This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Even if you don't know the term, you'll know the scumbro. It's a fashion trend—one that's more Hypebeast than it is GQ—involving vaguely attractive men who look like they’ve had a collision with an easter egg basket. Think mismatched clothing, high-end brands, and a nod to the streetwear realm. It is Diplo looking like the dude who sells you bad weed on the Venice boardwalk, evangelical Justin Bieber with a side order of Tommy Jeans, slim Jonah Hill puffing on a vape.

More crucially, it's moneyed. The name came about thanks to Vanity Fair, which published an editorial called "Pete Davidson and the Rise of the Scumbro," naming the Saturday Night Live star as lord of the scums. Due, in part, to the recent uptick in luxury streetwear brands such as Palace and Supreme; the collapse of the catwalk into Instagram drops and Balenciaga Triple S sneakers; and men realizing they don't have to dress in the same three T-shirts (white, blue, white with blue stripes), it's a relatively new trend—scumbros only started appearing, slightly dazed and stepping out of an Uber, around this time last year.

Unlike these pioneering name-brand scumbros—who dress in primary-coloured sweatpants and look uncomfortable beneath facial hair, as if they're at the logical conclusion of a witness protection program, forced into fashion to escape their own face—I've been interested in clothes from a young age. It was probably around 12 when I learned that pants were important. I got a paper route and realized I didn't have to dress in the stuff my mom bought for me. I guess I loved the freedom the clothes offered; I loved how the right combination of garments could be used to tell stories about myself, or who I wanted to be that morning.

This is the essence of fashion: There are entire businesses built on these narratives, of how the right shirt will make you feel like a thousand bucks. It's why we dress up when we’re going out, dress down when we’re inside, aesthetically code-switching through the world's offices, restaurants, and house parties. But what story is the scumbro telling? I would have to become one to find out, and seeing as they look like gentrified trash, the first step was to wake up on my friend's couch in gentrified east London.

Though the scumbro is generally rich (minimum wage just isn't gonna cut it when it comes to £615 [$895] Triple S sneakers), they also cultivate an air of crustiness. Specific items, such as those sneakers, are coupled with a scummy white boy aesthetic that seems to scream "showering is optional." Picture your typical ketamine-addled college graduate—the kind of kid who chews tobacco and slides into DMs with all the grace of a drunk goose—and you'll be close to honing in on their style inspiration.

Part and parcel of the scumbro messiness is bad facial hair. Everyone knows the most disgraceful members of society let their beards grow past their sell-by date, hiding all of their impurities behind a gross follicle shield. But that's also so Tinder, 2015, and the scumbro has evolved with several varieties of beard. There's Jonah Hill's all-over-do, which I’m pretty sure would have a Reddit account if it could detach from his face, sentiently tweeting about Cambridge Analytica. Shia Labeouf's is somewhere between cowboy and hot garbage man. Then there's Justin Bieber, with his teeny-weeny, incy-wincy, baby-booby, oopsy-poopsy little mustache.

Of course I went for that one.

I immediately felt more scumbro-y. It felt sinister, and bad, as if a screenshot of my Tinder bio was being circulated through a thousand WhatsApp groups all at once.

It was time to start building an outfit, but I still felt too… me. I felt light, and well-rested, and pure. So I consumed a whole oven pizza and a coffee-in-a-can of double espresso for breakfast because it was important to feel full and gross and uncomfortably on edge if I was going to do this properly.

Thing is: dressing like a scumbro is wildly expensive. In the Vanity Fair piece from this summer, Lawrence "Four Pins" Schlossman said: "What’s awesome about brands like Supreme and Palace—and this is one of the biggest factors of their popularity—is that initial retail price point is super palatable," which is a sentence that breathes money and boujee loft apartment-elitism and being all about menswear.

I don't know what your definition of "palatable" is, but I browsed through the entire Palace website and couldn't find anything less than this turquoise T-shirt for £58 [$75].

This wouldn't do. I got a mustache for free, that one's on nature. But would it be possible to become a scrumbro on a budget? I set myself a limit of £60 [$80], the same price as the T-shirt, and headed out into the world.

In many ways, early-90s Brad Pitt is the original scumbro. Walking around with his stoner eyes and his long hair and his man bag, he is the prime aesthetic exemplification of simultaneously giving and not giving a fuck—dressing in such a way that, were you to bring him home to meet the parents, it might unconsciously be due to some deep-seated issues that you really should have sorted out by now.

However, today's scumbros—the Biebers and the Labeoufs—took what Brad perfected and turned it 35 degrees to the left, moving the look from "charming and relatively harmless fuck-up" to "Florida Man Seen Riding Jet Ski Down State Highway." To achieve this feat, to look like I might appear on an ABC news segment, I was going to need a hat—in this case, a really dumb red hat. All the fucking weirdos out there wear these hats! They're the weirdo hats!

I also picked up a red coat because in the scumbro world, it's important to wear ostentatious items that don't really go together (i.e: baseball cap, for sports; luxury-look jacket that is several sizes too big, for fashion). Total cost: £7 [$9]. But the transformation wasn't complete: I needed to add some more color, to really make everything clash.

So, to top things off, I bought some green pants. In hindsight, these made me look like a cosplaying cross-breed between Mario and Luigi, but whatever: I've learned from it. I've moved on. Womp womp womp.

Oh, I also got some glasses, and to completely finish the look a very cheap white T-shirt, which I was almost sure to spill a can of Monster Energy drink on later.

There we go. Finally, I had arrived! I felt like I'd stepped off the long haul flight on half a xanny. Like I might sell you cocaine from my yacht. I will probably sleep with your Christian daughter when God isn't watching. I had become scumbro, destroyer of worlds.

Total cost? £32 [$41].

Next step: living the scumbro lifestyle.

Seeing as it's pretty much only celebrities who are financially able to live out this trend in its purest form when it came to being spiritually baked into becoming a scumbro, my options were limited. I didn't have a private jet to waltz toward, no hotel lobby to be papped in. I looked wistfully at the jewelry in the window of a local store, studying the gold, then thought about what I could do with my time. I was probably going to need some friends.

To get the ball rolling, I called some pals. No one answered. I guess they were all working hard at their jobs. I didn't have my own DiCaprio, or FKA twigs. I couldn't even reach a Mintz-Plasse. Instead, I hung out with this dog:

Thing is, he wasn't actually mine. He was just a prop pooch. I was going to have to do it alone. But what exactly do scumbros do when they're by themselves? Sure, they loiter and vape and whatnot. But do they, like, do stuff? I guess they go to places where you spend money, like gambling in Vegas. Sadly, the closest I could get to that was a gambling machine in a dilapidated pub.

I had a cocktail in a bar, too.

I even went skateboarding, a top-tier aspirational alone time activity for anyone looking to segue away from superstardom.

But the more time I spent in these clothes, the more I started to feel like an actual creep. It was probably the glasses, their 1980s porn director frames speaking volumes about my assumed cocaine habit. With each second spent trying to become a scumbro, my general sense of well-being fell. Living the scumbro life without having any real money was kind of impossible. I wanted to be the big daddy, the hot shot, but I was just a stupid person in some dumb clothes, vaping for a photographer.

And herein lays the narrative of the scumbro trend. These men have already entered a faustian trade-off by being so rich and famous that, in trying to dress normal, they almost have to do it in a moneyed way. They can't piece together a pedestrian look because they’re so famous that, when they try to buy normal-looking clothes in the expensive shops they're used to, they inevitably end up looking more like the left-field inserts in the Palace A/W 2018 lookbook .

The story the scumbro wants to tell is that they’re just like you. But it's patently clear that by starring in films and making tunes and dressing in outfits that can't properly be recreated in charity shops, like I’ve tried to do, they’re not. It's telling, in fact, that there’s a difference between the average streetwear head and the generic scumbro.

Still, I guess dressing like a scumbro is a form of celebrity freedom: It's a way to go beyond oneself. I'm not saying Bieber wakes up feeling like you and I—worrying about bills and scabs and if he’s remembered to defrost tonight’s chicken. The key is that it looks like he just might be thinking those things, even if he isn’t.

And that’s the true magic of clothes: they’re fake, they’re real, they’re everything you want them to be. They’re Justin Bieber in a shitty trailer hat trying and failing to look normal; and they’re me, in a shitty red coat, trying and failing to look rich. It’s the scumbro dichotomy: You have to look like the thing you aren’t to be the thing you are. I kept the hat, the coat will get a walk out, it took me three days to feel normal again after eating pizza through a mustache. How anyone can live like this is beyond me.

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This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

For months, cops have been trying to track down the thieves behind a string of high-profile burglaries in Los Angeles, believed to have ransacked the homes of musicians, pro athletes, producers, and actresses, and burglarized Rihanna's house just last week. Finally, on Tuesday, police announced they had caught the alleged culprits, and much like the infamous Bling Ring of the late 2000s, they busted a few teenagers, who they believe targeted A-list celebrities with help from one of their moms.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the alleged teen crime ring stole from the LA Dodgers's Yasiel Puig, Rams wide receiver Robert Woods, and singer Christina Milian all within the last few months. They wound up jacking millions of dollars worth of property, LAPD Captain Lillian Carranza said at a press conference Tuesday, and are believed to have been behind at least two dozen other burglaries in the area, the Washington Post reports.

According to the cops, the teens drove around bougie LA neighbourhoods in fancy cars wearing expensive clothes, blending in while they cased the houses they wanted to hit. They would constantly monitor celebrities' "social media postings and touring or travel schedules," Carranza said, so they'd know when their houses were likely to be empty. Once their victims were out of town, they'd swap cars, change clothes, and break in after knocking to make sure no one was home.

"One burglar knocks on the front of the door, testing the premises to see if anybody would answer,” Carranza said—and if no one did, they'd allegedly sneak inside and make a beeline for the master bedroom, stealing watches, cash, jewelry, and anything else that was easy to grab. “They usually exited the home in minutes, very often taking flight before the alarm company could reach out and notify the homeowner or the police department.”

The LAPD uploaded footage of one of the burglaries to YouTube in late September, after Puig's home security camera caught the suspects breaking into his house while he was out of town.

But the cops finally busted the group after they allegedly robbed Woods's house on Thursday, when a neighbor called 911 to report the heist. Police pulled over their getaway car and saw "what appeared to be stolen property" inside, Carranza said. Later on, investigators found $50,000 in cash inside one of their homes, along with a horde of Rolexes, purses, and other jewelry. They also found a list of other celebrities' names and addresses—which included LeBron James, Viola Davis, and Matt Damon—whom police say the teens might have been planning to target next.

The cops arrested two 19-year-olds—Tyress Williams and Jshawne Daniels—along with 18-year-old Damaji Hall on suspicion of burglary. They also arrested Hall's 34-year-old mother for suspicion of grand theft, the LA Times reports, though it's unclear exactly how she's connected to the heists. They slapped Williams with four felony counts of first-degree residential burglary, which could land him behind bars for up to ten years—but the cops haven't filed charges against any other suspects.

For as supposedly lame and straight-laced as most teens are these days, it sure does seem like a lot of them are into the whole "high-profile crime" thing—though, most of the time, they're rarely any good at it.

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New Democrat Leader Jagmeet Singh is calling for the federal government to expunge the criminal records of all Canadians convicted of nonviolent weed crimes.

Singh, alongside his party’s Justice Critic Murray Rankin and lawyer Annamaria Enenajor, announced the NDP will soon be tabling a bill calling for weed amnesty.

“The legislation asks to delete the record for anyone that’s faced possession of a personal nature,” Singh told reporters on Parliament Hill earlier today.

Rankin said he’s hoping the government will take the bill and “run with it.” He mentioned how black and Indigenous people in Canada are overpoliced for pot possession.

“It’s a question of justice, and not a partisan issue,” he said.

The federal government hasn’t made any moves towards granting Canadians with weed records amnesty, except to say that it will consider the matter after legalization. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also recently signed a US declaration to renew the War on Drugs, which has a deeply racist history.

In a statement to VICE, Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, assistant sociology professor at the University of Toronto and director of research for Cannabis Amnesty, said the bill can’t come soon enough.

“I’m excited about the opportunities that legalization presents us with, but I think that it is vitally important that we do not forget about all of the people whose lives have been damaged by cannabis prohibition. Cannabis amnesty is a first step forward in repairing these harms.”

In April, a VICE News investigation revealed Canadian police arrest black and Indigenous people for pot possession at a higher rate than white people, despite the fact that there is no difference in pot consumption amongst the groups.

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In Canada, there’s really only two streaming head-honchos in town, CraveTV and that other guy (RIP Shomi). In an effort to be the most complete cultural critic that I can be—which amounts to sitting on my ass and pissing people off with my thoughts—I signed up for a CraveTV subscription to get a good look at their offerings. And it turns out, there’s a ton of TV shows, most importantly, HBO’s back catalogue, on here that are pretty hard to find anywhere else in Canada.

From Game of Thrones, The Wire (must watch), Band of Brothers to even Seinfeld, it seems to be all here, along with some less shows like Party Down, Nathan for You, The Knick and Broad City.

And what do ya know, I made a ‘best TV episode’ list out of some of the best CraveTV episodes just to prove this point to you in the most non-promotional way possible, because this is not a promotion. I swear. (Disclosure: Bell Media, which owns CraveTV, recently signed a partnership with VICE Canada.)

Minor spoilers ahead.

