Albertus in front of a BMW. Photo from his private collection.

This article originally appeared on VICE Denmark.

Nicholas Albertus owns 48 dating sites in 11 different countries, and most of his sites are geared towards very specific segments of the dating population. He has you covered if you're looking for a hot date with someone in a wheelchair, with someone who's overweight, with a single parent or with an elderly person. Nicholas Albertus is like a Danish Cupid – wingmanning people who generally have a harder time finding love in the traditional dating arena.

The latest addition to Nicholas' arsenal of dating services is Bump – a Tinder-esque dating app that caters to both romantics and the horny. It's the first time that the dating entrepreneur has launched a dating portal that isn't aimed directly at a niche segment. We caught up with the king of Danish online dating to discuss his digital love empire and the road that led to him helping people date.

VICE: I need to get this out of the way first, is Nicholas Albertus your real name?
Nicholas Albertus: Yes, my full name is Jens-Nicholas Gundorph Albertus. It's real.

Great. So, running dating websites is somewhat of a calling to you?
I've been in the industry for 12 or 13 years now and I'm always throwing myself into new dating site adventures. XL-Dating was one of the first dating sites I created. The market is pretty crowded with Facebook and all the apps and websites that connect people who want to date, so I can't afford not to be on point.

My latest dating app is called Bump. Everything is so superficial these days, so I'm getting my piece of that pie. Bump is a superficial product: you just flick through the profiles, find whatever you're into and what you're looking for. It can be casual hookup, a fuck buddy or a relationship. It's vain, but you avoid misunderstandings. That's what I like about the product.

In the past you've focused on catering to a very specific niche within single people. Why?
The strategy was to keep going where others fell short. Instead of making a site that appeals to everybody, we target specific audiences. If you're a girl and weigh 130 kilo (20 stone), you can get in touch with guy you'd like to date on XL-Dating. And he won't be surprised or put off by your weight, you know he'll embrace it.

Where does your desire come from to find dates for people who on regular dating sites would generally be considered less desirable?
I just felt that a lot of people were left out of the dating game to fend for themselves. So I figured I could build a decent business here, while at the same time helping out a group of people having a hard time. And we're very approachable: if people have trouble setting up their profile, they can just give us a call and we'll help out.

A selfie from Venice, the city of love.

How do you manage the sites?
We screen everything before it goes on the site – pictures, bios, everything. We remove all dick pics, I ban about 50 profiles a day for that kind of thing. And then there are a lot of other sexual images, fake profiles, violent and racist comments. We won't have it. We want to maintain a civil tone, so we have to filter through everything.

On which of your sites would you say are the most dick pics uploaded?
(laughs) I would probably say every one of them.

Even on the dating site for seniors?
Well, OK, maybe not as much on that one. But on the others, we get dick pics like there's no tomorrow. It's not really a problem, because we just erase them as soon as we see them.

So you have people on staff whose job it is to trawl through the sites looking for dicks?
Yes, but let's not make a bigger deal out of it than it is. We have employees who read and look through everything, and it hasn't traumatised us – yet.

How do you feel about making money off of disabled people's romantic lives?
I'm providing a virtual safe space for members of a relatively marginalised part of society to meet in. I think that's a good thing. And it's not like these sites are making me astronomical sums of money.

Do you have any idea how many people have found love through your sites?
Oh, I couldn't tell you. I have met people on the street who recognised me and told me that they met through our dating site and had gotten married. That sort of news definitely makes my day.

Do you personally have a profile on any of the sites?
I have a profile on all of the sites but not for dating: I assist our users with tech support and whatever other troubles they may be having using our sites. I did get a ton of messages when I was on a reality show called Singleliv ("Single life") on Danish TV channel Kanal 4. Half of those messages were positive and the other half said I was a stupid bastard.

If you were forced to shut down all but one of the sites, which one would you keep?
I love XL-Dating and Bump, but if I had to choose one I'd go with handicap-dating. That's the one where I really feel like it's not about business but about doing something nice for other people. We have a lot of users on that site who need an extra hand, so it takes a fair amount of resources to keep it running. But it's more than worth it.

Thank you, Nicholas.

High school in America, as told by 'Clueless.' Still from 'Clueless'

This article originally appeared on VICE US

Thanks to the teen melodrama boom of the early 90s, everyone knows what an American high school looks like: glamorous, fashionable teens smoking Virginia Slims out of bathroom windows, 40-minute passing periods where someone gets stuffed into a locker, crotchety teachers threatening to keep students in detention all summer.

In reality, of course, the American public school system is a bureaucracy devoted to teaching kids how to game standardized tests in order to secure more government funding to then teach kids how to score even higher on those tests. The focus of American education is often not on preparing students for the future, but on forcing them memorize useless information like "the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell." The result, according to some education experts, is that American students basically learn nothing.

European high schools may not have the same pop cultural cachet, but it's generally known that whatever goes on inside them, they're better in many ways than their American counterparts. Schools in countries like Finland, for example, have effectively given up on the repetitive learning style, which might be why those countries regularly outpace American education scores. Even Poland, where one in six children live in relative poverty, continually beats the US in math, science, and reading.

"European countries put greater premium on rigor, focus and coherence in their instructional systems," says Andreas Schleicher, the Paris-based director of education and skills at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Curricula in the United States, by contrast, "run a mile wide but only an inch deep."

Of course, it's hard to compare the United States, a country with over 300 million people, to Europe, a continent with a population of more than 700 million. But there are some clear-cut differences, so keeping in mind that education can vary wildly at the local level, I tried to find out what kids in Europe learn in school that American kids do not.

MANY EUROPEANS ACTUALLY LEARN HOW TO HAVE SEX

Still from 'Mean Girls'

In America, sex education usually boils down to that line from Mean Girls: "If you touch each other, you will get chlamydia. And die." At best, American students are treated to a PowerPoint slideshow of sexually transmitted diseases and maybe a demonstration of how to put a condom on a piece of fruit. At worst, teens are stuck in abstinence-only classrooms, where everyone pretends like they're not going to fuck until they're married. As recently as 2008, according to the Guttmacher Institute, one-third of American kids ages 15 to 19 weren't taught anything about contraceptives in school. Meanwhile, states that have embraced abstinence-only education have the highest teen pregnancy rates.

Conversely, sex education—the kind that acknowledges teens might have sex—is mandatory throughout much of Western and Northern Europe (the Catholic stronghold of Italy is one exception). In many of these countries, sex ed is more practical, and less strictly biological, than it is in America.

The reasons for this might be chalked up to relaxed continental attitudes toward sex. In a 2011 paper on advancing sex education in developing countries, Heather D. Boonstra, the public policy director at the Guttmacher Institute, pointed out that in Western Europe, "sex among adolescents is generally accepted, with little to no societal pressure to remain abstinent. But with that acceptance comes strong cultural norms that emphasize that young people who are having sex should take actions to protect themselves and their partners from pregnancy and STIs."

In Germany, for example, my friend Laura says she learned about sex as early as age eight from a picture book in school. (A similar picture book recently made headlines for being used in a Berlin classroom full of five-year-olds.) German schools teach everything from the biology of reproduction to how to properly use contraception to how to reach orgasm. In the Scandinavian countries—Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland—sex education starts as early as preschool and continues through high school, often including graphic videos that explain how to masturbate, among other topics.

Countries like Switzerland, Belgium, Austria, Slovakia, France, and Luxembourg have sex ed curricula that emphasize things like sexual consent, navigating relationships, and communication, according to a 2013 report on sex education from European Parliament. A friend of mine who has cousins in the Netherlands says they remember learning how to put condoms on dildos in the dark.

The closest thing Europe has to the prudish Americans sex education system is probably found in the UK, which has been criticized for skirting around important sex-related matters in school, and which had the highest teen pregnancy rate in Western Europe as of 2014.

EUROPEANS CAN LOCATE STUFF ON A MAP

Photo via Flickr user Jessica Alexander

It's a running joke that Americans are so ignorant of geography that they'd have trouble pointing out any country but their own on a map. Actually, about one in ten Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 can't find the US on a map, according to a 2002 survey by National Geographic. In that survey of young people in nine developed countries—including Canada, France, Germany, the UK, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Sweden, and the US— the US came in second-to-last in geographic literacy, beating only Mexico.

A Finnish woman I know tells me that, as children, Finns are expected to not only memorize all the world countries, but also their capitals, any major cities, rivers, mountain ranges, deserts, and other important geographical features. In one stress-inducing childhood experience, she had to name 100 obscure rivers on a map in front of the whole class. Personally, I can't name 100 of anything, other than Pokémon or jelly bean flavors.

"Geography is often thought to help students understand different cultures and social systems in Europe, and to see the world through different lenses, appreciate different perspectives and values," the OECD's Schleicher tells me. "That being said, geography in Europe is often taught in a rather Eurocentric way" that places Europe at the center of the universe and privileges European narratives over others, he adds.

Watch: Another way the United States pales in comparison to Europe: maternity leave.

EUROPEANS LEARN TO SPEAK ENGLISH, AND OFTEN ANOTHER FOREIGN LANGUAGE

It's easy to take for granted that English is the international language of commerce and politics when it's your mother tongue. In the US, there is no national requirement for students to learn a second language. Although many individual schools make kids take a few foreign language classes in high school, that rarely amounts to more than ¿Cómo estás? and a few foreign swear words.

Not only do almost all European children have to learn English as a second language, but 20 European countries also require students to learn a second foreign language. Students in Austria, Cyrpus, Malta, Croatia, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Spain, and Portugal all start learning their first foreign language by age six; in Belgium kids start learning at age three, according to 2015 data from the Pew Research Center.

In America, by the end of high school the average graduate had taken less than two years of a foreign language—about enough to order from a restaurant, if that—according to research from John H. Bishop, a former Cornell University professor who's authored multiple papers comparing American and European education. By contrast, a quarter of all Europeans can hold a conversation in two or more foreign languages, and half of all Europeans can speak at least one language other than their native tongue.

ONLY AMERICANS ARE OBSESSED WITH SCHOOL SPORTS

Still from 'Friday Night Lights'

One of the largest differences between European and American schools has nothing to do with what goes on inside classrooms. It's the sports teams that dominate massive amounts of money and attention high schools across the US. Europeans take part in PE but their schools don't have the single-minded focus on athletic achievement that is common in America.

Schleicher tells me that when he first visited the US from Germany as a teenager, he was "surprised that the first thing entering a school were all the sports trophies. Sometimes I asked myself how the children who were good at math would feel their interests were valued."

Bishop explains that this stark difference stems from the fact that in Europe, sports are more clearly delineated as a career early on. Kids who show athletic promise often end up in secondary schools where they're trained to enter professional sports or to compete in the Olympics, placing them somewhat outside the ordinary teenage experience. As a blockbuster 2013 article in The Atlantic on the subject pointed out, in places like Finland and Germany, "many kids play club sports in their local towns—outside of school. Most schools do not staff, manage, transport, insure, or glorify sports teams, because, well, why would they?"

Even European PE classes are less focused on competition. Kids in Spain learn how to dance; in Nordic countries, they learn to make maps and orient themselves in nature as part of school. Lithuania and Hungary include correct posture and breathing exercises in their PE curricula, according to a 2012 European Commission report.

There is, however, one area where Americans beat the Europeans: It's anecdotal, but kids in American schools seem to have more fun. Rifle through any number of blogs from foreign exchange students studying in the US (like this one or this one or this one) and they all highlight the American high school experience: football games, cheerleaders, eating chicken nuggets every day for lunch, playing pranks, homecoming, prom. Sure, they might be bored in the classroom, but everyone knows class is the least important part of the American high school experience.

Follow Jules Suzdaltsev on Twitter.

This piece was originally published on VICE US

This piece was published in partnership with The Influence.

"Molly" and high-profile molly-related deaths have generated much media attention in recent years, raising questions about the safety of the drug and the substances often sold in its name (never assume molly is MDMA).

But the small number of deaths compared to the swaths of young people ingesting the drugs at festivals and clubs suggests it's not quite as dangerous as headlines make it sound. As with all psychoactive substances, the vast majority of users get high with no significant health problems. Still, for a few, a night intended for dancing can end up deadly.

