Last night we were all minding our own business and scrolling through our Twitter feeds when one of Donald Trump's strangest tweets yet appeared. The now-deleted tweet, which will live on forever through screenshots, read: "Despite the constant negative press covfefe." As if the tweet itself wasn't confusing enough, it stayed up for hours and we were blessed with a slew of witty social media responses.

Tonight, Trump's 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton weighed in with her own response — and it's the latest example of the hilarious #nofilter Hillz who has emerged in the months since her loss.

People in covfefe houses shouldn't throw covfefe. https://t.co/M7oK5Z6qwF

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 1, 2017

This isn't the first time Clinton has thrown some seriously witty shade at Trump and prominent members of the GOP.

Victory for Macron, for France, the EU, & the world.

Defeat to those interfering w/democracy. (But the media says I can't talk about that)

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) May 7, 2017

If you can't stand the heat, get out of the...Congress.https://t.co/TEAXDPEPrt

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) February 22, 2017

She also retweeted a debate prep video recorded in September, in which she practiced avoiding a potential hug from Trump.

Not easy to avoid the unwanted Trump hug, sometimes it even takes practice...

A favorite moment from debate prep (9/24/16): pic.twitter.com/JAAHaqKFoa

— Philippe Reines (@PhilippeReines) May 19, 2017

Clinton has emerged from the woods, she's launched the political group Onward Together, and she's tweeting about covfefe. Nothing can keep her down.

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She’s the 26 year-old debut novelist from the Liberties in Dublin whose first offering, Conversations With Friends, has been compared to some of the greats. From Sheila Heti and Edna O’Brien to even, yes, J. D. Salinger. But in person Sally Rooney has none of the bravado you might expect of someone of her prodigious talent. Chatty, open and with a razor-sharp wit particular to a generation that cut its teeth online, she spoke to us openly about some of the wider issues underscoring her book – including race, sex and gender – which in her careful treatment, emerge far more complex and often funnier, than we could have ever imagined.

First of all I want to congratulate you on such an honest and observant debut novel. How are you finding the newfound attention?
Well thank you. That’s very kind. The attention, I have to say, has been quite surreal. From when it went to auction I knew that the book might attract quite a bit of attention, so I’d prepared for that, but not me. Nothing prepared me for being in the spotlight, as a person. And I feel so unprepared for that. I keep thinking, 'I’m not a famous person. I’m not a public figure!'

The level of personal scrutiny might also be caused by the fact that central character, Francis, seems to be semi-autobiographical. Is that the case?
No, not at all. But I wonder why that is? Is it because it’s in first person? Is it because some of the structural tropes are similar – Francis studies English at Trinity, I studied English at Trinity, for example. Her parents live in Mayo but she lives in Dublin. My parents live in Mayo and I live in Dublin. But besides that it is 100% fiction. None of the stuff in the book has happened to me. But I felt I had to set it quite close to the circumstances of my life because that’s the social milieu I’m familiar with. The book is so much about observing people’s manners and the way they behave, that it would be hard for me to execute if I had set it in a world I wasn’t familiar with.

Do you see it as a feminist book?
Oh yes, very much so. And I think the kind of questions that it’s concerned with are feminist questions about how men and women relate to one another, and how women relate to one another, and how we can work our way out of these quite oppressive relationship norms that have dominated for such a long time. The sort of culturally normative forms of relationship are pretty oppressive, traditionally, and so I think the novel asks how we can escape that, and what terrible mistakes are we going to make along the way?

There’s a lesbian relationship that is taken entirely for granted and doesn’t form the central focus of the book. Do you think as a society we’re finally reaching a point in which heteronormativity is breaking down?
I think so, yes. So many people have written incredible fiction – are still writing so much incredible fiction – about the difficulties of coming out and about the homophobia that obviously so many people still suffer. And that’s still such an important narrative that needs to be told, because we still have so much to learn about how diverse and how different those experiences can be. But in a way, most of the time people just get on with their lives. Homophobia still exists. Sexism still exists. But we’re not conscious of it every waking minute of the day. And that’s what my book centres on. None of the characters in the book could be described as traditionally exploitative men who just want to take advantage.

We’re moving the discussion on to look at some of the more nuanced and unexpected ways in which these things manifest…
Yes. It’s kind of like saying, 'Let’s say we all agree homophobia and sexism are bad, what do we do then?' The characters in the book would never think of themselves of being homophobic or sexist – the idea would seem absurd to them. But can they still be guilty of it? And the other point is that most of us don’t feel solely defined by sexism or homophobia. Most women in their daily life don’t feel as though they are solely and constantly defined by being the victims of sexism. You have so much other stuff going on. Often it takes place in ways we don’t notice, while thinking about our own lives.

Comparisons with Sheila Heti have been made before, and the honesty and fallibility of the central character really did remind me of the first person voice used in How Should a Person Be?
I thought that novel was incredible. I read it years before writing this but I feel as though it stayed with me. The immediacy of the voice – the very direct way of speaking, that’s so far from being high, literary prose – was really exciting to me.

Do you see yourself as an Irish writer and do you see the book as forming a part of Irish literary tradition?
That image of romantic Ireland that’s epitomised in Yeats and even to an extent Joyce, who I think is a really interesting writer but has been co-opted by that same image of romantic, literary Ireland, sends shivers down my spine. That fetishisation of Yeats and his mystic twilight or whatever, doesn’t speak to any of my experiences growing up in Ireland. But am I an Irish writer? Absolutely. Am I an Irish person? Completely. In my national affiliation I feel very Irish, no more so than when I am in Britain. And I feel a strong affinity with Irish writers who are working now. Writers like Lisa McInerney and Colin Barrett. There’s a really vibrant literary scene in Ireland now that’s dealing with the weird contradictions of Irish society in a very honest way.

At the heart of the novel is a relationship between Francis and an older, married actor called Nick. How easy was it to write that relationship?
It came pretty easily. I understood these characters as people – as the author, you know them better than they know each other. In one sense it fits with that classic narrative of the young ingénue having an affair with an older married man, but I wanted to complicate the power dynamics that we attribute to that dynamic. And I think as the book goes on, you come to see Nick as a very different character. And as a writer I found that very interesting, because at the same time as I was trying to understand him as a character, I was also trying to conceal him from Francis, and she spends a lot of the book misunderstanding him. I had to hold both knowledges in my hands.

That’s a big ask of any writer, but particularly someone of your age. Were you always writing?
I always worry when talking about this, because I don’t want to be misunderstood. But I was always writing through my childhood and teenage years and my parents were always big readers and the house was full of books. My parents were always very tolerant of their bemusing daughter who was writing stories and I’m very appreciative of that. And County Mayo, where I grew up, has a lot of writers’ communities. I don’t think I was even conscious of it at the time, but I thought it was completely normal to be able to attend several writing groups a week. And they were very welcoming to me and didn’t mind that I was younger. So yes, writing always felt like a very normal thing to do.

What advice do you have for other young women writers?
There is a huge disparity between the number of published men and women. And I don’t want this to sound victim-blaming – as though there aren’t several external factors causing it – but women sometimes lack the same confidence. I have male friends who will finish a first draft and just send it out straight away. I have to work on it and work on it. I have that cautiousness, like a lot of women, and I’ve been socialised to behave like that. So I guess my advice would be to trust yourself. If you don’t feel comfortable sending out what you have immediately, that’s ok. Work on stuff at your own pace. Also don’t read profiles of writers and think, 'Oh I’m not like that person, which means I can’t be a writer'. I even become worried that I could say something that another woman – like me, reading it – will be put off by. Writers are all very different. If you want to write something and you’re writing, then just trust in the fact that you’re already a writer.

You’ve said that you wrote the book quite intensively. Was it hard letting go of the characters once you had finished?
Yes, because I identify with all four of the central characters very strongly. I feel like that was really important for me in the writing process, to empathise with their decisions and to understand the sometimes crazy things that they were doing. So I had to be on their level. I felt that was necessary. But now the book is written it’s hard to hear criticism of them. And that might sound trivial or silly and obviously I’m open to people reading the book and hating all four of them – that’s totally fair enough – but I can’t help feeling like, 'Oh, but they’re like me. I made them. How dare you criticise them!'

I think the result of that approach is a novel that feels completely real, like a very plausible window into a life…
Thanks. I worry that when people hear ‘feminist book’ they will think it’s going to be about men being horrible to women and women getting their own back. And I totally believe in that narrative: women should get their own back. But the reason it didn’t appeal to me as a writer is because I felt I had to sympathise with all of my characters. And there was no way I was going to be able to get inside the head of a traditionally predatory, exploitative man. I just wouldn’t have been able to inhabit his world. So it had to be more nuanced.

I think it’s important to come to terms with not just how we’re victims of certain oppressive structures, but also the oppressors. At one point they have a conversation about being white people and it raises an important question of, well, once you’ve recognised your privilege, what do you do next? White people, on balance, are bad. White supremacy is still prevalent and we are having white privilege and we use it in ways we’re probably not even aware of. And I think Nick probably feels the same way about his masculinity. He’s a pretty woke guy, he’s read Judith Butler, but what to do then? It’s very difficult to disclaim your identity.