The Sopranos - Pine Barrens

It’s not the craziest damn thing in the world to put “Pine Barrens” in a best episode list; I’m expecting zero brownie points here. But to this day, “Pine Barrens” sits as the most un-Soprano-like Soprano episode of the series, and it must be included as a result. Back to 01’, creator David Chase, with Emmy nominated writers Tim Van Patten and Terence Winter seemed to go for episodes that were more unusual and self-contained. Pine Barrens sat as the creative peak of that design; taking two Goodfellas stand-ins and dropping them into a two-stooges-like scenario. For one, there was Paulie Walnuts and Christopher who get lost in the woods—already funny—and then there’s the Slavic gangster who they tried to whack near the woods who then escapes right into the woods. Older Paulie is cold, “It’s the fuckin’ Yukon out there!” he says. They go on to worry and argue as the mystery of the missing Slavic hangs. Classic.

Party Down - "Steve Guttenberg's Birthday"

Criminally underwatched, Party Down features one of the greatest ensemble casts of any sitcom (Adam Scott, Lizzy Caplan, Ken Marino, Martin Starr, Megan Mullally, Jane Lynch) and really nailed the sadcom long before Bojack Horseman. While virtually every episode of this two-season wonder is a banger, this second season episode stands above the best. In this episode, the Party Down gang caters a non-birthday party for Steve Guttenberg, which morphs into impromptu reading of Roman’s (Starr) god awful sci-fi screenplay. It’s hilarious but pulls together a number of thematic undercurrents, most importantly, the realization that Henry (Scott) has given up on a dream he should still be pursuing.

The Wire - "Middle Ground"

Aside from a certain vile boy king of a beeyotch named Joffrey Baratheon few antagonists triggered collective blood vessels like Stringer Bell. Assuming you’ve seen this show made by god himself—which if not, have fun in TV hell—you already know where I’m going with this. He was second in command to a Baltimore kingpin. He shat on every damn rule in the game. And of course, “Where’s Wallace, String?!” nuff said. He needed to die and this show took forever to make it happen. The Wire was always that show with a carefully designed ecosystem; networks of plots on subplots to tell a larger story. “Middle Ground” brought several major plots to a close—Stringer Bell’s death, Avon Barksdale’s arrest and Officer McNulty's completed case. So few TV shows have the courage withhold what constitutes as audience satisfaction in favour of a story that feels authentic to its pace. But this one did.

Letterkenny - "Les Hiques"

Wayne, Derry, Squirly Dan and Katy venture to "Kwee-beck" for some good ol' fashion ice fishing. Upon finding a perfect patch of ice, they encounter "Les Hiques", their snooty Quebecois doppelgangers, just a few meters away. What ensues is a back and forth exchange of yelled insults that highlights the series' knack for creative verbal takedowns— Letterkenny is, in many ways, the Canadian Veep. Naturally, a brawl ensues that features some pretty impressive choreography—think The World's End. The episode is particularly funny if you're bilingual. In a country where "it feels very Canadian" is typically code for "it sucks", it's refreshing, exciting even, to have such a good comedy that is distinctly Canadian.

Broad City - "Mushrooms"

“Sometimes I think our dynamic is special and we should capture it”—this episode quip could pretty much sum up four seasons of Broad City, a comedy that luxuriates in the absurdist riffing of its stoner buddy leads. Drug stories are usually boring, so it’s an impressive feat that Abbi and Ilana capture the high-as-fuck highs and the excruciating lows of a psychedelic trip in such relatable, funny detail. Suddenly the most basic tasks are a mountain to overcome, and friendship becomes a secret weapon/escape hatch in a messed up situation. The animation in this episode is spectacular, by the show’s title sequence creator Mike Perry, oddly reminiscent of Bojack Horseman’s most surreal moments. By the end of the episode I had the same googly eyes as these two.

Game of Thrones - "The Red Wedding"

The episode is actually called The Rains of Castamere, but no one cares for that poshy designation. A wedding happened and it was made red from blood. When thinking back to this GOT moment, it’s important take in the shelf-life of the average TV character in the interest of fandoms and what can sell. Back in 2013, you were probably fresh off of a Breaking Bad stint and no one loevable died from The Walking Dead just yet, and here came this episode putting the final nail in what you thought this series was going to be coffin. Those good guy Starks you were rooting for have lost. The bad guy Lannisters won. Writers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss made you watch an entire family get stabbed repeatedly out of an entire series, and every watch from here on out would have you questioning everything and expecting the deaths of everyone. GOT became the GOAT this day, and it was beautiful.

The Expanse - "Home"

The best sci-fi show currently airing is most easily described as “ Game of Thrones in space,” and like its fantasy brethren, it is based on a series of books and thus, often feels like a long novel rather than a series of TV episodes. But much like Thrones, there’s a few eps that really stand out, and for the Toronto-shot Expanse, that’s season two’s “Home.” The unofficial end to Thomas Jane’s character’s central mission, “ Home” is hard, heady sci-fi that also pulls on the heartstrings.

Girls - "American Bitch"

There’s been A LOT of TV about brilliant, but deeply, deeply problematic men—most often with them as the leads of their shows (see: this list). But in the last few years, we’ve started to see shows coming from different POVs grapple with shitty men and what to do about them. And say what you want to say about Lena Dunham (and there’s a lot to say) but Girls put together one of the finest episodes ever on art and toxic masculinity. “American Bitch” features a stunning turn from (now Emmy-award winning) Matthew Rhys as troubled novelist in conversation with Hannah (Dunham), attempting to play the sympathetic bad boy while also saying things like “I’m a horny motherfucker with the impulse control of a toddler.” It’s a brilliant, challenging episode of TV, made all the more amazing in that it’s all over in a half-hour.

Band of Brothers - "Bastogne"

It’s Christmas 1944, and the 101 Airborne Division is low on supplies while surrounded by a German offensive just outside of Bastogne, Belgium. By now, HBO’s Band of Brothers fermented a kinship with an audience. The men in military outfits holding rifles and bayonets were fully fleshed-out people. You hoped for their survival. In this carefully re-captured true-to-life event about the bloody Battle of the Bulge, viewers witnessed Allied forces taken by surprise for a change. What followed was a visible terror captured brilliantly on screen thanks to director David Leland’s vision. Every shiver, and wide-shift-eyed expression added to the reminder that this event happened, and it didn’t care for who the good or bad guys were. Dead was dead and lives were made at their most disposable that day.

The Knick - "Get the Rope"

I’m probably not the first person to say this, but I always describe The Knick as ER, but set at the turn of the last century. The show is packed with the same type of complex characters, and gory realism, but filtered through the added complexity of pioneering surgical procedures at the same time as electricity is first being introduced to the hospital. Plus all the episodes are shot and directed by mastermind Steven Soderbergh during his “retirement” from making movies, and features gorgeous natural lighting and loads of complicated tracking shots, the latter not unlike ER. Everything about Dr. John Thackery’s (Clive Owen) combination of god complex and chemical dependency (liquid cocaine and opium are his drugs of choice) is consistently riveting, but even better are the episodes like “Get the Rope” where the focus shifts to Dr. Algernon C. Edwards (André Holland), the only African-American surgeon in the hospital.

True Detective - "Who Goes There"

True Detective “Who Goes There” is more “moment” then episode. For a series centering on an investigation about the murder of Dora Lange by Detectives Rust Cohle and Marty Hart, very little forward momentum occurs in the span of 58 minutes. It’s the several minutes in and a second half later, when audiences were given a technical showcase that remains one of the most awe-inspiring 15-minutes of television in the history of ever. The entire sequence in question is a six-minute tracking shot completely absent of cuts, taking our man Rust through a stash house, gun fight, and into an elaborate escape into partner Marty’s car. Even after the rubbish that was Season 2, the memory of this scene will keep True Detective alive for several listicals to come.

Twin Peaks: "The Return - Part 8"

The eighth episode of David Lynch's Twin Peaks: The Return is wilder, more experimental, and more affecting than almost anything else in the series, and frankly, on television period. There’s a lot to scratch your head at in the universe of Twin Peaks, but this episode blows you away with the force of the A-bomb blast that takes center stage in explaining (insofar as Lynch explains anything) the origin of evil in the series.

Star Trek: "The Next Generation - The Best of Both Worlds"

It was a first for a Star Trek episode to end on a cliff hanger. They had to. Shatner stanning trekkies were tagging The Next Generation crew as pretenders at the helm, so a departure needed to be taken. When the unstoppable alien race known as the Borg made a return, our captain, future adorable Twitter icon Patrick Stewart, was captured and transformed into the de-facto delegate for the enemy collective. The episode ended with Picard’s second in command Riker giving the order to “fire” a superweapon, presumably killing Picard upon the Borg ship. But cut screen, enter credit line...“to be continued.” The idea that a character that stood at the heart of the show could be killed off rocked the trekkie world and forced everyone at the time to wait an entire summer to get a conclusion. But it also transformed a series inspired by the campieroriginal, into a must-see sci-fi epic willing to take serious risks for a new generation. And Picard is better than Kirk btw.

Seinfeld - "The Contest"

It goes like this: George “Master of my Domain” Costanza is caught by mother Costanza while leafing through an issue of Glamour magazine. Momma Costanza falls and nearly breaks her back, landing her in the hospital. George then vows to never pleasure himself again as we all laugh at the thought. It’s here is when the legendary wager between four friends on who could hold out the longest begins. Each individual challenge became a series of interlocking stories of relatable comedy. Elaine and her dream man, John F. Kennedy Jr. Jerry Seinfeld and his dilemma of dating a virgin. And Kramer who immediately stiffens at the sight of an exhibitionist across Jerry’s apartment. The word “masturbation” is never spoken we leave the episode not knowing if Jerry or George won the contest. Groundbreaking.

Nathan for You - "Mechanic/Realtor"

There are certain scenes of certain shows that instantly become a defining moment of a series, the one you constantly ask “have you seen it?” Nathan for You has a lot of contenders between “Dumb Starbucks” and that poo yogurt one, but the most talked-about sequence has to be when not-quite-comedian, not-quite-business-consultant Nathan Fielder helps a realtor market houses based on a “ghost free” guarantee. The “mechanic” segment of this episode gets a little lost in the background while the in-home exorcism and penis demons leave so many unanswered questions, you pretty much have to watch it repeatedly and debate with your friends until you run out of opinions.

South Park - "Scott Tenorman Must Die"

In 2001, you couldn’t fully comprehend just how far Matt Stone and Trey Parker were willing to go for a joke. It was the ep “Scott Tenorman Must Die” that brought audiences to the point of no return. When younger Eric Cartman gets crossed by ninth-grader Scott Tenorman, our pudgy rebel with a cause comes across a kid who seems infinitely smarter at every turn. After being made into a recurring fool, Cartman no longer satisfied in getting that typical, family wholesome revenge, goes for murdering Scott’s parents before tricking him into eating their remains. South Park had already taken liberties for being a show without a fuck to give, but this marked a moment when the Comedy Central animation would solidify that reputation.

Dexter - "The Getaway"

There’s a refreshing dance between a semi-bad guy finally getting the drop on the bad guy, to which the bad guy still gets the last laugh (John Lithgow). It’s an unending dosage of darkness for an episode that left viewers completely spent. A single scene laid it bare: serial killer of serial killers Dexter is looking at baby Harrison crying in a pool of his wife’s blood—an experience he tried hard to shield from his son.

It’s rare to have an antagonist that’s written to understand an anti-hero so completely as to strike him squarely where hurts audiences the most. Even in remembering that neck scruff of a finale episode, this sequence is a reminder of how great this show was once upon a time.

Six Feet Under - "Everyone's Waiting"

Each episode in HBO’s Six Feet Under—a story about the Fisher family (Michael C. Hall, Peter Kraus, Lauren Ambrose, Fraces Conroy, Rachel Griffiths etc) who own and operate a funeral home—starts with a theme of death and life’s fragility. The last episode isn’t as depressing and downtraden as you’d expect around a series about that cycle. Instead, there’s a hope in the family Fishers finding moments of breakthrough when self-destructive patterns are discarded at at the end of the five season watch. Through a montage of deaths as healmed by director Adam Ball, audiences witness not only the death of each main character, but the best snapshots of their lives. It’s made more clear compared to any piece of fiction that life isn’t about the tragedy of loss, but about the moments we gather gather along the way.

Chappelle’s Show - "I’m Rick James"

“There are some great storytellers in the world we live today, man. Who the fuck can make up that shit?” says the late Charlie Murphy at the end of one of the greatest comedy sketches of all time. It all began back to February 11, 2004, the fourth episode of season 2 of Chappelle’s Show, well before Chappelle went completely rogue.

Audiences were still absorbing this bold sketch show that held zero topics sacred—from “The Nigger Family”to “White People Dancing” —the buzz was mounting. So in enters comedian Charlie Murphy, emerging in front of a green screen mock-like aesthetic of a E: True Hollywood Stories segment, but with a Charlie touch( Charlie Murphy’s True Hollywood Stories). This stood just before social media removed every iota of mystery from the occupational celebrity, when a celeb that wasn’t Beyonce could be marked with a sense of mythos and secrecy; Rick James being among that old-school few. But here stood Charlie laying an insane story bare in front of a camera about the singer—punchline after perfect punchline—as Chapelle personified James before topping it off with a kicker “I’m Rick James, Bitch!”. Everything was set into motion and the skit is still likely the first TV comedy sketch to actually go viral.

Jersey Shore - "A New Family"

It’s a moment in television history when millions upon millions were introduced to an alien society in New Jersey on some shore. Red dyed young adults were grouped and studied at an MTV sponsored summer house with the following names—Paul DelVecchio, Nicole Polizzi, Michael Sorrentino, Samantha Giancola, Ronnie Ortiz-Magro, Jennifer Farley, Vinny Guadagnino, Angelina Pivarnick and Deena Nicole Cortese. They also possessed strange characteristics: tanning, working out, and laundry—not necessarily in that order. And lastly, each had a designation such as Schnooki, Snickers or Snookums. Much of what they communicated revolved around booze, sex, or a fist pumping mish mash of both. What made the show so endearing wasn’t that it was anything close to smart—it was actually god damned dumb—it’s that it wasn’t afraid to be dumb and flaunt a dumbness that that has infected an entire generation to this day...