We know that the mechanism of most MDMA-related deaths is similar to overheating (which is exacerbated by hot club or festival environments), and that a small dose is a safer dose. But the significant overlap of recreational and fatally toxic doses—in addition to the survival of peers who take molly in the same environment as friends who end up sick—makes it difficult to determine why some people have such adverse reactions when others seem fine.

The idea that some people die from an "MDMA allergy" has arisen as a potential explanation.

To account for unexplained MDMA-related deaths, some have proposed the theory that an enzyme deficiency, sometimes described as an "allergy," leaves certain individuals unable to metabolize the drug, and more susceptible to its toxicity. Most comprehensive texts on MDMA, like Julie Holland's 2001 book Ecstasy: The Complete Guide: A Comprehensive Look at the Risks and Benefits of MDMA and research summarizing the literature on MDMA toxicity, note the theory, without necessarily endorsing it.

Others, however, have taken to the theory with more confidence. The International Drug Policy Consortium, for example, recommends in a 2015 guide to MDMA harm reduction that first-time users take a "quarter dose" of around 20-30mg, "sometimes called an 'allergy test'" because "a portion of the population has a deficiency in a liver enzyme are more susceptible to the acute effects of MDMA (Tucker et al., 1994), since a deficiency in this enzyme could substantially impair elimination of MDMA, leading to higher and sustained concentrations of MDMA in the body. This could subsequently increase the risk of clinical symptoms including hyperthermia, hypertension, tachycardia, seizures, serotonin syndrome and rhabdomyolysis."

Most researchers have since been unable to prove the theory. Recently, many are instead ditching it for more complex descriptions of how enzymes may affect MDMA toxicity.

A 2012 review of the literature, authored by Rafael de la Torre, the lead researcher on several articles laying out the theory, concluded that the enzyme "may have less impact on the risk of acute toxicity than previously thought." That study did say that one "bias" worth taking into account is that the research involves small sample sizes," and within them, "poor metabolizers" are underrepresented, "probably because of the acute effects experienced."

Still, as this and other studies note, robust research into the enzyme theory has found that MDMA toxicity is too complicated to explain so simply. One 2002 study concluded that "Ecstasy-related deaths are rare and complex events, which have so far defied adequate explanation," adding, "There appear to be other metabolic mechanisms which compensate for the poor metabolism of these drugs by CYP2D6."

The notion of an enzyme deficiency that manifests as somewhat of an "allergy" to MDMA—or predisposition to health risks—has remained folklore nonetheless. On the internet and the party scene, the enzyme theory serves as a stand-in for some of the mysteries around MDMA-related deaths that scientists have not been able to fully explain. Looking to the science, though, it's not a useful harm-reduction philosophy to promote.

"There are other metabolic pathways for MDMA," Rick Doblin, the founder and executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), a group currently studying MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for treatment-resistant PTSD, tells The Influence.

"We don't think CYP2D6 deficiency really matters. About 10 percent of the US population are CYP2D6-deficient and there aren't 10 percent of users showing any consistent problems."

This article was originally published by The Influence, a news site that covers the full spectrum of human relationships with drugs. Follow The Influence on Facebook or Twitter.

YouTube is probably the greatest anthropological project ever launched. It has managed to expose the multitudes of the human condition more than any other medium ever created, and allowed people to express themselves in more diverse ways than at any point in history. This weekly column is an outlet for me to share with you some undiscovered gems, as well some very well-trodden gems, and discuss just what it is that makes the chosen accounts so intriguing.

WHO: Fred Red
WHAT: A man who talks to a cardboard cut out of Lana Del Rey.
HOW MANY SUBSCRIBERS AT TIME OF WRITING: 353
WHY SHOULD I CARE: Something you all should have learned at school is that it's not good to laugh at people who don't deserve it. Watching the school bully get a mouthful of mud after being tripped into a pool of shite and hyperventilating with laughter is perfectly acceptable behaviour, but pointing at and jibing the kid with the Thomas the Tank Engine pencil case is not cool. I would say, however, that it is good, maybe even important, to laugh with them. If there's a quirk they enjoy, be it Warhammer, be it drone modification, it's good to lightly rib, but not destroy. Making someone's hobby a point of fun can be a bonding experience if done the right way. One of the guys who works here at VICE makes scale model aeroplanes, a fact that, after several drinks, becomes almost impossible not to mention and mock. In the case of Fred Red, this approach works, as Fred isn't hurting anyone, but his hobby is very strange.

His name isn't actually Fred, though. It's Bob, and he lives in Massachusetts. Bob is a huge Lana Del Rey fan, and owns more than one cut out of the sultry chanteuse, in a variety of poses and expressions. It's unclear whether he makes them himself, though unless the Lana Del Rey Cardboard Cut-Out Emporium had a closing down sale, I'd say it was likely.

In each of his videos, most of which are around 15 minutes long, the silver-haired Bob engages in conversation with the cut-outs, mostly about either current events (such as the death of David Bowie) or milestones in Lana's career, like an album release. In the David Bowie clip, Bob stresses that he is not a stalker and is harmless, after hearing about other arrests for stalking. He even invites the Lana cut-out to concur, which she does.

Bob's impression of Lana is... Not sinister, but perhaps a little odd. He does it with his eyes glued to the floor, head bowed, like a cartoon child who has knocked over a pail of paint onto the new rug, hands behind his back, with a 'sowee' on the way. He's taken the real Lana, who is popularised as a smoky, sexy, independent, druggy femme fatale, and made her into a submissive, light-voiced dainty indie type.

I don't, however, think this is a reflection on Bob's psyche. I don't think he's a creep hell bent on infantilising a famous woman for his own peculiar desires. He appears to be, simply, a fan, expressing his fandom in a different way. If you think about it, the litany of other ways people pay homage to their favourite celebs is far stranger. Yaoi, fan fiction, threatening to rape and murder people if they 'talk trash about 1D' – in many ways, Bob's dedication to his favourite artist (I'm assuming she's his favourite) is more innocent than all of them.

I have regularly said both in print and out loud with my mouth that fans are the worst part of any medium. Movies, books, music, art – the people who put the most in, who care the most, are invariably the worst facet of any given thing. The forum warriors, the ultra nerds, the threateners, the 'actually' guys – they all make otherwise palatable things tawdry and shit through their excessive social-media-led deification of their chosen obsession du jour. Fred Red is just an older guy with some sticky back plastic, glue, cardboard, a printer and a Google image search of 'Lana Del Rey' saved as a bookmark.

I know for a fact that anyone watching any of the videos posted in here will be wary of Fred, or Bob, and his out-there way of showing someone that he loves them. But to me it's a good exercise in accepting the good in actions that, on the face of it, might seem to contain traces of bad. Bob isn't a bad man, he isn't a freak, he isn't a stalker, he just really likes Lana Del Rey. He's a 58-year-old teenager, and why the fuck shouldn't he be afforded the same live-and-let-live courtesy they are? Besides, the teenagers are the ones who are more likely to demand that you die in a forest fire after implying Zayn's fade isn't so fresh. Count your blessings.

@joe_bish

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This article originally appeared on VICE US

The Republican Party's long-awaited day of reckoning finally arrived on Tuesday, and to no one's surprise, it was a very good day for Donald Trump. In a major multi-state primary contest imaginatively referred to as "Super Tuesday 3," voters in five states cast ballots for the GOP candidates. The results were supposed to determine how hard Trump will have to fight for the party's nomination on the convention floor, and the answer was what most people suspected: not very hard.

The first big news of the night was arguably the most predictable: After trailing in state and national polls for months, Marco Rubio was trounced in his home state, losing Florida's winner-take-all primary to Trump by nearly 20 points shortly after the polls closed Tuesday. The Cuban-American Senator lost in every county, except his own, Miami-Dade. It was a humiliating loss for a politician that until recently was looked on as the White Knight of the Republican Party, marking the end of a downward spiral that, in hindsight, began back with that unfortunate sip of water in 2013.

Thus out of options, Rubio announced Tuesday night that would suspend his presidential campaign. Though he didn't mention Trump by name, his farewell speech was an impressive jeremiad against the frontrunner's divisive brand of politics, and also the conservative movement and GOP Establishment, which he accused of "being more interested in winning elections than solving problems or standing by principles."

"From a political standpoint, the easiest thing to have done in this campaign is to jump on all those anxieties...to make people angrier, make people more frustrated," Rubio told supporters a gathering of supporters in Miami. "But I chose a different route and I'm proud of that."

"The politics of resentment against other people will not just leave us a fractured party," he added. "They are going to leave us as a nation where people literally hate each other because they have different political opinions."

In a sign of how desperate Republicans have become, Rubio had barely finished speaking before conservatives, online and on cable news—including at least one of the candidate's former advisors—started calling on the Florida Senator's supporters to get behind his primary rival, Ted Cruz. Cruz, you may remember, has spent most of the 2016 cycle trying to undermine Rubio, and even had to fire his campaign spokesman for taking the Marco sabotage too far.

By Tuesday night, though, the Texas Senator had changed his tune, calling his Senate colleague and rival "an inspiration," and telling Rubio's supporters that they would be welcomed to the Cruz campaign "with open arms."

Aside from the rapid-response ass-kissing, Cruz had a mostly unremarkable night Tuesday, coming in second behind Trump in North Carolina and Illinois, and virtually tying with the frontrunner in Missouri. The proportional allocation of delegates in North Carolina and Missouri once again worked to Cruz's advantage, helping to offset slightly his opponents' winner-take-all victories in Florida and Ohio.

It was hardly a big night for the Texan, but he frequently points out, he remains the only candidate left in the race with a viable path to beating Trump. "Only two campaigns have a plausible path to the nomination," Cruz told supporters at a gathering in Houston Tuesday night. "Nobody else has any mathematical possibility whatsoever."

The problem for Cruz is that Republican leaders hate him almost as much as they hate Trump. With Rubio out of the race, the lone Establishment survivor is Ohio Governor John Kasich. Though generally unremarkable, Kasich scored a big victory in his home state Tuesday night, edging out his opponents to take all of Ohio's 66 delegates. While the win can't do much for his presidential ambitions at this point, it made a deep cut into Trump's overall delegate tally, making it far more difficult for the frontrunner to get to the 1,237 needed to lock up the nomination before the convention.

Trump, meanwhile, seemed unfazed. In surprisingly un-Donald-like remarks Tuesday, he turned his attention not to his primary opponents, but to the party itself, hinting that it's time for Republicans to accept him as their eventual nominee. "We have something happening that makes the Republican Party probably the biggest political story in the world," Trump told supporters gathered in the ballroom at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida. "Everyone around the world is talking about it. Millions of people are coming in to vote."

"We're gonna win, win, win, and we're not stopping," he promised. "We're going to have great victories for our country."

On the Democratic side, Tuesday's votes were less eventful, although the outcome was similarly favorable to the party's frontrunner. After pulling off a surprising upset in the Michigan primary last week, Bernie Sanders once again fell behind his opponent Hillary Clinton Tuesday, finishing second in four of the five states that cast ballots. The results were close in Illinois, and he did manage to pull off a tie in Missouri; but in Ohio, a Rust Belt state where the Sanders' campaign had hoped to replicate its Michigan success, Clinton managed to pull ahead by more than 10 points. She also won easily in Florida and North Carolina

The results solidify Clinton's already strong delegate lead, making her inevitable nomination once again seem like a foregone conclusion. Sanders is likely to stay in the race—he's said he'll ride his campaign out to the convention, and has the funding to do it—but at this point, it's hard to see how he could upset the calculus of the race.

And Clinton herself is once again talking about the election like she has it in the bag. "We know we will add to our delegate lead to roughly 300, with over two million more votes nationwide," she told supporters at a rally in West Palm Beach Tuesday. "We are moving closer to securing the Democratic Party nomination and closer to winning this election in November."

Follow John Surico on Twitter.