Is there anything outside of your reading habits that put you onto these issues and made you want to address them in your work?
I spent my teenage years on the internet – on MSN Messenger. I had my own laptop as I was finishing secondary school, so I was all the time talking to people online – both friends from school and people from other countries who were my internet friends. So although I was obviously growing up in County Mayo, I was also immersed in the culture of the internet, which has been a way for lots of people to understand alternative viewpoints and perspectives. I also think it's important for those methods of communication to find their way into literature. If you look at the epistolary novels of the 18th and 19th century, they existed because people were getting to know each other via letters. And it’s the same now. It would be dishonest for the emerging ways we communicate online not to somehow find their way into literature.

Conversations With Friends is published 1st June by Faber.

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Once upon a time, the only way to shop for foundation was by waiting in line at a department store or getting grubby with testers in Boots, and booking a salon appointment meant risking an embarrassing eavesdrop moment from the guy who sits next to you at work – Hollywood wax, anyone?

But now you can colour-match yourself in minutes, sort your skin out in seconds and stock up on makeup, hair and body care essentials in the coffees shop queue, thanks to a new breed of seriously clever beauty apps.

Here are the downloads every beauty obsessive needs to know about.

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Welcome to June, when the temperature finally reaches double figures and we Brits decide that's warm enough to listen to music outdoors and camp. Yep festival season is upon us. If you're not inclined to wade through muddy fields or pay £6 for a warm Bulmers then allow us to point you towards one of the great films hitting cinemas this month. Or if you're saving up for your summer hols then you can enjoy some of the fab new series starting on Netflix or hit up one of the superb art shows opening. No wellies required.

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It's well known that when Ted Bundy, the notorious serial killer responsible for the rape and murder of over 30 young women, was put on trial in 1979, he was sent fan mail from women all over the world.

According to Stephen Michaud, the co-author of Ted Bundy: Conversations with a Killer, Ted received countless letters containing marriage proposals and pictures (some of them nude). Each day of his trial, women – referred to as "groupies" – would show up to the courtroom with their hair parted in the middle and wearing hoop earrings, on the assumption that this was the style worn by his victims. Some even dyed their hair brown to match the hair of those he murdered.

In 1980, while still on trial, Ted married one of his admirers. He was executed for his crimes in 1989.

Ted Bundy is the most famous case but, over and over again, throughout history, “bad” men have won themselves legions of female fans. Jeffrey Dahmer, who committed the murders and post-mortem mutilations of 17 young men and boys, received love letters and gift s from women. Richard Ramirez, a serial killer dubbed the "Night Stalker" who raped and tortured over 25 victims and caused the deaths of at least 13, also married one of his many female admirers.

More recently, Anders Breivik, the terrorist who murdered 77 people in Norway in 2011, mainly children, was reported to have received “love letters” from girls as young as 16.

A condition called hybristophilia exists to explain those who are sexually aroused by the object of their affection's wrongdoing. The internet has perpetuated this term and today, there’s even a hybristophilia tag on Tumblr. Clicking on it opens a gateway to hundreds of posts exalting Gary Ridgway, the “Green River Killer”, Richard Ramirez, Charles Manson and, among others, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the teenage perpetrators of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre. Some users from the community have even made their own memes. Because, 2017.

Hybristophilia is often referred to as “Bonnie and Clyde syndrome” after the famous crime duo who, along with their gang, were responsible for at least nine deaths and countless robberies. Bonnie was an unusual criminal and, before meeting Clyde and joining him in a life of crime, was a prize-winning student. It was noted by a fellow gang runner that Bonnie herself never fired a weapon and, more tellingly, had “no voice in the decisions” made by Clyde. She remained devoted to Clyde until their deaths in 1934.

So who are these women who fall for the world's worst men? Laura Elizabeth Woollett, author of new book The Love of a Bad Man is trying to shed some light on the matter. Her book consists of 12 short stories – snapshots, if you will – of the complicated lives of real-life women who had relationships with men remembered as some of the most evil people to walk the planet.

Each woman in the book is given her own voice, some more fictionalised than others, depending on the amount of evidence Woollett was able to uncover. Eva Braun, mistress of Adolf Hitler, is one; Myra Hindley, girlfriend of Moors Murderer Ian Brady, is another. Woollett covers Sadie Atkins, one of the Manson family; Marceline Baldwin, wife of Jim Jones of the Jonestown massacre; and Karla Homolka, who helped her husband Paul Bernardo rape and murder three women and girls in Canada.

We spoke to Woollett about why she wrote the book and how she went about getting inside these women's heads.

Why did you want to write this book?
I’ve been drawn to true crime stories since I was a pre-teen. The stories that attract me most tend to be those committed by people from relatively normal, non-abusive upbringings; the 'How?' and 'Why?' in these cases is more interesting and mysterious to me. I’ve found myself fascinated by female criminals for similar reasons; there’s that sense of unlikelihood, since women – for various reasons – are less associated with crime, especially violent crime.

He proposed to Caril and she turned him down. Not long after that, he killed her family and forced her to run away with him, killing more people along the way.

How did you research these women?
I read biographies, true crime books, court transcripts, newspaper articles, letters – anything relevant that I could get my hands on, really. I also watched documentaries and original footage of them when possible (Eva Braun notably had a lot of home movies). For voice and mood inspiration, I read novels and watched movies set in the times and places these women lived in, as well as listening to music that they liked, or that was popular during their times.

Did you notice any common threads between all these women?
If there was one thing that was common to all these women, it was probably insecurity, and a willingness to have their sense of self determined by the men they were involved with. I think insecurity is a very human thing, though; you’d be hard-pressed to find a person who isn’t insecure in some way, or hasn’t been at some stage in their life.

In general, young adults especially have a lot of insecurities and are less solid in their sense of self. The majority of the stories in The Love of a Bad Man feature young women – even teenagers – and the women who don’t fall into this category often met their partners when they were young, or else had involvements with abusive men prior to meeting the titular bad men.

How closely did you decide to stick to the truth?
Much of the time it had to do with the information that was available. It was easier to stick to the truth with subjects like Myra Hindley and Eva Braun, for example, who’ve had loads of books written about them. With these ones, it was mostly a matter of choosing anecdotes or points during their lives that best represented who they were, what they did, and how they got there.

With others, such as Janice Hooker and Veronica Compton, there was very little information available, so my imagination had more of a free rein. I may never know how close I got to the truth with these stories.

Did you intentionally set out to give these women a voice? For us to empathise with them?
Voice was extremely important to me. I wanted each voice to be unique and persuasive, and for each of these women to feel as real as the next. People, when they tell their own stories, generally try to garner sympathy, and to present themselves in a vulnerable and human way. As I was writing these stories in first person, this was something I kept in mind.

What do you think the attraction is to bad men?
It’s hard to say where the figure of the 'bad man’ ends and the ‘antihero’ begins. There’s a huge crossover there and, as a result, bad men are often romanticised – tragically flawed, but human; dark and sinister, but exciting. As long as antiheroes are seen as attractive, bad men will be too, on some level.

In real-life terms, though, it’s often less a matter of being attracted to exclusively ‘bad’ men, and more the crumbs of goodness they offer: attention when no one else is giving it; plush kittens; boxes of chocolates; moonlit drives; intelligent conversations. It’s harder to see the bad if there’s good mixed in.

If there was one thing that was common to all these women, it was probably insecurity, and a willingness to have their sense of self determined by the men they were involved with.

How many of the women you write about do you think were brainwashed and how many do you think were equally as evil as their male counterparts?
I find the term 'brainwashing' problematic, since it has an association of brainlessness and total powerlessness, which I don’t think is completely true to life and the complexity of individuals. The most skilled manipulators, I believe, are those that tap into something latent within the manipulated person and channel it, while allowing the manipulated person to retain a sense of agency and even, in some cases, strengthening their ego. This was a dynamic within many of the relationships that I researched.

That’s not to say these men weren’t psychopaths, but it wasn’t always a clear-cut distinction between ‘brainwashed follower’ and equal villain. Most, if not all, of these women probably wouldn’t have committed the crimes they did if they hadn’t become involved with these men; on the other side of the coin, most of these men wouldn’t have been such successful criminals if they didn’t have dedicated women helping them.

Caril Ann Fugate's story is perhaps the most shocking covered in the book. Did people feel sorry for her because of her age?
Caril Ann Fugate was actually 13 when she became involved with Charles Starkweather. He was older than her by five years but, intellectually and emotionally, was very unsophisticated. He proposed to Caril and she turned him down. Not long after that, he killed her family and forced her to run away with him, killing more people along the way.

Looking at the evidence, it seems evident that Caril was an unwilling accomplice (a recent book by Linda M. Battisti, The Twelfth Victim, explores Caril’s innocence). At the time, though, Caril wasn’t seen as innocent; it was the 1950s, and she was a girl who’d had premarital sex, living in a placid Nebraska community, which had just been shaken by these violent murders. While likely suffering from PTSD, a lot of people found her cold and ‘snooty’ when she took to the witness stand. She was tried for first-degree murder and sentenced to life, though was paroled after 17 years.

Do you think any of the men actually cared for the women that you've written about?
There’s certainly evidence that some of them cared, and had genuine affection for their women: serial killer David Birnie exchanged over 2,000 letters with his partner Catherine Birnie (the couple were nicknamed Australia's Fred and Rose West) before she cut off communication with him.

Raymond Fernandez publicly declared his love for his partner Martha Beck before they were executed. If ‘care’ is defined as the willingness to put someone’s needs and happiness before one’s own, however, a lot of these men wouldn’t pass that test; a lot of people in general wouldn’t!

