a live discussion between advocates on both sides of this issue to continue the work of elevating young people’s voices and forcing elected officials to pay attention.

Our latest thought-starter explores what might be the most contentious and core question out there about guns in America: Do they actually make people and their loved ones safer?

Protection is one of the most compelling reasons Americans tend to cite when explaining their unique fondness for gun ownership. According to a 2017 Pew survey, 65 percent of male gun owners listed it as a top reason for having one. For women, that percentage rose to 71 percent.

Whether guns are actually effective protection tools has of course been the subject of fierce debate and many studies. In the early 1990s, Florida State University researchers conducted a telephone survey of almost 5,000 households in 48 states. They asked respondents if they or someone in their home had used a gun in self defense in the last five years. Crucially, they specified that the gun didn’t need to be fired to have proved useful in defense—whether of their body or their property. Extrapolating from those responses, the researchers concluded that Americans used guns defensively as many as 2.5 million times a year.

While that sounded like a lot, critics have since raised doubts the study's methodology. Another, perhaps more scientific analysis of the most nationwide crime data from FBI databases concluded in 2015 that "private citizens are far more likely to use guns to harm others or themselves than to use them to kill in self-defense.” That squares with the simple argument made by gun-control advocates that the Second Amendment is abused to make society more dangerous.

Indeed, the list of ways Americans have come up with to hurt themselves using tools they think keep them safe is as disturbing as it is long. Parents let toddlers get ahold of firearms, and tragedy ensues. People shoot family members or roommates they mistake for intruders. And, perhaps most commonly, domestic disputes between partners escalate when guns—typically wielded by men—are in the household.

Is the presence of a firearm really a deterrent of any kind to harm—or the cause of harm? It's the question at the core of the “good guy with a gun” mantra behind modern NRA mythology about preventing mass shootings. But that whole notion has been definitively debunked by a litany of academic research showing loose gun laws that permit more guns in more places tend to be accompanied by more (non-fatal) violent crime.

Maybe I'm wrong, but when it comes to how individuals behave in their homes, I'm inclined to side with the overwhelming number of gun-violence experts pointing to the hard crime numbers as showing they do not tend to make people safer. Still, I can understand how lived experience might have taught many Americans something entirely different.

The only question is how many of us are really basing our determination that guns are useful tools on IRL experiences—and how many are just fixated on the the abstractions of the Second Amendment.

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Follow Krishna Andavolu on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

The first time I saw the cover of a romance novel by Johanna Lindsey, I was in the checkout line at Stop & Shop. I remember it vividly. The sun was setting dramatically in the sky behind a very chiseled couple. The damsel looked half in anguish, half aroused—being hoisted by the bare chest and puffy shirt adorned beefcake, grasping at her bursting corset. I had no such bursting corset, but was intrigued and disturbed all at once by my budding hormone-laden tweendom. It was like stumbling into the horror section at Blockbuster when I was kid—I knew it was wrong, but I wanted more. The imagery was unbearable and beautiful. At the time, I didn't have a lot of—let's say—material to crush on. So Fabio Lanzoni had to do.

As intriguing as these images were to me back then, they are problematic on a lot of levels. These days, I'm awe-struck by how painfully white and hetero they are. I've often wondered how much more eye-opening they'd be if they better reflected the diverse reality of intimacy, while still maintaining their sleazy wonder.

With that in mind, I reached out to the only photographer I knew who could do a formidable job—Jason Altaan. I've always been impressed with his total disregard for subtlety and need to evoke fantasy in everything he makes. The covers below are his interpretations of the genre, but using an inclusive casting of friends and couples he thought would compliment the assignment. In a time of constant darkness, it's nice to embrace a little over-the-top affection and mysterious bodice-ripping.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

In the few days since Nike dropped its Colin Kaepernick ad, we’ve seen pissed-off MAGA bros incinerate their own sneakers, Trump angrily weigh in, and a Louisiana mayor try to ban (then un-ban) Nike products from his city’s rec centers. Now, unfortunately, it looks like we've reached the "racist 4Chan hoax" phase of this godforsaken story.

Trolls on the notorious site’s /pol (a.k.a. "politically incorrect") forum have been circulating fake Nike coupons for “people of color," USA Today reports. The coupons, which feature photos of Kaepernick, promise massive discounts on Nike shoes and apparel for non-white folks and "urban youth" who use them in-store, claiming Nike rolled out the deal "to show solidarity with the things we believe in." Obviously, they're totally bogus.

Aside from being blatantly racist, the coupons might actually be trying to incite violence. According to Snopes, scan the QR code on one of them—say, if you're a Nike store employee—and you'll see the following message: “This is a ROBBERY, Move slowly and put all the LARGE bills in the shoe box OR everyone DIES.”

According to USA Today, Nike knows about the coupons, and it's warned all of its US retail outlets to watch out for them. Meanwhile, the trolls over at /pol are congratulating themselves for making headlines with the racist scam—though as Jack Gillis, executive director of the Consumer Federation of America, told USA Today, "scam" doesn't quite cover it.

"I wouldn’t characterize this as a scam, but a full on racial epithet," he said. "This is nothing more than a dog whistle to a small, and unfortunate, segment of America. Another way to put it is that this is a racial statement masquerading as a scam."

At the end of the day, all the backlash, outrage, and controversy over the Kaepernick ad has been a windfall for Nike: Since the spot came out, the company's shares have hit an all-time high.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

So I’m going to say something. And you can go ahead and fight me if you’re into that. But if you wanna throw it down—and I’d really prefer not to —it’s not going to make the statement I’m about to make any less of a truth.

Superman should no longer be white.

I said what I said. We’re several dozen exits past a “woke” cultural point where we must admit this. Sure, we all know the Supe’s origin story, plucked straight from a 1930s bygone era—the same period that would present a desert walking Jesus as melanin deficient. But we’re past that right? Isn't it time that we stop doing the absolute most to conserve an 80ish year history of DC regulated canon. No one should be naive enough to believe that a damn outsider from another world would make the best sense as a blue-eyed having white dude right? Of course not.

So, why am I writing this now? As reported by Variety, Deadline among others, Warner Bros. is no longer sticking with Henry Cavill to play Superman/Clark Kent. Rumours dance around salary issues, a lack of direction, but the big name encircling the red and blue noise just happens to be Michael B. Jordan taking on the role next. A black man. And damn, it just makes so much more sense.

Let’s really think about what the man in tights embodies today: the white, strong, handsome, masculine and young physical presence—exemplary with who he actually is—an American ideal. A romantic hero for the 20/21st century who is incorruptible. He landed on a world in a spaceship beyond his control. He was forced to assimilate into a society while trying his best to not be seen as threatening. And within the context of this origin story, that sounds nothing like an everyday white dude.

Superman’s original creators, Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, both children of Jewish immigrants painted a different picture. The goal was clearly not to just create some pale, christianized hero. It was to create a Hebrew-like Moses that would have been labelled a foreigner in his time within an American context. Superman’s characterization was an ideal wrapped in a possibility—that anyone could become something great in America.

Superman as we know him has the benefit of hiding his "other" in a way that defeats the purpose of being alien.

To be any kind of immigrant is to be jammed between the happiness of being welcomed and the lasting stigma of being different from your surroundings. I could never buy into an alien that had the benefit of hiding his alien-ness simply by dawning his spectacles. My man could be a foreign journalist on the side, rock a suit, and have people just love his entire ass without being seen as a threat by the law abiding folk—his white, blue-eyed, iron chiseled cheeks grant him that privilege of consideration. A black Superman would never be that welcomed. He’d fit more in line with Shuster and Siegal’s original vision of rising above an “alien” status to become something great—a hope that America has claimed to promote since its foundation. With anything but “white”, that ideal holds more true without the white foundation.

The racial pretext, context, and any damn text for those opposed to a black Superman should be obvious as fuck by now (racial bias). I mean sure, on the valid side of things, I get the common issue of race switching. If someone decided to up and remove the spice from Black Panther and make him a salt and pepper white guy, it would strip the very thing that made the character extraordinary through canon. His kingdom was built on a foundation of black excellence that spit in the face of white colonization. That was the point. I also understand why audiences would rather a black man take ownership of an originally black character instead of piggybacking the history of a white dude (we actually did have black Superman from another universe and there were black Kryptonians).

Super “white” man however is just a man made whiter and messianic over time. He has zero connection with the original intent. What he has instead increasingly become is a model of the tired and dated—a fictional propaganda designed to prolong the rosey believe that whitenses meshes with greatness, goodness, innocence, and fortune.

When it comes down to it—basic sun-absorbing-melanin-science aside—I just want what feels real in this origin story. I want to see art reflecting life by way of our human nature to be afraid of people we don’t understand. I want skinhead-ed Lex Luthor (main villain) to be the realest one to tell a black Superman that he fears the very thing he also doesn’t understand.

Whatever colour the next Superman is, I could care less. I'm just done pretending that he’s best as white.

Follow Noel Ransome on Twitter.

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For months, White House watchers have been focused on the big scandal that has the potential to bring this president down: Russian collusion and the obstruction of justice charge that could go with it. Every new development in Robert Mueller’s investigation is covered extensively and dissected endlessly on Twitter and cable news, with each indictment and guilty plea of a Trump associate representing another link in a chain that we assume—or hope—will lead to Donald Trump himself. We read the tea leaves of Trump-Putin meetings and of Russia’s relationships with other nations. The various grifters, hucksters, and criminals who have long had relationships to Trump, some of whom cycled in and out of the his campaign and administration, give us good reason to think that some seriously scandalous stuff went on between Russia and members of this administration (and the president’s own family). There’s more than ample reason to believe that there was collusion between Trump and a hostile foreign power.

Any potential wrongdoing should of course be investigated. But if we’re looking at what might be the most direct route to toppling the teflon Don in the Oval Office, we don’t need to rely on complex international shadiness. It seems that if Trump is taken down before the 2020 election it will be at the hands of the people he respects the least: Women.