Again: not the plane in question, just a nice photo of the same aircraft model (Photo via Aero Icarus)

In quiet moments, it gets to me. In the middle of the night, where the light is blue and black, I'm there with my eyes bolt open, thinking about it. Thinking: what happened to you, Person Who Did A Shit So Bad On a British Airways Plane That It Had to Turn Around and Come Back Again? Prithee: when did thine shits return back to normal? And then I think: if I am thinking about the Person Who Did A Shit So Bad On a British Airways Plane That It Had to Turn Around and Come Back Again, what is the Person Who Did A Shit So Bad On a British Airways Plane That It Had to Turn Around and Come Back Again thinking? Are they thinking about that shit? More to the point: are there ever any moments when they are not thinking about the shit they did, the one that landed the plane? Do their cheeks still glow with the furnace of embarrassment? Or does life go on? How long until they could sit down comfortably again?

§

A year ago today, so the most-shared headline I've ever written goes, Someone Did a Shit So Bad On a British Airways Plane That It Had to Turn Around and Come Back Again. This is a fact. This happened. The plane was going from Heathrow to Dubai, but 30 minutes in it had to turn around and come back. This was because someone did some damage to the plane toilet using their butt and butthole, and it was considered a safety hazard to keep flying, because the butt crime was in danger of poisoning the air. A BA employee known only as 'Sarah', to the BBC, at the time of the incident: "When you're up at that altitude the cabin has to be pressurised so the problem is that anything like that is actually a health and safety problem because only 50 percent of the air is being recycled and cleaned." Tory councillor Abhishek Sachdev, a passenger who was delayed 15 hours waiting for the next flight to Dubai after the incident, euphoric on repumped turd air: "Insane. Our BA flight to Dubai returned back to Heathrow because of a smelly poo in the toilet." This shit changed people's lives. This shit ruined holidays and launched media careers. This shit was talked about. When was the last time something you did got discussed by Greg James on Radio 1? Good or bad? Was it never?

In the grand scheme of things, this bad shit is more significant than many of us, and yes, I include myself in that. And yet the name of the shit doer remains a mystery.

On NOISEY: The First Food Critic's Review of Nando's New, Stormzy Affiliated #MerkyBurger

This just makes me think about the person who did the shit ever more, about who they might be and what they might be feeling. This is what has been keeping me occupied for twelve straight months, attempting to profile them in my head for a year. What I have so far is:

i. The shit-doer is almost certainly a man. Listen: I have been trying to brush up on my feminism, I really have. And one central tenet of feminism seems to be: do not assume men are the answer to everything. It is so entrenched that a man should do job x, or head up team y, or do shit z in aeroplane toilet α, and we need to rail against that ingrained assumption, we need to think bigger. We need to consider that women are involved just as much if not more so. But in this instance I refuse to believe a woman did a shit so bad it made a plane fall to the ground. I have been in a bathroom after men. I have been into a bathroom after women. A man did this shit, with his man anus;

ii. You have to assume that the shit-doer was having a subnormal digestion day. Somebody with a longstanding poo disease – the kind that can render an aeroplane bathroom medically inadvisable in ten minutes flat – is not going to get on a seven-hour flight to Dubai. They are going to dink around that one. They are going to get a train to France to their holidays, nothing more exotic than that. Anything more than an hour from home is dangerous territory. They are going to bring their own supply of water because they do not trust French taps. But the BA Heathrow–Dubai shitter, in my opinion, was not expecting this to happen out of their body in any way at all. They were on a hangover, or something. They went to someone's house and had chicken the day before and it was pink in the middle but they were too polite to say something. Nothing too unordinary. But then: then something unordinary came out of them, at high speed, and got up and indeed around the toilet they were aiming for, and grounded a plane for 15 hours;

iii. I like to imagine the moment of sheer panic the shit-doer had to experience post-shit when they realised that the plane toilet was ill-equipped to mop up what they had done to anything close to a satisfactory level. Like: were there people waiting outside the toilet door that they had to play through-the-door chicken with? You know the game: you have to leave the toilet, but you've done a life-changing and uncleanable shit in it, and someone is waiting but their patience will only run to about eight minutes or so, so you just sit there – perfect silence, single bead of sweat undulating on the end of your nose – and you wait it out, in your poo prison, the absolute lowest moment of your life, until they leave;

iv. How do you live your life after an incident such as this? How do you even make it to Dubai? You turn up a day later than expected and everyone who is meeting you there has heard about the poo plane. "Were you on it?" they're saying, desperately. "Did you see who did the poo?" And you laugh nervously and go: haha, no. And then you try and enjoy your week in Dubai with the sun and sand and excess, but you can't – you can't relax unless you're within 100 metres of a toilet, you can't sleep without reimagining yourself back in that cubicle. The flight home is shitless hell. And then you get home, back to your base toilet, but nothing feels the same anymore. Are... are you afraid to shit? You are. The last time you shat it grounded a plane. Nothing will be the same again, now. You will carry this boulder around with your forever;

You would be right to think: hold on, Joel, do you not exactly fit the profile of the poo bandit? You do seem to know a lot about this mythical person. Are you not a man in a panic, capable of doing a shit? I am all of those things and more. But I am not the poo bandit. I am just a man who has spent a full year inhabiting a mental space where a poo bandit can live, trying to understand them from the inside out, from every angle, from mouth to arsehole. I feel like I understand the poo bandit better than they understand themselves. If you line up every person who was on that flight from Heathrow to Dubai, and let me look them each in the eye, I would tell you who done the shat. I would look at the pain and the fear and the weakness inherent within them and say: this, this is the shitter. This man did the shit.

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If you are reading this, anonymous plane-shitter, know that you are forgiven. That you made a mistake, but that we all do. A year ago you did a shit. A shit that affected the fundamental workings of a multi-million pound aircraft, but a simple shit nonetheless. We all do this. We all make mistakes. Let he who is without sin – let he who hath not had six pints of Guinness then a curry the night before an intercontinental flight – cast the first stone. Be at peace, plane shitter. Put that poop to bed.

@joelgolby

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These two haven't just moved in together and aren't featured in this article. They're two people we interviewed ages ago just after they'd had sex with each other. (Photo: Ed Zipco)

Moving in together. It's when a couple solidifies their relationship. It's the moment they affirm their commitment to one another and proclaim to the world that they are A Thing – the essential bridge between messy nights out and nights in on the sofa together watching 24 Hours in A&E and shopping online for hand soap.

But what does shared domesticity do to a couple's sex life? Is all sexual tension lost amid arguments about emptying the dishwasher and the mundanity of choosing what colour to paint the skirting board? Can humans really mate in captivity?

To find out, we asked some humans.

"THERE WAS MORE 'DUTY SEX'"

It was actually pretty weird. It wasn't better or worse – just very different. There was probably less frequency, but the "quality" was better – like a "we are making love in our nest" type of difference. Also, no more flatmates meant that we could do it whenever, wherever, without fearing someone bursting in. The fact that we lived together also meant that we didn't have to have sex every time we slept in the same bed, so we became more comfortable with the "not having sex" stage of the relationship. It also meant we started to experiment more.

On the other hand, difficult times were more clearly illustrated through lack of sex. And there also was more "duty sex" – the "sex just to make the numbers" type of sex. Which was pretty shit.

Carla, 30

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"FOR THE PAST YEAR WE'VE BEEN IN AN OPEN RELATIONSHIP, AND THAT'S BEEN ROCKY"

I guess we did the whole thing in reverse, because we were cohabiting before we were even dating. I'd just moved to a new city. I'd planned to crash on his couch, but then we hooked up and I ended up moving straight into his bedroom. At the very beginning I was young and immature, so we both had to be wasted out of our minds – but once we got over that, it was like this non-stop love and intimacy fest.

That was two-and-a-half years ago. We both have crazy schedules so we rarely saw each other, and that built resentment. You feel the absence, but because you're living together you never feel like you have to make a plan. When you live together, because you're sleeping in the same bed every night, sex can end up feeling like an obligation. Our sex life is better now that we've moved out – when we're sleeping together it's by choice, not by necessity.

Also, for the past year we've been in an open relationship, and that's been rocky. He's Southern European and super-romantic, and he had a hard time with that. So we needed to re-evaluate with a little bit of distance, and since we moved out I feel way closer to him. That was actually just two weeks ago – but it's chill, or at least medium-chill, to talk about it.

Davis, 24

To have him moving in from the beginning was great because we could have as much sex as we wanted, and it really intensified the experience of feeling like a couple. I mean, I hear new couples talk about how they do it seven times a day or whatever – that wasn't quite us, but to me the amount was perfect.

We were both always away a lot, so when we were together it was special. Now things have evolved in a way that we need more space, and I'd say moving out has really helped the way we relate to each other physically and emotionally. It's brought more romance to the idea of getting together – it's made our relationship stronger.

We've had ups and downs, but we work on things and have good communication. I don't think we've ever had a bad sex life – I mean, he's a contortionist and I'm a yoga teacher; how bad is sex ever really going to be?

Paulo, 24

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"SHE MADE ME FUCK HER WHILE SHE STARTED INTENTLY AT BOTH ME AND HERSELF IN THE MIRROR"

We'd had a messy, on-off relationship for years, but the shit hit the fan when my landlord decided not to renew my tenancy after three years. Reality hit hard. There was simply nothing in London even close to the £450 I'd been paying. That was when I had my bright idea – we should do a couples' house. Three rooms, three couples. I'm a genius, right?

Over the year she and I lived together we just got more and more resentful. Right from day one, cohabitation reinforced how much we wished the other person would change, to be more like who we wanted them to be. Sex became more and more infrequent, and eventually I started weaponising my slightly lower sex drive – to deny her sex at crucial moments, as my way of expressing how angry I was for other reasons. It was fucking horrible, really.

It became increasingly clear to her that I was just waiting for our contract to run out. This became a real emotional drain. She dragged us on a fucking mini-break to Amsterdam to relight the flame. I hated that she was making me spend money I didn't have on a trip I'd rather do with people I actually liked. We didn't have sex that weekend.

Things came to a head after a particularly nasty night where I drank too much, had a line or three and threw a bottle of wine through a window. I moved on to the sofa for the final few months of our contract.

We always had good sex (when we were having sex), but it was really the post-relationship encounters I remember. That's when something else came out: the dirty talk, the seedy, exhibitionist sex with something to prove – half trying to pleasure, half trying to intimidate. The final time was the best. She took me back to her new flat – it was much nicer than my new place, with a full-length mirror against the wall. She made me fuck her while she stared intently at both me and herself (mostly herself). I pulled out and she arched her back a little further and whispered, "Don't hurt me too much" – the invite to have her in the ass as well.

Despite the fact that our co-habitation was a total misery for us both, my lingering memory of her will always be her reflection in that mirror – all the resentment, power-play and helplessness washed away.

Jamie, 26

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"NOW WE HAVE OUR OWN PLACE WE CAN EXPERIMENT"

I think our sex life changed drastically because the space became both of ours, so it was happening in different places, rather than just the bedroom: the kitchen, the living room, the shower, the couch. I hated his old apartment, and I had flatmates, so now that we have our own place there's a level of comfort that allows for way more experimentation.

Also, because we both travel a lot, when we're in the apartment together it becomes this place of extreme intimacy. When we get home it all becomes extra heightened and special – like, OK, now this is connection time.

Jenny, 27

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"YOU TOUCH THIS, I TOUCH THAT, THEN WE COME"

I was with Giuliana for five years. Six months was a long-distance relationship, then a year-and-a-half in a small room in a shared apartment, then really living together.

I think every relationship starts off with a lot of sex, then it tails off whether you are living together or not. But this was my first time living with a girl, and it was interesting to observe the rhythm that developed, where during the week not much would happen, then Saturday morning was, like, sex time. That was just when we had time together without being tired – but it can become a bit regular.

The sex itself was always quite good, but a bit of routine crept in – like, you touch this, then I touch that, then we come. But we found ways of making it new, like exploring tantric practices together, which was really exciting. You have to be creative and make sure not to take each other for granted.

Then she moved away, and the problem was we saw each other rarely, and there was pressure to have a really great time in the days we had together. So, really, that was what caused the problems.