Were there any cases you researched which were actually very different from what you'd thought of them before?
Bonnie and Clyde were a lot less glamorous, and a lot less competent as criminals, than in the legends surrounding them. They were constantly getting injured, living in dirty conditions, eating poorly, and risking their lives for relatively small amounts of money. Both of them missed their families and, by the end, weren’t having much fun living on the run.

Most, if not all, of these women probably wouldn’t have committed the crimes they did if they hadn’t become involved with these men; on the other side of the coin, most of these men wouldn’t have been such successful criminals if they didn’t have dedicated women helping them.

Who was the most interesting to research?
A woman I didn’t include in the book, Carolyn Moore Layton, who was the mistress and closest advisor of Reverend Jim Jones (of Jonestown infamy). She ended up inspiring the novel I’m working on now, Beautiful Revolutionary. A fascinating woman, and one who definitely fits into the ‘normal, non-abusive upbringing’ camp.

Do you have any favourite true crime books or podcasts to recommend?
Hazelwood Jr. High by Rob Urbinati is a play based on the murder of middle-schooler Shanda Sharer by four female classmates in 1992. It’s a brutal, pitch-perfect inquiry into the dark heart of girlhood, with a lot of the dialogue coming from actual court transcripts.

Paul’s Case by Lynn Crosbie is a book I referred to a lot while writing The Love of a Bad Man. It’s a weird one, genre-wise – part true crime, part poetry, part theoretical fiction, part indictment of the justice system. Not a book for everyone, but it blew me away.

While researching my story Charlie's Girls, I watched the 1973 documentary Manson. It’s comprised of original footage of the Manson family, and interviews with members and associated people, and it’s also so wonderfully ’70s – full of dreamy musical interludes and psychedelic visuals. Of all the things I’ve encountered about the Manson family, this was by far the most immersive.

I recently read and thoroughly enjoyed Jeff Guinn’s The Road to Jonestown. If you’re looking to read a fresh, comprehensive history of Peoples Temple and Jonestown, I’d highly recommend this one.

Finally, I’ve just started listening to My Favorite Murder. I’ve never been a podcast person, but this was recommended to me a few times – with good reason!

The Love of A Bad Man is published by Scribe (£9.99).

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Summer is oh so close. We've just had an Aperol Spritz-filled bank holiday, festival season is under way, and we're busy eyeing up the swimsuits we'll don at our local lido. We've relegated thick knits and heavy jackets to the back of our wardrobe, and said a long-awaited hello to chic mules, rainbow brights, and plenty of gingham.

But what about our accessories game? We've spied some fantastic maximalist shoes in shops and on catwalks recently – if you're not pounding the pavement in point-toe zebra heels or paisley flatforms, you're not fully embracing spring. Now it's time to focus on bags. As soon as the thermometer hits 26 degrees, the last thing you want is to be lugging around a huge shopper or a big old backpack.

We want to keep our essentials as sartorially springlike as our outfits – think embellishment, florals and fruity brights – and so we've rounded up the best new bags to add to your (growing) accessories collection. Click through for the bags that'll see you from work to park to bar to festival, all while shouting "Summer is coming!"

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So many people, so little time! As June begins, it's Gemini Season, a time where twinning means winning. Scout out your kindred spirits and find clever ways to partner up between now and June 21. From carpooling to developing co-branded products, the options are limitless. Gemini can be restless and mercurial. A wise move: Do a trial run with any prospective doppelgängers declaring anyone the missing soul twin. Talk, while wittier than usual during this astrological cycle, is ultimately cheap.

The divine feminine is rising strong in June. Courageous warrior planet Mars drops into Cancer, the sign of the Alpha female, from June 4 to July 20. If you weren't already fired up about women's rights being threatened, this Mars cycle will sound an impossible-to-ignore call to action. (Conscious fashionista assignment: What will the summer version of a pussy hat look like? Go!) On June 21, the summer solstice, the sun and messenger Mercury join Mars in Cancer. Then, on the 23rd, the annual new moon in Cancer. All this will further energise the feminist agenda. Look ahead: The 2018 elections will be here before we know it and there are candidates to promote and support.

Summer travels are on everyone's mind and June 9 will be major! Worldly, adventurous Jupiter wakes up from a retrograde slumber that began on February 6. That very same day marks the full moon in Sagittarius, the sign of the sojourning nomad. And if you can't slip off for a trip abroad, make a point of mingling multiculturally close to home.

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Arket hasn't even opened yet and it's already causing a fashion frenzy. When news broke in March that the H&M group was launching a new clothing and homeware brand – its 8th brand to date – those with a keen eye for Scandi style (come on, everyone raise your hand) got very excited.

The store will make its debut in prime location in the heart of Regent Street in London this autumn and, today, a second retail space was announced, which will open in Covent Garden at 27-29 Long Acre later this year. To recap, the new stores will stock Arket's own brand (think chic, elegant silhouettes and timeless wardrobe essentials which will be slightly more expensive than H&M, ranging from roughly £33 to £100) alongside a selection of non-H&M brands. In select stores, there will also be a café serving healthy ‘new Nordic’ cuisine.

But if you can't wait until autumn, click on to see a teaser of what's in store from your new high street favourite, Arket.

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On Friday, 21-year-old Micah David-Cole Fletcher was one of three people stabbed on a Metropolitan Area Express (MAX) train in Portland, Oregon after standing up to a man who was harassing two young women, one of whom was Muslim and wearing a hijab. Fletcher survived the attack, but 23-year-old Taliesin Namkai-Meche and 53-year-old Army veteran Rick Best lost their lives in the incident.

After being treated for wounds on his neck and chest, Fletcher was released from the hospital on Tuesday. He later opened up in two interviews about the attack, explaining what it means for the residents of Portland, and sharing a powerful message for the Muslim community in the city.

Fletcher told local TV station KATU News that he wants people in Portland to work together to make the city a safer place for all its residents.

"If you live here, move here, or if you want to call this city home — it is your home. And we must protect each other like that is the truth, no matter what the consequences," Fletcher said.

He continued, "The Muslim community, especially in Portland, needs to understand that there are a lot of us that are not going to stand by and let anybody – whether they are from here or not – scare you into thinking you can’t be a part of this town, this city, this community, or this country."

In another interview with local TV station Fox News 12 Oregon, he said the residents of Portland should rally behind the families of Best and Namkai-Meche, who lost their lives in the attack, and help them during this time.

"We must stand hand-in-hand with one another and find a way to start ending the anger and the hatred, and to not allow anger and hatred to flood our city streets with violence and with the destruction that can come with it," he said.

Fletcher also added that he doesn't consider himself a hero, and said the real heroes were Best and Namkai-Meche. "It was the right thing to do," he said. "I'm not a hero, nobody special. I'm a kid from Portland."

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In 1928, a recently divorced writer named Agatha Christie embarked on a solo trip around the world. On the advice of some fellow travellers, she canceled her planned voyage to the West Indies and instead embarked on a trip to the Middle East. She booked a ticket on the Orient Express to take her to Istanbul.

The famed mystery queen is said to have traveled on the train, now called the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, dozens of times. Having been a passenger alongside the writer's heirs and actor Josh Gad last month, I can assure you that there's nothing sinister about the ride, where your biggest problem is a lack of showers and an espresso machine, and deciding which ballgown to wear to the black-tie dinner.

But Christie saw plenty of possibility. Inspired by a real-life snowbound journey and the major headlines of the day, she set to writing one of the most famous thrillers of the 20th century: Murder on the Orient Express, published in 1934.

Now that story is once again coming to the big screen, and the first trailer (watch below) was released this morning. Due this November, Kenneth Branagh (who cast himself as ridiculously moustached Belgian detective Hercule Poirot) has directed an all-star cast that includes Daisy Ridley, Judi Dench, Michelle Pfeiffer, Penélope Cruz, Leslie Odom Jr., Josh Gad, Derek Jacobi, Olivia Colman, and Johnny Depp as passengers stuck on the train in the middle of a blizzard. A body is found, and the accusations fly.

At a Fox panel last month, costar Colman jokingly compared the passengers' defensive reactions to the murder to having a whoopee cushion go off in a dorm room; everyone turns red, whether they're the culprit or not.

Branagh, meanwhile, described the story as one of "loss, grief, and revenge," with the "claustrophobic, confined environment" of the train contributing to the sense of danger and suspicion.

Who died? Who did it? It's time to play detective.

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“What do you think Cora would have said if you had told her she was going to die?” was the question from my 12-year-old that punctuated the silence between YouTube videos during a recent family dinner. I paused before blurting out, “She would have laughed. She would have said that was the silliest thing she had ever heard.” And I believe it.

My third daughter was born, on a bright and chilly December day, facing a life of uncertainty that threatened to rock my well-ordered existence. I had developed a knack for making things look wholesome and intact from the outside. I had learned that there was little I couldn’t gloss over with a smile and a pair of well behaved kids. Put them in matching outfits, and the deal was sealed. Careful impression management, I call it. That all began to change on an August afternoon more than seven years ago, when the ultrasound technician paused a sticky wand on my swollen abdomen as he struggled to image the four chambers of my unborn child’s heart.