We’ve seen hints of this already in the Michael Cohen plea deal. Trump’s longtime crony admitted that he paid off Trump’s mistresses at the direction of the president while Trump was running for president (a crime Trump has denied). That was the clearest indication yet that Trump committed an illegal act during his campaign, and it had nothing at all to do with backroom deals with Russia.

This month brings another potential problem for the president. He is submitting answers to questions, in writing but under oath, in a defamation lawsuit. Trump is being sued by Summer Zervos, a former contestant on his reality show The Apprentice who says Trump sexually assaulted her in 2007. When she spoke out about those allegations in 2017, Trump called her a liar; she is suing him not for the harassment itself but for his claim she wasn’t telling the truth when he knew that she was.

If Trump lies in his answers to the questions posed in these written interrogatories, he opens himself up to perjury charges—the same thing that got Bill Clinton impeached, though not removed from office. It’s a fear of perjury that may be leading his lawyer Rudy Giuliani to insist that the president won’t answer questions from Mueller. But he will have to answer questions from Zervos.

We know that Trump has a loose relationship with the truth, even when he's talking to his legal advisers. Whether that’s because he’s a compulsive liar or because he’s mentally impaired to the point of not being fully able to disentangle truth from fiction doesn’t matter, at least not for our purposes here. What’s relevant is that the president has a habit of lying to everyone about everything. Being put under oath makes this pattern of dishonesty his greatest vulnerability.

And yet there isn’t much attention being paid to Trump’s sexual harassment scandals or the scandals that have arisen from his hush money payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, who said that Trump offered to pay her after they had sex.

Surely this is because these stories feel like old news. This president has rewritten the script on what’s acceptable, from blatant white nationalism to unvarnished misogyny. Other Republican leaders haven’t exactly been feminists or civil rights icons, but the GOP at least seemed to believe it was necessary to put a veneer of politeness and dog whistles over their sexism and racism. That’s gone out the window—the signals are loud and clear to anyone with eyes and ears.

With a president who is so willing to be so unapologetically noxious, and who made an entire campaign appealing to the entitlement of disaffected white men who fear their stranglehold on power slipping (and the angry white women who know and love them), allegations of affairs, sexual harassment, and even sexual assault weren’t all that shocking. This is a man who spent decades as a tacky fixture and punchline of the New York social scene, a man who went on the Howard Stern Show to talk about his wife’s breasts and ran the Miss Universe franchise, (where he unapologetically focused on boobs in bikinis over brains and allegedly harassed, ridiculed, and creeped on the young contestants).

When he ran for president, he carefully portrayed himself as a hypermasculine counter to Hillary Clinton’s potentially feminized America. He encouraged his followers to ratchet the rhetoric up even more, and Trump rallies were rife with merchandise encouraging him to “Trump that bitch.” Male entitlement, and the misogyny it entails, is his brand.

So it’s not surprising that Trump was able to survive all the allegations of sexual harassment and assault made by Zervos and many other women during the campaign, even though he was caught on tape saying, “I’m automatically attracted to beautiful—I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”

But conning millions of conservative voters who are already inclined to forgive your sins is a different thing than conning the legal system.

Getting to the bottom of the Russia story is crucial. It’s complex, and those investigating it, from journalists to government officials, need time and resources. But it's also crucial to get to the bottom of Trump’s alleged sexual harassment incidents, and then the alleged lies he told about the woman who accused him of such behavior. Those cases are a lot more straightforward and immediate. We aren’t treating them with as much seriousness because this president has raised the bar for wrongdoing so absurdly high that “clear and unassailable evidence of direct collusion between the president of the United States and a hostile foreign power, for the express purpose of throwing an election and directly undermining American democracy” is the only thing we’ve all agreed will count enough to get rid of the man in the Oval Office.

That’s crazy, and it’s what Trump and his acolytes want. Evidence that Trump sexually assaulted women—and paid off others in ways that broke the law—should be enough to boot him. The Zervos case may just offer that up, especially if Democrats take back Congress and are on the lookout for “high crimes and misdemeanors” that could be used to start impeachment proceedings.

We should be paying closer attention. And how sweet it will be if women—the people Trump denigrates and disrespects more than nearly any other group (save immigrants)—eventually win out.

Jill Filipovic is the author of The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness. Follow her on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

At federal court in Boston Thursday, a geriatric ex-mafia Don hunched over the bench in an orange jumpsuit and shuffled papers, his ears sticking out from his shriveled head like bat wings. But he didn't appear to be listening even as the assembled children of his murder victim, Steven DiSarro, addressed the man they knew as "Cadillac Frank."

"I spent all these years wondering what happened to my father," Nick DiSarro, the victim's youngest son, told the 85-year-old—whose actual name is Francis Salemme—in-between tears. "The questions were the same. Was he alive? Did he leave? Why didn't he take us? Did he suffer?"

The elder DiSarro, a nightclub owner, real estate developer and father of three, went missing in 1993. His wife last saw him getting into a red Jeep. For 23 years, DiSarro’s family didn’t know if he was alive or dead.

His body wasn’t discovered until March 2016, when a Rhode Island man “jammed up” on narcotics charges pointed law enforcement to a body buried near an old mill in Providence.

Salemme and another man named Paul Weadick were both convicted in June of strangling DiSarro and hiding his body with help from Salemme’s late son, Francis Salemme, Jr. The Salemmes had a secret stake in DiSarro’s nightclub, The Channel, and the duo were said to fear their target might become a federal informant. On Thursday, Cadillac Frank Salemme was sentenced to life in prison.

For his part, Nick DiSarro said he got his answers sitting in court day after day, finally gaining a degree of closure on a horrific chapter of his life. “Sadly, he wasn’t alive. Sadly, he did suffer. And sadly, I do think he knew it was coming.”

This trial has been heralded as the end of an era in Boston crime history, too.

After Salemme’s conviction early this summer, US Attorney Andrew Lelling said the case “in some ways ends a long and dark chapter in the history of our city.” That’s because Salemme was friends with some of the Boston mobsters Americans tend to see played in big Hollywood movies, like James “Whitey” Bulger, the head of the Winter Hill gang. But even if the outsized personalities of this criminal underworld are what has penetrated American consciousness, what’s uniquely haunting about these cases is they suggest there was an untouched layer of corruption at the FBI—and systemic problems with federal informants.

For example, after disgraced FBI agent John Connolly tipped Bulger off to a racketeering indictment in 1994, the mobster fled and lived on the lam in Santa Monica for 15 years—before he was dragged to court at age 81 in 2011 and later convicted of 11 murders. Over a decade earlier, Bulger's partner and fellow informant Stephen "The Rifle Man" Flemmi claimed that because they provided the Bureau with intel, the FBI gave both him and Bulger what amounted to a license to kill—a sensational claim Whiter reiterated at his own trial.

Salemme fled around the same time Bulger did in the 90s, but got caught in West Palm Beach, where neighbors said he wallowed away his days feeding ducks. When he found out that Whitey and Flemmi were informants—up until then, Salemme seemed to think they were just paying for intel—he agreed to be a witness against Connolly himself in a trial that took place in 1999.

At the time of his testimony on behalf of federal prosecutors in that case, Salemme was already a confessed murderer who killed at least half a dozen and maimed another in the 1960s, serving about 16 years in prison. After his release in 1988, he was dubbed the head of the New England Mafia, and during an ensuing power struggle was once nearly assassinated in front of an IHOP.

After he testified against the FBI agent Connolly in the 1999 case, the federal government had Cadillac Frank's back. He was released after doing time for racketeering charges in 2003 and got placed in witness protection, living as a free man on the government’s dime.

Witness protection didn’t really suit him though, he told reporter David Boeri shortly afterward. So Salemme came back to Massachusetts, lived in Brookline, and took his lunch at The Busy Bee diner. “This life is so inundated with top echelon informants, that you couldn’t survive a day in it,” he told Boeri, explaining why he wasn’t returning to a life of crime.

“They called me The General behind my back,” Salemme said of his murder rap.

“Because you planned,” nudged Boeri.

“Planned and did them” finished Salemme.

Salemme’s period of retirement and reflection didn’t last long. He was indicted again in 2004, eventually pleading guilty to misleading federal agents in regards to the DiSarro case. Still, no body had been found, so there was no murder trial. He got released in 2009, and was again placed in witness protection, living in Atlanta under the name Richard Parker and joining a New England Patriots fan club.

In 2016, when feds started digging into the Providence mill, Salemme acted like someone who’d been tipped off, fleeing to Connecticut with $28,000 cash. But "Rifle Man" Flemmi—a ten-time murderer an opposing attorney dubbed “the ultimate human cockroach”—emerged to testify against him. He described DiSarro's last moments to the court.

“As I opened the door to walk in, that’s when I saw Frank Salemme, Jr.,” he said. “He had Steve DiSarro on the throat and he was strangling him, and Paul was holding his legs. Frank was to my immediate left of the door.”

“I said to him Frank, I’m leaving, I’ll see you later. And I left immediately,” he added, noting his decision to leave wasn’t about morals—he was worried Salemme was under surveillance.

But in Boston, the details of what mobsters were up to and when is almost never the whole story. The local history of FBI corruption and shady relationships with informants is why, shortly after DiSarro’s body was found, his widow Pamela told the Boston Globe she blamed the Bureau in part for her husband’s death. She said that, before his death, her husband told her FBI agents approached him in the club.

They “wanted him to start ratting, to be a federal witness.” He refused, she claimed. But she argued that by meeting him at a public place, where he worked with the people they wanted him to inform on, they put his life in danger. “They did not protect me and my family,” she told the paper. “They endangered my family by being so blatant with my husband.” (VICE reached out to the FBI for comment but had yet to receive one at the time of publication.)