Stefan, 31

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Poster for Life On The Road

Not long ago, when I was home alone and without a lot of money, I stuck an oven pizza in and put The Office on the telly. The whole thing, including the two Christmas specials, was on Netflix. Six episodes a series, two series in total, wouldn't take long. I sat and watched something I hadn't seen in nearly a decade and was mesmerised by how much it had changed. When I was younger, I had thought it was an #awks 'cringe-fest', but what I saw this time was a painful, incisive documentation of total banality and trying to escape it through any means necessary. It was a picture of a forgotten part of our society, the one away from any limelight, a hundred thousand beige prisons up and down the country facilitating not lives but existences, especially in the case of its agonisingly sad protagonist David Brent.

Ricky Gervais is one of the last great British comedy auteurs. Since The Office and, to a lesser extent, Extras, no one else has really seen their original vision come true in such a way. There have been popular formats and programmes: Mrs Brown's Boys, the endless sneering panel shows that clog up the daily Dave viewing schedule... Even the best BBC comedy in years, BBC3's (or BBC ii-upside-down-'i' as it's now referred to) People Just Do Nothing, borrows heavily from Gervais's themes, as does Channel 4's Phoneshop, also good and clearly indebted to Gervais (who acted as script editor on it) too.

But that particular comedy of embarrassment will always belong to him. He will always be a reference point for other shows using that style. And David Brent, the sap who started it all, will go down as one of the greats. Or, perhaps, he would have, had Gervais not decided to eke every tired wheeze out of this heavily flogged dead horse. In August, a feature-length film called Life On The Road will be released. It's another Brent vehicle, in which the character tours with his old band Foregone Conclusion. Of the story, Gervais has said: "This film delves much more into his private life than The Office ever did and we really get to peel back the layers of this extraordinary, ordinary man."

But Brent isn't an extraordinary man. That's the point of him. He's a schmuck, a norm, an idiot, a whatever, but that doesn't make him a bad character. Gervais is taking his creation and potentially turning it into shit, and for what?

The controversy surrounding Gervais's most recent TV comedy, Derek, brought out that staunch destructiveness in him. Many viewers were upset at his portrayal of an apparently disabled man working in an old people's home, which he then countered by saying that Derek wasn't disabled, and he would know, as he created him. It was a facile argument – you could go to a fancy dress party as a plane crashing into a building and say it's not meant to be 9/11, even though everyone can see it – but it alls feels as if Gervais is out to destroy his own medium because he's the only one who can. He wields the knife, and he can do with his intellectual property whatever he wants, even if that means running it into the ground and ignoring what made it special in the first place.

This isn't just the curse of the auteur, though. It's also a by-product of success. Movie directors and producers ruin their franchises all the time, in ways that are distinct from clear grabs for money, but have the feeling of power-tripping, of ownership and control. Gervais's trans-Atlantic contemporary, albeit on a greater scale, would be Seth MacFarlane, creator of Family Guy, American Dad and Ted. MacFarlane created his brand of fourth-wall-breaking, pop-culture-referencing style of comedy in 1999. But since then, this style has drawn regular derision from people who have recognised the format he works in and think they're above it. They see it as repetitive, and that may be so, but the difference between MacFarlane and Gervais is that MacFarlane would never do things with his characters that go against the style in which they were created, even if, like Ted and its unwatchable sequel, it was terrible to begin with.

There's something fatalistic about watching Gervais continually do this to his characters. It's been going on since the infamous 'do the dance' period of charity appearances, but the process has been a slow, tumescent spread to the lymph nodes of his beloved creations. It's difficult to believe that someone capable of such greatness is also so blind to how far that greatness can fall. But that's what happens when you achieve something great and then try for the rest of your life to emulate it; you end up crushing and debasing your magnus opus, until it's unrecognisable in the face of your immense, newfound vanity.

I no longer believe that Gervais is capable of creating something good and real, not now that he's been some consumed by his own self-imposed comedy demi-god status. But how much can we blame him for it? He's fallen into the hole of others before him by thinking that a moment's genius can be replicated ad infinitum. You shouldn't watch Life On The Road, not because it will be crap, which it almost certainly will be, but because it's disrespectful to the memory of David Brent, who died a long time ago.

@joe_bish

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(Photo by Gordon Jolly)

George Osborne loves to announce things, even things we have already heard. In Wednesday's budget he re-announced the "Help to Save" scheme, a plan aimed at helping the poorest to save, originally proposed by the last Labour government under the name "Saving Gateway". Scrapping that was one of the first moves of the coalition government in 2010. Now having made some more people poor, Osborne is bringing it back.

The Help to Save scheme will help employees on in-work benefits who put aside £50 a month by giving them a bonus of 50 percent after two years and worth up to £300 a year.

David Cameron has really high hopes for the scheme saying it will "transform life chances". But Owen Smith, the shadow work and pensions secretary, was a Debbie Downer about it, saying, "Low income families are going to struggle to have enough money to make it to the end of the week, let alone save for the future."

The scheme comes partly after government research showed that almost half of UK adults have less than £500 saved in case of an emergency. But is that is that really true? We asked some people on the street what they made of all this.

Lorie, 55, café owner

Is saving something that you do?
Not really. I'm not much of a saver but I'm a builder of things, I spend to make rather than just hoard. You have to be in the flow of things, participating. I'm not sure whether it's a good plan, probably not.

Has that philosophy worked out for you so far?
I'm in the middle of figuring that out.

Is saving something that you may potentially do in the future?
No, probably not. I mean I have plans for how I'm not going to work for my entire life, plans that don't really include setting aside money. I have a property in Italy so I have money there and I own this café.

What do you think of the "new savers" scheme?
I don't really know if £300 a month is going to make much a difference in people's lives.

Toxi, 27, works at a creative agency

Do you save money?
I have a habit of saving all of my change into a jar and then when it's full I will use it to buy a new vinyl record.

Do you also save money into a bank account? Or it is just the jar?
Yeah, on a monthly basis I will take a proportion of my earnings into another account. It's become a habit now, especially as my girlfriend has always saved a lot of money and my parents have always pushed me to save too. I used to have a really bad habit of spending, so I thought I should try and be more conscientious.

Do you find it hard to save?
Yeah because of course everything costs money – there are not that many activities you can do for free these days. But usually I'm able to save some of my pay cheque.

What do you think of the government's 'Help to Save' scheme?
It's always good to teach people to save because if you want to buy a house or take out a mortgage it's important to learn those habits.

Caroline, 24, music management

Do you save money?
I have always tried to save as much as possible. When I was younger I used to live in a village in Devon so I didn't have anything to spend my money on, and I would just save it all. I've just carried on from there. Also my parents are both accountants, so they have always taught me to save.

What was the last thing you saved for?
A holiday I think. I'm also saving for renting in the future; keeping back some money means that I have a fund that I can quickly move with.

Have your savings ever covered an unexpected expense?
Car expenditures. That's something that crops up out of nowhere and you think, 'OMG I need money quickly'.

Do you think £300 extra pounds a year from the government is likely to "transform life chances"?
I think it would be helpful. It doesn't seem like loads, but it would be more than enough for some people.

Jade, 24, business owner

Is saving something you do?
I try to save for rainy days. I had a baby six months ago so I've been saving more since then. Before that the small amounts of money I saved would go on things like clothes and prosecco.

Do you find it hard to save?
I think it's always hard to save - when you're younger, you are saving to go out on a Friday night, and then as you get older, you're saving for a house.

What are you saving for now?
Last week the dishwasher broke down, so the money I've been saving went on fixing that.

Do you have a savings account?
No, I just save at home, that's the easiest way to do it. Just buy a tin and put your money in there.

What do you think of the government's 'Help to Save' scheme?
It depends on whether people can actually afford to save on the money they earn. I've been on benefits and I don't think you could save £50 a month. For a little while I got employment support allowance and I think that worked out at £45 a week - there is no way I could save on top of that. I don't see that working out unless people go without electricity or food.

William, 48, producer

Do you save money regularly?
Yes, as much as possible. You should start saving before you have any money. It's a form of resistance; you have to stop believing that the more you consume the more you have. So your mindset goes, I don't need that magazine right now or that extra pint at the pub. You can save that way.

Do you find it difficult to save money?
I don't think it's difficult at all. Everything is a question of desire – if you really work on saving for something, you will probably have more money left over than you planned on saving originally.

What was the last thing you saved for?
Recording equipment – old reel-to-reel tape recorders.

Polly, 22, jazz singer; Boz, 22, jazz drummer

Is saving something you do?
Polly: My friends have told me to save since I've started working two jobs, as a way to be more independent, but generally I'm really bad at saving money.

Would you like to be saving more?
I don't know. What would I be saving for? I don't mean to get dark but a friend of mine recently died in an accident - in the aftermath of it all, a mutual friend of ours who saves a lot began to talk to me about the money he was saving and if it was actually worth the hassle, as you never know how long you will be around for to spend it.

So spend the money you have while you have it?
Yeah I think that philosophy is part of my family; we all enjoy life and are not that careful with money. My dad told me that when he dies there would be no money left for me. He said to me, 'Would you rather have a good time with me now or have a shit ton of money when I'm gone?' I'd rather spend it with him.

How about you, Boz?
Boz: I'm pretty shit at saving money.

Would you like to be saving?
Yes, I would like to, so I didn't have to work so much during summer and I could go away. Realistically I could be saving money by cutting down on things like cups of coffee but it's easier said than done.

What do you think of the government asking low earners to save?
There are bigger issues and the government is sort of fucking it.

@ameliadimz

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Amyl nitrite users across the UK can breathe a sigh of relief today, as it's been announced that the substance – "poppers" to the majority of us; "room odourisers" to the people who sell them – will not be banned under the government's plans to crack down on the sale and use of legal highs.

The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs – the government's body of drug advisors – said that poppers have such limited effects on the body that they couldn't be included in the Psychoactive Substances Act. They are, in fact, almost completely harmless and don't fit within the government definition of what a "psychoactive substance" actually is.

"The ACMD's consensus view is that a psychoactive substance has a direct action on the brain, and that substances having peripheral effects, such as those caused by alkyl nitrites , do not directly stimulate or depress the central nervous system," the council said in a report.

This may come as a shock to some ministers, who believed that poppers had been banned under the new Act.

Members of the LGBT community and gay health charities have been campaigning against the ban since the government announced it, as poppers are commonly used to relax the sphincter before anal sex. Poppers manufactures were also up in arms, as obviously the ban would leave them jobless. And let's not forget longtime poppers user and Conservative MP Crispin Blunt, who argued in a Commons debate that banning them would be "fantastically stupid".

Away from the whole poppers debate, the Psychoactive Substances Act has been contentious from the get-go. Drug policy campaigners have argued that it's not going to stop the availability of these substances; that it doesn't deal with reducing harm among users; and that it's only going to further criminalise casual drug users. In fact, a VICE report found that the ban is already directly harming users and aiding street level drug dealers.

The bill was also heavily criticised on a scientific level. Clare Wilson pointed out in New Scientist that the lack of technical understanding shown by government ministers when debating the bill was laughable.

"Watching MPs debate the Psychoactive Substances Bill yesterday, it was clear most of them hadn't a clue," she wrote. "They misunderstood medical evidence and mispronounced drug names."

Even transhumanists weighed in on the debate, arguing that nootropics – or "smart drugs", like modafinil – shouldn't be included in the ban as they are thought to have brain-boosting properties. Cheryl Gillan, MP for Amersham, echoed this view when trying to put forward an amendment that would exclude nootropics from the bill.

This isn't to say that the government has the wrong intentions: drugs like synthetic cannabis and widely untested cocaine, MDMA and LSD substitutes shouldn't be sold on the high street. You need only look at the issues caused by Spice – a brand of synthetic cannabis – in the UK's prisons and streets to see that it clearly shouldn't be readily available.

However, there are surely better ways to handle a problem than just outright banning everything to do with it and hoping it goes away. Governments tried that with the War on Drugs decades ago, and judging by what a global catastrophe that's been, it doesn't really seem that no tolerance blanket-bans are the way to go.

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A mural of Kim Il-sung outside a North Korean hotel. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Read: We Asked an Expert if the World Needs to Worry About North Korea's H-Bomb Claims

In an hour-long trial Wednesday, North Korea's highest court sentenced a college student from the University of Virginia to 15 years hard labor for trying to steal a propaganda poster from his Pyongyang hotel, as the Associated Press reports.