“There is something wrong,” he said, before ushering me to a genetic counsellor who promptly asked if I wanted to terminate the pregnancy. I contemplated abortion, seriously, for the nearly hourlong drive home from the hospital. “If I have an abortion, will we name the baby? Will we be able to have a service? How will I explain to people that I am no longer pregnant? What will I tell the kids?” I asked these questions of my then-husband, and also myself. I was so stuck on what people would think I was nearly incapable of making a decision. It’s as if the certainty of things not working out would be easier to stomach than the uncertainty that they might. I had no faith, but I knew my life was never going to be the same again regardless of my choice, and I knew I would be haunted by the “what ifs” of a rash decision. So I waited. And that meant carrying to term.

Cora was born with a rare Congenital Heart Defect, hypoplastic left heart syndrome, that redefined our family’s sense of normal from the moment we learned of her diagnosis. “Your sister has a special heart,” I explained to my two older daughters, which they understood made her different. As for Cora, it was simply the overarching theme of her short yet profound journey.

Cora was born at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, nearly 150 miles from our home in the Berkshire Hills of Western Massachusetts, and her entry to the world was marked by a packed house of highly trained doctors and nurses, medical fellows and cardiac specialists, all of whom had been eagerly anticipating her birth. I remember holding her for the first time, feeling relief and the tangible satisfaction of her finally being in my arms, while peering down at her smooth pink chest. In what was a suspended moment in time, I recognised — if only for a second — that this normalcy was fleeting. She was first taken to the NICU and ultimately transferred to Boston Children’s Hospital, via a glass walkway called “the bridge,” that both literally and figuratively connected the two edifices where my daughter’s short life began and ended.

There had been something alluring about the idea of an abortion — the promise of wiping the proverbial slate clean and trying again.

While my first two experiences giving birth had left me exhausted and fully expecting the sleepless nights that would follow, Cora was born into a veritable village. This support system not only allowed her to thrive, but it also assuaged the alienation I had so often felt as a mother to a newborn. I was never alone. In fact, I grew to despise the fact that I was nearly incapable of parenting Cora on my own.

A mere six hours after having given birth to her, I traced the tiny details of her countenance, breathed in the scent of baby hair, and sang to her from beneath heavily lidded eyes. I then swaddled my newborn daughter and left her in bed space 27 so that I could get a good night’s sleep. It's as if tiny kernels of faith were planted in both of us then — kernels that would blossom over the ensuing five-and-a-half years, symbols of the inherent possibility that can come when you embrace all the uncertainty of life.

Cora’s first open heart surgery, when she was just two days old, punctuated the illusion of perfection I had been striving for. There had been something alluring about the idea of an abortion — the promise of wiping the proverbial slate clean and trying again — but that decision did not resonate with me. Almost from the start, Cora boldly challenged my understanding of the difference between being alive and living. Her demonstration that every challenge is an opportunity for growth bumped up against my misconception that a successful life was marked by a smooth, unimpeded path.

Cora took every obstacle thrown in her way and crushed it. Her first two weeks of life at Boston Children’s Hospital taught her to trust others; our successful breastfeeding experience, despite doctors’ decree that it was impossible, strengthened our gut instincts; her countless hours in OT, PT, and speech therapy created an army of supporters who cheered tirelessly for Cora; and slowly but surely, a steadfast and confident little girl was shaped by her seemingly disadvantaged circumstances.

With her purple, plastic glasses and the pump-infused central line that fuelled her tiny, broken heart, Cora walked with such clarity and conviction for the simple fact that she knew no other way of life. She took a life others saw as riddled with challenge, and approached it with joy. This spirit allowed her to her attend pre-school while in heart failure, to ride the white van to school despite chronic vomiting, and to do front flips on the trampoline while just 85% oxygenated.

She was also demanding and challenging: My taking away her pink iPad could result in Academy Award-worthy histrionics. She tried to eat nothing but condiments, often licking pools of Ranch dressing from her plate without ever touching one of the vegetables she was meant to dip. But that’s because she was a kid, not because her heart was broken.

Cora’s resilient spirit also forced me to be present. To stop planning. To live fully, in the moment, and cease entertaining the “what ifs” that threatened to rob me of being alive — and thriving — alongside my littlest girl.

Watching Cora live her life, through the six open-heart surgeries she went on to face in not as many years, fuelled my growth when I might've expected myself to dissolve. I got my fill of experiencing Cora while she ate ketchup straight off the plate, belted out “Let it Go” into a makeshift corncob microphone, and recited her favourite bedtime stories from memory while licking her index finger each time she turned the page. Giving Cora the chance to live was an exercise in faith; I chose to believe there must be good to come from the uncertainty that threatened to engulf us. It also allowed me to experience pure selflessness, the kind people offer in the face of someone else's unimaginable grief. Denying Cora the chance to live would have provided me some certainty, but it would have never saved me from my pain. It would have created a different, excruciating pain as a result of the not knowing.

I remember, in vivid detail, finding out Cora would get a new heart. It was an event our family waited for and talked about with nearly as much anticipation as Cora’s very arrival in the world. We’d been hoping for this phone call for more than 18 months; when it came on a hot July evening, I was still wearing the navy blue bikini I had both cooked and eaten dinner in, after spending the day at the lake with my girls. I'd shower only after every last drip of the day had been wrung out. And then, Cora’s dad pulled the curtain back just far enough to whisper words that would become another indelible mark on our story: “We got a heart.”

It was ironic, in the end, that I still had to make the excruciating decision to end my daughter’s life. After she spent 17 days on life support, we accepted the fact that Cora’s perfect new heart — one given through the epitome of selfless generosity — had become damaged beyond repair due to antibody rejection. And so, in the waning hours of a September afternoon, I held my special girl for the last time. She felt heavier than I had remembered, but also far lankier. Her long legs dangled off of my lap as I cradled her head, with her boy-short haircut that had grown out. As I stared down at her face, newly freed from a tangle of cloth tape and a breathing tube, I drank in the details of her rosebud mouth and realised that the connection we had forged through seemingly insurmountable obstacles was not ending, it was simply changing. While I was bidding farewell to the lone freckle on the bridge of her nose, her long lashes, and the full, ruddy cheeks I loved so much, I was not saying goodbye to Cora.

I had kept vigil by Cora’s bedside, while a machine did the work of her heart and lungs, as Cora was physically present but unresponsive for more than two weeks. The decision to take her off of life support, I began to understand, was to follow a path Cora had already cleared for me: Stomp on through the obstacle and embrace what transpires as a result. On that beautiful fall day, I was certain of my task: to simply free Cora’s physical body from the pain of dysfunction and to unleash her spirit in a way she had been modelling for me all along. Thinking back to how scared I had been when pregnant, it became clear: I chose to prolong Cora’s life, because I wanted to postpone her death; in retrospect, it was embracing her life that gave me the freedom, the permission, to face her death. I remember feeling like I was supposed to be scared, but I wasn’t. I actually felt relieved.

Those few years before, despite being faced with a difficult journey ahead, I was terrified by the prospect of ending a life. And I am thankful for having been afraid. The uncertain circumstances of my daughter’s life allowed us to forge a connection that rivals any bond I’ve ever experienced. Even in the midst of my despair, I continue to cling to the gifts of Cora: Her short life taught me to embrace uncertainty, which ultimately taught me to embrace life. Rather than languish on my journey, and admit defeat when things become difficult and painful, I’ve learned to take pause; I'm certain that to feel the inherent discomforts of life ultimately allows us to soak in its pleasures. And this, I’ve learned, is what it means to live.

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I have a decently sized collection of jeans. But even though my trouser drawer is filled with 15 or so pairs, only one and a half pairs truly fits – in a way that looks good and feels fucking great. The others, right now, are too big, and do nothing for me. They’re not roomy enough to be boyfriend jeans or chic mom jeans; they don’t look model off duty-ish. They get baggy and stretched out by lunchtime. They just look…uninspired, ill-fitting, haphazard. But they say something about what I’ve held onto: a forgiving, weight-fluctuation-friendly selection of pairs in larger sizes, once better-looking on a larger me. And what I’ve allowed myself to let go of: jeans that I, at some point, stopped being able to wriggle into. Jeans that likely could’ve fit me really well now – if only I’d kept them.

There’s basically a closet that fits me today, and former closets that fit me at past weights, all occupying the same hangers. My weight has fluctuated in the ballpark of 25 pounds since 2010. It’s been pretty consistent, on the lower end of that range, the past three years, mostly thanks to some exercising tweaks (lots of walking and so much Zumba, because it’s fucking joyous), but I’m always waiting for the other shoe to drop, for that unexpected double-digit weight gain. Can these closets coexist peacefully, without making me feel crazy?

Shouldn’t it be okay to swap out my different pairs of pants seasonally -- whether that means actual temperature shifts from winter to spring, or different periods or “seasons” weight-wise? Or do they belong in separate timeframes of life (and the corresponding numbers on the scale), occupying the same hangers and drawers for different periods? I wonder these things -- and what they say about the complex interplay between my brain, my body, and my closet -- pretty often when I’m digging around for a pair of pants to wear, because the current set-up is not working. Sometimes, it seems like this overwrought perspective on jeans (they’re just jeans, after all!) means my relationship with food manifests as holding onto or getting rid of clothes.