At sentencing, the DiSarro children were less critical of the feds, thanking prosecutors and law enforcement. But Salemme couldn’t help messing with the family one last time.

“This is ridiculous,” the old man said, standing up and gesturing with his hands for as long as his rickety legs could hold him. “The real story hasn’t been told and it will come out, Mr. [Fred] Wyshak knows it,” he said of the federal prosecutor. “It’s all BS, your honor, believe me. But it will come out, it will come out in time.”

“They haven’t been told the truth,” added the mobster, for the first time referring to the murder victim’s family directly.

Salemme, a fitness buff in his heyday, was then led out of court wearing handcuffs and grin. He jabbed at the air with a frail right fist, looking pleased with himself for getting one last shot in.

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Follow Susan Zalkind on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

It was noticeable in the build up to this weekend’s Premier League fixtures that some vital component of the usual swirling, screaming mix seemed to be missing. Typically, the domestic season is not so much welcomed back after the international break as torn into, devoured with the twitching fervour of a lover home from war or Sunday hair of the dog. Yet in the days between England’s ground-out 1-0 victory over the Swiss and Liverpool and Spurs’ early kick-off at Wembley, the tribal noise that tends to enshroud our domestic weekends felt weirdly muted. You can’t imagine this was due to any lack of desire to fight and argue and generally smug it up – these are the urges that power elite football in this country now, our top division a 20-man bar fight taking place in real time over the span of nine wonderfully violent, toxic months. Instead, it was as though there was simply nothing to fight about, no competing narrative punches really landing in an opening month that largely failed to draw or raise any blood.

Not that this impression of tepidness, of a season waiting to ignite, will extend down to those on the pitch. Tell Bournemouth’s Ryan Fraser this campaign is yet to really get going and he might just bite your face off. In the swooning microclimate of Fraser’s brain the last month has been one long hot-air balloon ride to heaven, “Nessun Dorma” booming on loop from purple skies as he flies with flocks of flamingos into the dying September sun. Of all the Premier League’s players, it is its all-time smallest who has most stolen the breath, a 5-foot-4, £400,000 Scottish winger enjoying a rare personal humidity that has seen him lead little Bournemouth into fifth with a tally of three goals, two assists and a highlights reel that already harbours a litany of genuinely startling moments, the fever dream of a man who has learned to use simple gifts in the most devastating way possible.

There is something reassuring about seeing Fraser time his latest searing blindside run to perfection, or using his low centre of gravity to leave yet another centre half on his arse with the red alarm sirens blaring deep in the enemy cutback zone. It’s a fuzzy kind of reminder that for all the high-wire tactical finesse and training ground alchemy sought by the modern game’s great schemers – Pep Guardiola was described as a “celestial being” by Match of the Day commentator Steve Wilson on Saturday night – matches in the World’s Toughest League™ can still be won by a small man running in straight lines very quickly at just the right moment. Which isn’t to demean Fraser or his style of play. It’s more that he feels emblematic of a Bournemouth side that this year seem more intent on finding the soft neck meat of their opponents, an approach that relies heavily on working Fraser into those critical spaces of the pitch so coveted by xG and xA stats.

Against Leicester City on Saturday in the weekend’s best game, Fraser wasn’t so much at the heart of his side’s 4-2 victory as lurking constantly at the peripheries, to the extent that at times it felt like the haywire midfield scrimmages were a kind of proxy war being fought on his behalf. His two goals were both the result of his teammates goading Leicester defenders into shoving matches then finding him haring 30 or 40 yards from deep into the territory left behind, the reformed Domino’s pizza obsessive they call "Wee Man" stealing in for his joyous pillage. There is something cruel about Wes Morgan being asked to combat play like this; for the last year or so Claudio Ranieri’s totemic title-winning captain has basically just been a man who’s always falling over somewhere in the background, but Fraser will embarrass quicker, better defenders this season.

With Burnley, Crystal Palace, Watford and Fulham to come in the next four games, Bournemouth will be hoping they can turn any absence of narrative to their advantage. You wonder what their players might have to do to attract bids from the league’s bigger fish, marvel at manager Eddie Howe’s ability to construct a formidable force from men deemed so deeply unfashionable despite their goals and wins. Maybe there is something wider we can learn here, too, about our ability to discern the game from afar, to understand with human nuance the depths of any Premier League player’s screaming ambition, the extent to which their talent might be heaven-dealt or strived for. The division’s history is rich with the ghosts of other Ryan Frasers, players who’ve started seasons like a bullet before tailing off. What is it that happens in the brains of the Ritchie Humphreys, Diafra Sakhos and Amr Zakis to briefly elevate them so far beyond the limits of their own ability? And what is it that hauls them back down to mean, their talent curling up like an autumn leaf?

Maybe this is a question for another day. The last thing that the Premier League needs at this stage is a killjoy. And of course, Ryan Fraser might not end up like those wasted players at all, instead extending his breakout moment indefinitely, exploring the outer reaches of his own prowess, guiding the club for which he has so much affection on to the highest planes of their history. So unstrap a few more sandbags. Feed the Pavarotti impersonator another sausage. The alarms are sounding and the flamingos are taking flight. Little Ryan’s in the cutback zone again.

@hydallcodeen

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

An Alberta woman was killed by her own dog inside her home Saturday after the boxer-pitbull cross attacked a toddler, according to police.

RCMP told reporters the 50-year-old woman was killed in her home near Langdon following an attack by her dog, who first went after a two-and-a-half-year-old girl. The girl sustained traumatic injuries to her extremities, RCMP Staff Sgt. John Spaans told Global News. The woman, whose identity has not been released, was pronounced dead on scene Saturday evening.

Spaans told Global the attack was out of character for the dog.

“There was indication early in its life that it was wound up, a little hyper, but there was no history of violence.”

Two dogs were seized from the property and are now being monitored for rabies.

The dog’s owners will now have the option to euthanize the animal, or police could seek a court order to do the same.

Ontario currently has a pitbull ban in place, while Quebec recently abandoned its plans to do the same.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

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Until late last week, the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court seemed like a foregone conclusion. Though nearly all Democrats in the Senate had voiced opposition to him, the Republican majority was palpably eager to install another conservative justice on the court, where he could help push the country's laws to the right for the next generation. But Kavanaugh's path to a lifetime appointment has become more difficult since a woman named Christine Blasey Ford said he sexually assaulted her at a party in high school 36 years ago.

The accusation, which Ford raised to her local congresswoman and then passed along in a letter to Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein before going public this week, has been strongly denied by Kavanaugh. This controversy may just be beginning, however, with both Kavanaugh and Ford (who had told a therapist about the incident in 2012) indicating Monday they were willing to testify before the Senate. The question hovering above all this is whether the allegation will torpedo Kavanaugh's nomination. He stands accused of a violent crime at a time of heightened awareness of sexual violence across the world, and while Anita Hill accusing Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment famously failed to fell him in 1991, previous Supreme Court nominations had been scuttled by something as minor as a history of pot use. Then again, given the conservative movement's support for his appointment, it won't be easy for opponents to slow Kavanaugh's push for power to a halt.

It could happen, though. Here's how.

The Senate Could Actually Vote Against Him

For a long time, the norm in the Senate was to vote through pretty much any qualified candidate to the Supreme Court. Even after Robert Bork was blocked in 1987 for his right-wing views, the Senate routinely confirmed justices on a bipartisan basis. But confirmation fights have been getting more politically charged since then, and Republicans launched the Senate into a new era in 2016, when they refused to even give Barack Obama's pick Merrick Garland a hearing.

The Senate is now narrowly divided 51–49, and if Democrats uniformly opposed Kavanaugh, it would only take two defections for his nomination to go down. Alaska's Lisa Murkowski and Maine's Susan Collins are seen as the most moderate and independent-minded among GOP senators and both have voiced at least some support for hearings into Ford's accusation. They've been joined by Arizona's Jeff Flake and Tennessee's Bob Corker, both Republicans who are retiring from the Senate and therefore insulated from demands made by the pro-Trump conservative base. It's a big step from "we need to hear more before we vote" to actually voting no on Kavanaugh and risking the consequences of breaking from their party. But depending on how things play out, it's possible that these Republicans reject him. (Of these Republicans, only Flake is on the Judiciary Committee, but the full Senate vote, not the committee vote, is what determines Kavanaugh's fate.)

There's also the question of how Democratic senators facing tough reelection fights will vote on Kavanaugh. Before the assault accusation surfaced, they were in a tricky position: They didn't want to be seen as occupying space as far to the left as their more liberal colleagues, and may not have seen much value in denouncing Kavanaugh if he was going to be rubber-stamped by the Republican majority anyway. But if public support for the judge drops in the wake of Ford's allegation, that could provide them with political cover to sink him.

A Long Delay Could Doom Him

The blockade of Garland's nomination may have established a new precedent: If the Senate is controlled by the party opposing the president, why should those senators even consider confirming the other party's Supreme Court nominations? Though Democrats would have to win several tough elections in red states to retake the Senate, it's at least a possibility. If Kavanaugh isn't confirmed by the end of the year, Republicans may have missed their chance to get another justice on the court.

That means the GOP will likely be trying to speed through additional hearings and investigations, while Democrats do what little they can to delay, creating an environment where they can at least argue the GOP is not taking Ford seriously, and connect Kavanaugh to other high-profile conservatives accused of sexual assault, including Donald Trump himself. (Perhaps cognizant of that danger, White House aide Kellyanne Conway has publicly insisted Kavanaugh's accuser "should be heard.") Meanwhile, Republicans could try to use the specter of a Democratic Senate blocking their judges to inspire the base to come out to vote in the November midterms. If a Supreme Court seat is up for grabs in the Senate elections, it'll raise the stakes even further on an already high-stakes midterm contest, one that was expected to be about resistance to Trump as much as anything else.