The defendant, 21-year-old Otto Warmbier, apparently went over to North Korea as part of a tour group, and he was detained on January 2 while boarding his flight home to the states. When North Korean officials searched him, they allegedly found a propaganda poster torn from his hotel room wall.

North Korean officials reportedly believe a shady university group and the CIA encouraged Warmbier to steal the poster from the hotel. He, on the other hand, maintains he jacked the propaganda poster for a church member back home in Ohio, who promised to trade him a $10,000 used car for the souvenir.

As the New York Times reports, Warmbier confessed and pleaded for his release February—an apology that has to be taken with a grain of salt given past claims of coerced confessions in North Korea. But if the sentencing goes through, the guy won't be back on US soil until he's at least 36.

"I made the worst mistake of my life," Warmbier said late last month.

A lithograph depicting the anti-Catholic riots that hit Philadelphia in 1844. In the mid 19th century, xenophobic political parties and mobs often targeted Catholic immigrants from Ireland and Italy. Image via public domain

One day not too long ago, more than 10,000 people packed themselves into a Detroit convention center to hear the most controversial politician in America speak. Some were there to shout him down, more were there to celebrate him, and the two factions boiled over with anger and joy before he even took the stage. A scuffle broke out, a cop was seen screaming about having been blinded by some kind of chemical spray, and mocking chants of "Sieg Heil!" could be heard. Eventually, the speaker had to cut his remarks short, his speech subsumed by the chaos he was by then in the habit of causing.

Earlier that day, in Oklahoma, the same candidate had inveighed against the protesters who followed him around the country. "We're going to grab some of these college students by the hair of your head and stick you under the jail."

Those could be vignettes from Donald Trump's campaign as it rolls, seemingly unstoppably now, toward the Republican nomination. The GOP frontrunner's Chicago rally on Friday was canceled amid mass protests, then turned into a brawl; an earlier event in St. Louis led to dozens of arrests of anti-Trump activists. But those scenes of unrest in Detroit and Oklahoma come from George Wallace rallies held in October 1968, where the avowed champion of racial segregation was stoking the same sorts of flames Trump is playing with today. Trump, like Wallace, speaks to the fears and anxieties of working-class whites, the sense that their world is slipping away.

Also like Wallace, Trump makes vague—and sometimes not so vague—threats of violence against those who oppose him. On Wednesday morning, after yet another night of primary victories, Trump was asked what would happen if the Republican elite made good on plans to stop him from getting the nomination at the party convention by any means necessary. "I think you'd have riots," he replied. "I'm representing many, many millions of people."

But Wallace and Trump aren't aberrations. There is a long American tradition of violence in the service of politics—and especially violence sparked by racial and ethnic tension.

"The worst political violence in US history has often been racialized," explains Christopher Strain, a professor of American studies at Florida Atlantic University and the author of Reload: Rethinking Violence in American Life. "And there are shades of this strain of violence at the recent Trump rally in Chicago."

In the early days of the American republic, settling partisan disputes by way of fists, knives, clubs, or guns was relatively common. Prominent politicians—like Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton, and, a few decades later, Andrew Jackson—were almost as notorious for their pistol duels as their politics. Then there was the infamous May 1856 incident where South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks strode onto the floor of the Senate and beat abolitionist Republican Charles Sumner furiously about the neck and face with a cane, nearly killing him.

Violence used to be a more common feature of American life, and campaign events reflected that, according to Noah Feldman, a Harvard legal historian. "They were definitely extremely raucous and that was true of a whole range of public events," he says. "Not just campaign rallies, but the elections themselves were raucous and unruly. All of politics was just much, much wilder."

The mid 19th century saw a spike in populist violence. In the 1840s and 50s, as anti-immigrant sentiment rose, riots tore through cities such as Philadelphia, Louisville, St. Louis, New Orleans, and Baltimore; members of the xenophobic Know-Nothing Party launched attacks on Catholics in Maine; and Chicago's Know-Nothing mayor essentially went to war with the city's German and Irish immigrants. The Civil War only further inflamed racial tensions. In New York City at the time, Feldman says, "whites—mostly Irish-Americans—rioted and killed blacks on the theory that, you know, 'We're going to have to go to war over you, so let's kill you.' I mean, it's pretty crazy stuff and profoundly irrational but also a feature of American public life at the time."

But it was during the Reconstruction era that followed the Civil War that wholesale racial terrorism began to take hold on a mass scale. After a bitterly contested Louisiana gubernatorial election, as many as 100 black state militiamen holding a local courthouse in the town of Colfax were killed by a band of enraged paramilitary troops called the White League on Easter Sunday 1873. (Three whites were ultimately convicted of federal crimes over the incident but won a reprieve when the Supreme Court ruled state courts would have to deal with the massacre perpetrators.)

"To become civil is hard; to become uncivil is easy."
—Noah Feldman

Donald Trump's 2016 presidential bid, of course, has been defined by the sort of flagrant appeals to anti-immigrant sentiment with which the Know-Nothings would have been quite familiar. In the worldview he's expressed over and over again in stump speeches and on the campaign trail, brown people (Mexicans and Muslims) are responsible for the problems facing working-class whites. Trump has also repeatedly and explicitly (if somewhat flippantly) encouraged attacks on protesters. Combine that rhetoric with angry opposition from left-wing groups such as Black Lives Matter, and you've got the makings of the type of storm not seen in America since the days of Wallace.

"Maintaining civility in public discourse is a delicate thing," says Feldman. "I don't fear that we're in danger of becoming Weimar Germany, with a battle for control over the streets. But that said, civility is a hard-won practice. To become civil is hard; to become uncivil is easy."

A case in point is that of 78-year-old John McGraw. He's the white Trump supporter who sucker-punched a black protester being led out of an event in Fayetteville, North Carolina, by security personnel early last week. (Trump has suggested he may pay legal fees for McGraw, who was arrested the next day and charged with assault and disorderly conduct. Local law enforcement reportedly mulled incitement charges against the candidate himself but declined to proceed.)

Where Trump differs from his predecessors is he has a not insignificant chance of actually becoming president. In 1968, Wallace was a third-party candidate with mostly regional appeal; in the 1850s, the Know-Nothings never got a sniff of the White House and faded quickly. Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee, might be an underdog against Hillary Clinton in the general election, but he's got a shot, and that scares the hell out of people who oppose him.

"His tactics are on a continuum with we've seen some presidents and candidates do before, but they seem much more extreme because they're not even rationalized as safety measures," says Tabatha Abu El-Haj, a law professor at Drexel University in Philadelphia. "It's sort of a disregard of the protesters' rights. And right now, he's a private citizen—he's not yet the government acting, so he doesn't need to respect those rights. But it does make me wonder what his administration, if that occurred, would do when they were obligated to respect the First Amendment rights of protesters."

Trump's rhetoric has spooked plenty of people, both on the left and the right, but America has seen this sort of anger before and come out on the other side intact. What it hasn't seen is what happens when that sort of demagogue actually gets handed the keys to the country.

Follow Matt Taylor on Twitter.

"The Means of Pleasure" by Roy Martinez

"Lick Ass" is not your typical brand name, but it's the English translation for Lambe Culo, the alias for genderfluid visual artist and fashion designer Roy Martinez. In Martinez's artwork, clothing designs reclaim old school cultural terms like "Brown Pride," lucha libre masks substitute gimp masks in BDSM-inspired photoshoots, and harness sculptures are made with the traditional patterns of the Mexican serape.

The queer, punk, and Chicano cultures are intrinsic influences to Lambe Culo's work, even though they may seem to have irreconcilable differences. Traditional Mexican-American families tend to employ strict gender roles and conservative values, so being queer and Chicano can be complicated. But instead of rejecting Chicano identity, Lambe Culo finds inspiration in it and navigates these tricky aspects through art. "I want to evoke the complexity of my being. I don't just want to do abstract expressionistic stuff. I also want to reference Mesoamerican and indigenous influences because that's just as important as my color theory. Part of being queer is not being set on one thing," Martinez said.

Originally from Chicago and Texas with roots in Zacatecas, Mexico, Lambe Culo is now in LA finishing up a studio art degree at Cal Arts while maintaining social media celebrity. Lambe Culo's images on Instagram and Tumblr are often sexually provocative, challenging respectability politics at all turns. Unsurprisingly, Martinez's bathtub nudes and simulated cum pics have been censored by Instagram.

I had a chance to talk with Lambe Culo about sketching Selena outfits, growing up Chicana in Texas, and using art as a means to analyze the fluidity of gender and cultural identities.

"Homage to Céasar Chávex" by Roy Martinez

Why Lambe Culo?
At first it was a joke. I showed my mentor Harry Gamboa Jr., from ASCO [a Chicano art group from the 1960s], a picture of the label Lambe Culo, and he told me I should use it as my brand. It's very abrupt and in your face, and it's resistant to traditional brand names. For me, it rolls off my tongue.

When you explain it to white people, it's like, "Oh it's 'lick ass.' It's not a typical brand name." When you brand something, it has to be respectful and thought out and not very ratchet or punk. I'm really into punk, so that's why I did it. Also being queer and brown is in a way being punk.

I fangirled when I saw you at the C'mon Everybody bar in Brooklyn. How does it feel to meet people from the internet who know your internet persona?
When I went to Mexico, I crashed with a friend from Instagram. We went out, and I think he thought I was going to be out there, like drinking and out of control. It was my first time in Mexico City, and I was shy and very aware of my surroundings. Being queer and non-binary, I have to be cautious of my surroundings. He was like, "What's wrong?" I think he had a vision of me that didn't relate to the real me.

Your social media image is very punk, intense, sexually overt, but in real life, you're so approachable. I think these dualities such as shy boi and hard femme also reflect in your artwork and fashion design.
I find the virtual world to be a safe space. I can be who I am without any restraints or confinements. I can be free in that realm, but in real life, you have other constraints. There are weird people in the world out to destroy you. If you're not conforming to their binaries, it's like you're meant to be destructed.

WATCH: "The Subway Gangs of Mexico City"

Some of the clothes that you make have culturally specific identifier words on them—Xicanx, Cabroncita, Brown Pride. Is there a larger reason for using these words in your clothing line?
I think part of it is to push an identity forward. I do borrow from old school Chicano aesthetics. While I want to push an identity forward, I also want to rethink it. There are people who are straight or hetero or cis that relate to my work because of Chicano 60s and 70s movimiento (movement) shit. Then there are these new wave queer Chicano/as who also relate to it.

I don't think many people outside of California and Texas understand the term Chicano, much less Xicanx or Latinx. Can you give me your rundown on the x-ing out of gendered words?
The word Xicanx is open for interpretation. It has room to move. It's very inclusive for anybody that relates to it. A lot of people are like 'Oh you weren't born in Mexico, so these identifiers exclude you... ' I feel like Xicanx is inclusive to anyone who identifies with it. I'm not an identity politics enforcer. But for me, in general, Xicanx is not being bound to the feminine or masculine aspects. I'm very fluid within myself. I accept both masculinity and femininity equally. It's a word that is new and is still getting meaning. People can interpret it how they feel like. It's not a set thing. I feel like being bound to that is not what Xicanx is. It's fluidity.

Why do you use pre-Columbian and Mesoamerican images as ancestral references in your work?
For me, it's empowerment—it's digging up what came before me. You can't move forward without knowing what your past is. It's like, Wow, my people fucking built pyramids. Someone did this without modern machinery. For me, that's why I invoke it—to feel more empowered by my culture or who I am. Assimilation has erased all that. In high school, I didn't know what Mexican really was, what Olmec, Aztec, Mayan, and Mesoamerican identities were. I had to do my own research. It was nothing that I was taught.

"Sin Tìtulo" by Roy Martinez

I remember seeing the Chicana punk Alice Bag's book in your studio. Has she influenced you? Who else are your influencers?
Again, because I wasn't brought up knowing anything about my identity, I've had to research. Alice Bag, a Chicana in the 70s who was in the punk movement, just came up recently. When it comes to punk culture, white cis males are known as the punk innovators or originators. So to see Alice Bag who claims her Chicanidad (Chicano culture) is awesome. Like, "I'm Chicana, and I'm fucking punk!" It was amazing to find her out. Also, the Chicana writers Sandra Cisneros and Gloria Anzaldúa definitely.