One benefit of hanging onto once-fitting clothing is that it’s a constant reminder that the human body changes. Regardless of eating and exercising habits, it’s a complex tangle of physiological mechanisms, and you canno t always control every part of it. So it doesn’t seem that logical, much less financially possible, to meticulously ensure every piece of clothing reflects my current weight and shape at any given time. I’ve worn a range of sizes in the past five or so years -- mediums through extra-larges in workout gear, 28s through 32s in my jeans drawer -- without drastically changing what I eat and how I exercise, so I know how fickle weight can be.

This is especially meaningful for anyone, like myself, with some garden-variety body image hang-ups to having a completely healthy relationship with food. You’ve already fucked yourself at some point by complicating what could (and, for plenty, is) be a simple activity. Eating can be necessary nourishment – simply squelching hunger. Eating can and should also be a bliss. Or a “foodventure,” as my boyfriend and I call them, which could involve a Detroit-style pizza feast or a gut-busting, five-stop Chinatown dumpling tour. To be clear, I fucking love to eat, and always have; I plan my weekends and plot my next vacation around incredible meals. But my body image hang-ups still linger, and those can complicate the “keep-or-toss” tally of one’s closet.

What does it mean to hold onto “fat clothes” — the shit that was never flattering but at least covered all of your least-favourite body parts up? Well, it can affirm weight loss. (Maybe that's no longer a P.C. thing to celebrate, but many of us still do, of course.) Baggy waistband and stretched-out thighs on a pair of jeans can make you feel like, yes, subtle shifts have occurred in your weight and/or shape. But ironically, it's not flattering. Only in those private moments of states of undress each morning, or in the gym locker room, that’s there fleeting evidence of a changed body. The rest of the world just sees poorly-fitting pants. Buying smaller sizes is about more than replacing old staples: If you’ve experienced weight fluctuations, there's a sense of trepidation. If weight loss is, indeed, one’s goal, could buying smaller sizes jinx things?

Back to that jeans drawer: During a recent closet purge, I swiftly sifted through items, making quick judgment calls about things to keep or ditch – a process I always dread, but end up enjoying how good it feels to be decisive. When I got to a pair of size-32, always-too-long, slim bootcut J Brand black jeans, I stalled. I’d gotten plenty of use out of them, and they were in good shape after years of wear. But these days, they don’t look that great on me. They just look bulky, bunched-up, sagging, always in need of being tugged up or smoothed out. They made the cut to remain in my closet, but not for long.

I’ve decided they belong in a consignment store. If – when – my weight fluctuates, I’ll buy a new pair of black jeans. It won’t prove that I’m a fuckup, have no willpower, or don’t take care of my body. It won’t be some grand philosophical statement about the complex relationship between food, body, and fashion. It’s a pair of legs on the always-changing human body, and if those legs need a new pair of jeans? So be it.

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For somewhere around three months, usually longer, you are invisibly pregnant. Your stomach doesn’t yet betray the geyser of life involuntarily erupting within you, nor are you “supposed” to talk about it with anyone but your partner, and perhaps your family. Of course, your natural impulse is to talk about nothing but this profound phenomenon occurring inside of you, and yet we are unilaterally urged against it until the supposed “safe” zone of 12 weeks has been reached. It’s a pathological paradigm, belied by a culturally-enforced shame that holds hands with the extraordinary vulnerability of pregnancy.

It’s also macabre, our culture’s counsel to stay quiet about being pregnant in case of a miscarriage. The underlying code is: Don’t tell anyone you’re pregnant until you’re 12 weeks along, because if you miscarry or find out it has an incurable disease and you decide to abort, you might have to (gasp) explain to people the unexplainable: your own immeasurable despair. The subtext is: You might have an unendurable time experiencing a miscarriage, but also just imagine what your friends, co-workers, family, and acquaintances might feel about it. Don’t burden them with your personal tragedies.

The possibility of miscarriage already forces the realisation that your body is now an island unto itself, over which you have so little control. You can avoid all the raw fish, soft cheese, cured meats, runny eggs, alfalfa sprouts, lox, delicious Pinot, and fresh-squeezed farmer’s market juice ( UNPASTEURISED!!!) in the world, but even that can’t stop your insides from deciding, no, not this time. Not this one.

I’m not exactly the close-mouthed type, but my husband didn’t want to share the news on our various social media until we made it through the first trimester, and I respected his wishes. Instead, bursting with brand-new maternal pride, I revealed the secret of my fecund abdomen to anyone it made sense to do so in person: diner waitresses, vague acquaintances I ran into at auditions, any of my more amiable Lyft drivers. Partly because I felt the need to explain my pallid geriatric appearance, and partly because I didn’t want to be the only one (literally) carrying around this news, this bold-fonted all-caps headline being waved about by a tiny newscap’d British boy in my womb.

Maggie Nelson wrote in The Argonauts, “Is there something inherently queer about pregnancy itself, insofar as it profoundly alters one’s ‘normal’ state, and occasions a radical intimacy with — and radical alienation from — one’s body? How can an experience so profoundly strange and wild and transformative also symbolise or enact the ultimate conformity?”

The first week I found out I was pregnant, I walked around the world feeling unremittingly elated. I felt a constant buzz of mirthful energy coming from inside of me. A baby! I’d wanted this so much! I was so ready to be a mother, to learn about the world anew through a tiny set of eyes! Eyes that would hopefully be much less astigmatic than my own!

But a week later, exactly when I hit 5 weeks and 2 days pregnant, that happy amphetamine ardor was brutally and without any warning at all replaced with mono-level fatigue and knock-out nausea. Sure, I knew morning sickness was a possibility — I’d seen the movies, and I knew the shtick that it shouldn’t be referred to as morning sickness when it can and does come at any time. What I wasn’t prepared for or informed of was that the morning sickness could and would — for me — be positively ceaseless. That truly, 15 of my 16 waking hours would be spent in unbearable nausea.

Imagine being seasick for months on end.

Yeah. That.

A constant tidal wave of queasiness crashed around my insides, leaving me so feeble all I could do was lie in the foetal position moaning (moaning loudly actually really helped). Hapless crying jags, extreme constipation lasting multiple days on end, and oh, and let’s not forget about dysgeusia, a rare condition that feels as disgusting as it sounds. It is the persistent taste in your mouth of rotting, metallic sewage. Joy of Pregnancy, indeed.

Although I didn’t think I had internalised our patriarchy’s derision of women acting “crazy” or “hormonal,” but a handful of times, after being whiplashed with constant nausea for so many days in a row, I would burst into tears, uncontrollably sobbing for hours on end. (I think about this now and wonder how it was possibly me — I’m not really a cryer. Hell, I’m a Capricorn! I’m very emotionally even-keeled, to the hearty dismay of both of my extremely anxiety-ridden parents.) When my husband would come home and find me sobbing, hours after the tears began, I would try to explain why and couldn’t find a reason. He would hold me and attempt to to comfort me, but I remember blubbering, “I KNOW you think I’m making up how awful this is, but I’m not. This just feels. So. UNILATERALLY. AWFUL!!!!! ”

I would burst into tears, uncontrollably sobbing for hours on end.

“Of course I believe you!” he would cry out, holding me tighter. But I didn’t believe him. My puffy eyes would narrow at him while I continued to weep. A kernel of me just knew he thought I was being a drama queen. A hormonal wreck. Being a despondent bummer for no reason. Because I didn’t have any external symptoms of the plague I was very much experiencing internally, I felt tremendously lonely. At least when you have chickenpox, or a broken leg, strangers and loved ones alike can imagine themselves in your situation — they can readily see it, plus they’ve probably been there.

I believe the biggest reason the contemporary narrative of pregnancy is not open about the real atrocities of the first trimester is that by the time it’s socially acceptable to tell the world that you’re pregnant, you’re already through the rough part. The cathartic elation of informing the world of the news of your secret practically immediately eliminates the truth of the last dark months, and thus the entire first third of pregnancy gets swept under the rug in the narrative.

By the time my uterus received its first houseguest, I hadn’t come across any true accounts of what the first trimester really feels like. A major caveat here is that all women are different and some feel completely fine in every trimester, and many other women feel much, much worse. I wanted to share my experience so those considering becoming pregnant can be more aware of what this first third can look and feel like, and those who are currently going through it can not feel so alone.

I am currently a few days away from my due date. Contrary to the proliferation of cursive-scripted, Earth toned “Mama Blogs” you have likely come across whether or not you too are pregnant, my experience has clearly been nothing in the remote vicinity of blissful, magical, or earth-goddess-like. The first third was an astonishingly lonely, wholly isolating, and quite literally nauseating experience. The second trimester improved greatly, allowing me the energy and psychological room to enjoy the active snorkeler inside my belly, and my final trimester has settled into a kind of multifaceted discomfort that I also, somehow, couldn’t have anticipated. But of course we all must stumble through this alone, there’s no way even the most well-read and well-prepared of incubating mothers could know what pregnancy feels like until she finds out firsthand.

I regret not writing this essay when I was still in my first trimester, but there was no room for anything remotely creative or thoughtful in those dark 10 weeks, the darkest physically and psychologically that I’ve ever experienced. Ironically, this essay proved its entire point: by the time I came out of the tunnel and was well into my second trimester, I sat down to write this and realised I couldn’t quite grasp at the corporal wickedness I’d just spent so many weeks enduring. The true way to describe it eluded me, ironically just like the pain of childbirth must, otherwise why would women return to it again and again?