Kavanaugh Could Just Withdraw

Given all of the above, it seems like there is an easy way out for Republicans: Just find another judge. Kavanaugh was obviously Trump's preferred pick—possibly because of his stance on investigations of the president—but he's not uniquely qualified; there's a literal list of judges who would have extremely similar views on a whole range of issues. The White House is currently standing behind Kavanaugh, but that might change if Republican senators waver on the nomination. A fresh nominee would have to be vetted and go through the Judicial Committee hearing process, but the GOP could likely rush that along before the end of the year, even if it meant breaking a few norms along the way. It might be seen as a defeat for Trump initially, but at the end of the day he'd wind up with an anti-abortion, pro-employer, anti-regulation Supreme Court justice, just as he would have if Kavanaugh sailed through.

By sticking with Kavanaugh, Trump and his allies are betting they can either confirm him by January, when new senators are sworn in, or else retain the Senate. Both of those are likely outcomes at this point—but also far from sure things. If they are wrong on both counts, get used to having eight justices on the Supreme Court.

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Were playing men in crisis a sport, Ben Mendelsohn would be an Olympic medalist. It’s not that all of the characters he’s played are men on the verge (or in the throes) of a breakdown—rather, it’s the balance of volatility and vulnerability in his work. Since his breakout performance in 1987’s The Year My Voice Broke, he’s run the gamut in terms of parts—he’s been the romantic lead, the supporting player, and lately, the megalomaniacal villain. His latest is perhaps his most normal, as suburban divorcé Anders Hill in Nicole Holofcener’s The Land of Steady Habits, which was released on Netflix over the weekend.

Of course, the idyllic Connecticut neighborhood Anders lives in doesn’t stay so anodyne for long—hence, Mendelsohn.

When I arrive for our interview a few days before the film’s premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, Mendelsohn has just gotten a cup of coffee. Lacking anything to use to stir in creamer, he plucks a pen from the conference table that dominates the room and uses that, and when a little coffee splatters onto his phone, he wipes it off—on the carpeted floor. It’s hardly wild behavior—he’s making the best of what’s at hand (and there’s an according matter-of-factness to his manner)—but it’s a little startling, nevertheless. (Or at least, it is to someone like me, who’d probably just suffer through unstirred coffee and a wet phone instead.)

It’s a fine line to walk (volatility and vulnerability), but Mendelsohn’s ability to pull it off is what’s made him such a hot commodity in Hollywood—he’s in the upcoming Robin Hood, as well as Captain Marvel. And it’s what makes it unsurprising that our conversation winds from the film, to life lessons, to video games.

VICE: I’m going to start with the obvious question: how did you get involved with this film?
Ben Mendelsohn: I knew Nicole a little bit as a human. I knew her work from being a happy audience. I’d actually tested for her years ago, before things sort of turned fortunate. I came close on one of her things, which was something I was really encouraged by, because at the time I was getting no one. I couldn’t get arrested. We knew each other a little bit, and she told me about it, saying, “I want you to come do a movie.” I was like, “Are you fucking kidding me? I’m gonna do it, yeah.” Also, she mainly works with women leads. So yeah, a no-brainer.

Was there a particular film that was your introduction to her work?
Yeah, Friends with Money, the one that I didn’t get. And I saw exactly why, because I wasn’t right for the part that she had been testing me for, but in any case, yeah, that was my introduction.

Are you somebody who finds it easy to leave a character on set when you go home? This film seems like a kind of harrowing thing to carry around with you.
Yeah, I do. Yes and no. I mean, it’s easy to move in and out of mode on the day that you’re working. That, I have found more and more. I think that when you’re younger and you’re learning, it can be more intense, that sort of working and separating, or just going off into normal life. But they just sort of hang around like—they’re like reflections in windows passing by, and stuff like that. You have senses of different experiences or different kind of characters or whatnot in your life, and some of them hang around for a long time, but I think it’s when you’re coming up and you’re sort of getting into it. I also think it depends a lot on the way other people end up feeling about them, but you do feel, in terms of leaving them behind and being tortured when you go home, you do get tortured when you go home, but it’s more because it’s hard to eat when you’re on set. It’s like the actual process of making a film is long and tiring. Sorry, I’m raving on.

Was there a particular point that you felt you’d wrapped your head around that?
Yeah and no. I think the biggest departure point is you try not to sort of aggrandize it or make it more of a [ jerk-off motion] than, you know— you try not to do too much of that kind of stuff, like wanking on about it or making it more of a kind of hallowed thing. You try and remember you’re making something for an audience, that you want an audience to be entertained and enjoy their time or be absorbed by their time with your project, whatever it is. I think that’s actually the most helpful thing, is to just become a bit more audience-aware and focused.

Specific to this project, what was your impression of that character when you first read the script?
I remember the scenes. I remember the sense of someone having this stated of goal of getting away from this land of steady habits, and at the same time cementing himself in a different, more unfortunate way. There’s something of a comedy of errors about the way he goes about it. The way Nicole writes—and ultimately the way she directs—it’s very clear what’s going on, on one level, but she’s got this way of unleashing an emotional unease in the viewer that lingers along as a side traveler. That, I trust, is going to be a part of this, too. Anders is—I mean, you love them when you play them, but you also get what fools they are, in their way, as well. And we’re not dealing with black and whites, here, we’re not dealing with a cop going after someone that’s murdering and terrorizing people, these aren’t black and white moral codes. I just dig her writing, and I have a trust and experience that she’s going to know what she’s doing, and also that very much is up to her, because she makes very much her own style of film, and that’s part of what’s so excellent about it.

The thing that catalyzes the events of the film is your character’s retirement; God forbid, but is that something that you’d ever thought about?
Retiring? Yeah. Well, I think about it sometimes, but not a whole lot. I mean, acting is one of those jobs that you can ostensibly work until you leave here, or until you’re very infirm and can’t. It’s not really something that I think about a lot in that way. I have thought about getting some time away or trying to do something different at various times in my life, but I’m kind of married to the game, as it were.

With regards to your work, you’ve recently been cast as a villain in several blockbusters, but you’ve also played the protagonist and antihero figures in a lot of smaller, independent films; is that a balance that you’ve consciously been looking for?
It’s not something that I’ve been consciously looking for; I’d love to keep doing them both. I think the more important thing is making something that has its own integrity, that is good, that is well made, that people enjoy, that takes them away from whatever they were doing before they watched it, and while they’re watching it. I think the old-fashioned idea of entertainment or being entertained is actually a really good grounding in what you want to be doing, if you’re doing this stuff. That doesn’t mean that it has to be unsubstantive or not have a lot to it, but if you keep in mind that you just want to do things that entertain people in their busy lives, or their whatever lives, that’s pretty good, that’s a bit of an honor, to be active and working doing that.

I also wanted to ask, with regards to what you were saying about your career, there was an interview where you were speaking about your life post- The Year My Voice Broke, and you were saying that at that time, you didn’t think that you deserved that success.
Yeah.

Do you think you do now? Has your idea of a merit-based system changed?
Yeah, it has changed. I also think that there’s big differences—subtle differences, but quite profound differences—in Australian and American culture, and I probably, if I could, would put my arm around that guy and say, “Hey, good on you. It’s really good. It’s a nod of encouragement in the right direction. It doesn’t actually mean what you think it means right now. Off you go.” But yeah, I feel like—I’m very happy to be working and generally thought of well.

Is there anything in particular that you’ve wanted to do that you haven’t been able to yet?
Not hugely—I tend to get delighted by each new turn in this, and I’m an actor that came up through television in Australia in the 80s, and the idea that you would somehow plan out what you were going to do is something that I’ve not experienced many people that operate from that basis. Most of it tends to be: there’s a film happening or whatnot, and who’s around, and who can we get, and who will work in it? I don’t experience myself as flying the plane, I experience myself as valued technician, or air host.

Slightly more philosophically speaking, one of the big themes is balancing being true to what you want and taking note of or caring about the perception of others; is that a balance you’ve found easy or difficult?
The paradigm, as you put it up, is not exactly the way I see it. I think knowing what it is that people are saying or how it is that you’re coming off in the world as you make your way around is something that I’ve often been surprised by the way certain people will view or interpret or feel about you. I still am. More nowadays, I’m surprised and delighted by the positivity that people feel, but certainly there’ve been many times growing up where I was surprised that people were viewing things negatively or whatnot, but it didn’t have so much to do with me consciously trying to exercise autonomism and break free of something. It was just, I don’t think, for a long time, I’ve felt that way. I’ve felt, more fundamentally, like, “What do you do?” more than, “I’m gonna strike forth in this direction,” and all that. I think, maybe, for people that have a more grounded and solid sense of themselves, they might feel that way, but that’s not been where I’ve come from. But yeah, I’ve been surprised at times by what people thought.

Yeah?
Oh, yeah! I’ve been surprised, but it’s a quality that probably works for performance in one way or another. The tension between what they feel or see themselves as versus how they come off to other people.

Is there anything in particular that has surprised you?
[ Laughs] There’ve been many of them. A lot of the times were very early on. I was born in Australia, but I went to Germany and England, and when I came back to Australia, I was very surprised by being viewed as this little German outsider kid and stuff like that, so a lot of my formative experiences have to do with that feeling of being an outsider. And then there’s been many kind of hostile or bemused receptions that I’ve received over my life. In many of those, I had an active part, but what I thought I was doing versus what other people interpreted it as have often been wildly different. I think it’s very easy for us to misunderstand or half-understand or not give a damn about where people are coming from, and get it wrong.

I have one last question—I’ve read previously that you’re a videogamer, I was wondering what you’ve been playing or enjoying lately.
Lately I’ve been all about the tablet, and pretty dated things. There’s not a lot I’ve checked out new for a while. I’ve been doing Hearthstone, I’ve been doing Clash of Clans, and the other one is Plants vs. Zombies. They’re the three games— and I will play them every day. The one I’m looking forward to is the new Fallout. I think the new red, what is it, cowboy, the cowboy thing—

Red Dead Redemption?
Yeah, thank you—that new one, I’ll have downloaded, because I pre-bought it. But I want to add, for the record, that I do think that the best video game, in terms of modern games, is The Last of Us. I just wanna go on record.