Roots - "Part 2"

Alex Haley’s eight-part epic Roots from 1977 is important for one very obvious reason. It was the first to introduce the image of Americanized slavery into suburban living rooms. From night to night, a series about a young African named Kuta Kinte (LeVar Burton and John Amos) being stripped from his home and sent to an American setting of slave-dum would depict an experience previously restricted to words in a book. While part-1 displayed the journey, part 2 unleashed the full frontal brutality of once proud people being reduced to cattle. Before this moment, sections of America were mighty comfortable with the ideas of institutionalized racism. But a good look of rusty shackles, and the strained face of a beloved personality like LeVar Burton put a dent to that white comfort.

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For a long time sex dolls were simply ignored by the majority of people in ‘decent society’ but now—thanks to a rash of niche brothels opening in North America—we’ve been forced to look deep into the uncanny valley and reckon with the hard truth that some folks out there like to have sex with dolls and robots.

In the last month alone, a sex doll brothel stated it would be opening in Toronto at the end of the summer, another just recently announced its intention to open in Vancouver in the near future, and yet one more was just announced in Houston.

In some instances, the ‘brothels’ have experienced harsh backlash. In Toronto—despite there already being a sex doll brothel quietly operating for over a year—a neighbourhood used a bylaw against adult entertainment to ban it. In Houston, lawmakers have vowed to do what they can to make sure the brothel doesn’t open. In Vancouver well, it’s Vancouver so people just kinda went with it.

All this leads us to the question of what’s going on here?

Jenna Owsianik, a sex tech expert and writer, is the co-author of the Future of Sex Report (and a similarly titled website.) The Future of Sex Report analyzes the current state of sex technology and offers detailed predictions of where we are headed to in terms of sex robots, augmented boning reality, internet connected dildos and what not.

So, I decided to call up the sex futurist and ask her what the recent uptick in fuck doll news meant and where we might be heading.

VICE: So, sex dolls, they're all the rage these days, eh?
Jenna Owsianik: Yup, they sure are. I think part of the reason they're in the news a lot these days is just the progress being made with sex robots and sex dolls more generally so people are trying to capitalize on that. It's not really a new thing—brothels or rental services in Canada and the US are—but they've been in Japan for ages and are pretty popular in Europe.

What are your thoughts about these ‘brothels?’
What's interesting to me is that we don't have really great sex robots now, nothing like we see in the movies, but what these new brothels are doing is giving us a kinda precursor into what we're going to see. In the next few decades, we're going to see people bringing their robotic partners around, even non-sexual ones. We're kinda testing the waters. They're a bit of thermometer to see how ready society is for these kinda alternative relationships with technology and having it out in the public. We're seeing a little bit of what to come down the line in terms of the media and public's reaction.

There is also the thoughts that some legal prostitutes are making about how using sex dolls in so-called brothels is going to further dehumanize sex workers. That's an important topic, how it might change sex work.

Do you think they're going to be popular?
Well, there isn't much acceptance and that stigma is so great—especially among single straight men. So when these guys try to go out and explore their sexuality they think 'oh they're gross, they're pervs' and it makes me wonder who would actually go into these brothels, who would be brave enough to actually try it?

I think they will be popular one day but I don't think there will be a surge in popularity in the immediate future.

What kind of misconception do people have about fucking dolls?

There is this misconception that the people who use these dolls are all lonely losers who are misogynist or can't get a woman. That’s not the case. Sexuality is diverse, it would be an oversimplification to suggest it's just sad dudes who can't get a woman. Some people are simply just attracted to dolls or robots. I've spoken to some men who are married and their wife is sick so she doesn't have sex with them and he doesn't want to cheat but still wants to have fun sexually. But still, these people didn't want to put out their real names because of the stigma.

You mentioned earlier one of the reasons they're so popular and so much interest is innovations with sex robots. What innovations have there been?
Well, have you heard of Real Dolls?

I sure have.
Well, the creator of Real Dolls wanted to do something different because he had been creating sex dolls for so long. So he started creating something a bit more sophisticated so he started going into robotics. For the last few years, he's been creating a robotic sex doll head [with a programmable personality] that can be placed on a body of a sex doll. So what's happened is that this year it actually went on sale and so we have these heads that can go on basic real doll bodies.

I have the app and you can kinda create like a Siri for sex. It's a type of companion. It's not the most intuitive thing right now, it's not as good as my Google Assistant. It's interesting though. A lot of people would kinda get creeped out by a humanoid looking doll but they keep it looking like a doll so you don't get that uncanny valley kinda thing.

Wow... what do you do with yours if you don't mind me asking?
The last time I tried it out, and it hasn't been for a few months—and I'm not the market for these things because I'm a woman and most of their customers are male—so it would say things about me having male anatomy, which is fine but it's not quite... what I want. But it's interesting because you can pick different personalities traits. You're given, say, ten traits to pick from—one could be jealousy, others could be kindness, etc. So you can pick their personality and then in the app you can design how you want the doll or the avatar, if you're just using the app, to look.

So you can basically create this personality in this app and put it in your sex robot head so that technically, if you have the means, you could have the app and bring this companion with you just on your phone and put it back in the head when you get home. You can bring this anywhere.

Most of these dolls seem to be made for straight men, at least that's what is seemingly stocked up in the 'brothels,' are there any dolls or brothels that cater to other sexualities?
There are male dolls made, like of male bodies, but generally, in terms of real dolls, it's usually men that buy them. There are some women that get them but not too, too many. So women are not the norm when it comes to buying sex dolls but, in terms of what I know, they're the exception.

So it's mostly for men as is. There needs to be a little more, just a little more, catering to other demographics and not in a cookie cutter approach of just bringing in male dolls either.

How important is cleaning to the process? How bad could it be if, worst case scenario, the person running the brothel didn't clean them?
You have to clean it. I think it's super important. You have to make sure you trust the place that's offering them. You can get STIs from unclean sex toys. It's interesting because these places aren't regulated so there is a lot of room for uncleanliness and unhygienic practices because how will they be checked and held accountable if there aren't regulations.

If you're going to use one it's super important to make sure they're stored in the right place, they're regularly cleaned with the right materials. It's totally important. So sex doll rental services are totally under the radar. It's good to talk about it because the last thing we need to have happened is a scourge of STI outbreaks from this rise in sex doll services.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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Donald Trump's penchant for telling cruel or unusual lies has been taken as a given for many, many months now. He spouts falsehoods about polls, about voting, about the economy, about himself, and about the women who have accused him of crimes. But the blockbuster New York Times story Tuesday showing how Trump's family used a variety of legal, semi-legal, and probably outright criminal methods to dodge taxes gave the public valuable insight into a very specific kind of lie Trump and rich people all over have in common. Fred Trump, the president's father, used a host of methods to transfer money to his children without paying any taxes. That included falsifying the amounts paid to vendors, getting appraisals that undervalued his properties, and buying a $15.5 million stake in one of his son's properties before selling that stake for $10,000 a few years later.

The Times story, which is long but worth reading in full to get a sense of how brazen these schemes were, proves definitively that Trump is more of a spoiled rich kid than a genius businessman—a phony who lied about how much money he had while getting bailed out over and over again by his father, a genuine empire-builder. (The Times reports that in 1990, Trump also tried to get his 85-year-old father to sign over more control of that empire to him.) But though this sort of behavior is outrageous, it's been enabled at every turn by a system that caters to the wealthy. That system, not Trump's individual malfeasance, is what Democrats should focus on as they work to retake Congress this year and the White House in 2020.

The Trump family's statement to the Times is revealing: "Our father’s estate was closed in 2001 by both the Internal Revenue Service and the New York State tax authorities, and our mother’s estate was closed in 2004." As the newspaper notes, the efforts by the family to take tax deductions they shouldn't have and undervalue their properties were "met with little resistance from the Internal Revenue Service." The Times calculated that Fred Trump's estate could have produced a $550 million tax bill, but instead the family paid just $52.2 million. So where was the IRS?

Wherever it was in the 90s, it's even more MIA right now—Republicans have spent years stripping away resources from the agency charged with collecting Americans' taxes. Congress has cut the IRS budget by 18 percent in inflation-adjusted terms since 2010, limiting its ability to investigate and punish tax evaders like the Trumps. (The Trumps' actions occurred before these cuts.) A recent ProPublica/ New York Times investigation found that last year the IRS brought in only 795 cases focused on tax fraud, a massive drop since 2010; collectively, US businesses evade an estimated $125 billion worth of taxes each year. Conservatives like Ted Cruz have periodically called for abolishing the IRS for obvious political reasons—no one likes paying taxes or dealing with the IRS—but the upshot of this rage is that the government has fewer tools with which to actually go after rich people who cheat and lie.

Since passing a complicated tax cut bill that will put more stress on collection operations, Republicans have begun to begrudgingly acknowledge the need for more IRS funding. But the issue has been largely reduced to background noise in a news environment full of loud noises.

Still, the Times story should give Democrats a way to bring the issue of tax enforcement in from the cold—and weaponize it. It demonstrates in exhaustive detail the way the rich aren't taxed like you or me. The Times touched on grantor-retained annuity trusts (GRATs), "one of the tax code’s great gifts to the ultrawealthy," which "let dynastic families like the Trumps pass wealth from one generation to the next—be it stocks, real estate, even art collections—without paying a dime of estate taxes." The man who appraised Trump properties as having strikingly low value—reducing the family's tax burden—was "a favorite of New York City’s big real estate families."

Zooming out from the Trumps, what we can see is a system in which the rich have the resources to use a variety of methods to evade taxes, but the government lacks the muscle to adequately counter those techniques. This isn't news, per se: Americans learned as much after the Panama and Paradise papers leaks, if they didn't know already. But by depriving the IRS of resources, Republicans have been enabling this immoral and sometimes criminal behavior to grow more brazen—by starving the beast of government, they've allowed the country's oligarchs to grow even fatter.

Americans hate this status quo. Multiple polls have shown that more than 60 percent of the population favors higher taxes on the wealthy, and last year's Republican-penned tax cut bill was decidedly unpopular. "Tax the rich" should be a no-brainer of a Democratic campaign slogan, especially with the party considering expensive social safety-net expansions like Medicare for all. There is some evidence that Democrats know this—that moving in a more explicitly anti–1 percent direction is their best hope. Just watch this recent ad from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee:

But hiking taxes on the wealthy should just be one of a bouquet of proposed Democratic policies that raise government revenue while punishing white-collar criminals. Democrats should emphasize plans to re-empower the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, the agency charged with investigating financial firms that prey upon the poor that has been defanged by the Trump administration. They should also call for funding to allow the IRS to investigate companies and rich individuals who, like the Trumps, flout the country's tax laws in the name of hoarding wealth. Especially egregious tax cheats should be named and shamed—Bernie Sanders's recent callout of Amazon shows the kind of power public denouncements can have.

Importantly, to break through a crowded news environment, this needs to be an emotional appeal—not one based on dry statistics. That's why stories like the Times piece are vital: They show the extent of the obfuscations and outright lies that the rich partake in every day. The system is unfair because it is immoral. The GOP passed complicated tax-cut legislation that benefits the wealthy while working to take health insurance away from the poor and sick because fundamentally, the Republicans only care about their donors and themselves. The economy is good and the stock market is sky-high, but the benefits are accruing to the upper classes at the expense of everyone else. Trump is a cheater and a liar who heads a party whose mission it is to enable cheaters and liars. To fix America, we need to put scum like that in their place, whether that means out of elected office or, if their conduct warrants it, in a prison cell.

This is of course class warfare—or, more accurately, a response to the class warfare currently being waged by the rich against the poor. That means it will likely make some Democratic donors a bit uncomfortable. Republicans, after all, do not have a monopoly on tax evasion. But the country's 1 percent should be made uncomfortable—above all, the Times story shows just how comfortable they've gotten.

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The Brett Kavanaugh hearings had me thinking back to another incredibly high-stakes job interview process: the one that led me to my current job at VICE. My first interview was a cordial, albeit slightly awkward conversation with my now editor. Next, I met with two senior members of the editorial staff, and pitched them various ideas for what I'd write about. Lastly, I met with the department's top dog—we got along swimmingly, and a couple weeks later I got a job offer. Throughout my interviews, I managed not to insult the people who were asking me questions. I did not lose my temper. I don't recall ever scrunching my face in anger and fear or bringing up any facts about how I once enjoyed binge-drinking. My adequate performance in those interviews never felt like something to brag about. I was able to behave like a sane human being in a somewhat high-stress situation. So what? I did the bare minimum. Go me!

Considering the current national disaster we find ourselves in, as the hyperpartisans in Washington and beyond go head-to-head in a fiery debate over whether Brett Kavanaugh should get a really important job that requires an incredible amount of grace and reason—arguably more grace and reason than my job does—I have come to realize that I actually performed exceptionally in my job interview. I didn't even cry—not a single tear was shed! Regardless of whether you believe the women who have made allegations of sexual misconduct and cruelty against Kavanaugh, I hope you can see one glaringly obvious fact: By the standards of a job interview, Kavanaugh's performance was abysmal.

Recently, Benjamin Wittes, a national security think tank guy who is personally friendly with Kavanaugh, penned a piece for The Atlantic where he asserted, "If I were a senator, I would not vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh." The argument wasn't that the allegations against Kavanaugh were airtight, but rather that the judge's response at the hearing was revealing: "His opening statement was an unprecedentedly partisan outburst of emotion from a would-be justice... The allegations against him shocked me very deeply, but not quite so deeply as did his presentation."