I have written my little foetus a love note every week or so. The first few letters I wrote to him were positively haemorrhaging with impassioned, sentimental platitudes, but after a certain point in the first trimester I’d had just about as much as I could take.

“Dear You,” I wrote. “I used to like you. I really did. But these past weeks have been a radical species of hell. What did I ever do to you? Do you hate the name I picked out for you? I’ll change it. Do you not like your father? I WILL LEAVE HIM!! I’ll do anything. Just please, please, let me feel normal again.

Nevertheless, I love you tremendously, despite your tiny, very possibly sadistic temperament.

Love always,

Your beleaguered mum ( MUM!!!!!)”

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There are certain things in life I meander through: cooking dinner, long walks through Central Park, and paying my rent. But, for the most part, I rush everything. I consistently blitz through mopping my studio apartment, so my floors are never 100% clean. I barrel through food shopping, so I always get home and realize I forgot the milk a- fucking-gain. And, most damningly, I surge through relationships. For most of my adult life, I’ve dated at a middle school clip. We meet, we have one date, we have another, and by date three, I’m on Airbnb researching cabins for weekend trips upstate and wondering whether or not he’s told his mother about me. (He hasn’t.)

This pace served me well with my three serious boyfriends: one of which was in high school, so it made sense; one who I was friends with for years, so we skipped over the “getting to know you” part; and one who was a lazy, cerebral ass hat who contributed the bare minimum to our relationship, so I made all the decisions. But once I bid adieu to these three guys and set off into the “real” world of dating — which was filled with terms like “seeing each other” and “not looking for anything serious ” — I realised very quickly that defining the relationship didn’t always follow my breakneck speed. In fact, DTR barely happened at all.

Being someone prone to extreme behaviour, I went in the complete opposite direction. I tried my hardest to be cool and not worry about defining the relationship. But I’m actually someone who prefers boundaries and labels — and there’s nothing wrong with that. So that whole attitude failed gloriously, culminating in a drunken showdown with a guy who I allowed to string me along for the better part of a year. I accepted the fact that I was looking for a real, lasting connection, and made sure to let the guys who I started dating know.

This new state of mind wasn’t very fruitful for me until mid-February, when I met Jude* on Bumble. We hit it off, moving swiftly to text message, which is where he asked the question I always look forward to in a new dating situation: “What are you looking for?” I told him that I wasn’t one to rush into things (practice makes perfect, guys), but that I wanted to find someone to build a relationship with. He told me he was too, but that he’d just gotten out of a relationship, so he wanted to take things “slow.” I agreed, and we started to see each other.

We both tried to keep the pace sluggish. Truly, we did. But when you like someone, and your schedules align, and you’re in that beginning flush of a new relationship, and you’re stoked as fuck, then it’s easy to get carried away. Jude and I were spending the night at one another’s places every time we hung out, we texted or G-chatted all day, I was cooking him dinner on certain days of the week when we worked late, and he’d met my friends over fried chicken while I met his over veggie phó. When we started sleeping together, I gave him my rule: If you fuck someone else, I need to know about it, because I don’t sleep with men who are sleeping with other people. He agreed.

You can probably figure out where this wound up.

I can see that my need to slap the label of BF across the forehead of any man I kinda-sorta liked stemmed from a raging case of insecurity.

On the one hand, I felt like one half of a couple. But on the other hand, I was getting to know things about him that I really didn’t like — he was a bit macho, he was stubborn, he seemed hung up on his ex, and he once looked at me square in the eyes and told me that he respected Steve Bannon for his intelligence. (I know.) And it had me question whether or not it was a situation I wanted to be in. I was itching to define the relationship, but he didn’t want to, and I wasn’t even sure if I actually wanted this guy to be my boyfriend, which was a weird situation to be in.

Looking back at my dating life through more mature eyes, I can see that my need to slap the label of BF across the forehead of any man I kinda-sorta liked stemmed from a raging case of insecurity. In the past, I’d rush the boyfriend tag, because it made me feel like he wasn’t going to leave me — and, back then, I needed someone to be with. But with Jude, I knew what I wanted. And since I didn’t need him, or any relationship, I was able to step back, slow down, consider what I actually wanted, and whether or not he fit into that — even while, on the outside, it seemed like we were chugging along at a clip. And at one point, after getting fed up over something he did, I texted my friend Sarah and said “I don’t think I even want to date him anymore.” She texted me back, “Then that’s your answer.”

So when he told me through tears one Friday that he’d slept with someone else instead of calling me, I broke it off. I cried in the cab on the way home, while the driver passed me tissues through the change slot in the plexiglass that separated us. I took the next morning to wallow. But by mid-afternoon, I realised that I had learned an important lesson in the act of DTR.

Rushing the labels in my relationships allowed me to overlook a lot of the red flags that would typically keep me from moving forward with a person. I knew the cerebral ass hat was a cerebral ass hat deep down, but since I was high on the feeling of having a real-life “boyfriend,” I squashed those feelings and focused on the few positives in our relationship. Slowing down helps keep things in focus. Now, this isn’t to say that there won’t be issues in future relationships I have. No one is ever going to be perfect. But it’s important to figure out if your shit jives with their shit before you lock ‘em down, because it’s harder to confront the bigger issues with a person when you’re deep in the love trap.

With Jude, I saw the red flags, and realised he wasn’t a person I wanted to move forward with. And even though I wasn’t the one to end things, that realisation was golden to me. Getting to know someone you see a potential romantic future with is a marathon, not a sprint. For me, it’s important to keep my boundaries up until I feel like I’ve gotten to know the person well. My “don’t-sleep-with-anyone-else-while-you’re-sleeping-with-me” rule is one of those boundaries, because I’ve learned I fall hard for men after we’ve been intimate, and I don’t like sharing. After Jude, I won’t have regular sleepovers with a dude until he’s earned my trust and the privilege of spending all that time in my space.

So while my floors continue to suffer thanks to my rushed mop jobs, I’ve decided to treat the beginning parts of my next relationship like I treat cooking dinner: one step at a time, relishing in the feelings it gives me, and drinking plenty of wine in the process.

* Name has been changed.

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Trystan Reese and Biff Chaplow exploded onto the parenting scene a couple years ago after the couple fought to adopt Chaplow's niece and nephew, who were living in a traumatic home. Their journey through court hearings and custody battles was chronicled on the popular parenting podcast The Longest Shortest Time, and Reese and Chaplow were dubbed the "accidental gay parents."

Now, after gaining custody of their son and daughter, Reese and Chaplow are planning to add a third child to their family. Reese, who is a transgender man, is pregnant. In a new episode of the podcast, he and Chaplow talk about their decision to have a baby, going through a miscarriage, finding out Reese was pregnant, telling their families, and how other people react to seeing a pregnant man.

This is their story.

Just a preview from today's pregnancy shoot!

A post shared by Biff And I (@rebelprincetrys) on Apr 14, 2017 at 6:02pm PDT

On preparing his body for pregnancy:

In order to get pregnant, Reese had to stop taking testosterone, which meant that his periods started coming back for the first time in 10 years. But even after months of trying and carefully tracking his cycle, Reese wasn't pregnant. He and Chaplow started to get discouraged, but while many cisgender women who are trying to get pregnant might feel the need to blame their body for failed attempts, Reese was found a way to be much kinder to his body.

"I had to work so hard to feel great about my body that I didn't ever blame it on on my body," he said. "I just sort of thought maybe this isn't meant to be. Maybe we learned what we were supposed to learn from this experience and and we need to just sort of accept where we are and this beautiful family we have which is not a consolation prize at all.

And one morning I woke up and I felt really, really bad. Like I had a fever bad, like lying on the tiles of the bathroom floor because how cool they are — feels good on your face kind of bad.

And I randomly grabbed one of the tests and it came back positive. And I was like oh my god this is actually happening."

On telling Chaplow that he was pregnant:

"I had to go wake him up and I was like 'ah I'm pregnant.'

He was a little bit sleepy but he was just like 'I told you so.' So that's still, like, romantic. He said 'I'm really excited to start planning for you. But like is it OK with you if I go back to sleep now?'"

32 weeks today!!!

A post shared by Biff And I (@rebelprincetrys) on May 18, 2017 at 6:48pm PDT

On going to the doctor's office:

Reese told The Longest Shortest Time that he and Chaplow were anxious for their six-week appointment, when pregnant people get their first ultrasound, and on the week of the appointment he called the clinic to make sure his doctors were aware and prepared to treat a pregnant dad.

"I can feel someone looking at my face and searching for the remnants of womanhood. They kind of squint their eyes a little bit and I can tell they're trying to, like, take away my beard. They're trying to transition me in their heads."

Triple-checking that this clinic was prepared to treat transgender people, though, paid off.

"There hasn’t been an ounce of transphobia from anyone I have come in contact with," he said. "I expected to have to show extra ID, them to have to call their manager, all kinds of things and none of that happened. I went to go give blood at the phlebotomy lab, checking in with the person at the desk and she would type in my Medical Records ID and she be like 'OK you're here for the six weeks along blood test. oh six weeks along. Congratulations you look good.'

And I'm sitting there and I'm like 'did you not notice that I am a man?'"

On telling his mom:

After ultrasound, Reese wrote an email to his mom to break the news.