Oh, I just bought that.
You just bought it?

I know, I’m way behind.
No, no, fuck that. Have you cracked it open at all?

No, I haven’t, it’s still in the packaging.
OK, that, for my money, that’s the best video game. Classically, I’m a Civ guy, Civilization, because it’s the most strategy and it’s war and all that bullshit, and you can just go back and start again and have one more move, all that shit, but I do think that The Last of Us is an extraordinary achievement. But really, for what it does here. [ gestures at heart]

There’s been talk of doing a movie adaptation, is that something you would swing for?
I’d be really surprised, and I think you would too, once you crack it open, if they went my way for the movie adaptation of that. I think you probably need a guy who is younger. You probably need someone in his late 30s. There’s two major, major roles in that, and then there’s quite a few other bits and pieces that come along. There’s a couple of parts in there, if you’re just going from the video game, that are pretty good. There’s really only the two of them, and I think that’s beautiful. I hope they get it right. I mean, that’s such a great video game. I haven’t played everything, but most of the ones that have had a big noise about them or big hoopla. We used to have this fantastic games review show out of Australia called Good Game, which got fucking axed by the ABC, which is our equivalent of the BBC, a few years ago, apropos, it seems, of nothing, so I don’t know a good games review show since then, certainly not one that’s a podcast or that I know how to get access to. I’m not as informed as I was when I was doing their stuff. Look, The Last of Us, yeah. What are you playing?

I just started playing the last Final Fantasy that came out.
Oh, yeah. I’ve played a few Final Fantasy games way back in the day, but I haven’t played many of the modern ones. I mean, that’s a huge, huge franchise. I can remember playing it on—I wanna say the 2, I think? I think I got one of them when the PS2 was around. I’ve played a couple of Final Fantasy games and stuff like that, and kind of dug it and was immersed. But The Last of Us. It’s extraordinary.

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Welcome to the VICE Guide to Life, our imperfect advice on becoming an adult.

College asks a lot from incoming freshmen. They’re uprooted from everything that’s ever been familiar to them. They’re forced into confined, unsanitary living quarters with a bunch of other hormonal teenagers. They’re put in charge of their own schedules, routines, and chores, often for the first time in their lives. And on top of all that, they have to commit to a lifelong career path.

At least, that’s what picking a major feels like. Once an area of study is chosen, second thoughts can appear to be a waste of time and, more importantly, money. Americans spent over $25,000 per year on college tuition, fees, room, and board in the 2016–2017 school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Switching majors after a year or two of such steep costs can seem like lighting a huge pile of money on fire. This line of thought is called the sunk cost fallacy, which a lot of people grapple with after years in unfulfilling careers.

On the bright side, students who switch directions and follow their true calling are less likely to waste their youth working a shitty office job. They're also not alone. According to the US Department of Education, about 30 percent of American students change their major in the first three years of college. Some universities have an even higher rate, such as UC Davis, where more than 50 percent of enrolled students switch teams at least once. A study from the Asia-Pacific Journal of Cooperative Education found that the two main reasons Canadian students change majors are their personal interests or their careers.

No matter the motivation, a degree is only part of the equation for getting a job. It’s more important to make connections and develop a reputation as passionate and valuable. The desire to change majors shouldn't be dismissed as wishful thinking or a waste of time. Academic experimentation can be as important to a student's self-discovery as navigating their newfound sexual freedom.

We talked to some students who made the tough decision about how to do it thoughtfully. Here's what they had to say.

Evaluate Yourself

The most important part of switching your major, according to students we talked to who've done it, is measuring your own happiness. Talk to your therapist, if you have one. Communicate with your classmates, professors, and alumni organizations to figure out whether you’re experiencing a normal amount of stress and satisfaction with your courses. If you dread all your major courses, consider making a change.

That's what Dylan Berg, a New York-based music video director, did. He was a journalism major for two years at Hofstra University before deciding to study film instead. By sophomore year, there were a few signs he was in the wrong field. “I was at a peak shitbag period of my college career when I decided to change my major,” he told VICE. “I was fucked up nearly 24 hours a day. I was doing drugs even unbeknownst to my partying friends just to pull through and deal with everyday life. I was a terrible journalist, and my professors told me so.” Once he realized he was unhappy, he was motivated to take action about it.

Sometimes it's more immediate. Alex New, a video editor at VICE who originally studied psychology, said he knew he had to change his major after the first week of class. “During my first psych lecture, my stomach dropped for the entire 90 minutes,” he said. “A few days later, I met some film students at a party and talked to them about it." New had done animation throughout high school and started editing a bunch of videos of my friends during my senior year, but didn't ever consider it as a career path. The students he met at the party were the first to even suggest he look into the possibility. Once he learned about film industry jobs, New knew how to research his next academic move.

Erik Trinidad, a programmer, graphic designer, and food and beverage journalist, would be none of those if he’d followed through with his original major at New Jersey Institute of Technology. “It became pretty obvious that I wasn't cut out to be an engineer like my father when I basically failed out of two foundation courses: physics and chemistry,” he said. “My brain just didn't think the way an engineer's brain is supposed to. I realized I needed to get out of that world fast.”

Similarly, Vocalist Rayssa Gomes, who just released a single about suicide prevention, found herself in at a crossroads studying political science and computer science, ignoring her passion to do so. “I’d always known I wanted to be a singer—my mom even says I would sing myself to sleep as a baby! But growing up immigrants in America, my parents heavily encouraged me to find a stable career path first,” she said. “Eventually, I became really depressed studying something I didn’t love, and it started affecting my entire outlook on life.”

It's difficult to admit to being unhappy, especially with the pressure from social media to feel Insta-perfect and well-composed at all times. But once you do, the next step is to experiment.

Explore Other Fields

After recognizing you may be studying the wrong subject, it's important to research the topics that interest you, our students say. Take an elective in the major you’re flirting with, or look for communities to learn from outside of school. If you're into art, take a figure drawing class and talk to your classmates. If your secret passion is medieval architecture, find a Reddit forum for history nerds.

Berg got a whiff of his future passion from an assignment in a journalism class he was struggling with. “I was drunk, high, or some terrible fusion of the two most of the time, and just didn't feel any motivation whatsoever. Then it was Oscar season and I decided for one of my classes I'd do a film review blog,” he said. He got more positive feedback on that assignment than any before, and it unlocked his creative energy. He took an intro to film class the next semester, and a professor told him to change majors or “be permanently unhappy.”

NJIT allowed its students to take art classes at the nearby Rutgers Institute of Technology, which Trinidad took advantage of to prove his aptitude for creative work to himself, and his parents. “To them, me going into the arts meant that I was going to work a crappy job at Kinkos for the rest of my life," he said. "So gradually I entered local design contests—and won a couple that had prize money—to show the viability of my new career choice."

Guidance counselors probably won’t know about all your options. So, according to the graduates we talked to, it's important to look for other resources. Ask students in the major you’re considering about their course loads. Talk to professors and alumni about the job market in their field. Not only will they help you decide whether to change your major, but they might become friends, mentors, or even connect you to jobs later on.

Actually Change Your Major

Thinking about it is fun, but it’s stressful to abandon a path after sinking hours, months, years, and thousands of dollars into it. But the good news is: making the actual decision to switch is the hardest part. Once made, nearly every subject of our informal survey said filing the paperwork was the easy part.

“Getting it put through the school wasn't actually that hard," said Berg. "The hardest part about that was me.”

Keep Evaluating Your Choice

It’s never too late to switch majors—even after you graduate.

Case in point is Ambre Kelly, one half of the curatorial duo behind New York indie art fair, Spring/Break. Before becoming an art impresario, she went to law school. For exactly one day. “I was asked by the Board of Deans what the definition of ‘law’ is. Standing before all of my new classmates, my on-the-spot response was a long monologue comparing law to art. I essentially said that law, like art, is open for interpretation. The deans jokingly said, ‘Well, you can graduate now.’ So, I sat down and thought, ‘What the hell am I doing here?’" That afternoon Kelly requested to be dismissed from law school and left. She applied to art school soon thereafter and her path hasn't veered much since then.

Another example is Steven Emerson, who had a degree in film and a job at a national news studio in New York before deciding he wanted to become a social worker. “I was becoming increasingly more aware of the issues facing our country and I wanted to contribute to the solution,” he said. It was daunting—he thought he might have to sink thousands of dollars into an additional undergraduate social work major. Instead, he found plenty of programs that were mostly concerned with general education requirements and readiness to do the work. “During the interview process, my school liked that I was able to formulate how the skills I developed through my film education could help me in crafting my new skills as a social worker,” he said.

Make Peace with Your Parents

Almost without exception, those we surveyed said the hardest part of changing majors was explaining the choice to their parents. Jamie L. Workman, an assistant professor at Valdosta State University in Georgia, found in a 2015 study that parental influence had a significant impact on students’ choice of major. Kimberly Renk, a psychology professor at the University of Central Florida, also found a correlation between perceived familial criticism and depressive symptoms among young adult women. Familial influence on our academic decisions and on our self-worth can be a powerful combination that makes communicating with them a vital part of changing your major.

“It was my dad's dream for me to follow in his footsteps and be an engineer—and going from a tech career to one in the arts was a complete 180 from that dream,” said Trinidad. “Eventually, I transferred to Rutgers and entered the graphic design program. I graduated with a B.A. in Visual Arts and landed a job in e-publishing before graduation day. And now I'm their example of ‘letting your kids do what they want’ when they talk to other parents.”