I love your conceptual Selena GIFs! What does Selena mean to you?
Selena means childhood. I remember when I was 10 or 11, I was sketching her outfits. I don't know if I was inspired by her music, fashion, or by her being a fashion designer. I guess I saw a little bit of myself in her. Being Chicana, being Mexican-American, being Tejana is a connection to her.

T-shirt for sale on lambeculo.bigcartel.com

How does the BDSM imagery (harnesses, chokers, chains, etc.) function within your work?
People automatically associate that work with gay leather-daddy culture, which, yes, I can see that. But, for me, it represents a willful restraint. Especially when I did the harness sculpture with the serape. That represented culture. Yes, I love culture so much, but I'm not able to be who I truly am within my culture sometimes. It's a metaphor for me, for how I feel.

There's some shit within our culture that is shitty. It's very complex. That's why I identify with Gloria Anzaldúa in Borderlands. She puts it into words so perfectly. When I first read her, I was getting chills and crying. There's a passage where she says she feels mariada (dizzy) from pulling in and out of different cultures. It's part of survival to go in and out of these different cultures.

WATCH: The Zapatista Uprising (20 Years Later)

I read that you want to eventually have an art history class based around people of color?
Yes, that's why I want to get my Master's to be able to make courses that were not available to me. They only have one Chicana feminism class here that they offer once a year. There's no other Chicano/a course that they offer at all. And that class was very valuable to me. It gave me terminology that I didn't know existed, words I could relate to my practice. When I learned about terms like "rasquache" and "domesticana," I was like that's definitely what my art is. Rasquache is doing with what you have. Domesticana is using what you have around the house, which is totally inspired by my mom.

Do you feel your art is rebelling against everything at once—overwhelmingly white art institutions, homophobic society at large, and traditional and conservative values of the Chicano/Mexicano culture? We also have to admit that, within our culture, there is a lot of misogyny, homophobia, anti-blackness.
Yes. It's kind of overwhelming to think that I have all these things on my back. There are days where I just want to be me. Like this is really heavy, but that's where art comes in—where I can have that freedom to express myself without any constraints.

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All photos by the author unless otherwise noted

All dollar amounts in USD

Every year, over 400,000 Canadian students go deeper into student debt. Some provinces are better than others for giving grants over loans, but many Canadian students eventually have to bite the bullet and take on some form of increasing financial slavery. By the end of a four-year cycle, the average student will end up with at least $18,700 worth of tears for bill collectors to feast on.

Most money that students take for school is necessary to get by. Tuition, textbooks, living expenses—all of these things make up the bulk of what most young adults are borrowing for. But, let's be real, not all of it is spent wisely. There are a few of us (i.e. many of us) who use our money on personal expenses not related to education at all. Dinners, booze, fast fashion, Ubers, and trips to Cuba. We chalk it up to psychological relief—this is the era of mental health after all.

To get an idea of what Canadian students were blowing their borrowed bucks on, I visited and called students from different programs and walks of life to hear about their most regrettable spending decisions.

JOON, MEDICAL SCIENCE, VANCOUVER

Photo via Joon

Notable purchases: expensive Sennheiser headphones for anime ($260), expensive audio mixer for anime ($260), Steins; Gate 0—an anime video game ($50).

VICE: So you submitted your loan application late this year, and your parents are supplementing you until then. Do you feel bad spending your money on bullshit?
Joon: Not really. I never ask for the money. They just give it to me, and I already feel bad taking their money in any circumstance. My little sister cries and screams to get money from them, so my mom is always like, "Joon, you're such a good kid!" I guess it balances out.

OK. Sort of, I guess. Anything you almost ended up buying but held back to save your dignity?
Yeah, there was a video game I wanted to buy called Steins; Gate 0, but it's only for consoles that I don't have—PS4, PS3, Playstation Vita. I was literally about to buy a PS4 just to play this game, even though I knew I would probably never play it again. $300 down the drain. I eventually decided against it, but it was tough.

Do you think you're good with money?
I'm good at not going broke, but not necessarily saving it to be rich.

Total of student loan wasted: $375–$750 per month

Lauren, Radio and Television, Toronto

Notable purchases: a table from Honest Ed's ($22), assorted food ($37), a toaster ($26), a kettle ($22), a Vans hat to look like "one of those hot girls with backwards caps" ($30), a baby plant ($18).

VICE: Why did you buy all this normal stuff? Like, more power to you for saving money, but come on. Why didn't you buy some crazy shit?
Lauren: Well, it's just a bunch of shit that I see and think, Oh, I'll need that! And then I buy it, and sometimes I use it. A lot of the stuff here is just the essentials, though. I don't like to spend too much because I don't like having shit that I absolutely don't need. I'm not about clutter. I feel very crowded with my stuff; I need to get rid a lot of it. I hate owning things. It just stresses me out.

How do you feel about other people's spending habits?
Seeing other people splurge on ridiculous stuff with their student loans gives me anxiety. Like, you're spending so much money on stuff you're not going to ever need and going into debt because of it. Oh my God, I don't even want to talk about it.

You clearly value your food. What is important here?
Oh, oh! I saw this at the grocery store a while ago, and I never tried it before. I put this on fucking everything, I swear.

Total of student loan wasted: roughly $150 per month

Syona, Fashion, Toronto

Notable purchases: an Adidas tracksuit ($112), a pair of Jordans ($150), liquor ($75/month), drunk spending she can't remember.

VICE: You're like the female Drake—tracksuit, Jordans, overall finesse. Do you spend a lot of your money on clothing?
Syona: Not a lot, but definitely some. I mean, it's kind of part of what I do in fashion—having an aesthetic and all that. Plus, sometimes I just go into the Jordan store and think, Do I really need this pair? I already have a pair like this. I'm pretty good at saying no for that kind of thing.

How much money do you spend drinking?
Oh God. Uh, probably $75 on average a month? It fluctuates, though. I'm probably much more of a lightweight than you.

Are you ever concerned about how much you spend partying?
Sometimes, but I think a lot of it works itself out because I'm happy at the end of the day. I'm sure I could save it, but I'm at a point in my life where it doesn't affect me too much, and I don't really want to.

Total of student loan wasted: roughly $1,500 per semester

Josh, Business Management, Montreal

Notable purchases: a Gucci suit ($1,900), assorted Zara jackets ($450), a 2010 Ford pickup ($2,250)

VICE: I have a bias—I'm convinced business bros are the worst when it comes to buying douchey stuff. Please tell me you are the exception.
Josh: I bought a truck with my student loan, and I didn't need it. Is that douchey?

Yeah, to be honest, it is. But at least you're self-aware. Do you feel like you have to spend more money to fit in with the suit-wearing business student crowd?
I haven't been in another program, so I can't speak for things like arts or media, but business students party hard and like to look good while doing it. All of my boys wear suits when we go out. It's a mindset, you know? It's kind of preparing you for after school.

Why didn't you buy an Audi instead of a truck then!?
Well, business textbooks are expensive and the insurance on my truck is cheap.

Total of student loan wasted: roughly $4,500 per semester

Kyla, Marine Biology, Calgary

Notable purchases: six science textbooks ($750), a MacBook Pro ($825), an e-reader ($112), school supplies ($75), four months of metro passes ($320), eats out five times a week ($180 per month)

VICE: You seem pretty responsible with your money. Does it upset you when other people spend their money on luxurious stuff instead of the necessities?
Kyla: No way! I'm not upset. I mean, people got this money given to them. They can do what they want with it. Most people go into debt and accept that responsibility when they accept loans. The people, at least from what I find, who spend their loans on dumb stuff are people who already have money. My family doesn't have much, so I just learned the value of money at a young age.

But surely, you would buy extravagant stuff if you had money, no?
I don't know about extravagant stuff, but I wouldn't fuss over the small things. Being able to sit down and grab coffee, food, take a cab without having to worry about my bank account would be amazing.

You must have splurged on something by now. Don't be afraid—we've all done it.
Ugh, I bought a cake for a friend's birthday from Dairy Queen, and it was something like $50. A really nice ice cream cake. Problem was, when I got there, someone else had already bought him a cake and everyone agreed that it was the better cake. I had the receipt, so I could have just returned it, but I decided to keep it and ended up eating it in one sitting. Real regrets.

Total of student loan wasted: about $750 per semester

Victoria, Broadcast, Toronto

Notable purchases: a Drake Degrassi T-shirt ($30), a pug pillow ($38), a can of Simpson's Duff root beer ($15), a Santa onesie ($75), a Darth Vader mask ($22), a 3D-printed sculpture of herself (free, with a ticket to Fan Expo), a Victoria's Secret bag (priceless: because her name is Victoria), furniture for her apartment ($225 every few months)

VICE: This stuff is very cheesy. Would you say you're a bit of a nerd?
Victoria: I just like to grab things that I think are funny or sentimental. All of these things mean something to me, but they don't mean that much. Some of them are also just very me—like the Santa onesie. It has some liquor stains on it.

Do you ever worry that you're not spending your money on the right things?
Not at all. I think these things enhance my life, and I've been really tight with not spending too much on textbooks or unnecessary binges. I like to think I have a good grip on my finances!

Alright, that Drake shirt is lit. Did he really look like that back in 2006?
Yeah, he changed a lot. He's really swole now.

Total of student loan wasted: about $1,500 per semester

Julie, Computer Science, Halifax

Notable purchases: a maxed-out Visa ($1,800), accumulated interest ($375)

VICE: Wait, so what'd you buy with the credit card?
Julie: I don't even remember at this point! It was all consumable stuff—tickets, drinks, food, cabs. I just got to a point where I didn't really want to look at the bill.

Isn't the interest on this card fucking crazy? What are you doing?
I need to wait for my next grant to pay it off. I wasn't really paying attention and got a little ahead of myself on the holiday break.

I'll keep you in my thoughts.

Total of student loan wasted: about $2,250 per semester.

Follow Jake Kivanc on Twitter.

Hand sanitizer is a cheap and toxic liquor substitute for chronic alcoholics. Photo via Flickr user Morten Rand-Hendriksen

The type of booze Fernando Pacheco drinks comes with a dire warning label—"ingestion will result in severe gastrointestinal disturbance, unconsciousness, and death."

Pacheco, 50, a Portuguese Canadian who grew up in Vancouver and lives in the Downtown Eastside, consumes rubbing alcohol compound, a.k.a. isopropyl, on a regular basis. A "drink" for him is about one third of a 500 ml bottle mixed with water. The effect is practically instantaneous.

"It screws my inside out," he told VICE in a phone interview, comparing the taste to gasoline.

"Your brain and your body feel warm."

His skin flushed, tummy burning, and vision blurred, he said the high wears off quickly. Within half an hour, he typically blacks out.

"Two weeks ago, I lost my cell phone, my house keys, my laundry that I got cleaned... I wound up in jail."

Pacheco is a member of the Eastside Illicit Drinkers Group for Education, a subset of the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users. The group is currently seeking funding for a Managed Alcohol Program (MAP), a form of harm reduction that provides chronic alcoholics with booze in order to stop them from drinking "illicit alcohol" such as rubbing alcohol, mouthwash, hand sanitizer, rice wine, and hairspray.

A patchwork of such programs exist across Canada, with addictions advocates in cities like Calgary and Vancouver lobbying for more.

The purpose of a MAP isn't to get people off drinking (though that's sometimes a positive by-product), so much as it is to halt visits to jail, the hospital, injury, and death, all of which are more common when non-beverage alcohol is a factor.

"Someone going through a 500 ml bottle of rubbing alcohol in a 24 hour period is the equivalent of drinking 30 beers," said Coco Culbertson, a director of programming with the Portland Hotel Society (PHS).

Hand sanitizer, mouthwash, and rubbing alcohol are cheap, easy to obtain, and get a person drunk very quickly—a bottle of rubby costs around $5 and can be up to 90 percent alcohol—which makes them appealing to addicts. One EIDGE member told VICE that crews regularly hit up hospitals to steal large quantities of hand sanitizer, known on the street as "gel." The problem is so common in the Downtown Eastside, residents say local corner stores have jacked up the prices of products like Listerine.