Wittes's case against confirming Kavanaugh tracks with common advice given to jobseekers. According to US News and World Report's "Job Interview Mistakes to Avoid," his emotional outbursts are a big no-no when interviewing for an employment opportunity. "It's important to be friendly to everyone," an expert explained. When Senator Amy Klobuchar asked Kavanaugh if he had ever blacked out while drinking, he sniped back, "I don't know. Have you?" US News also cautioned against "expressing desperation or anger," a pitfall Kavanaugh was also unable to avoid when he fumed, “This whole two-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit."

Famously, Kavanaugh repeatedly expressed his affection for beer throughout his testimony. Per US News and World Report, a job interview "is not the time to talk about recreational drug use or any other hobbies that violate the law or employer conduct policies." So telling senators "I liked beer; I still like beer" over and over again might not be an automatic dealbreaker, but if a normal person mentioned beer 29 times during any job interview not conducted at a brewery, chances are they wouldn't get the gig.

Forbes's "9 Interview No-Nos That Will Keep You From Getting Hired" warns against "seeming needy" instructing the reader, "don’t desperately try to land the job at all costs." So when Kavanaugh fumed, “I will not be intimidated into withdrawing from this process... You’ll never get me to quit. Never,” he not only oozed with desperation, but also came off as kind of entitled. As it turns out, Forbes also says "being arrogant" is also to be avoided.

Of course, most job interviews don't involve multiple sex crime allegations. A common argument from the right is that it's justifiable to be angry if you are falsely accused of sexual assault. But any employer who heard that a potential hire for a big job—a lifetime appointment, actually, which is a weird perk—was accused of raping someone, that would require some looking into. Getting visibly pissed off, and making insinuations of this all being a conspiracy, seems like it would be an automatic disqualification.

Kavanaugh isn't the only candidate for this job on the market. There are plenty of conservatives who would be happy to put on a robe and overturn Roe v. Wade—hell, nominate the ghost of Scalia for all I care—but if your goal was to appoint someone qualified to the high court, sticking with a possible alcoholic sex criminal who screamed and cried at the Senate seems like the wrong move.

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Jake Doyle was only 16 when he first saw Conor McGregor. It was 2012, and McGregor was fighting on a Cage Warriors show in Dublin. Not even in the main event, McGregor entered clean-shaven and bald, before submitting Dave Hill in the second round.

Seven months later, Doyle saw McGregor knock out Ivan Buchinger with the left-hand punch he'd become famous for. It was McGregor's last fight for Cage Warriors, but the mark it left on Doyle was permanent. "I've followed him since then," says Doyle, now 22, living in Clare on the west coast of Ireland. "His style in the cage was unreal, so you knew from that night he was going to be something brilliant."

On Saturday, McGregor fans will be hoping that brilliance takes centre stage again when he fights Khabib Nurmagomedov for the UFC Lightweight Championship. It marks McGregor's return to the Octagon after nearly two years away, and is set to smash UFC pay-per-view records.

It's been an eventful two years for McGregor – a period that's seen him father his first child and pocket an estimated $100 million (£77 million) for boxing Floyd Mayweather Jr. His standing among mainstream onlookers and general fight fans, however, has dipped following a couple of incidents over the past 12 months. First, he tried to fight a referee at a Bellator MMA show. Second, he threw a hand truck through the window of a bus Nurmagomedov was travelling on, injuring several people. Even in Ireland his standing has taken a hit, with a reported run-in with Dublin gangsters and that infamous Burger King ad contributing to mounting distaste.

His hardcore fans, however, appear to have been mobilised by these events, defending him in ways that are not only proving lucrative for McGregor, but which at times seem strange, sad and more than a little nasty. It's as if, with them buying anything their idol puts his name to, and intimidating anyone who questions him, Conor McGregor has got himself something of a cult.

* * *

The first characteristic of a hardcore McGregor fan is the unshakeable belief that the Irishman can knock anyone out, regardless of their skill, weight class or chin. It's this faith in him that McGregor has leveraged into an ever-expanding array of commercial ventures designed to, in his own words, make "Diddy bread" – a reference to Sean Combs' business empire.

Faith is particularly required when buying his "McGregor FAST" fitness programme, as McGregor himself is known for less-than-perfect fitness, which has contributed to two losses in recent memory – one to Mayweather, the other to Nate Diaz. Faith may also be required when buying from his "August McGregor" fashion line (launched last Friday, in partnership with designer David August) as £40 feels a little steep for a fairly ugly baseball cap.

If you think McGregor's brands are just about looking good – or that price or rudimentary logic might keep people away – you clearly haven't heard of his new whiskey, "Proper Twelve", launched two weeks ago in Ireland and the US to such high sales that Tesco had to limit customers to two bottles each, despite it costing €8 (£7) more than Jameson, a competitor McGregor has said is "toast".

Like many others, Jake Doyle bought Proper Twelve to support McGregor, and thinks it's actually quite nice. He also believes that McGregor launching his whiskey just before the fight on Saturday is "absolute genius", as it allows him to emblazon the logo on the Octagon floor, which is supposedly happening. "It just shows how smart of a businessman he is," Doyle says. "Let’'s hope to God he gets the win, though I've no doubt about it whatsoever."

Doyle operates a Twitter account that – like thousands of others across various platforms – is mostly dedicated to sharing content about McGregor and arguing with strangers in the comments section of McGregor's own posts. He isn't so much a troll as someone who defends McGregor against things McGregor probably doesn't care about, in ways that must be equally invigorating and exhausting. I contacted him after seeing his icon pop up repeatedly on Twitter – unsurprisingly, a picture of McGregor's face – but again, he's far from the only one religiously doing this kind of thing.

The rise of McGregor has coincided with the shift of online culture into memes, GIFs and burner-account abuse. A culture that McGregor – the master of the 13-second knockout and comebacks like "You'll do fucking nothing" and "Who the fuck is that guy?" – lends himself perfectly to.

This translates into memes like the above: Khabib Nurmagomedov – McGregor's opponent on Saturday – Photoshopped into a coffin. Though their fight is undoubtedly personal, it's a little strange to think people are getting this invested in a mixed martial arts bout between two millionaires in Las Vegas.

If the memes are standardly weird, then the abuse is just nasty – particularly the abuse levelled at current UFC Strawweight Champion Rose Namajunas after her coach revealed in an interview that she was having trouble being in public places following McGregor's attack on Nurmagomedov's bus, which she was also on.

Namajunas – who suffered sexual abuse in her youth and had a schizophrenic dad – is generally considered one of the nicest people in MMA. Having won her Strawweight title last year, she famously proclaimed, "This belt don't mean nothing, man – just be a good person."

To lots of McGregor fans, though, she's now scum of the Earth, as they believe she's secretly plotting a lawsuit – so for McGregor's sake they're piling on in her social media, calling her things like a "lame ass bitch", an "entitled feminist twat" and a "money crazed Jew". Of course, many of these accounts behind this abuse are run by men, and are either set to private or populated by a few sad selfies.

* * *

In an era in which rock stars, actors and athletes all seem impeccably well-coached in banality, it's no surprise that McGregor's flailing, fiery attitude appeals to this legion of young men. Like he said himself, "The double champ does what the fuck he wants" – the point of view many idolise him for.

For some of these McGregor fans, the outcome of Saturday's fight means very little. As long as he keeps being meme-worthy and giving people someone to hate, his status as cult leader extraordinaire should be safe.

For others, however, the fight means a bit more. Jake Doyle is staying up until 5AM on the west coast of Ireland to watch it. "Both men are in their prime, and both the best in the world at what they do," he says. "If you're a fan of martial arts, then this is surely the fight you've been waiting for."

@inthefruitbowl

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

In a world-first, Australia is on track to achieve a landmark medical breakthrough: the eradication of cervical cancer. The disease – which in 2018 recorded 930 cases among Australian women – is set to become so rare in the next 20 years that it will no longer be considered a public health problem.

Experts are predicting that cervical cancer will affect just four in 100,000 women by 2035. By as soon as 2022, it is expected to affect no more than six in 100,000, according to research published in the Lancet Public Health Journal and released by the Cancer Council this week.

The positive development is partly being chalked up to the rollout of the world-first Gardasil vaccination program, which has been vaccinating schoolchildren around the country against the human papillomavirus (HPV) for the past ten years. SBS reports that about 79 per cent of 15-year-old girls have had the voluntary vaccination, with the first recipients now starting to reach their mid-thirties.

Australia’s pap smear program has also been instrumental in fighting the disease, by identifying any abnormalities in the early stages, Fairfax reports. Since the introduction of that program in 1991, cervical cancer rates among women have dropped by about 50 per cent.

Currently, the incidence rate of the disease in Australia sits at about seven per 100,000 – half the global average. Researchers suggest that if current practices continue, cervical cancer will be almost eradicated nationally within the next 50 years: with predictions of there being just one case per 100,000 by 2066. Cervical cancer is currently responsible for 21 deaths per million women. It is thought that by 2100 that number could be as low as three.

Professor Karen Canfell, director of research at Cancer Council NSW, celebrated the success of Australia’s battle against the devastating disease – and suggested that a next step involved taking those medical developments to a global scale.

“This is such exciting news for women across Australia,” she said “We’ve been leading the way in cervical cancer control for many years and we’ll be sharing our research and approaches with the rest of the world as part of a global push to eliminate this highly preventable cancer.”

This article originally appeared on VICE AU.

Lisa chops the heroin into a small beige line, about three inches long. She lifts it to her face and snorts it with expert precision. Then she turns and smiles. "Much better. Would you two like another cup of tea?"

The heroin we've just watched Lisa snort is no ordinary street smack. This is heroin supplied by the British state – prescribed to Lisa by her doctor, and provided by a pharmacist. It is completely pure, and to get it Lisa didn't need to encounter a single drug dealer, gangster or criminal.

There is so much controversy any time a so-called "progressive" approach to drugs is attempted in Britain – from safe consumption facilities to medical cannabis for suffering children – that the idea of people being prescribed heroin, rather than even methadone, to manage their addiction seems almost fantastical. Yet, Lisa is one of the last remaining remnants of a foundational tradition in British drug policy. The practice of prescribing heroin to manage addiction was originally invented in the UK – and was so entrenched here that it was formally known in international policy circles as the British System. Throughout the early 20th century, as America began forcing its War on Drugs on the rest of the world, it was Britain that represented the most promising alternative model. The story of the British System, and of how it was dismantled under American pressure, has been all but forgotten. It shouldn't be. This story illuminates not only fascinating truths about drug policy, but about entire liberal traditions in British political history.

Throughout the 19th century opium was imported to Britain and sold everywhere from high street pharmacies to rural grocery stores. This was all completely legal. Most people used laudanum (a tincture of morphine and codeine) purely as a medicine. A few, such as the writers Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Thomas De Quincey, took opiates seeking pleasure and mind expansion. Queen Victoria was fond of both opium and cannabis, before being introduced to cocaine later in life.

As technology and trade progressed, new professions emerged. Old-fashioned apothecaries gave way to a new class of professional pharmacists, and in 1868 the Pharmacy Act placed opium under pharmaceutical control with minimal regulation.

Britain emerged from the First World War a nation transformed. Women got the vote, and the first governmental Ministry of Health was founded in 1919. Debate immediately began on whether the medical profession or the Home Office should take the lead in the regulation of drug use.

The United States, the rising power on the world stage, had banned all drugs with the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914, and was strongly pushing their moralising, prohibitionist approach across the world. This received furious opposition from the British medical community. In 1923, WE Dixon, reader in pharmacology at Cambridge, wrote to The Times:

We do not seem to have learnt anything from the experience of our American brethren … cannot our legislators understand that our only hope of stamping out the drug addict is through the doctors, that legislation above the doctors' heads is likely to prove our undoing and that we can no more stamp out addiction by prohibition than we can stamp out insanity?

In 1924, a committee was formed to consider these questions, under the leadership of Sir Humphry Rolleston, President of the Royal College of Physicians. The result was the British System. Doctors could use their own discretion in prescribing heroin to treat addiction, with loose overall control remaining with the Home Office.

What is probably most striking about the discussions of the Rolleston Committee is their utter sobriety. There is not a hint of the moralising hysteria that characterised conversations around drugs in America. Addiction is spoken about as an "unfortunate condition" – but never as "evil", never as a moral failure. And for about five decades, the British System was relatively successful. Between 1936 and 1953, the number of known drug addicts in Britain fell from 616 to 290, before rising again to 454 by 1960.

The idea of a Britain in which drug addicts could be numbered in the hundreds seems almost inconceivable today. At the same time in the US, with its prohibitionist model, the addict population was skyrocketing into the hundreds of thousands.

There is a very simple reason for this. Heroin addiction tends to spread through the black market – one addict introduces another to the drug, usually in order to finance their own habit. Under a system where users receive their drugs on prescription, there is simply no need to push the drug on anyone else.

The British System completely prevented the growth of the gangster-led black market that drove the spread of addiction in the US. One widespread rumour was that, in 1963, several New York mafia crime families came to London and met at the Hilton Hotel to discuss whether they should develop a drugs syndicate in the UK. They ended up deciding there was no point. Why bother when British doctors were already supplying the drugs?

Drug addiction in the era of the British System was confined to a tiny, insular community, largely centred around London's Soho. Unfortunately, almost all the denizens of this underground scene are long gone, but we did discover a memoir written by one user, who wrote under the pen name barbateboy:

All of the drugs I used were obtained legally on doctor’s prescription from a clutch of chemists around London. There was Boots at Piccadilly, Blisses in Kilburn, John Bell & Croyden in Wigmore St.

Very few chemists stocked these drugs and so over time I ran into most junkies who were ‘scripping’. It was a small world… A camaraderie existed and we would gossip and discuss which doctors were cool and which were severe.