After Berg filed the paperwork correctly, he had to reckon with his mother. He had a generous journalism scholarship, and switching to film would be more expensive. On top of that, he said his Kentucky-born mom had aspired to be a journalist herself, but for economic reasons, “worked at a coke-addled radio station and spent most of the 1980s in an ocean of liquor,” before juggling four jobs to give her children a middle-class lifestyle. Explaining that he didn’t want what she wanted was impossible—so he talked to his dad.

“My father helped me tell my mom that every professor thought I was a hack journalist who wouldn't fit into any well-paying place,” Berg said. “It helped that one of the people who talked to my dad was the former VP of CBS News." He told Berg's dad about all these directors he knew, and how he saw, in them, a similar energy to the one he recognized in Berg, compared to the journalists he knew. "He finished his talk with my dad explaining, ‘Journalists seek out the truth. Your son makes shit up in case the story seems boring.’ It worked. Within the next week, my major had changed.”

In the tumultuous process of uprooting your academic path, telling your parents can be the first step or the last. Evaluate your happiness, experiment with other fields, change your major, evaluate those changes, rinse, and, if necessary, repeat.

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After Anthony Bourdain died in the midst of filming Parts Unknown, CNN announced it would still air its final season, making do with the footage it had before the star's tragic suicide. Now, ahead of the season premiere on Sunday, we finally have a first emotional look at what's to come.

The brief clip gives us a glimpse at the show's first episode, in which Bourdain takes United Shades of America host W. Kamau Bell on a trip to Nairobi, Kenya. But rather than a teaser of their trip together, the clip focuses on Bell as he reflects on what it was like to work with a man who "made some of the best television in the history of television." It's also accompanied by footage from their time speaking with locals, ambling through a street market, and of course, drinking.

It's the only episode Bourdain recorded voiceovers for—the remaining five will reportedly rely on narration from the show's directors and producers, potentially paired with dialogue the host recorded on location. And while this clip offers a bit of Bourdain's last monologue, it also captures one particularly powerful unscripted exchange the two had while looking out at a few wild giraffes—a painful reminder of how much the host loved what he did.

"As soon as the cameras turn off, the crew will be sitting around, we’ll be having a cocktail—I fucking pinch myself," Bourdain says to Bell. "I cannot fucking believe that I get to do this."

The final season of Parts Unknown premieres September 23 at 9 PM ET on CNN, with an upcoming documentary slated to follow sometime in 2019.

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There is something delightfully uncanny about entering the "Two Decades of Memes" exhibit in Queens' Museum of the Moving Image, and seeing a crisp, supersized print of the famed Expanding Brain hanging on the wall. As citizens of the internet, we exclusively consume memes through ravioli-sized jpegs stretched out on our phones and laptops. But here, on the austere walls of a scholarly repository—one that's also hosting showcases on the evolution of the video camera and the artistry of Jim Henson—you get the first taste of a future where some of the silliest jokes alive will be studied as part of our global story.

The exhibit is curated by the website KnowYourMeme, which has long established itself as the centralized authority for internet humor. As you might expect from the name, "Two Decades of Memes" is a combination of both a timeline, and a gallery, that walks you through some of the most famous, and most viral, artifacts in the history of cyberspace. It begins in 1998, and the famously garbled "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" monologue from the '80s arcade game Zero Wing, which subsequently immortalized in a flash cartoon with the same name. It's a worthy starting point, and dovetails neatly into other all-stars like Rage Comics, Pepe the Frog, the Jealous Girlfriend, etc, until you're given a thorough distillation of how memes have evolved, and diversified with technology. All together, it forces you to consider how this particular slice of web diction originally lived on the pages of prehistoric forums like SomethingAwful, before eventually making their homes in extremely public places, like say, Kim Kardashian's Instagram account.

"I moved to America from Korea after elementary school, and the internet was the way I adjusted to western culture," says Brad Kim, editor-in-chief of KnowYourMeme. "It was so helpful, that I decided to study how those ideas catch on and change. With this exhibit I wanted to present a singular narrative that [tracks memes] that interacts with how the media and IT have developed over the past 20 years."

Alongside the visual part of the exhibit, KnowYourMeme booked a symposium of speakers who were tasked with tackling one of many intellectual angles on the maturation of online humor. Amanda Brennan, who works at Tumblr, gave a slideshow presentation on the history (and prosperity) of cats on the internet. GIPHY's Ari Spool led a discussion on the continued renaissance of the GIF. Kim hosted a conversation about the intersection of meme artists and the overarching art world. And VICE's own Eve Peyser and Peter Slattery, were both featured panelists, examining why millennial humor is so weird/dark and meme analytics, respectively. Essentially, the exhibit argues for people to take memes seriously; that the ephemeral, throwaway jokes that cross your timeline on a daily basis are worth putting under the microscope. "I want to bring [memes] to a level beyond [a joke,]" says Kim. "And how they interact with the social affairs in the world."

This is an audacious challenge. It's hard to know how to archive and analyze memes in a meaningful way in 2018, when the format itself is still so young, and in constant flux. There's not much you can compare it to either. For example, the Museum of the Moving Image does a lot of work in the movie industry, which has its own corresponding tradition of film theory and criticism. That infrastructure doesn't yet exist for, say, an image macro of an expanding brain. No, memes are too new, and too insurgent, to be examined with objective eyes. In that sense, KnowYourMeme's work is on the cultural frontier.

All in all, the Two Decades of Memes exhibit is a noble attempt to canonize a brief chronicle of internet folklore, but it doesn't address how memes are getting more political, and more meta, as the years pile on. Pepe the Frog has been hijacked by an international community of racists—it's not the first example of that, and it certainly won't be the last, and Kim tells me he'd like to explore a deeper reading into the politicization of internet humor in the future.

There's are of course those who may harbor the idea that memes aren't worthy of academic discourse, an understandable position, and one I put past the Museum of the Motion Picture's Executive Director Carl Goodman. He is quick to remind those who feel this way that one of the very first films ever made for the Kinetoscope, a 19th century motion picture device, was of two boxing cats—essentially a Tumblr GIF pushed out during the Grover Cleveland administration. Media, even when it's deemed silly or frivolous, can still be crucial.

"In a way, we have a responsibility to help contribute to the zeitgeist. We're not reacting to these new forms of expression, we're helping people look at them in a more serious way," says Goodman. "We need to fulfill our responsibility as a museum, which is to make sure the kinds of things that we'll look back on as significant, and influential, and inspirational, are made available not just for the public, but for scholars, and to others that want to document the history that we're living through."

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The writers of BoJack Horseman started working on the latest season of the show last summer. But given its nuanced, canny coverage of various elements of sexual harassment and problematic men in the spotlight, season five feels more like it was written last month.

With Louis C.K.'s return to comedy, it feels like we’re reaching the next stage of #MeToo in which shitty men attempt to make a comeback, and this season—which dropped on Netflix last Friday—grapples with the idea of public forgivingness for toxic, abusive men (and letting them forgive themselves) and it feels like the show saw it coming.

Even though it may seem like the writers were informed by current events, most of the season was already decided before the Harvey Weinstein story broke in October 2017. Showrunners only tweaked one line as a result of recent news stories, according to creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg.

“The original line was about how terrible it is that we don’t hold these men accountable, and then we started holding men accountable,” Bob-Waksberg told VICE. He adds that the team “maybe leaned into [sexual harassment and abuse] a little bit harder because it felt like, ‘Oh yeah, this is a thing people are talking about.’”

A still from footage of Vance Waggoner, a parody of Mel Gibson, getting arrested.

While #MeToo may seem to be a groundbreaking crackdown on famous and powerful harassers and abusers—arguably in large part because of social media—the idea of these men making a comeback has proved itself time and time again for decades. In fact, Bob-Waksberg says the inspiration surrounding character Vance Waggoner, who retreated from the public eye due to numerous stories about his behavior only to come back into the spotlight five years later, was Mel Gibson. When the writers began work on this season, Gibson was working on the Daddy’s Home film franchise. “[Gibson], by all accounts, is a terrible guy over and over again, yet continues to get opportunities in our industry, some of which seem to play off his bad boy persona,” Bob-Waksberg says.

This explains one storyline in the fourth episode of the season (“BoJack the Feminist”), in which Mr. Peanutbutter tries emulating Vance Waggoner’s bad boy persona, despite the fact that this persona is built entirely around numerous heinous allegations, like hitting a woman with a baseball bat. “Let’s not pat ourselves on the back too hard for calling out these terrible men, [because] although I’m glad [some are] being stripped of their power, many of them are not,” Bob-Waksberg says.

Mr. Peanutbutter (left) tries to build a bad boy image with help from Todd (right).

Intentional or not, the season’s eerie foreshadowing remains. The owner of the Greenwich Village club where Louis C.K. performed late last month defended his choices by saying that "there can't be a permanent life sentence on someone who does something wrong,” reminiscent of Ana Spanakopita's argument to Diane in the same episode. “All [Vance is] asking for is a fresh start,” Ana tells Diane, later adding, “He’s reformed. What else would you have him do?”

Throughout the season, several plot points delved into #MeToo in different ways, whether intensely and harrowingly. For instance, BoJack choking his girlfriend and co-star Gina Cazador after he was lauded in the media for simply saying choking women is bad. Or in a more more lighthearted way, like when Henry Fondle—a literal sex robot promoted to CEO of WhatTimeIsItRightNow.com for his go-getter attitude. The latter was more influenced by current events and felt like “a light, fun way to talk about the sexual harassment problem in this industry,” Bob-Waksberg says.

Despite the fact that some of the main characters either inflict or are complicit in abuse, viewers can dismiss the idea that the show is asking us to empathize with abusers. Especially after watching the notably meta argument between BoJack and Diane in the season’s 10th episode, “Head in the Clouds.”

Diane Nguyen (left) facepalms mid-conversation with BoJack (right).

“That’s not the point of Philbert, for guys to watch it and feel OK,” Diane tells BoJack. “I don’t want you, or anyone else, justifying their shitty behavior because of the show.”