The Downtown Eastside. Photo via Flickr user Patrick Doheny

The PHS, a nonprofit organization that once sold crack pipes via vending machine to curb the spread of HIV and Hepatitis C, runs two programs in the area to help severe alcoholics refrain from drinking these more toxic forms of liquor.

One is a pilot residential program, through which 12 people are given shelter and are prescribed 12 doses of alcohol under doctor supervision, not unlike the way a heroin addict would receive methadone. The other, less formal in structure, is a brewer's co-op. Around 130 participants are now involved in the latter; $10 a month allows them to brew several liters of beer or wine. Twice a day, groups gather to mix and bottle their own stuff, which they can take home.

An exchange component allows people to swap hand sanitizer, rubbing alcohol, etc. for drinkable booze.

Once a week, members have a "drinker's lounge" meeting, said Culbertson, where they can socialize, find support, and discuss harm reduction. It also provides an opportunity to mourn peers who have died—a sad but fairly common occurrence amongst this demographic. Over at EIDGE, 40 members have died in the last four years alone.

"The folks we're dealing with are already on a serious trajectory of illness and death," Culbertson said, noting it's not uncommon for people in PHS buildings to overdose. Many are indigenous and have a history of trauma or are survivors of the residential school system.

Brewmaster Tyler Bigchild, 35, grew up off reserve in Red Deer, Alberta, drinking heavily from the age of 13. His mother, who would take him to the bar with her when Bigchild was a teen, and his aunt both died of alcohol-related illnesses, he said, adding the only time in his life he's ever been sober was when he was in prison; he's spent around six years locked up for crimes like car theft.

At his lowest point, Bigchild, who drinks from 10 AM until he goes to sleep, said he would resort to drinking rubbing alcohol, sometimes just to get over morning withdrawal. He takes prescription drugs to stop from shaking.

"When I drink compound, it looks a lot like iced tea. It's not bad, you mix it with juice."

But, in addition to his deceased family members, he can easily list the names of three friends who recently died due to chronic alcoholism.

While research on the effects of drinking illicit alcohol is limited, one study, published in the Southern Medical Journal in 2009, said the minimum dose of isopropyl alcohol necessary to kill an adult is just 100 ml (about two shots), but that death and kidney failure from ingestion is rare.

Due to lifelong use, many PHS clients are in stages of liver failure, have diabetes, pancreatitis, brain injuries (falls can be very extremely dangerous when highly intoxicated), and suffer from severe withdrawal symptoms without access to booze, causing seizures, Culbertson told VICE. At its worst, alcohol withdrawal can be fatal.

Photo via Flickr user Charmaine Chiu.

The illicit products most commonly consumed all advise calling a doctor or poison control center in case of "accidental ingestion" and the non-alcoholic chemicals they contain can be particularly rough on the stomach.

Alberta Health Services said there were around 80 emergency room visits in Calgary the last few years due to poisoning from toxic substances like mouthwash, though the numbers do partially take accidental ingestion into account.

Additionally, because of its consistency, drinking hand sanitizer without diluting it properly can result in choking—something that recently happened to an EIDGE member who subsequently died.

The University of Victoria and Vancouver Coastal Health are in the midst of studying the impact of managed alcohol programs across the country. Speaking to VICE, lead researcher Tim Stockwell, who is also director for the Center for Addictions Research of British Columbia, said early indicators are positive.

He cited an inpatient program at Shelter House in Thunder Bay, Ontario, where 15 residents receive six ounces of white wine every 90 minutes, from 8 AM to 11 PM. It's enough to keep withdrawal symptoms at bay without getting people wasted.

"One of our main findings was... MAP participants tended to be doing much better than the controls in terms of how many police contacts they had and how many hospital admissions they had. ER visits were much lower for the MAP residents," Stockwell said.

Brad King, who manages Shelter House, added withdrawal services have been reduced by 88 percent.

But he said the MAP concept isn't without controversy.

"People say, 'Are you enabling substance use?' We're enabling access to food and shelter and medical care and addictions care as people need them."

Mark Townsend, former executive director of PHS, told VICE programs like this often get "bureaucratized" when the government gets involved, but the reality is they should probably remain informal. There are few happy endings, he said.

"This isn't a way of getting people off alcohol and not necessarily a way of saving their lives. They're probably still going to die."

Shelter House is always full and has a wait list. It and similar MAP programs, which also exist in Ottawa and Toronto, are the few options for homeless illicit alcohol drinkers, who aren't eligible for dry shelters. Many drink at bus stops, parks, under bridges, and on the street, where it's easier to get arrested, become victims of robbery and violence, or even choke on vomit and die without anyone noticing.

"I've been beaten up left and right," Pacheco told VICE. His most recent arrest took place outside of a Salvation Army in the Downtown Eastside. Blind drunk, he was told he was pounding on the store's windows and yelling, "Feed me!" The level of intoxication that comes from using rubby is much more intense than with regular booze, he said, as is the comedown.

"I can't consume food, I feel sick, I get the shakes, I sweat. It's awful."

Fellow EIDGE member John Skulsh, 55, told VICE for seven years he downed half a liter of mouthwash every day. He was compelled to stop after he gave himself second-degree burns while making a pot of instant noodles.

"I dumped the whole thing on my chest. I was by myself, I was so drunk," he said. "I was in excruciating pain."

Skulsh said he's been off mouthwash the last ten months but still routinely drinks beer.

EIDGE is calling for a non-residential MAP, to give users a place to legally hang out and drink indoors.

While MAP participants sometimes stop drinking non-beverage alcohol and reduce their overall liquor intake, they generally don't get completely clean—and that's not really the point, administrators say.

"What we're trying to do is ease some of the pain for these people and extend their life if we can," said Culbertson. "It's about being kind and re-humanizing a population that's been very, very ignored."

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

John Doe was a freshman at George Mason University when he started seeing Jane Roe, a student at a different university (both subjects have been anonymous in media accounts and court documents). The two young people formed a relationship and frequently met at Doe's GMU dorm room to have BDSM sex, with Roe as the submissive partner. One day in October 2013, Roe pushed Doe away from her and then said she didn't know whether she wanted to continue, but he kept on anyway, he says because she didn't use their agreed-upon safe word.

Later they broke up, but Doe continued texting Roe, trying to rekindle things and at one point threatening to kill himself if she didn't respond to his texts. Eventually, Roe reported the harassment to GMU and, separately, began working with the campus police to prove that he'd forced sex without her consent during the October incident. In December 2014, Doe was expelled from GMU for violating the university's sexual misconduct policy.

That's where things get complicated: Doe sued the university for violating his due process and free speech rights. This month, a district court in Virginia ruled in his favor, largely on procedural grounds. But Judge T.S. Ellis III pushed back on Doe's contention that GMU's code of conduct dismisses the complexities of BDSM relationships. The judge's decision read: "Plaintiff has no constitutionally protected and judicially enforceable fundamental liberty interest under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to engage in BDSM sexual activity."

The ruling has inspired outrage within the BDSM community, but for others, the case left a lot of unanswered questions: Didn't the Supreme Court rule in 2003 that sodomy laws are invalid? Do the same protections not apply to BDSM? Should people be worried about a clampdown on kink? I put these questions to UCLA Law Professor Eugene Volokh, who has written about the case on his Washington Post blog, to understand what the ruling means for the rest of us.

VICE: So what happened here? Did the judge say that banning BDSM practices was OK?
Eugene Volokh: The student's claim was that the university was, in effect, making consensual BDSM a basis for expulsion. I don't think the university has a rule against consensual BDSM; I think the university has a rule against nonconsensual sex, and that its claim was that this was, in fact, nonconsensual. The issue is kind of hypothetical: What would happen if the university or some other government entity banned BDSM? There's no real reason to think that it did. But based on this hypothetical scenario—what if, as alleged, the university did ban it?—the court said, "Well, that would be constitutionally permissible."

Most people are probably aware of Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 case where the US Supreme Court that invalidated anti-sodomy laws across the country. Why wouldn't that apply here?
There are two ways of reading Lawrence v. Texas. One way of reading it is to say that a state may not ban sex in a context where it's essentially interfering with the ability of groups of people to have any realistic sexual self-expression. So the theory goes that what was wrong ? It seems like a lot depends on consent and expectations of consent.

Follow Simon Davis on Twitter.

There was a mixed reaction from bystanders as the object slowly hovered back down to earth, kicking up small columns of dust as it landed. We were standing outside a health clinic in Malawi's capital, Lilongwe, watching the inaugural launch of a small white drone. Malawian officials said a prayer to bless its virgin flight, and they issued assurances that it was not powered by witchcraft. Some spectators cheered; others, afraid the drone might land on them, took shade next to tall maize plants, shielding their heads.

"I'm glad I know what it is," said Scholastic Billiard, who like many of the other women gathered at the clinic, was pregnant. "I would have thought it was a bomb coming to be delivered, or the start of a war." Instead, the custom-made drone is part of a UNICEF pilot program to fly around and deliver HIV tests and results.

Malawi has one of the highest rates of HIV in the world, with roughly 15 percent of adults carrying the virus. An estimated 170,000 children in the country are also HIV-positive, and young people between the ages of 15 and 18 account for half of new HIV infections. The death toll is tremendous—33,000 people in Malawi died of AIDS complications in 2014 alone, including 10,000 children, according to UNAIDS—in part because many people are undiagnosed or lack access to antiretroviral drugs.

"It's a good idea, as people will get their has beaten them all," she said.

But Dombolo also worries that the hovering machines could be met with superstition. In Malawi–a country where three quarters of the population believes in witchcraft, and where those accused of the practice are aggressively prosecuted—a drone landing in someone's garden could easily be read as "witchcraft or something satanic," she said.

According to a September report from the Malawi News Agency, there was quite a stir in Kasangu after a man spotted an alleged "witchcraft plane" crashing outside a home in the early hours of the morning. The claim prompted debate over whether or not the object was proof of witchcraft, and hundreds of people gathered at local police stations hoping to glimpse the black tube with two sticks.

"They will have to know what is flying on top of them, as now they will have that fear," said Daniel Nyerenda, a health officer at another mother-and-child HIV clinic in Malawi. The clinic where he works treats more than 350 patients, up from just seven in 2010, he said, and some of his patients have stopped making the hours-long walk to the clinic to pick up their antiretroviral drugs—a problem that UNICEF's drone program could remedy.

Photo by UNICEF/Bodole

To dispel witchcraft rumors surrounding the new HIV drones, UNICEF has been carrying out drone awareness campaigns in Malawi. Jim O' Sullivan, a pilot-turned-drone technician who works for Matternet, the California-based company that created the specialty HIV-testing drones, says that in communities included in the public education campaign, the reaction has been "heartwarming."

"The kids love it," he said. "When they see the vehicle take off, they will often times cheer. We haven't noticed any fear of it."

Follow Hannah McNeish on Twitter.

'Yer done bud!': a distinctly Albertan slogan. Photos via Dawson Raymond

This originally appeared on VICE US

Dawson Raymond has many names for adult men who troll for underage girls and boys on the internet. "Sick fucks," "fucking pigs," and "rapist douche motherfuckers" are just a few examples I hear over the phone.

A mason worker living in Calgary with three pit bulls, Raymond occasionally apologizes for becoming "overheated." Just thinking about child predators, it seems, never ceases to make his blood boil.

But Raymond assures me he takes a cooler approach when posing as a 13-year-old girl on popular dating sites. As the ringleader of a growing team of vigilante pedophile hunters, he wants to make sure "nobody does anything stupid."

"We're not trying to set people up," he says of the To Catch a Predator tactic. "We don't ask anybody to meet us... we wait for them to talk to us."

With this strategy, Raymond says it doesn't take long to find men sending unsolicited pictures, asking about sex, and even inviting supposed minors to meet IRL. "I'm telling you, the first time it took me ten fucking minutes, and I had like twenty of them talking to me," he says. "I figured it would get harder, but it hasn't."

In September of last year, Raymond started confronting these men at malls and fast food joints with cameras rolling, later posting the videos and chat logs online. Between his Facebook page and branded "creep catchers" website, the videos can rack up thousands of shares and hundreds of thousands of views. As you can imagine, the project is a polarizing one. Some commenters tell Raymond and his team to let police do the "big boy job," while others call him a national hero.