The drugs were of course pure, British Pharmaceutical…The heroin came by the grain (which is about one sixteenth of a gram), consisting of six tiny tablets called jacks, which perhaps gave rise to the expression ‘To jack up’. On private prescription it cost one and tuppence a grain, the cheapest hit in town. Half a jack was as much as a non-user could stomach... Fresh syringes and needles came with every ‘scrip’. There was very little reuse. I met many people, from taxi drivers to set designers, who held responsible jobs and lived otherwise normal lives.

The British heroin scene in this era was so small that we know the precise addresses of the pharmacies where addicts picked up their gear. Almost every account of this period stresses the importance of Boots at Piccadilly Circus and John Bell & Croyden in Wigmore St. These two chemists controlled most of the British heroin supply. Reflect on that for a moment – there was a time in living memory when the two biggest heroin dealers in Britain both had W1 postcodes, didn't engage in gang wars and paid their taxes every year.

The other crucial difference between life under the British System and American-style prohibition is that there was absolutely no link between addiction and other forms of criminality. When you get your prescription from a doctor, there is simply no need to steal to fund your habit.

When the American journalist Edgar May came over to report on the British System he wrote, "No one in England – from the toughest London detective to the most liberal-prescribing clinic physician – suggested to me that narcotics addiction increases criminal behaviour… in England there is no cause-and-effect relationship." The creation of a criminal addict underclass seems to only emerge under a system of drugs prohibition.

By 1959, the number of known heroin addicts in Britain had dropped to 59, before rising to 342 by 1964. By today's standards these numbers are almost comically low. On all evidence, the British System seemed effective in preventing the spread of addiction and associated criminality. So what happened? How did it all fall apart?

Left: David Pearson / Alamy Stock Photo; Right: Feng Yu / Alamy Stock Photo

Ultimately, the answer is that, in 1961, Britain was pressured into signing the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs – a US-led policy formally committing every member state to prohibition. The American architects of the War on Drugs despised the British System, and constantly briefed against it in policy documents and propaganda. It was thus inevitable that the British System would come under sustained diplomatic attack. But the immediate trigger for the breakdown of the system can actually be traced back to one rogue doctor in London.

Lady Isabella Frankau is a fascinating character. Trained in psychiatry, she began treating addicts in 1957. She prescribed without question. Any addict could come to her, claim they had lost their tablets – or that their usual NHS doctor was on holiday – and she would scribble out a new script.

Word went round the addict networks like wildfire, and Frankau became a magnet for hundreds of heroin users. When the great American jazz trumpeter Chet Baker came to London, she was his first stop. "She simply asked my name, my address and how much cocaine and heroin I wanted per day," he later recalled.

But Lady Frankau was no drug dealer. She was described by other doctors as a "well-meaning fool", but no one has ever suggested she prescribed for money. In fact, she often waived her consultation fee for poorer patients.

Unfortunately, some of those patients had no such scruples. Some addicts realised they could pick up extra supplies from Frankau, then sell them on. The writer Alexander Trocchi became notorious for this on the underground scene. This was the first emergence of a "grey market" in Britain – drugs acquired legally, but sold illicitly.

Then, in 1967, Lady Frankau died. In an instant, the hundreds of addicts who had relied on her were cast adrift. Into this gap in the market stepped the shadowy figure of Dr John Petro. Originally a brilliant doctor, Petro had been one of the first to administer penicillin with Alexander Fleming. Then, in 1966, he was injured in a road accident and, unable to practice, was facing bankruptcy.

Unlike Frankau, Petro wrote prescriptions to survive. He didn't even have an office, but would hold court at all-night coffee bars in Soho or the café at Baker Street Station, scribbling out prescriptions on napkins and cigarette packs.

Inevitably, someone tipped off the papers. The Sun and the Daily Mail both led with front-page stories: "Doctor Holds Drug Clinic In A Café" and "Drugs Clinic In Station Buffet". Over the next few months, Petro's chaotic practice became an incessant tabloid circus. Finally, in January of 1968, Petro was invited onto David Frost's TV programme to explain himself. Immediately after the broadcast, he was arrested.

As easy as it is to blame rogue figures like Frankau and Petro, though, they were actually dealing with a problem of the government's own making. In 1964, following American pressure, legislation had passed that doctors would now need a special license from the Home Office to prescribe heroin, but that new treatment centres would be built to compensate. Those treatment centres were never built. And it was into this gap that the British black market was born.

Dr AJ Hawes, one of the major "junkie's doctors" of the era, wrote to The Observer in 1965, warning that "to cut off supply by prescription would be easy; it has already been done in the United States, where doctors are not allowed to prescribe for addicts, with the result that the provision of drugs has become a flourishing industry and addiction there increases yearly".

Unfortunately, this is exactly what happened. Instead of fixing the problem of rogue doctors over-prescribing, the government pressured doctors doing valuable work. Addicts could no longer get prescriptions, so illegal heroin began trickling into the country to satisfy demand. Unlike America, this did not come from Italian mafia organisations, but from Chinese Triads working out of Hong Kong. Little red packets of south-east Asian heroin, stamped with an elephant design, began littering the gutters of Gerrard Street in London's Chinatown.

We can pick up this story in the memoir of the anonymous addict, Barbateboy, that we followed earlier:

The tabloid press had got all judgmental about the practice of prescribing drugs. [Harold] Wilson’s government, impotent in other respects, needed to be seen as effective … almost overnight all junkies were cut off from their supplies.

The contraband trade in Chinese heroin mushroomed. Nothing pure about it. A wrap of brown, white and black (unrefined opium) powder which had to be ground and then boiled in a spoon and sucked into the syringe through a wodge of cotton wool. There was no way to assess the strength of the dose. Over the next year I lost about six friends to overdose, all experienced junkies. The whole junkie scene exploded. It became a ‘pushed’ drug, and the number of users grew as they got younger.

The key phrase here is that heroin became a "pushed drug". Under the British System there was simply no financial incentive for gangsters to import the drug, or for one user to introduce it to another. As soon as heroin is outlawed, the potential profits of a black market become almost limitless. Dealers have a huge incentive to actively get more people addicted, and the easiest way for any user to finance their own habit is to sell a bit themselves. It is a pyramid structure in which every link in the chain is incentivised to introduce more people to the habit.

By 1971, when the Misuse of Drugs Act was finally passed, there were just over a thousand known heroin addicts in the UK. Over the following decades of prohibition, the black market would rocket that number into the hundreds of thousands.

But the British System wasn't killed completely. Even under the terms of the Misuse of Drugs Act, it is still technically legal for a doctor to prescribe heroin to patients in the UK. Instead of banning it outright, the government pulled a classic bureaucratic fudge – they made doctors apply for a special license, then stopped issuing them.

Lisa, who we watched snort her government supplied heroin, first got her prescription in the 1980s, at one of the last surviving Rolleston-era drug clinics, which had been bumping along under the radar since the 1920s.

She has maintained that prescription to this day. Before the script, Lisa lived an intensely chaotic life, selling gear to prostitutes to finance her own habit. She now works full time, owns her own flat and speaks lovingly of her daughter and granddaughter – neither of whom have ever touched illicit drugs. She credits this change in her life to one thing and one thing only – the precious slip of paper she gets from her doctor that allows her to live a relatively normal, productive life.

Lisa is a living fragment of a lost history. When Switzerland introduced Heroin Assisted Therapy to great success in the 1990s, they explicitly modelled their methods on the British System. Yet, almost no one in Britain itself is aware of this story. They should be.

Britain was once a world leader, building on a humane, liberal and pragmatic tradition to show an alternative route to the cruel and failing War on Drugs. With a little imagination and courage from its leaders, it could lead the world once again.

This article contains extracts from the book Drug Wars, published by Ebury Press.

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This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

With his latest film When the Storm Fades, Canadian filmmaker Sean Devlin seems to have invented a new genre of film—a docudramedy. “We just kind of made the name up,” Devlin recently told VICE. “It’s the fewest amount of words we’ve come up with to try and approximate what the film is like.”

Pulling together threads from his career as a climate change campaigner and a stand-up comic, Devlin spotlights the real-life experiences of a family recovering from a deadly typhoon in rural Philippines. The film, which will have its North American premiere this week at Vancouver’s International Film Fest, is equal parts touching, emotional and hilarious. We’re introduced to annoying but well-intentioned aid workers as well as the communities that bear the brunt of disasters which we know increase with rising temperatures. Together, it’s a story about our interconnected global responsibility, and resisting the urge to look away after a dangerous storm like Hurricane Florence or Super Typhoon Mangkhut subside.

I chatted with Sean recently about the film, his motivation to make people laugh while grieving, the role whiteness plays in climate change, and what the future can hold for climate justice.

VICE: Tell me more about When The Storm Fades and the idea behind it.
Sean Devlin: My mother is from the Leyte island where we filmed, where Typhoon Haiyan fell in 2013. The year after the storm I was working for an alliance of storm survivors there, producing a short documentary and it was over the course of the production that I met the Pablo family and interviewed them for that film, and really just fell in love with them, their story and their personalities, and wanted to continue working with them on a project that would bring more of their experiences to light. So that’s how it started—knowing that I had a certain ancestral responsibility to that place and wanting to find a film to make there, and this was it.

This was a beautiful, breathtaking film Sean. What made you want to tell this story in this way—and focus on the aftermath?
Broadly speaking, there’s a lot of attention paid to these disasters, why it is they’re happening, the world watches and donations flood in, but then after a few days, the news cycle switches to something else and those communities are forgotten. I’ve been spending time in the Philippines since I was a kid and the more that I’ve seen the long-term impacts of climate change, the more evident it is that we need to be able to think about these things for more than just a few days, and more deeply than we are able to in those short news cycles. So I wanted to tell a story that was focused on the aftermath on one of those disasters, and something that would hopefully bring to life some of the nuance of what it’s like to endure unprecedented disasters in a place like the Philippines.

One of the things I loved about this movie is the way it tackles the white saviour issue. The white volunteers who come to help played by Kayla Lorette and Aaron Read are not unsympathetic people, but they also happen to be incredibly short sighted at times. Where did this nuance in the story come from?
Some of what is portrayed in that film and embodied actually comes from some of my own personal experience. In my early 20s, I was part of a volunteer mission in Ghana, where I lived for nearly a year working at an orphanage. At the time I thought that what I was doing there was really impactful, and it was certainly meaningful to me personally. But as I’ve matured, I’ve reflected differently on those experiences. But what’s interesting is that when I go to a place like Ghana and sometimes even the Philippines, I’m actually perceived as white because my father is white. So in a way I do have the experience of a white person, or of a certain white privilege in an impoverished community like that, so I felt I had some of that experience to share.

On top of that, I was raised in an international development household meaning both of my parents work in sustainable development for various Canadian government agencies and the private sector—my mother was actually an auditor of international development projects for the Canadian government. So her life’s work was looking at attempts at foreign intervention and actually trying to discover whether they’re helping or not. It was a very particular family context to grow up in, but I would say the simplest answer is that I grew up seeing films in which every time a white person went to a foreign country, they became some sort of saviour or heroic figure within the story and I knew for a fact that that’s not always the case when white people show up. So I wanted to make a film that would make space for some of that perspective.

You have a personal connection to the place shown in the movie, as well as a connection to the Yolanda/Haiyan storm that the protagonists are recovering from. Why use humour to show a very real issue that is many times not funny?
I think it’s is a device that is active in a lot of my work, but I really think that with something like climate change the problem is so daunting that it’s really hard for us to sit with it. Because it’s not only painful, it’s quite overwhelming—and that’s what I was hoping to do with this film, was to create an experience that made a bit of space for a reflective or meditative sort of state of mind, with which to sit [with] the grief of all that’s going on with this issue. I find that if you can pepper some laughter in there, it makes it easier to endure that experience.

While I was filming the first time around four years ago, I had asked in Tacloban if there were any live comedy shows, because there is a fairly large city there, and I was just interested to know if there was live comedy there somewhere. I was sent to a variety karaoke show, and the host was putting on a one-year anniversary karaoke party, and there were comedy elements to it, and I thought that was such an interesting thing to see on such a sad day. It should be noted that the week of the storm, November 8, actually overlaps with All Souls and All Saints Day which is November 1, which in in the Philippines is a big day of ceremonial grieving for loved ones who have passed away. So it is a week all about grief and this guy was doing a comedy show. He told me that through the whole year after the storm, he would host his karaoke nights, and at least once a night, someone would get up and sing a song—and everyone in the room immediately knew, that unconsciously this song was a loved one’s song, and he said that the person would usually start crying and then everyone would start crying and his responsibility would be to bring everyone back together and keep on with the singing.

When I heard that, I thought it was such a beautiful thing. We knew we wanted to have some karaoke in the film, and there’s a gentleman who’s a neighbour of the Pablos, who dubbed himself the Filipino Clint Eastwood. His name is Carlito, and he’s the older gentleman in some of the scenes, and he was such a stoic guy, I hadn’t really seen him show any emotion, but I asked him if he had any karaoke he would want to sing. We borrowed this karaoke machine from a neighbour, and we set it up—and we were actually filming somewhere else at the time; we had scheduled a start time to film the karaoke—and we just heard him [laughs] on the other side of the neighbourhood, starting to sing… he didn’t even wait for us. So there’s a moment in the film, where he’s singing one of the songs that his loved ones really adored, and he was just singing that without us. So we showed up, and started rolling to be able to capture that moment but I think that felt like a special moment, because I’d known him for a couple of years but not too intimately, and I felt like in that moment, through his own singing, he showed more of his grief than he had in the two years prior.