The idea of fans, or even people in the entertainment industry, taking comfort in the character of BoJack Horseman is something that Bob-Waksberg has given a lot of thought. Especially after he heard that Harvey Weinstein is a fan of the show—or at least a fan of “Fish Out of Water,” the widely acclaimed fourth episode of season three. “Hearing that really gave me the chills,” he says. “And it really made me think about what message he is getting from that show.”

Bob-Waksberg adds that this line of thought was “a motivator for some of the conversations that happen on the show this season.”

“Are there people who really see themselves in BoJack in major ways? And are they getting too much comfort from that connection?” Bob-Waksberg asks, adding that learning Weinstein enjoys BoJack Horseman was “a really difficult pill for me to—I don’t want to say swallow, because I don’t think I’ve swallowed it entirely. But thinking about that certainly led to a lot of conversations in this season.”

Flip McVickers (left), Bojack Horseman (right)

Bob-Waksberg says that at the start of work on this season he thought, “I’m gonna be really bummed out, personally, if we get to the end of the season and the moral is ‘We should all forgive Mel Gibson.’” Forgiveness is a huge theme of BoJack Horseman—and he grapples with the concept of that as well accountability, making it a tricky line to balance.

“I don’t believe anybody is hopeless, and that is one of the foundational columns of the series,” he says. “And so then when you ask me to apply that to some of the real-world dirtbags...I don’t quite know what the answer is.”

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Harm reduction advocates are slamming Vancouver police’s decision to seize cannabis intended for opioid users in the city’s Downtown Eastside.

Sarah Blyth, executive of the Overdose Prevention Society, founded the High Hopes Foundation, which gives opioid users free high concentration cannabis as a substitute for opioids.

Blyth said High Hopes Foundation has been operating out of the Downtown Eastside Market —a flea market of sorts where locals can sell their wares—for the last year. But on Friday, police officers showed up and raided the organization’s product.

“The police came and took everything away. They didn’t really give any details why,” Blyth, who is running for city council, told VICE.

She said police later came back and said providing cannabis isn’t part of the market’s mandate and that the person running the market doesn’t want weed sold there. She also posted videos of the interactions on social media.

In an email statement, the Vancouver Police Department told VICE officers “located a table with a plastic display of mainly cannabis products, marked for sale” and tried unsuccessfully to locate the owners of the product. They then seized the product, “including two plastic bottles of unknown powder.”

“Although our officers tried to identify the owner of the cannabis products being openly sold, no one took responsibility for it,” said VPD spokesman Sgt. Jason Robillard. “This removed the opportunity for our officers to collect enough information from which they could base their next course of action on.” Vancouver police have previously told VICE weed raids are not a priority for them.

Blyth told VICE Downtown Eastside Market organizers do not support the raid. The market has not yet responded to VICE’s request for comment.

Blyth said the cannabis is for people who suffer from long term illnesses, including cancer and fibromyalgia, as well as those with mental health issues such as PTSD.

“It’s introducing people to something that’s a safe alternative. It’s not addictive, it won’t kill anyone.”

She said the Overdose Prevention Society watches over people as they consume drugs. According to the Georgia Straight, in 2017 the group handled more than 175,000 visits, witnessed 417 overdoses and administered naloxone 397 times but there were no deaths.

A growing number of doctors are pushing for more research into how cannabinoids can treat pain and examine its effectiveness versus opioids.

Alan Bell, a clinical researcher and professor at the University of Toronto who sits on the medical advisory board for Tweed, previously told VICE opioids are not a good option for treating long-term pain because people build up a tolerance to them. He said cannabis can be effective at treating neuropathic pain, and can help reduce the amount of opioids a patient would require.

Blyth told VICE she’s unsure if High Hopes will be able to continue operating out of the Downtown Eastside Market.

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As people rushed to evacuate the path of Hurricane Florence, shelters across the southeastern coast have been struggling to make room for the influx of pets that have been left behind. But thanks to a few fearless vigilantes, dozens of North and South Carolina's abandoned animals may get a chance to find a new home. Just last week, a North Carolina couple rescued roughly 20 pets from shelters in their "fluffy bus," and a trucker named Tony Alsup loaded up 64 dogs and cats in his school bus, driving them outside of the hurricane warning zone, the Washington Post reports.

"It’s so easy for people to adopt the small pets and the cuties and the cuddly," Alsup told the Greenville News. "We take on the ones that deserve a chance even though they are big and a little ugly. But I love big dogs, and we find places for them."

According to the Greenville News , the good samaritan and animal lover from Tennessee spent $3,200 on a school bus he's used to evacuate what he calls "leftovers"—sheltered pets who no one's tried to adopt—from disaster zones across the country. A few days before Hurricane Florence hit, Alsup drove through South Carolina, loading 53 dogs and 11 cats into the bus from shelters across the state, driving them to a private dog shelter in Alabama. Many were adopted from there, while others were sent to adoption shelters across the US with a little more room.

In the intervening days before a hurricane, pets often get left behind and local shelters begin to fill up, according to the Post. Government-run shelters in certain jurisdictions are obligated not to turn away any new animals, but to do that, they sometimes have to make space for them by putting others down. Thankfully, Alsup was able to swoop in and save multiple good boys and girls, and aims to head back down to Wilmington, North Carolina—where flooding has caused the roads to close—to save even more animals in need.

"Animals—especially shelter pets—they always have to take the back seat of the bus," Alsup told the Post. "But I’ll give them their own bus. If I have to I’ll pay for all the fuel, or even a boat, to get these dogs out of there."

You can follow Alsup's journey on Facebook and donate to his gas and upkeep funds through his Paypal.

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A lot of people compare Rick and Morty to Japanese animation for its wildness, innovation, and focus on teenage emotions. Its visuals are innovative for American animation, but French animator Malec dropped a video over the weekend that shows how dazzling it could be if reimagined in the style of anime.

Malec and his team, who also anime-fied Game of Thrones and produces a series of pop-culture rap battles, transformed the Smith-Sanchez clan into the blushing, bubble-eyed, spiky-haired bodies characteristic of Japanese animation for their short, If Rick And Morty Was An Anime. Fan-favorite snippets from the series, like buff Summer, Pickle Rick, wine-drunk Beth, and Jerry's dumb hat are all spliced into a 90-second remake of Rick and Morty's intro theme. KronoMuzik's splendidly generic anime music soundtrack is an excellent touch.

The video is cool because it knows its audience. Rick and Morty fans are incredibly thirsty for an anime crossover. "Rick and Morty is anime " is a recurring Twitter troll that's met with 50 shades of ironic derision, unironic scorn, and wistfulness for an actual Rick and Morty anime episode.

Members of the media are even more dazzled by the idea than fans on Twitter. In August, Titmouse's Anthony F. Schepperd animated an X-Men inspired promo for the show, which publications said, "Depicts an insane new season," and "Promises an absolutely epic new season," implying "anime action" would play a role in future episodes. In reality, Adult Swim hires young animators to use their characters in experimental bumps all the time, and they never have anything to do with the show itself. Stop-motion animator Lee Hardcastle did a series called The Non-Canonical Adventures of Rick and Morty to quash any suspicion that they have bearing on the show itself.

Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland owe Adult Swim 70 episodes of Rick and Morty. That's a lot of chances to cave to their audience and do an anime episode, the same way Harmon did a whole claymation episode of his previous NBC series, Community. However, if he and Roiland are as committed to ignoring anime fans as they are to shutting out deep conspiracy theorists, then it won't happen any time soon.

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Fresher’s Week – welcome to hell and heaven, heaven and hell. You’ll make friends, you’ll have good times, you’ll start smoking to fit in, you’ll have fun, you’ll have times when you’ll be sat k-holing for the first time in a stranger’s flat and will see unrelentingly vivid images in your mind’s eye of your father’s disappointed face when you got your A-level results, but most of all you will grow from a tiny child into a useless adult.

Anyone with an ounce of intelligence – which you definitely have now you've finally made it onto that course you probably want to spend £28k minimum on and bumped up your sixth form’s statistics – will understand the utmost importance of dressing perfectly at all times when learning. Also important is making snap judgements on others whilst at uni based entirely on what they wear. See:

VINTAGE MANBOY

The clever thing about this outfit is that it can be worn every single day – same artfully scruffy trainers, same artfully rolled up corduroy jeans – the only components changing being the £45 vintage designer rugby top/fleece and the £35 vintage baseball cap. Vintage Manboy knows this, and so in preparation for university tactically stocks up on these items spending a cool £1k+ on variations of the exact same outfit, paying no mind to the expense. It’s worth it, he tells himself. This will secure my new cool and aloof university personality.

Very probably called Toby and very probably studying Philosophy or History of Art, Vintage ManBoy will ask you for rizla and filters in the smoking area on your first fresher’s night out and will not stop doing so until the day you graduate.

INCREDIBLY WEALTHY INTERNATIONAL STUDENT

These people can afford to buy designer clothes. You, I’m afraid, cannot. You may think you are fairly good with money – you had that job in sixth form, didn't you, you saved up a bit before you came to uni, you might have even set yourself a weekly budget – but I am here to tell you that you are not. You are terrible with money and will never in your life be able to afford designer clothes. By the end of fresher’s week you’ve hit your overdraft best case scenario, maxed it out worst case scenario. The Incredibly Wealthy International Student does not have this problem. They can wear Louboutin trainers to walk, in the mud and the rain, to Tesco to buy some cereal without even flinching.

Accept financial defeat now, tiny fresher, and try to do some food shopping once in a while instead of spending your entire student loan on UberEats.

SPORTS UNIFORM

People still do sports now you’re a grown-up, this is a sad fact. Despite finally escaping PE and the cold dread followed by meticulous faking of vague faint aches and pains to successfully avoid doing any strenuous exercise that wasn’t ping-pong during school, the sporty people – people who actively sought out the thrill of competition and inexplicably seemed to remain at a relatively normal skin shade playing football instead of instantly turning bright red and remaining that way for the rest of the school day – still exist, and you will be living with one in your first year.