Dawson Raymond

He says he learned the technique from watching Justin Payne, a Mississauga-based vigilante who has confronted more than 150 alleged predators. But it's Raymond who has brought an entrepreneurial spirit to that cause, helping start up chapters in Victoria, Nanaimo, Edmonton, Grande Prairie, Lloydminster, Saskatoon, and soon, Regina.

Calgary police are familiar with Raymond's work. Media have asked them for reaction enough times that I'm sent a prepared unattributed statement: "The Calgary Police Service is aware of the incidents that have been alleged by Mr. Raymond and is actively investigating these complaints," it reads. "The Service in no way advocates a citizen taking police action into their own hands and conducting their own investigations."

The statement goes on to say pedophile hunting is dangerous and puts both vigilantes and their loved ones at risk—something Raymond readily admits. He knows that some of his targets will try to retaliate, and he makes sure his fellow team members are prepared for the same.

"I'm making sure they're soldiers," says Raymond of his vetting process. "I'm not just bringing on any flimsy, Joe-blow guy."

Some of them work in oil and gas, others in warehouses, though none have a background in law enforcement. "We come from all walks of life, but we all have one general thing in common: We don't like these fuckers," quips Raymond.

He's also wary of naïve copycats: "The last thing I need is some little kids going out and doing it themselves."

So Raymond keeps a tight lid on his organization, making sure all the videos and chat logs are put in the hands of appropriate law enforcement officials. His site even includes a legal disclaimer: "All persons portrayed are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law," it reads. "We make no assertions of guilt and provide our viewers with content within the limits of Section 309 of the Criminal Code of Canada."

"Everything goes through me before it's published," he adds. "Even from my other teams, because I make sure it's good."

What law enforcement does with the evidence, Raymond says, isn't clear.

According to the Calgary police, Raymond's public-shaming method can actually interfere with investigations. "If evidence is not collected or submitted to police properly, the suspect might not be charged or convicted," reads the police statement. "Without a charge or conviction, there is no record of the offense or court orders to prevent the suspect from having unsupervised contact with children in the future."

But canned statements like these don't seem to deter Raymond. In fact, he claims that most police unofficially support what he's doing. "I've talked to a lot of police. On the record, they're telling me I can't do it... off the record, they all say not to stop and keep going."

Raymond's motivation comes from a deep anger at the Canadian justice system's inaction on child predators. In his eyes, there aren't enough investigations to begin with, and there certainly aren't enough pedophiles in jail.

"They protect them by giving reduced sentences, like fucking two months—it's a joke," he says. "What I'm doing is making sure people know who the fuck these people are."

Risky or not, Raymond shows no signs of slowing down his cross-Canada mission to out pedophiles. "I started doing this, and I'll die doing this."

Follow Sarah Berman on Twitter.

This photo wasn't taken at the author's workplace, but it is of some naked people who may or may not be having sex with each other in a jacuzzi, just so you get a sense of what that looks like.

This article originally appeared on VICE France

A while ago, I saw one of our regulars in action. I knew she enjoys gang bangs, but this time, she was even more adventurous than usual. It's difficult for me to describe the scene exactly. But let's say I was facing a line of guys queueing up, waiting to have sex with her. She loves having something written above her bum, things like "fill this" or "needy hole". According to her, it stimulates "the stallions" riding her. If that's what she likes, that's what she likes. It's my job to accommodate her with having any kind of debauchery she'd like to engage in.

I work in a sex sauna in Paris. I welcome the clients and make them feel comfortable. I choose the music we play in the background, I prepare coffee or tea, I make sure the towels are washed and that the sauna in general is tidy and clean – which is by far the least sexy part of my job.

I heard about the job from a friend that also works in the sauna, and mostly wanted it because I felt like getting out of my comfort zone – like exploring an unfamiliar world.

In the sauna we see people of all ages – although no one is under 18, of course. It's a very diverse mix of all social classes, religions and backgrounds. Some people just come to the sauna to relax but most of them come to have sex, watch people having sex, parade around naked, jerk off or be jerked off.

But some of the clients are a bit creepier. There are some very needy guys who've been on a very long dry spell and aren't afraid to show it. I've met some shady, weird, crazy guys during my time at the sauna; guys who believe everything is allowed, even though the place only works because everyone follows the rules.

The first rule of our sauna is to respect others – which is basically the first rule of human interaction in general. The other rules are just as basic: learn to accept rejection, always ask before touching and, above all, never cross any line indicated by the women in the sauna or their partners. Showering is mandatory for obvious, hygienic reasons. And lastly, it's forbidden to do anything more than just touching in the jacuzzi. You can't have a hard on in there, and you can't ever come in the jacuzzi either. Men have to be naked in the sauna, while women can choose to wear some kind of sexy outfit, if they feel like it. We hand out condoms for elementary safety reasons, and some lube for those who like it.

I've seen a lady being gang-banged, while her husband checked with a flashlight if the guys who were having sex with his wife were wearing a condom.

After they've come in, the men wait for the women to arrive; they drink tea and sweat it out in the saunas, or they jerk off to the porn that's always played on TV screens throughout the building. Only the regulars talk to each other, the others talk to me. Most clients have a chat for a couple of minutes before moving on to massaging each other, before moving on to fucking.

The competition in the sauna is extremely fierce – there are about ten men to every woman. Luckily, most of these women enjoy gang bangs and being watched, so it's never really a problem.

I'm a woman, which means I have to deal with tons of annoying men hitting on me too; telling me their life's story or rambling on about their achievements while trying to sound like they're not horny. Some of them smell terribly. Or they don't respect the rules; they go to the cabins and leave their used condoms or their tissues behind, even though there are rubbish bins everywhere. I divide the clients in two distinct categories – there are the respectful regulars, and then there are all the rest.

There are recurring S&M parties, so clients can discover that world. But my boss also organises traditional masked balls and Caribbean themed zouk parties. He does it to cater to our diverse clientele and everybody comes to them – from total strangers to French celebrities.

I've witnessed so many incredible and sometimes sinister scenes. I've seen a lady well into her sixties being gang-banged while next to her a woman forty years younger was sensually dancing, naked, with the sole purpose to get the onlooking guys excited. All of that was happening while the husband of the elderly lady checked with a flashlight if the guys who were having sex with his wife were wearing a condom.

I also discovered so many new things that I could never have imagined myself. I've seen a man wearing a kind of locked G-string – like a chastity belt. His wife had made him wear it because he had gone on a business trip for a week. That was one of the most perverse cases of domination I've seen. But it apparently worked, because the guy still ended up in the sauna, but couldn't take the chastity belt off.

I also remember a curvy woman in her forties wearing a nightgown and parading around in the sauna. She was followed by a flock of clearly, very horny guys. When she had gone full circle through the sauna she told them: "You, yes. You, no." She chose a couple of them and had a threesome in one of the cabins.

A photo of some people in a sauna that isn't the one where the author works, and also has nothing to do with gang bangs (Photo by Artur Potosi via)

What happens most in our sauna is candaulism, where a woman fucks other men, while her husband is watching. You could call that very free spirited, but there are some tacit rules to it: A woman can't have an orgasm with the other men – she can only come if her husband has an orgasm at the same time as her.

I was never the picture of female modesty but since I started working at the sauna, I'm slowly getting more and more out of control. I'm bordering on exhibitionism. I went to another sauna once and ended up giving a blow job to a guy while other guys were jerking off around us. When I realised that was happening, I immediately asked them to get out – which they did, without any protest.

Being permanently exposed to sex hasn't influenced my libido but it did change my perception of sex. Since I'm constantly around people who like to experiment and take their sex life a little further, I now actively look for new sexual experiences myself.

I have at times had the inclination to do something with a client, but my contract clearly states that I cannot. I remember meeting an extremely beautiful guy in the sauna once, and I asked him if he'd like to meet in another sauna later. I'd never ask him for a drink: Seeing someone naked is radically different from getting to know each other over a drink. All we both wanted was to fuck.

I've met very interesting and sexually liberated people through this job. Most of them are around 40 and express their sexuality without any inhibitions. I think our generation voluntarily creates many sexual barriers – especially women. I know some women who I think would feel a lot better off if they visited the sauna once or twice. Nothing weird would have to happen: These days, when I go to the sauna after work, the clients are very respectful and don't hit on me. Of course, they don't mind watching me when I take a shower but that's about it.

In the column "How Scared Should I Be?," VICE staff writer and generalized anxiety-disorder sufferer Mike Pearl seeks to quantify the scariness of the world around him. We hope it helps you to more wisely allocate that most precious of natural resources: your fear.

Donald Trump said a weird thing this week, responding to critics who have accused the Republican frontrunner of inciting violence among his supporters. Speaking to a crowd in Hickory, North Carolina, on Monday, the Republican frontrunner insisted that there has been "no violence" at his campaign events.

"You know how many people have been hurt at our rallies? I think, like, basically none except maybe somebody got hit once," he said, according to the Washington Post. "It's a lovefest. These are lovefests."

By almost any measure, this is just categorically untrue. Stories of violence at Trump events, carried out by the candidate's apparent supporters, started cropping up months ago. Back in October, cell phone video captured a protestor in Miami getting dragged across the floor by a Trump fan while someone shouted something that sounded like "Kill him!" In November, footage from a Trump rally in Birmingham, Alabama, appeared to show a protester on the ground, surrounded by Trump fans who were punching and kicking him (although to be fair, it looks like the protester threw a punch or two himself).

Then there was last week's incident in Fayetteville, North Carolina, when a septuagenarian Trump fan named John McGraw appeared to sucker punch a protester named Rakeem Jones. McGraw is now facing assault charges.

A Trump supporter takes a swipe at a protester at an Iowa rally on January 28, 2016.

These types of incidents are likely to continue, thanks in no small part to Trump's apparent encouragement—or at least, his failure to condone violence at his rallies. But is there any way some kind of Trump-related harm could come to me?

Were I to find myself protesting at a Trump campaign event, it seems fair to assume I'd be making myself a target to his rabid fans, or at the very least, to his deep security teams. According to Lee Rowland, an attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, in most cases, I probably couldn't do much about it: Trump has every right to have protesters forcibly removed from his events, Rowland said, although his campaign's claim that its rallies are private events may be overstating their impunity.

"Calling it a private event I think is a bit much," she said. In short, according to Rowland, while protesters can obviously be kicked out for being disruptive, no one should be able to challenge my presence at a Trump rally if I'm just minding my own business.

"As a general matter, it would be akin to any other kind of trespass law," Rowland said. Private citizens, she explained, "have every right to set rules for that event, including removing people who do not share an enthusiastic, sign waving show of support for the candidate."

Trump supporters can also say whatever they want to their fellow attendees at Trump rallies. So when fans shout "she's got a bomb" at a woman in a hijab—and they have done so—that's technically allowed, and while it may be hateful, the Trump campaign has no legal obligation to kick someone out for saying it. "The campaign has a lot of leeway to determine what it believes is disruptive, or what it believes is at odds with its message," Rowland said.

But if the confrontations get physical, Trump fans like McGraw open themselves up to possible assault charges—even if the contact stops at simply grabbing someone. "I'm certainly not aware of anything that would give them the right to touch another human being without consent in the absence of some official role—if they had not been deputized," Rowland said.

A Trump supporter yells at a protester at a campaign rally in Iowa on January 28, 2016.

While I don't have plans to protest any Trump events, I am in that other group that sometimes finds itself in the crosshairs of The Donald and his fans: the media.

Carlos Lauría, senior program coordinator for the Americas at the Committee to Protect Journalists, has my back. In an email, he said that his organization is "troubled" by what it's seeing at Trump events, including an "increasing number of attacks against reporters," and also by Trump's "aggressive rhetoric towards the press."

The campaign's attitude extends even to journalists who are ostensibly sympathetic to Trump, or at least to his party. The question of whether or not Trump's campaign manager Corey Lewandowski yanked the arm of Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields has blown up in the news over the past week, with the Trump campaign insisting that the incident never happened (and attempting to smear Fields's character in the process). Fields, meanwhile, claims she was pulled all the way to the ground by Lewandowski as she tried to ask Trump a question, and that the incident left her with a bruised arm.