This screening comes on the heels of Hurricane Florence , where people in North America are now thinking about surviving and rebuilding. How do we cope with the reality of more deadly storms while still retaining a sense of ‘normalcy’?
The more I become engaged in work around climate change—which is a little over 10 years now—the more I realize personally for me that I just needed to understand how grief worked because the further along this path we go, the more grief there seems to be there waiting for us. I mean that as a human family, as a whole, things are only going to be getting worse, at least for my lifetime and I think that the science says as much. I think we don’t collectively have a strong practice on how we grieve together. I think this film was just trying to explore that a little bit. I think the other thing to keep in mind is a quote from Naomi Klein, where she argued that “white supremacy is the whispered subtext of our entire response to the climate crisis” meaning as she says, if these kinds of storms were happening in Toronto for the past 20 years, maybe our climate change policy would look different.

I think for those of us who are far away from these events, we do have to really lean into looking at what’s going on there, and not just knowing about it, but trying to understand it at a deeper level, and I think that often involves a certain kind of emotional experience to understand, and not simply know. On top of that, I think there’s work I can’t necessarily do—which is that capitalism survives because of everything it externalizes, all the costs that it doesn’t count, and I think the human cost of climate change is at this point, immeasurable, and rarely does anyone ever try to measure this financially. I think if we as people at a distance from climate change do the work of trying to force our society, our governments, and our economies to really internalize these costs—these human costs—we would more quickly realize that this status quo is unacceptable.

What is your personal connection to this work? Sean Devlin is a comedy guy, as far as people know. Where does this climate activism come from, and why is Sean Devlin doing this?
I became more interested in it in my 20s as I just learned more about it, but a turning point for me was definitely seven years ago when my cousin lost her home to a typhoon called Sendong, which was similarly unprecedented for that region. She lost her home, and the land her home was on, was actually designed a “no value” zone. So they lost the home and the land they lived on, and ever since then I just viewed what was happening there as something that affects family and so I feel I have to not turn away from this, and also just a different understanding of the word responsibility, like the actual definition of the word as being one’s ability to respond and comedy and film are the abilities I was gifted with, so I do see it as an ancestral responsibility to create work like this.

You say that people are still losing homes because of storms that happened years ago. Is there a way to break that cycle? Who should pay to rebuild?
That’s a big question. Some of this is worked up in the themes of the film, but something that I don’t think is often acknowledged is when you look at a list on any given year of the countries most impacted by climate change, they’re also always countries that were colonized, or at least 90 percent of them are. I think it should be quite clear that it’s not a coincidence, that’s a consequence. The fact that these communities have such a hard time enduring these increasing disasters also has a lot to do with the social and economic conditions that were created in these countries by hundreds of years of colonization and capitalist exploitation. So all of these things are wrapped up together, and I think there’s a debt to be paid by Western countries who have benefited by creating this pollution, but that that debt goes back even further. There’s a lot of historic responsibility to be considered when we’re talking about these things.

Do you see a need for reparations? Who would decide something like that?
That’s a great question [laughs]. For instance, the Filipino representative at the UN climate talks, this guy Yeb Sano, became famous a few years ago for giving a really tearful speech; he became one of the strongest voices inside the UN, but a couple of years ago when he started to raise this point, specifically this language of historical responsibility, all of the countries, including the USA under Obama, moved to have him removed from the negotiations—so it’s a dangerous idea [chuckles]. At least to some people it’s a just idea, but I think a lot of people find it threatening and so at this point I think it’s up to people and artists who are trying to shape cultural conversations to try to bring this stuff into the debate because it’s being intentionally removed at the highest levels of power.

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Photographer Jill Freedman didn’t accept many assignments over the course of her career. In her words, she wouldn’t “kiss ass” with editors, and she had a low tolerance for bad behavior on set. She tells VICE she remembers one shoot where she was hired to photograph an up-and-coming actor who’d been cast in a Broadway play. From the start of their session, Freedman says the actor was incredibly rude and high-maintenance. She abruptly stopped shooting and told him, “Listen, if all this doesn’t take off, you’re still a waiter. Now cut the crap, and let’s get this done.” Afterward, someone complained to her editor.

The few assignments Freedman did take, or that she self-commissioned, are the exception in her vast portfolio. But these portraits, like so many of her photographs, offer nuanced glimpses of some of the 20th century’s most notable figures. Freedman’s photos of luminaries like Gloria Steinem and Andy Warhol are rarely straightforward. They show celebrities going about their everyday, albeit glamorous lives in ways that help the viewer relate, blending straightforward documentary photography with subtle symbolism.

A photo of Muhammad Ali holding a chocolate bar was taken by Freedman at an ABC television studio appearance in the 1970s. It was her first time being hired to shoot a major public figure, but Freedman says she was pleased to photograph Ali because he was a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War. Ali fought some of his most epic matches in the 70s, including The Rumble in the Jungle against George Foreman in 1974, and actively promoted an aggressive, dominant public image. But in Freedman’s portrait, the fighter looks friendly and carefree, his signature crisp rice chocolate bar in hand.

Photographing Gloria Steinem at Ms. Magazine proved challenging because Freedman says she had to make “a bunch of broads sitting around in an office” look interesting. But Steinem is captivating in the image. The eyes of every other woman in the room are trained on her, and the intensity of her expression and the way she underscores her speech with her hands points to her leadership. An all-female magazine staff was radical for the time, too. According to an oral history of Ms. published by New York magazine in 2011, before its creation, “few women ran magazines, even when the readership was entirely female, and they weren’t permitted to write the stories they felt were important; the focus had to be on fashion, recipes, cosmetics, or how to lure a man and keep him interested.” Ms. broke the mold with stories for women by women.

Freedman’s dreamy shot of Dizzy Gillespie shows the musician rehearsing with his Dream Band and Bop Five at Lincoln Center in 1981. The horn player had pioneered bebop decades earlier, and by the 80s, he was leaning into his eminence by forming supergroups with talented players, blurring musical genres. Freedman was an avid music fan, and she was there to take photos for JazzAmerica, a TV series chronicling the history of jazz. She says she couldn’t move around to get various angles during showtime, because she’d interrupt video documentation of the performance. But during rehearsals, she could get as close as she liked, and the result became images like this one, with spare surroundings and hazy light glinting off Gillespie’s trumpet, imparting a feeling of divinity and serenity.

Freedman’s photo of B.B. King at the 1973 New Orleans Blues and Jazz Festival was self-assigned, and she managed to snag an up-close-and-personal shot of the musician without a press pass. “I wanted to go. I loved the music, so I went… How’re you gonna get to do it if you don’t go?” she says. The image of King conveys a personable, commanding presence, channeled by his outstretched hand. “There were five different sound stages in this little park. I just was standing there,” she says. Freedman didn’t get to meet the blues legend, but adds, “What would I say? ‘Oh, you’re terrific?’ That’s ridiculous. Better that I get the picture.”

Freedman was sent by New York magazine to photograph writer Studs Terkel, who’s pictured here with a sandwich and coffee from a nearby lunch cart. The two were old acquaintances. Terkel had interviewed Freedman about her photo book documenting the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign for his 1974 book Working, which analyzed the relationship between people and their professions. Freedman says Terkel was a “good old, down-to-earth, working class guy,” and their familiarity seems apparent in her portrait of him. He gazes at something out of frame, seemingly forgetting Freedman’s camera.

A portrait of actress Ann-Margret gazing directly into Freedman’s lens was snapped at the Cannes Film Festival in the mid-70s. She says the actress is “a real trooper” who’s been acting and singing for more than 50 years since her debut on The Jack Benny Program in 1961.

Freedman also shot this fly-on-the-wall photo of Magnum Photos and International Center of Photography (ICP) co-founder Cornell Capa in Southern France at the renowned Les Rencontres d’Arles photo festival. The two of them were old friends, and Freedman associates this snapshot of Capa with the era in which he was trying to get ICP off the ground, sourcing work from photographers and searching for a permanent home for his collection. “He conned pictures out of me. Oh, he was good,” Freedman says.

The artist Isabelle Collin Dufresne, known by her stage name Ultra Violet, posed for Freedman in Oyster Bay, Long Island, while filming a movie in 1975. Dufresne was mentored by Salvador Dali, before becoming one of Andy Warhol’s so-called superstars. In Freedman’s portrait, she holds Da Vinci’s The Last Supper—an interesting allusion to her kinship with Warhol, since decades later she told The Huffington Post they both were interested in religious iconography, and that shortly before Warhol’s death in 1987, he was working extensively with that subject matter. “They were Last Suppers, Madonnas, words from the scripture, a punching bag with the face of Christ, and things like that,” she says.

George Wallace—the former governor of Alabama known for calling for “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” in his 1963 inaugural address—was visiting Brussels, Belgium, while Freedman happened to be vacationing in Europe with her boyfriend. Though she didn’t like his politics, Freedman wanted to take his picture. Her photograph of Wallace peers into his motorcade, exposing a powerful man swaddled by expensive suits and bodyguards in a chauffeured car.

Freedman’s photo of a public memorial to John Lennon in Central Park similarly milks meaning from its environment. Taken a day after a silent vigil was widely observed for the slain singer, the photo conveys a quiet grace. “I was just walking in the park and saw that,” Freedman remembers. “It had just happened.”

Freedman hated the disco music at Studio 54, because she worried DJs would replace live musicians, but she says she used to force herself to go, because “I always got a good picture.” In this shot, Debbie Harry poses in front of her blown-up cover photo for Interview magazine. Andy Warhol, his face wrinkled with age, makes a cameo in the foreground, leaning into a separate conversation. Like so many of Freedman's photographs, the shot conveys an extremely specific sense of time and place—a bit of gritty, glamorous vintage New York preserved in amber.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Kaethe Morris Hoffer worried she might be shouting. For many women, especially those who work with survivors of sexual assault, it’s getting harder by the day not to scream.

“The discussion about false rape allegations is frankly a profound waste of time,” the executive director of the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation told me when I asked about the pervasive myth, parroted by President Trump Tuesday night, that women routinely fabricate stories of sexual assault. "The reason it keeps cropping up is not because it has any basis in truth, but because it is effective. It promotes unreasonable doubt that lands on virtually every survivor."

Casting doubt seems to have been Trump’s aim when he trotted the lie out Tuesday, first to the press corps on the White House lawn, and later at a rally in Mississippi. It was ugly, even for him—a man who has himself been accused of sexual violence or harassment by many women.

“They want to destroy people,” the president said, apparently referring to survivors like Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, who testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh attempted to rape her at a party in the 80s. He took time from what was ostensibly a rally on behalf of a Republican candidate to mock the woman's harrowing account at length, to the delight of his fans and the horror of basically everyone else on Earth. “These are really evil people," he said, hours after arguing it was a "very scary time" to be male in the United States of America.

In fact, it's the lives of survivors who report their assaults that are far more likely to end up “in tatters," as Trump put it, than the lives of the people they accuse. This can get lost amid the broadsides being delivered by the president and his Adult Son in sort of a dynastic #MeToo backlash, but it doesn't change the underlying facts.

“Many, many people report that the trauma and the pain [of reporting their rape] is equivalent to and sometimes greater than the pain caused by the rape itself,” Morris Hoffer told me.

Prosecutors know this. Police do, too. In fact, University of Kansas Law Professor Corey Rayburn Yung told me, many cops warn survivors exactly what seeking justice will cost them—how much time and dignity they will lose, how little hope of an arrest or conviction—as a way of urging them to drop their case. Using federal crime numbers, the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) estimated that for every 1,000 rapes, 57 reports will lead to arrests, 11 will be referred to prosecutors, and just seven cases will lead to felony conviction.

“It’s a disaster for you if you falsely report, or even truly report a rape,” Yung said. “Even within the false reporting numbers, we have reason to believe those are inflated. It’s a dumping ground for cases police don’t want.”

Mountains of evidence suggest that only a small fraction of rapes reported to police ever prove to be “unfounded”, as federal law enforcement dubs false claims; the actual figure is generally pegged at between 2 and 10 percent. Yung said only a single analysis has ever deviated from that range, and it's been largely discredited. And while there is a long and shameful history of men of color being falsely accused of rape in America—especially at the height of Jim Crow—evidence of the same thing happening to powerful white men like Kavanaugh is vanishingly rare.

“The false reporting rate is lower than lots of crimes,” Yung added, singling out robbery—the metaphor so many researchers, prosecutors, and victims’ advocates reach for when they try to describe how hard it is to report a rape.

“Nobody ever thinks the guy who got robbed made up the robbery,” explained New York City defense attorney and former Manhattan sex crimes prosecutor Matthew Galluzzo. “Nobody asks what he was wearing. Nobody questions him, 'Why were you alone there?'"

Yet fake robberies abound, amounting to the bread and butter of insurance fraud.

“Most people who are sexually assaulted don’t make any complaint to law enforcement ever,” Galluzzo told me. “When I get people who’ve actually come forward, you want to make sure we get all the way there. I’ve had to literally hold their hand to get through it.”

As a prosecutor, he said, he sometimes heard claims he believed but couldn’t prosecute, rarely ones he didn’t credit as true. Patti Powers, a former sex-crimes prosecutor now serving as an attorney advisor at Aequitas, a group that advises law enforcement on cases involving violence against women, said authorities were slowly coming to understand that “perceived impediments” to prosecution can in fact corroborate a truthful account—for example, that "drugs and alcohol can be used in a predatory way."

So why won’t the myth die?

“It relies upon a fundamental assumption that women are idiots,” Morris Hoffer, the victim’s advocate, argued. “They think of us as so subhuman that we would routinely do something that is almost always a ticket into humiliation, degradation, shame, punishment and excisement from our community.”

What’s worse, she said, it suggests we can’t even lie well.

“Most people who don’t have a lived experience of sexual assault think of rape as a vicious beatdown plus sexual penetration,” she told me. So why would a story designed to discredit rest on accusations that look so little like rape on TV? “Women would have to be fundamentally without any sense at all to invent accusations [like Blasey Ford's] that don't conform to what people expect a sexual assault looks like."