"I didn't know what her response was going to be and I didn't want to put her on the spot with the expectation that she was going to fawn and gush," he said. "I wrote like five or six drafts of the email just to make sure that I got it right. And she wrote back right away. 'Congratulations I know you're going to be great dads. There's no reason why only screwed up people should have kids.'"

#family

A post shared by Biff And I (@rebelprincetrys) on Mar 19, 2016 at 9:28am PDT

On telling their kids:

Their son, Riley, is happy to have a new baby coming to their family soon, but also worried about what kids at school might say if they knew his dad was pregnant.

"He tried to ask us if we would pretend like the baby was just our cousin that we were babysitting," Reese said. "[For him] it's literally like just anything to have this not be our baby that my dad gave birth to. So, you know, we're happy to let him protect himself however he needs, but there is a limit. And pretending that this baby is not ours is where the line is drawn."

Their daughter, Hailey, on the other hand, is overjoyed to tell anyone and everyone.

"She has told everybody in her class that her dad is transgender and is having a baby and she's going to be a big sister. So we've kind of gotten to see it play out."

Halfway done cooking a person!!!

A post shared by Biff And I (@rebelprincetrys) on Mar 8, 2017 at 7:33pm PST

On people's reactions to seeing a pregnant man & keeping himself safe:

Safety is a big worry for all transgender people, but especially for a visibly queer and pregnant man, so Reese has figured out how to protect himself while in public.

"Because it's still freezing cold in Portland, I'm able to layer. So with like a chunky sweater, a long open coat, and then like a drapey scarf, you cannot tell at all."

But the one place Reese is really public about his pregnancy is online. He posted a video explaining why he, as a transgender man, would even want to be pregnant on Facebook and got a lot of feedback — both positive and negative.

"Everything from a lady upon learning that I am a trans person who's pregnant saying that I look like a circus freak, and much worse things than that have been said to me and about me, all the way to trans people who are angry that I even made a video to begin with because I shouldn't have to explain myself."

On how cool it is to be pregnant:

"It's been really awesome. And that's like not cool to say," Reese said. "You're supposed to like complain about your ankles or whatever. But I've been having a blast being pregnant. Feeling the movements has been so cool. The kids every night will read stories to my belly. You know, it's just been really awesome."

Reese and Chaplow will be answering questions live with The Longest Shortest Time on Friday, June 16 at 2 p.m. Eastern time. Tune in to learn more about their story or check out the couple's website.

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For Anna (Zoe Lister-Jones) and Ben (Adam Pally), the young couple at the heart of the upcoming indie film Band Aid, verbally vicious marital spats are a fixture of everyday life. Then, the couple stumbles upon an ingenious way to hack their fighting problem: Setting each of their tired arguments to music. The Dirty Dishes, a band named after the couple's classic fight over the constantly overflowing sink, becomes the battleground in which Anna and Ben can confront the grief at the heart of their marriage.

I sit down with the actress, director, star, and producer of the film, Zoe Lister-Jones, to talk about the joys of an all-women film crew, jumping on mattresses, and why Band Aid ultimately has an optimistic message about long-term relationships.

In many ways, Band Aid is the antidote to the romantic comedy meet cute. It's one of the first movies I've ever seen about a young couple putting real work into their relationship. What motivated you to fill that gap in cinema?

"You see movies about couples who are either falling in love or falling out of love, but it's much more rare, at least in my experience, to see a movie about a couple who's working on their relationship. So much of what it means to love someone is to really focus on the hard work that it takes to stay with them. I am a child of divorce, so I've been grappling with the larger questions of what it means to stay in a relationship and why people choose to stay for a long time. It was important to explore those themes on screen in a way that I hadn't seen them done before."

So you'd say this is a movie about a couple figuring out why they're together?

"It's about what it takes to stay together, rather than the classic tropes we see in the meet cutes of falling in love with someone, or the breakups we see in so many films, when people fall out of love. The banalities of commitment and what it takes to stay committed is something that's interesting to capture on screen."

Do you think us unwed millennials should walk away from this movie optimistic or terrified about the whole "marriage" endeavour?

"People should be optimistic. The movie's not just about marriage, it's about relationships in general. Even if you've only been with someone for a few months, you come up against similar conflicts, once you really get to know a person.

"When I was younger, I was fixated on finding the perfect guy or the perfect relationship. As I've grown, what's been really helpful in my relationship is understanding that loving someone is accepting their imperfections, and the imperfections of the relationship. That striving for the Hollywood version of romance is actually really dangerous.

"It really does take so much work to stay committed and to stay in love. That's actually a hopeful statement, even though I'm using the word 'work' and not 'fun.' It takes work to have fun, and to keep the fun alive. That's an important and hopeful sentiment to hang on to."

The idea of hiring an all-female crew came to me, and I knew it would be essential that I was directing in order to make that come true.

I was immediately struck by Band Aid ’s opening fight scene. It was so real and so cutting. It sounded like you filmed an actual couple fighting. As a writer, how did you find a way to rehash the same fights over and over again, in such interesting, accurate, and nuanced ways?

"Because it was the opening of the film, it was important to find the comedy in these sort of classic relationship squabbles. Part of the comedy lies in their commonality, in the fact that we are all having the same fight. Which is something I found so enlightening in the writing process, and one of the reasons I wrote the screenplay to begin with.

"When you're in a long-term relationship, or any relationship, the fights that you have with your partner can feel very specific to you. I was talking to to my friends about their fights and their relationships, which people are often apprehensive to share for fear of being judged. Once they started sharing what their fights were about, we all realised we were kind of fighting about the same things. So I think that distilling what those things are, finding their universality, and relaying them as best as I knew I could from my own personal experience into the dialogue was my biggest intention."

It's amazing that you wrote, directed, produced, and starred in Band Aid. How long have you been considering a project of this magnitude, and when did you feel ready to take it on?

"The three features that I co-wrote, produced, and starred in with my husband [Daryl Wein], were all projects that were, in the long run, leading up to this one. The skill sets involved in those jobs lend themselves to what it takes to direct. I felt that it was the right time in my life as an artist to take that next step. It was something that scared me — to direct — and that's always a sign that that's something you should do.

"When I wrote the script I didn't know that I would direct it. I was just writing it as a personal experiment to see if I could have fun writing. When I finished the script it became clear that this was something I wanted to have creative autonomy with. The idea of hiring an all-female crew came to me, and I knew it would be essential that I was directing in order to make that come true. There were a lot of factors. It's been a long time coming, but it all happening very quickly."

It was inspiring because it felt that we were doing something that had never been done before, and might actually help effect change in an industry that has been stubborn to change.

About a year ago, I heard actress Brooklyn Decker on NPR’s Ask Me Another, raving about her experiences working on a utopian all-women film set. Later, I realiaed she was describing Band Aid. One of the elements Decker spoke of was how efficient day-to-day work on set was. What were your own takeaways from the experience?

"What was so amazing about our crew was that it was really nurturing and supportive and free of ego, but also so productive and efficient. It was really the best of both worlds. The energy on set was markedly different from any other set I've been on before.

"It was really inspiring on a lot of levels. It was inspiring because it felt that we were doing something that had never been done before, and might actually help effect change in an industry that has been stubborn to change when it comes to gender inequity. But it also was just, for the work itself, so incredible and productive and as I said, supportive. It was a really amazing group of people creating work together."

The movie does contain three semi-nude scenes. What was acting in sex scenes, free from the male gaze, like?

"It was...amazing. It was really amazing. There are a fair amount of nude scenes. Whenever I've been put in that position in the past, whether or not the men in the crew are intentionally looking at you through that lens, I think it's impossible for them not to. As women, we're always being objectified and sexualised, and that takes it to the nth degree.

"So, I always have felt kind of uncomfortable in those situations. It was so freeing to be surrounded by women and to feel none of that dynamic, whether it's projected or real. The vulnerability level is so minimised when you know that you're not in danger in that way. As women, we walk down the street knowing that at any moment, we could be in danger. I think this movie is very much about womanhood in some ways, and what it means to be a woman, so there was a lot of life imitating art."

While efficiency and feeling comfortable during nude scenes were happy byproducts of your crew’s set-up, what was the initial logic behind your decision to have an all-women crew? How did it tie into gender inequity in film?

It was two-fold. On a personal level, I wanted to see what it would feel like to make art with other women. I had never really experienced that before. I wanted to create a set that was the most empowering version of the filmmaking experience that women could have, where not only were they being given opportunities that they might not otherwise be given, but also they were allowed to take up as much space as they wanted to.

Additionally, I was aware that at this stage in my life, couples are pairing up, and socialise generally with other couples or with families. It becomes and more rare to spend time with just women. Whenever I do it there's this sort of ineffable magic that happens. I thought it would be really cool to see what the translated to in the context of making art.

This all reminds me of a conversation in the movie. Ben (Adam Pally) finally goes to talk to his very wise therapist mother, who teaches him what he should've been paying attention to the whole time. She gives this very refined, "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" speech, and explains the different ways men and women process grief. Do you think that kind of fundamental difference between men and women exists in Ben and Anna’s relationship, or even in film crews?

"I do think that men and women are different. Part of what I was trying to explore in my own creative process is acknowledging our differences as a way to bridge them in relationships. So much of what we try to do is make each other try to fit in our rhythms and our processes.