You will meet them once properly when you move in, already somehow wearing full colours for an unnamed sport at your chosen university, a somehow graceful and decorative sheen of sweat accessorising their pristine trainers, the weird fluorescent ones Nike makes for doing specific Proper Sports, and from that point onwards they are like a weirdly competitive ghost in your flat, leaving endless hockey sticks and water bottles flung akimbo around the communal living area.

DEPOP GIRL

This girl could be failing at every single aspect of life – I mean she could literally be on bail from a prison sentence – but you will still feel constantly inferior to her because every day she appears to be wearing an entirely new vintage designer Very Branded outfit courtesy of Depop, alongside a headband – there is for some reason always a headband – and infinite pairs of new trainers. She doesn’t appear to have a job and you will never truly know how she has the ability to live inside a cloud of Dior monogrammed headbands, hoop earrings and Moschino, but some nights you will find yourself lying awake wishing you were her. If you ever catch yourself seething in jealousy the best advice I can give you is to put on some passably clean clothes, walk to Primark and buy yourself a nice £2.50 necklace. Void = filled.

ASPIRING TECHNO DJ WITH WEIRD TROUSERS

“Close your eyes”, he says, his phone rigged up to some heinously expensive speakers with an aux cord, “and imagine, yeah, just imagine me opening a set with this fucker.” You close your eyes, still unsure as to how you ended up in this boy’s halls bedroom at 3:30AM and even more unsure as to why you’re actually closing your eyes on demand, and a samey-sounding thudding noise fills the room.

You open your eyes and watch him Get Very Into This Song in a very intense way, sitting there in his zebra-print bootcut jeans and pristine trainers, and amongst fleeting wishes of home, of your own bed and a radiator that you know how to work and a shower that doesn’t resemble a dribbling baby, your main priority is escape.

Escaping Techno DJ’s bedroom at that exact moment is a good decision. These people will only become useful later in university life when you decide that you’re having a party and you desperately need someone for the music who has aggressive opinions about Berlin nightlife.

JUST A ZIP-UP HOODIE

Everyone has at least one ill-fitting zip-up hoodie, this is a fact. Maybe you splashed out £39 when you left school for one with 200 tiny names printed onto the back of it, or maybe you bought it in sheer panic whilst camping in the rain after discovering that your tent wasn’t waterproof and all your clothes were irreversibly soaked through, but you definitely have one and so does everyone else. Around Day #6 of fresher's week all your fellow freshly-released-from-home miniature grown-ups will also not understand how the grimy card operated washing machine system in your accommodation works and resort to wearing this hoodie, leaving their stylistically fresh but physically quite dirty garments in identical IKEA washing baskets mum bought for them in the big pre-uni shop.

Everywhere you turn you will see a grey hoodie with white zips – possibly stained with foundation around the neckline, possibly not – with a tired and terrified looking face peeking out. Smile, be kind to each other, for you are now all in this together: whether it’s your First Proper Comedown or you’re Actually Really Into Drugs And Have Been For A Good Few Years Now Haha. The grey hoodie is the leveller. Embrace the community of this horrible garment and accept your awful awful running-across-the-courtyard-in-the-rain-at-2AM £5-per-wash-and-dry-cycle fate for the next year.

@dankmemes4homecountiesteens

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Minor spoilers ahead.

American Vandal, the mockumentary that somehow turned a dick joke into a hit eight-episode whodunit last year, just came back to Netflix for season two. This season takes amateur filmmakers and detectives Peter and Sam (Tyler Alvarez and Griffin Gluck) out of their California high school to an affluent private Catholic school in Bellevue, WA, where they investigate the serial poop-related crimes of someone known only as the Turd Burglar. If you’re hearing about it for the first time, American Vandal might sound like an extended SNL sketch, but it’s so much more than the silly and sometimes gross comedy it appears to be—it’s one of best portrayals of teenagers on TV, and is particularly good at representing teens’ relationships with social media and the internet.

The internet is central to both seasons of American Vandal and the way the showrunners portray social media and tech is not only funny, it’s absolutely accurate and incredibly nuanced. A whole plotline is devoted to Peter and Sam investigating the iPhone “Letter I” bug from last year; later, they pay close attention to the way the Turd Burglar uses punctuation after emojis in Instagram captions, and flag it as weird (which it totally is). When the Burglar starts contacting Peter and Sam, Sam gets angry at Peter for typing drafts of their responses in the messages app, because “you draft in the notes app, everyone knows that, otherwise you see the dot-dot-dot,” referring to how some people might write risky messages in the notes app so the person they’re texting can’t see them typing.

Vandal even explains how code-switching can be a part of teens’ everyday social media interactions. Peter and Sam compare the way that a Black character, DeMarcus (played brilliantly by Melvin Gregg), texts with less or more slang depending on who he’s talking to, and DeMarcus explains he does this to avoid being stereotyped.

Too many shows and movies make the mistake of having their characters interact on the internet in a way that isn’t accurate, both in terms of technical details and behaviour. For example, culture writer Sarah Hagi pointed out the mistakes in the phone conversations in Sierra Burgess Is A Loser, and the AV Club’s Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya reflected on the ham-fisted way The Good Wife used the word “retweeted” in season four, saying “It’s such a small, nitpicky thing, but that piece of dialogue just stood out as so overwhelmingly bad to me, as if the writers were desperately grasping at how teens talk and just decided to throw “retweet” in there.”

Details like that should matter to the viewer because cutting corners when you’re writing plot-driving interactions is lazy. If you’re not going to try and be genuine, then why bother at all? Little missteps like a weird use of the word “retweet” chip away and distract from the story; in a serious moment, it takes away from the drama, and in a funny moment, it suddenly makes the joke feel corny. Just for a second, you’re reminded that you’re watching TV, and the adults writing said TV are completely winging it.

Technology can be hard to write into stories, and writers run the risk of creating a piece of work that will eventually become dated if they name-drop MySpace, Twitter, Snapchat, emojis, etc., because all those things will one day become artifacts of the internet. To truly make it work, showrunners need to embrace not just technical accuracy, but a real understanding of how and why people use the internet.

American Vandal’s technical references, though perfect right now, won’t stand the test of time as we move onto other social platforms in a few years, but its willingness to create sympathy for the way today’s teens and young people survive being the most recorded generation will always strike a chord with its viewers. That’s what makes season two the shit (pun intended obviously). Vandal isn’t interested in criticizing teens for their lives being revolved around the internet because it knows social media is here to stay; instead, it wants to look at how teens’ lives are now entirely informed by hyper-connectedness and a complete lack of privacy. This means something important for the development of young people’s identities, and it needs to be taken more seriously.

Kevin McClain (played by Travis Tope) is the Dylan Maxwell of this season of American Vandal—he’s blamed for the crimes of the Turd Burglar, but like Dylan with the dick drawings, he’s an easy patsy for the real accuser. Kevin is eccentric, pretentious, and a total social pariah because he breaks the rigid ideas of behavioural expectations set by his peers both online and offline. You can’t help but cringe at his tea-tasting YouTube videos or real-life Fruit Ninja game, but maybe you recognize the way he is bullied. While Kevin pretends to be above the bullying, we learn that he’s secretly tormented by the way his classmates treat him on social media, and that’s why he keeps posting weird stuff online—to send the message that he doesn’t care.

American Vandal definitely isn’t a love letter to social media—it also looks at how teens use the internet in ways that can hurt them. Turd Burglar suspect Jenna Hawthorne (Kiah Stern) falls from popularity after the allure of her perfect Instagram is shattered when it comes out that a picture she posted of her with Kendall Jenner was taken at a meet and greet, and the two don’t know each other. Drama student Drew Pankratz (Jonathan Saks), also known as Diapey Drew, becomes a laughing stock after someone leaks photos of him wearing a diaper.

Clearly, social media is a crucial part of American Vandal’s second season story arc, and it represents the technical details with incredible accuracy, however, this show is good because it doesn’t berate teens for the way social media takes up their lives. Rather, it carefully investigates how vulnerable young people are nowadays because of social media. It makes plenty of jokes and throws in details that please those of us who care about the accuracy of such things on TV, but best of all, it’s willing to cut teens a break when it comes to the internet and social media. In our current cultural landscape that often regards teens as stupid, often in tandem with jokes about their reliance on the internet, this line from the closing episode of American Vandal’s second season is heartfelt: “We’re not the worst generation. We’re just the most exposed.”

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The Marvel Cinematic Universe is filled with amazing female characters, from Captain America's Black Widow to Black Panther's Okoye, but after a decade's worth of MCU films, we've still never seen one with a female lead. Now, we're finally getting a female-fronted superhero movie in the upcoming Captain Marvel, and on Tuesday we got our first official trailer.

The film stars Brie Larson as Carol Danvers, a.k.a. Captain Marvel, a hero packing superhuman strength, the gift of flight, and the ability to shoot energy from her fingertips. The trailer finds her careening back down to Earth from what looks like a spaceship, plowing straight through the roof of a Blockbuster—which still exist, given that Captain Marvel is set in the 1990s. She winds up linking up with Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), the head honcho of the MCU spy agency S.H.I.E.L.D., and the two get busy fighting some dangerous, shape-shifting aliens.

For the uninitiated, those baddies—including what appears to be an innocent old lady Danvers socks in the face—are most likely Kree, a vicious alien race with the ability to disguise themselves as humans, so the movie has a bit of a Men in Black thing going on. Along the way, Danvers—a human (sort of, it's complicated) who spent years in space and apparently lost her memories—begins to realize that she once "had a life here," and it looks like she'll be searching for what that life looked like throughout the movie.

Captain Marvel hits theaters on March 8, 2019.

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