But Yung, the law professor, said many men prefer the lie about false accusations because it expiates them.

“Many men do realize they’ve crossed a line at some point, and they’re really scared,” he told me. “But rapists don’t think they’re rapists. This gives them an extra layer of denial.”

If you need someone to talk to about an experience with sexual abuse, you can call the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network's hotline at 800.656.HOPE (4673), where trained staff can provide you with support, information, advice, or a referral.

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The slice-of-life anime and manga series sweetness and lightning follows the endearing, food-filled story of Kohei Inuzuka and his daughter Tsumugi. It begins with a scene that could be cribbed from any family’s morning routine. A father gets his daughter ready for her day by tracking down her favorite shirt, helping her brush her teeth, and preparing her lunch. The food isn’t anything fancy. He places small meat patties from a microwavable package next to side dishes of beans and pickled veggies neatly tucked into cupcake liners. He realizes he’s prepared this exact meal, made of mostly processed food from the convenience store, many times before.

As the phrase “slice of life” implies, the series depicts routine, everyday stuff. But I was struck by how perfectly sweetness and lightning mirrored my own experience growing up in a single-parent household.

Though single parent households are becoming more common, my family structure still puts me in the minority in America. According to the US Census Bureau, 27 percent of children lived with only one parent in 2017. But families like mine are even rarer in Japan, where just 6.67 percent of households are run by a single parent, according to the 2015 Japanese census. The challenges faced by single mothers there, in particular, can be monumental. In light of these stats, it’s incredible to see anime that captures my own experience growing up with a single mom so vividly.

The story centers on Kohei, a high school math teacher and widower. In the first episode of sweetness and lightning, he comes home one night and finds Tsumugi glued to the television. As he offers her the take-out he’s brought home for dinner, she cuts him off and says they ought to write to her mother and ask her to cook a real dinner, like the one Tsumugi sees on TV.

Heartbroken, Kohei drops everything to find somewhere for them to share a freshly prepared meal. They wind up at a restaurant run by the mother of one of his math students, Kotori Iida, and the three of them bond over the meals they share there.

If you still dream about the steamed buns from Spirited Away or the bacon and eggs from Howl’s Moving Castle, you’ll understand the appeal of seeing Kohei make okonomiyaki—a savory pancake loaded with crisp cabbage, pork belly, and squid, topped by a sweet, dark sauce.

I was immediately enamored with the bright, cheerful art style of sweetness and lightning. But the moment when Tsumugi asks for a home cooked meal brought me to tears. I was caught off-guard by the earnest emotion and sentimental nature of the story and struck by the unassuming way Tsumugi points out something her father let fall by the wayside: She hasn’t shared a proper meal with him in ages. This forces Kohei to slow down and recognize that he’s neglected one of the most basic ways to bond with his daughter.

My tears were surprising, because they weren’t just about what was happening on screen, but what the series made me recall about my own upbringing. As Kohei fretted over getting home later than his babysitter could stay, I remembered the times I was alone in my apartment when a sitter had to leave before my mother could get home from a late shift at work. For me, this just meant more TV time, but for my mother, it was another momentous hurdle of single parenthood.

“It was never 100 percent peace—where you’re so comfortable, where you have another adult in the home, so you can relax,” my mother, Catherine, told me when I called her to talk about the series. “Instead you have a five, six, seven-year-old by themselves, alone. So, it was never peace. There was this fear.”

The series captures the unease of constantly wondering, “Am I doing this right?” Kohei’s student Kotori is the daughter of a constantly-working divorcee. She becomes Kohei’s sounding board for his fears of being a bad parent. While prepping for one of their shared dinners, Kotori admits to wondering if she matters to her mother. Kohei responds by talking about how hard it can be to show a child exactly how much they mean to their parent. Then he decides it may be better that children not know exactly how much stress and care goes into being a parent, because then they’d worry as well.

My mother, who also grew up with one parent, echoed the sentiment. “I worried because I went through it. Even though I was with my dad, I felt like I wasn’t with him because he was always gone,” she said. “I think that’s why I was so overprotective, because stuff that I went through, I didn’t want you guys to experience. So I tried to play that role. I’m not sure I played it well, but I know I tried my best.”

This series is part of a huge anime boom in Japan. Despite major concerns over piracy, anime generated $17.7 billion (2.01 trillion yen) in 2016 according to the Hollywood Reporter—the first time the market has exceeded 2 trillion yen.

When I talk to friends (or anyone who’ll listen) about anime, they often imagine explosions, hard to understand inside jokes, and gratuitous violence. But anime titles like Your Name, which was a massive box office success, are specifically interested in the intimate, internal stories of their characters, with the backdrop of stunning fantasy elements. As the market for anime grows internationally, audiences are getting more diverse stories.

The sweetness and lightning series is an example of the multiplicity of the genre and its ability to tell stories that are seemingly small but deeply human. They depict life as a day-to-day effort to make the most of the time we're given with those we love.

This is a huge contrast to mainstream titles, where single parenthood is relegated to a minor detail. The caring parent in the background is an archetype that’s rarely the driving force of primary or secondary plot lines. In Pokémon, for instance, Ash Ketchum’s single mother is always reliably waiting for him to return to Pallet Town but doesn’t take up much narrative space.

When single parenthood is given a story’s full attention, it often lacks substantial reckoning with the realities of that family structure. Movies like About a Boy, The Lucky One, or The Parent Trap use single parenthood primarily as a vehicle for romance, rather than a worthwhile storyline to investigate on its own. The characters are single parents, but this is just the framing rather than the focus.

There are anime, movies, and TV series that deal with the topics that sweetness and lightning depicts, but what sets this show apart from others is its pointed concentration on what a single parent household is really like for both adults and their children. Sweetness and lightning presents the profound as well as the mundane details of life. There are tense moments, but they don’t culminate in over-the-top climaxes. They resolve the same way my family qualms would—through frustration, an emotional conversation, and a freshly cooked dinner.

In Tsumugi, I recognized the struggle to comprehend why my family seemed different from others. I saw my current, more mature relationship with my mother embodied in Kotori when she cooks her mother’s recipes. I feel the same way whenever I make childhood dishes, like attieke poisson or cassava leaf and rice.

Growing up with one parent meant I adapted to a certain way of living that was difficult at times. But single parents find brilliant and unique ways to be there for their children, and sweetness and lightning reminded me of the effort my mother made to ensure my childhood never felt second-rate.

The manga that sweetness and lightning is based on ended August 7, wrapping up a five-year run that includes 11 paperback volumes. The final, 12-volume set will be released in English early next year. The first 12 episodes of the anime are available on Crunchyroll.

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A man has been fired from his job at a hair salon after a video of him kicking a protester at an anti-abortion rally went viral this week.

A video that has been seen over half a million times and, at the time of writing, sits in the YouTube trending section shows Marie-Claire Bissonnette, an anti-abortion activist, being kicked by a man during a rally. In an article on an anti-abortion website, Bissonnette writes she was at an action called Life Chain in downtown Toronto on Sunday in the early afternoon when the man showed up.

Bissonnette says that, once there, the man took out two markers and started scribbling on peoples signs to block out the writing. She says she told people to protect their signs and when she did the man drew on the backs of the protestors before turning to confront her. It was here when she started filming.

The two begin arguing with the man asking Bissonnette if a woman who was raped should have the option of having an abortion. Bissonnette said indicated that she believes the woman should and began expanding on her answer. The man, dressed in a purple hoodie with a flower in his hair and a pentagram necklace, obviously didn’t take kindly to this answer.

From here he enters a stance that I can only describe as Power Ranger(y)…. I guess. He crouches down, twists his upper body back, brings his arms up, and sticks his tongues out.

Then he unleashes a roundhouse kick and the phone goes flying.

“I meant to kick the phone,” the man can be heard saying repeatedly in the immediate aftermath as people start yelling. Bissonnette writes that another protestor called 911 and the man fled—but not before yanking off an anti-abortion ribbon she was wearing.

“I did not see it coming. I didn’t anticipate any violence,” Bissonnette told Global News. “As soon as he kicked me, the only thing I could think of was to get the police, make sure someone calls the police.”

The police arrived within ten minutes, Bissonnette writes, but they weren’t very helpful. saying “what do you want us to do about it” after she showed them the video. She says she plans to file a complaint.

After the video went viral a massive online movement started to find his identity. This included people like Laura Ingraham, and others on the right, tweeting out things like “let’s find this slime.” Late on Wednesday, they got their answer when Studio 101 hair salon (who are big enough to do Nick Kypreos’ hair) released a statement naming the kicker as Jordan Hunt and announcing that he has been fired. The statement says that it was brought to their attention that “Jordan Hunt has been caught on camera assaulting an innocent bystander at a pro-life rally.”

“We don’t condone his actions and he has been let go,” reads the statement. “We believe that everyone has a right to an opinion and the right to voice their opinion without fear of physical violence.”

Studio 101 has since deleted an artist profile of Hunt from their website.

On Wednesday, a combative Twitter account linked to Hunt popped up with many angry conservatives challenging it to fights and some media quoting it as Hunt. However, most evidence points to the account as being fake.

The account changed its name from @BLUEWAV94011533 and was tweeting under that name as late as Tuesday—he also used a publicly available photo of Hunt as a profile pic. While it did tweet from a politically left perspective, it focused solely on America (no tweets about Canada or Ontario,) and didn’t mention abortion. Since changing its name it has been trolling users by comparing himself to civil rights heroes or telling users to fuck off in a myriad of ways all under the guise of Hunt.

“I will NOT apologize for defending women’s right to choose. Even to a woman. #TheResistance,” reads one tweet.

It was ratioed into oblivion.

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Happy early Halloween, everybody: An asteroid shaped like a goddamn skull is currently heading toward Earth, as if you needed yet another reminder that our garbage world has somehow turned into the plot of a hacky B-movie, LiveScience reports.

The 2,000-foot-wide asteroid was initially discovered a few years ago, when it made its first pass by our planet on Halloween 2015 like some kind of cosmic spooky skeleton meme. At the time, the asteroid, which is likely a dead comet, did a pretty tight flyby, coming within 302,000 miles of Earth. That's just 1.3 times the distance between us and the moon.

Now, the cursed space Skeletor is on its way back to grace us with its terrifying presence once again on November 11—and at this point, let's just hope it ends us all.

According to LiveScience, the asteroid, which has been officially dubbed Asteroid 2015 TB145 by some brutally uncreative scientists, probably won't make us go the way of the dinosaurs next month. It's only expected to come within 24 million miles of Earth, which is about 80 times farther away than its last visit.

That means that unfortunately—or, uh, fortunately, depending on how you feel about the current state of society—the giant space skull isn't expected to bash into our world and completely decimate everything. It's not a celestial bringer of death, here to drive itself straight into our world and put an end to this massive failed experiment of humanity once and for all. For that, we'll have to wait until 2082, the next time the asteroid is expected to make another pass by Earth, and who knows what kind of ruin our society will be in by then.

Hopefully, the scattered survivors of the second water wars will be able to take a break from licking moisture off the walls of their bunkers to notice the skull on the asteroid's next flyby, provided that all of the world's technology wasn't fully fried in the sustained nuclear blasts. Until then, bow before the giant interstellar face and show it what you got.

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Brett Kavanaugh's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee about allegations of sexual assault somehow devolved into a unhinged yelling match about beer, blacking out, and bizarre yearbook references. Not only that, but according to Kavanaugh's freshman roommate at Yale (not to mention Urban Dictionary), the SCOTUS nominee also lied under oath.

When asked about the terms "boofing" and "Devil's Triangle," Kavanaugh told Rhode Island senator Sheldon Whitehouse that they were, respectively, just juvenile words for farting and a weird drinking game that no one's ever heard of. But in a recent op-ed for Slate and an interview with CNN, Kavanaugh's Yale roommate James Roche explained that the pretty blatantly sexual-sounding terms were, in fact, sexual.

"Those words were commonly used, and they were references to sexual activities," Roche told Anderson Cooper on live TV. "If you think about the context in which you might hear those words, the way that he described [how] they are defined and the way they are defined, they’re not interchangeable."

A quick look at Urban Dictionary will tell you that "boofing" is a euphemism for anal sex, and a Devil's Triangle is, as we all suspected, a threesome—specifically, to cite the definition, between one woman and two dudes where it's "important" not to "make eye contact." Somehow Kavanaugh apparently figured he'd pass them off as something else, under oath, despite Google search results pointing to something else entirely.

To Roche, all that talk about butt stuff and threesomes went beyond Kavanaugh and his pals having a good laugh. As he tells it, it was indicative of something problematic about their attitude toward women.

"I heard them talking about it regularly," Roche said. "I think that contributed to some of my feelings about the fact that these guys treated women in a way I didn’t like."

According to Roche, Kavanaugh also lied about his drinking. Despite being the self-appointed treasurer of the "Keg City Club—100 Kegs or Bust" in high school, Kavanaugh also insisted that he's never drank to the point of blacking out or passing out—but Roche told CNN he came home "incoherent" and "stumbling" all the time, and threw up from drinking too much more than once.

"There were people who were loud drunks, who were sloppy drunks, who were belligerent drunks,” Roche said on CNN. "But even by those standards, my memory of Brett was that he was on the far edge of this. He was notably heavier in his drinking than other people."

The FBI has already wrapped up its background investigation into Kavanaugh, and according to Roche, investigators never approached him for an interview—so, ostensibly, the feds are still under the impression that a Devil's Triangle has something to do with three glasses of booze. Still, the Senate is scheduled to go ahead and vote on Kavanaugh's confirmation on Friday, despite the fact that, as Roche claimed in Slate, he lied "baldly, without hesitation or reservation" in his hearing.