"There was something, for me at least, freeing to accept that we're never going to fit into the mould that we're trying to create for each other so that we can process things the same, or communicate in the same way. In that scene with Suzie Essman, who plays Ben's mom, I was trying to crystallise it as best as I could — if anything, for myself."

Here's one last question. At one point in the film, Anna leaps on an upright mattress to get out her anger. I know your character was going through a big cathartic moment, but it kind of looked like a fun exercise. Would you recommend people trying that stunt out?

"I would. I think that as women, we spend a lot of time in our heads, and one of my personal challenges lately has been to spend more time in my body. I think it's easy to forget to think from the neck down, and to experience life from the neck down, especially these days when we're so obsessed with our phones and technology. That was me trying to physicalise the emotions that the character was feeling. It was really fun. It was super fun. I put on riot girl music, and let it out."

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In our first interview with a sugar baby, 32-year-old *Crystal Milan discussed what it was like to treat being a sugar baby like a job. But obviously, some people do choose the romance side of sugar dating — like Milan's friend, Gail, who introduced her to the scene.

Here, we chat with the 33-year-old who met her current boyfriend on Arrangement.com — and is now in an exclusive relationship. Oh, and she makes £10,000 a month.

This interview is part one of our series about sugar babies. It has been edited and condensed for clarity. *Names have been changed.

How long have you been a sugar baby?

"Oh my gosh, I’ve been in the sugar dating scene for about 5 years. I moved to Atlanta to be a producer, but I wasn’t making that much money, and it was hard for me to make friends. It was also hard to find any good guys in the dating scene. I don’t even know if Tinder was around then, but the quality of people just wasn’t what I wanted.

I heard about the sugar baby scene through the grapevine and through some articles, so I thought I’d give it a try. I went into it originally thinking that I would find someone to hang out with, and it might turn into something else or help my network. In the end, though, I was going into it for companionship, to find a potential husband or suitor."

Did that work out for you?

"It worked out really well for me. I’m in a committed relationship at this point with one gentleman, and it’s been interesting and beneficial for me."

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President Trump announced Thursday afternoon that the U.S will withdraw from the Paris global climate pact, saying the accord is a bad deal for Americans. Trump, who has claimed without evidence over the years that climate change is a "hoax," made the announcement at the White House's Rose Garden.

"In order to fulfil my solemn duty to protect America and its citizens, the United States will withdraw from the Paris climate accord," Trump said. He added that he will renegotiate the terms of the agreement to possibly re-enter the deal or seek another type of arrangement.

The White House had signalled that withdrawal was likely, but Trump has been known to change his mind at the last minute on such major decisions. Abandoning the pact was one of Trump's principal campaign pledges, but America's allies have expressed alarm about the likely consequences.

The White House invited representatives from several groups that support withdrawing from the Paris accord, including staff from the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank with close ties to the administration, and Myron Ebell, director of the Centre for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think tank that gets financial support from the fossil fuel industry.

Under the agreement, the US had agreed to reduce the country's pollution emissions by 26% to 28% of 2005 levels by 2025 — about 1.6 billion tons. (The United States is the world's second largest emitter of carbon.) Countries are permitted under the treaty to change their goals and there is no punishment for missing targets.

Pulling out of the agreement outright would take three-and-a-half years under the standard cooling-off period for new international treaties.

Abandoning the Paris pact would isolate the US from a raft of international allies who spent years negotiating the 2015 agreement to fight global warming and pollution by reducing carbon emissions in nearly 200 nations. While travelling abroad last week, Trump was repeatedly pressed to stay in the deal by European leaders and the pope.

Withdrawing would leave the United States aligned only with Russia among the world's industrialised economies. Syria and Nicaragua are the only two countries that didn't sign the agreement.

American corporate leaders have also appealed to the president to stay in the pact. They include Apple, Google, and Walmart. Even fossil fuel companies such as Exxon Mobil, BP, and Shell say the United States should abide by the deal.

Scientists say Earth is likely to reach more dangerous levels of warming sooner if the US retreats from its pledge because America contributes so much to rising temperatures. Calculations suggest withdrawal could result in emissions of up to 3 billion tons of additional carbon dioxide in the air a year — enough to melt ice sheets faster, raise seas higher and trigger more extreme weather.

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Fans of Netflix's Sense8 were disappointed to learn on Thursday that the show has been cancelled. This follows the news that Netflix was cancelling The Get Down. Notably, The Get Down marks the first time a Netflix series hasn't been renewed for a second season.

Even if those aren't two of your favourite shows, there may still be a bigger reason to worry. Reed Hastings, Netflix's founder and CEO, may want the streaming service to cancel more shows, according to an interview with CNBC at the Code Conference on Wednesday.

"Our hit ratio is way too high right now," Hastings told CNBC. "So, we've canceled very few shows… I'm always pushing the content team: We have to take more risk; you have to try more crazy things. Because we should have a higher cancel rate overall."

Hastings also said in the interview that the company was "surprised" at the high success of its recent (and controversial) drama 13 Reasons Why. "It's a great show, but we didn’t realise just how it would catch on," Hastings told CNBC of the series.

Netflix is notorious for not releasing data on its viewership, so we don't know exactly how many people tuned into 13 Reasons Why, Sense8, or The Get Down. Hastings hinted, though, that shows with larger viewerships are less likely to be canceled by the streaming service. So if you love a Netflix show, tell your friends!

Hastings also told CNBC that Netflix will increase its budget for original content. "There are so many great shows we don't have yet," the CEO said in the interview. When one TV show's door closes, another one opens.

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An Australian TV host has slammed the Daily Mail for its “cheap, lazy, sexist” coverage in a rousing speech on the Today show, which has garnered reams of support on social media.

Karl Stefanovic took down the news and gossip website after it published pictures of him checking into a caravan park with a young female colleague and 12 cans of pre-mixed rum, implying that they were “settling in for a long night”.

Watch the powerful tirade for yourself.

“Fact: This was work,” Stefanovic said, addressing the inference on Friday morning. “We were filming a story about our struggling prawn farmers… The producer pictured on the website is a committed, talented, hard-working and totally professional young woman and not deserving of this cheap, lazy, sexist online slur.”

He said the young producer, Lauren Tomasi, had “spent the past hours in tears” because of the “hurtful and false way” she was portrayed. Tomasi tweeted her support for Stefanovic, saying she was proud to work with him.

I'm so proud to work with this man, and I'm bloody proud of the story we shot in Yamba. This needed to be said. https://t.co/Uedn6fiI8i

— Lauren Tomasi (@LaurenTomasi) June 1, 2017

The Mail has published numerous gossip articles about- and photos of Stefanovic since he split from his wife Cassandra Thorburn last year, and his speech suggests he's finally had enough.

“Go hard on me,” he said. “Make up your stories. Publish your lies. Send out your paparazzi. But if you have a sliver of decency, if you have any care whatsoever for the women of Australia, do not slur the reputations of others in your eagerness to throw mud at me.”

He called the Mail a news website, "which seeks to profit from criticising and publicly humiliating people, women especially". He added: “This site specialises in shaming women – for how they look, for what they wear, for how much they weigh, for how much weight they’ve lost, for going to the beach.”

“It has a despicable track record of denigrating women for who they are, what they look like, the choices they make, for denigrating women full-stop. This is the site that ridiculed Lisa [Wilkinson] for wearing the same blouse four months apart.

“The same site that tried to shame Sunrise host Samantha Armytage for wearing so-called ‘granny pants’,” he added, and ended by urging viewers to boycott the site.

The Mail addressed Stefanovic's criticism, calling it a "bizarre tirade" and highlighting tweets which called him a hypocrite.

"Karl Stefanovic went on a 'bizarre tirade' on the Today Show" - Daily Mail still not getting it! 🤦🏻‍♂️ #boycott pic.twitter.com/JNLhxwSk1x

— Christopher Rhodes (@rhodeschris_7) June 2, 2017

Many others were quick to show Stefanovic their support on Twitter, however.

karl stefanovic just dragged the daily mail to hell and back about time someone called them out pic.twitter.com/sI20iU7khx

— ash (@failingwords) June 1, 2017

KARL STEFANOVIC'S ATTACK ON THE DAILY MAIL IS THE BEST THING EVER 🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻

— Victoria (@yeahvictoriaaa_) June 2, 2017

I'm loving Karl Stefanovic's polite yet brutal rant against #DailyFail's #sexism here https://t.co/juKCHsnY5P #Equality #MSM #Women

— Hazel Fairs (@Hazel_Fairs) June 2, 2017

Daily Mail staff: "oh wow Karl shredded us, this is embarrassing, what do we--"

editor: "TURN IT INTO A YARN" https://t.co/kpu5GyMVg2

— Josh Butler (@JoshButler) June 1, 2017

Good to see some Pom Bully Dacre Bashing here. Hope he knows he'll have to lock up his black bin bags from now on ! https://t.co/rVVLvXp7MQ

— MichaelWhite (@michaelwhite) June 2, 2017

But this isn't the first time Stefanovic has criticised the media and been hailed as a feminist hero. Back in 2014 he wore the same suit every day for a year to make an important point about how his female are judged for their appearance, while “no one gives a shit” about how men look, he said.

“I’m judged on my interviews, my appalling sense of humour – on how I do my job, basically,” he told the Sydney Morning Herald. “Whereas women are quite often judged on what they’re wearing or how their hair is. Women, they wear the wrong colour and they get pulled up.” Hear, hear.

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