"Not only did I know that he wasn’t telling the truth," Roche said on CNN. "I knew that he knew he wasn’t telling the truth.”

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Starting college is a double-edged sword. You’re living on your own for the first time—meaning you can do whatever you want—while also meeting new people and “learning." But there are also numerous downsides: living on your own for the first time means coping with an empty fridge and a full laundry hamper, not to mention the all-nighters and frat bros.

Roommates can fall in either category. It’s certainly possible to hit the jackpot and get paired with someone who is actually bearable to share space with and who you actually like. I wouldn’t count on it though, especially if you let your school pair you off based on a too-vague survey. Even if you don’t leave your fate in the hands of your college’s residential office, choosing your own roommate is also a gamble.

This happened to me: I chose my freshman year roommate after chatting with her over Facebook Messenger for half an hour. I can’t remember what we talked about now, but it was probably bonding over Tumblr blogs and almond milk and other mundane stuff all white 17-year-old girls from the tri-state area care about, and I decided that was enough. It turned out to be a nightmare. This person would leave open jars of peanut butter and unwashed bowls on her desk. Partway through the year, she brought a life-sized cut-out of One Direction’s Niall Horan into our cramped room. She would face it toward the window so passersby would look up and see the soulless eyes of a boy band member staring back at them. When she drank too many Four Lokos, she would kiss “Niall” on the mouth.

“This person” was me, but I digress. Hell is other people, and living with them in the same room is like the tenth circle. “Living with someone else is going to have its challenges, no matter how alike you are,” Anne Brackett, who worked in student housing for 20 years and now is chief engagement officer of Strengths University, told VICE. “Yes, there are definitely easier roommates than others, but there are a few key issues that determine how successful you and your roommate will be.” Brackett identified having respect for one another, setting expectations early, and communicating as essential practices if you want to have a positive roommate experience.

But no matter how much respect and communication you have, your living situation may blow. Here are warning signs your roommate is just creepy AF and you need to leave.

Dorm decor and belongings

In the flurry of moving into your dorm room for the first time and dealing with the all-too cringey parent tears, you may not notice the Terry Richardson posters or the MAGA hat. But when the dust settles, you will start to notice what your roommate keeps on their side of the room.

There is a difference between having opposite tastes and being in a potentially unsafe situation. That Pulp Fiction poster on the wall? Listen, we all went through that phase—myself included—and we (hopefully) grow out of it. If your roommate is an 18-year-old film major, I’d let that slide. That copy of The Art of the Deal, however? That may be cause for alarm.

What they say and wear

There are a ton of explainers out there on the dog-whistle language of racists and incel subcultures. It may be worth familiarizing yourself with them. If your new roomie is calling people “Chads” and “Stacys,” for example, they are not innocuous nicknames. If they use “us versus them” language when speaking about people of different races and genders, that’s even worse. And it goes without saying: if they use actual slurs, they are definitely an asshole and you should leave.

In addition to how they speak, your roommate’s fashion will say a lot about them. The fashion choices groups like white supremacists tend to make are subtle, but noticeable—such as New Balance sneakers or a Lonsdale shirt. They don’t have to look like an 80s skinhead to be a neo-Nazi (but if they do dress like a skinhead, that’s probably not a great sign either).

Habits

There will be things your roommate does that annoy you. That is just life, and you just have to deal with it. While living in such close quarters can be demoralizing, it also teaches you everyone in the world is: a) weird and boring and b) Idiosyncratic in their own hyper-specific way. Honestly, they’re probably thinking the same thing about you. Do they hit snooze several times every morning instead of just setting the alarm for a later time and getting the fuck up? Do they drink Diet Coke for breakfast? Sorry, you will not change them fundamentally as a human in the months you live together. It’s best not to let it get to you.

Some habits, however, are inexcusable and distasteful. This will vary from person to person and you need to know your boundaries. For me, a roommate having sex or masturbating when I am in the room is not fucking cool and I will call you out ASAP (yes, this happened). But you, dear reader, may not give a shit. Know what triggers you and what you will not tolerate. Set these boundaries with your roommate early; you may think something is an obvious no-go, but they might not.

“You and your roommate need to be on the same page about the rules of the room,” said Brackett. “The distance between expectations and reality is disappointment. So, if you’re assuming the other person knows what you want but you’ve never discussed it, you’re bound to be disappointed—and then probably angry. If you’re not on the same page and you or your roommate are unwilling to talk about these things, you’re bound for trouble.”

Internet history

OK, no one’s going around hacking their roommate’s laptop (unless you are, in which case you are the creepy roommate). But seeing as everyone lives on the internet these days, there are some ways for you to gain insight on your roommate. It may not be a bad idea to check what their “likes” on Facebook are or who they follow on Instagram. Perhaps this practice seems over-the-top, but it can be illuminating. If they like every photo Tomi Lahren posts on Instagram, wouldn’t you want to know that? And if all they follow is accounts like @ifyouhigh, you may have found a winner—just make sure you have rules about smoking weed in the room.

If you see them browsing classically horrible subreddits like r/redpill, r/TheDonald, or on 4chan, that’s a huge red flag. Sites like InfoWars and Breitbart, same thing.

Bad smells

Being really gross and smelling bad can actually be a cry for help. If your roommate hasn’t showered in days or weeks, they may not be taking care of themselves mentally or physically in other ways either (such as eating well, taking their meds, or keeping up with their classes). You’re not expected to be their keeper, but if you suspect something is up, tell your RA.

Or, they might just be some Leonardo Dicaprio motherfucker who abhors soap and refuses to wear deodorant. They probably don’t brush their teeth either. Still tell your RA, and maybe buy a bar of soap for them as a hint.

What to do to GTFO

Even if you try your best to be respectful, set expectations, and communicate, sometimes a roommate just doesn’t care. Brackett said it may be “tempting to start behaving badly as well, but that just escalates the situation.” Petty shit like “talking behind your roommate’s back, leaving notes, sending texts, posting things on social media, being passive-aggressive,” as Brackett mentioned, can make it even worse.

There comes a point, however, when you can no longer handle the situation yourself. According to Brackett, “if you’ve tried all of these things (respect, expectation, and communication) several times and in different ways and there’s still problems, it’s time to get the appropriate staff members involved. That’s especially true if your roommate is violating school policy or even the law. You don’t want to get in trouble for something they’re doing!”

First: go to your RA, or whatever they call your school’s peer leader. The RA has a neutral perspective, so it may be worth it to hear what they have to say (you will have to be honest, though).

“Depending on your school and their policies, you may be able to change rooms right away or you might need to go through steps like meditation before that can happen,” Brackett told VICE.

“People usually think moving rooms or changing roommates will be the magic solution to all their problems and want to bypass any steps other than that, but those steps are there for a reason," Brackett said. "Learning how to deal with situations like this productively can benefit you your entire life. In my experience, nine times out of ten roommate problems are caused by miscommunications and the problem(s) can be solved just by sitting down with a neutral staff member and talking things out,”

If your RA can’t resolve the situation and you still want out, then they can help you through next steps. Alternatively, you may be in an unsafe situation (such as if you are a person of color, a woman, a non-binary person, or a queer person and your roommate is being hostile). A heart-to-heart with your RA won’t cut it in that case. It may take time, and you may not get the outcome you want (aka the creep getting expelled), but you will be able to change rooms at some point. Should your roommate do something illegal or abusive, you can absolutely get a lawyer or other members of the administration involved in order to get legal protection such as a No Contact Order.

Living with someone for the first time is an experiment in finding out what you can deal with and it may blow up in your face. Sometimes it’s your fault and sometimes it’s not. But hopefully your roommate isn’t the next Jason Kessler—and if they are, maybe just live off campus next year.

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Less than 24 hours after being elected as Quebec’s new premier, CAQ leader Francois Legault said he would use the notwithstanding clause to override any court decisions that might interfere with his efforts to ban religious symbols.

This vow came less than a month after Ontario Premier Doug Ford also indicated he would also use the notwithstanding clause, basically whenever he needed to. Both premiers know full well that the clause is rarely used and was supposed to only be invoked in extreme circumstances. For those unaware of arcane Canadian Constitutional clauses, the notwithstanding clause allows the federal or a provincial government to override a court decision, in the event that they can get a majority of parliament to vote to invoke the clause. When Ford floated the idea, framers of the 1982 Canadian constitution suggested Ford's use of the notwithstanding clause was a bad move. And Conservatives also expressed unease, including former prime minister Brian Mulroney, which might make for an awkward Thanksgiving—his daughter, Caroline Mulroney, was appointed the Ontario's attorney general by Ford and supports use of the contentious clause.

Ford wanted to invoke the clause—a move many consider a nuclear option—to ram through a bill to cut Toronto’s city hall in half, claiming (without much evidence) that it would save money and make Toronto run more smoothly and efficiently. Of course, Ford only targeted Toronto and not any of the other municipalities in Ontario, so his bill likely had nothing to do with his own troubled tenure at City Hall and with new seats being distributed to the ‘downtown elites’ that rejected him in 2014.

In Legault’s case, he is defending the ban on religious symbols worn by civil servants as a means of protecting Quebec secularism, something considered sacred since Quebec’s landmark Quiet Revolution of the early 60s, in which the Quebecois threw off the chains of oppression kept in place by the government and the Catholic Church. Legault has not held a formal press conference yet, so journalists have not been able to press him further on his possibly invoking the clause.

When asked, Ford has stated bluntly that he’ll consider using the notwithstanding clause whenever he needs to. And why shouldn’t he, he has asked rhetorically. After all, it’s there—so why not use it? And with that question, Ford has a point. The fact is, the notwithstanding clause was an epic blunder, a bit of legislation that paved the way for just this kind of disaster—tyrants elected by majorities trampling over court decisions without any actual logic or reasoning, in some cases bypassing Canada's Human Rights Charter, simply because they can and the courts have gotten in the way of their war.

The Canadian government agreed to the notwithstanding clause when fatigue had set in during lengthy and messy attempts in the early 80s to bring the constitution back to Canada from Britain, its past colonizer. When several provincial premiers argued they wanted the power to occasionally opt out of court decisions, negotiators, led by then-prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, caved, creating the clause.

But the clause has had its critics all along. Svend Robinson, an NDP Member of Parliament when the constitutional negotiations were unfolding, immediately pointed to its possible misuse, in particular noting that it would allow for parliamentary majorities to override the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. Robinson voted against the new Canadian constitution in 1982, specifically citing his protesting of the notwithstanding clause. (Robinson, notably, was the first openly-gay member of Canada's parliament, and thus had hunch the clause could possibly override decisions protecting minorities.)

In 2000, when Stockwell Day became leader of the Canadian Alliance (then the official opposition), I asked him if he would consider invoking the notwithstanding clause in the event of a Supreme Court decision allowing for the legal recognition of same-sex marriages. The politician had been renowned for his discomfort with the advances of the rights of gays and lesbians, and he acknowledged he would consider using the notwithstanding clause in such an instance.

During a leaders' debate in the 2006 federal election, then prime minister Paul Martin brought up the notwithstanding clause, promising to remove it from the constitution if re-elected, and demanding that his Conservative opponent, Stephen Harper, make the same pledge. Martin warned the clause could be used recklessly and to possibly curtail the rights of minorities or women, and was dismissed as “desperate” for having done so. (The issue was dropped when Martin and the Liberals lost the election.)

But we now have the very moment naysayers warned about: thoughtless, vindictive leaders with majorities in their parliaments, who speak of the defense of democracy as their motivation, while simultaneously ignoring the fact that the judicial branch is a crucial part of the checks and balances in a democracy, not some opposing, external force. Inadvertently, Ford and Legault have prompted a crucial question: what is the point of having a Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms if it can be so easily cancelled at the whim of a ruling government?

The issue is now one Canada's federal Liberal government and its leader, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, must address: it's time to amend the Canadian constitution and revoke the notwithstanding clause, for the sake of Canada's democracy. While changing the constitution will take time and is obviously an extremely complicated process, leaving the notwithstanding clause in place is not an acceptable option. The dangers it presents are now only too obvious.

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First, there was the bloodthirsty squirrel uprising, then the "zombie" raccoon outbreak, and now, it looks like another member of the animal kingdom is gearing up to fight back against us puny humans. But this time, thankfully, they're apparently a little too wasted to do any real damage.

According to the Washington Post, shitfaced birds have started wreaking drunken terror on the Minnesota town of Gilbert. They're flying straight into moving cars, making suicidal dives into windows, and staggering around the streets like they've found their way into some kind of terrible Alfred Hitchcock remake—all thanks to some rotten berries.

"The Gilbert Police Department has received several reports of birds that appear to be ‘under the influence’ flying into windows, cars and acting confused," the department wrote in a Facebook postearlier this week. "The reason behind this occurrence is certain berries we have in our area have fermented earlier than usual due to an early frost, which in turn has expedited the fermenting process."

"Oh my! That explains all the birds bouncing off my window lately," one Facebook user commented on the post.

"I had to slam on the breaks today for a pigeon flying directly at my windshield," another added.

According to the Gilbert PD, the early frost isn't the only thing causing the massive influx of drunk-ass birds—the issue is also compounded by the fact that most of the town's bird population hasn't migrated south as usual, probably because they're having too much fun getting wasted and fucking with Minnesota townspeople. Let's just hope they don't graduate from rotten berries to the hard stuff, though.

"There is no need to call law enforcement about these birds as they should sober up within a short period of time," the statement continued.

It sounds like there's not much anyone can do about the onslaught of rowdy, hammered birds aside from just letting them sleep it off. In the meantime, the people of Gilbert should probably drive a little more cautiously, seeing as how a wasted bird could dive-bomb their windshields at any moment. Get your wire coat hangers ready.

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