Chuck Thier's 3D printed Warhammer miniatures. Photo by Chuck Thier.

Miniatures games have always been reserved for lifers. Lifers who spend hundreds of dollars on bags of disassembled pewter sculptures, put them together, and paint them in colors like "Fuegan Orange" and "Leadbelcher." It's a hobby made by the deeply invested, for the deeply invested. Games Workshop manufactures the Warhammer series—one of the most popular names in miniatures gaming—and they happily charge $150 for a starter set. If you're looking for hyper-realistic orc figurines, you'll have to pay a premium—and, no, Wal-Mart can't save you.

They will be around long after we're long gone. Photo via Shutterstock

When you've lived with rats as long as I have, you become paranoid. Every suspect sound and fleeting shadow could be a rat waiting to pounce. I moved out of my last apartment, in Brooklyn's Gowanus neighborhood, after it became infested with rats in the wake of Hurricane Sandy; the Gowanus Canal overflowed, which drove the rats farther inland. They invaded my garbage, gnawed on old pork chops, and left them to rot on the kitchen floor. I could hear the rats scurrying in the walls.

When I moved, I thought I'd gotten away from them—but soon enough, construction began on my block, and they appeared once again. My roommates and I put out traps and poison, hired exterminators, and covered up holes with steel mesh. Still, they came (presumably through the basement, which was littered with rat shit).

We couldn't leave food out on the counter—or anywhere, really. I once foolishly placed an entire loaf of sliced bread on top of my refrigerator. The next morning, I found the bag empty, gnawed and discarded in the laundry room. The rats also figured out how to open our trash can, which has a locking lid. Once, we placed a pile of magazines on top of the can to keep them out; I later walked into the kitchen to find a rat hanging from the lid with his two front claws chewing furiously on the can's plastic exterior—very pliable to a rat's teeth, which are as strong as steel. (Fun fact: A rat's jaws wield an impressive biting force of about 7,000 pounds per square inch.)

So I have very few reasons to like rats. But the other day, I was typing away at my desk when a rat materialized on the hardwood floor of my bedroom. It ran under a chest of drawers, cornering itself. I grabbed a few loose coins and tossed them at him, hoping he'd run out—but he continued to hide. Eventually, I walked over and kicked the drawer repeatedly, hoping he'd get the idea. He ran out and flew up a flight of stairs.

Since that fateful morning, I've learned more about rats and developed a begrudging respect for them. I've come to accept that we live alongside one another. I'm no longer at war with them, and that's a good thing, because rats are inescapable. They exist in staggering numbers, and they'll be here long after we're all gone.

There are around 2 million rats in New York City. Even if you never see them, the evidence of their presence surrounds us. They descend over parks at night like "one big shadow," according to one exterminator in this New Yorker story.

They are remarkably resilient, virtually indestructible, and built to survive. Rats have lived through nuclear testing and can swim underwater; an exterminator once told me they can hold their breath for up to four minutes, which is how they make their way into toilet bowls. Norwegian rats, NYC's only existent species, are basically built to eat and multiply. According to Robert Sullivan's Rats: Observations on the History & Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants, spotting one at night means about ten are nearby. "One pair of rats," Sullivan writes, "has the potential of 15,000 descendants in a year."

I've since learned that the reason the rat came into my room that day was either because its nest was disturbed, or it simply couldn't cut it in the hunt with the other rats at night. Rats are nocturnal, so if you see one during daylight hours, it's because it's been out-competed and has no choice but to brave the elements in the sun. "If humans can't make it with one job, they get another one to pay the bills," another exterminator told me. "If there's not enough food, they'll come out in the daytime looking for it—they have no choice."

Rats thrive around humans because we produce so much garbage. While rats may be getting rid of our waste, they also create their own, spreading their urine and feces all over the place. The economic cost of damage from rats in the United States is, according to estimates, $19 billion a year—"many times greater than any other invasive animal species."

Each year rats eat 42 billion tons of our food at a cost of $30 billion worldwide.

In 1982, the United Nations estimated that rats ate more than 42 billion tons of food at a cost of $30 billion worldwide. Rats are such a prevalent part of the food supply throughout the world that many governments put acceptable limits on how much rat contamination they deem to be safe, according to the book Rat: How the World's Most Notorious Rodent Clawed Its Way to the Top.Rats author Jerry Langton reminds us that the US Food and Drug Administration allows an average of two rodent hairs per 100 grams of peanut butter, and that the World Health Organization estimates that as much as 35 percent of all food consumed by humans has been contaminated by rodents—mostly, by rats.

It's not just our food that rats have developed a taste for, Langton writes; they're fond of the insulation that covers our electrical wires as well. Insurers and fire-safety groups estimate rats are responsible for as much as 25 percent of unintentional fires.

When you look at rats from a purely biological standpoint, though, there is much to admire. "They certainly have their place in the ecosystem," Ronald J Sarno, an associate professor of biology at Hofstra University who specializes in urban rat research, told me. According to Sarno, rats are most useful—for humans, at least—in laboratory studies, providing insights into health and genetics and behavior. "I realize they're vilified by the media, but they're pretty amazing animals, biologically. They're amazingly adaptable."

Bobby Corrigan, one of the world's leading experts on rodent control and a preeminent urban rodentologist (his nickname among colleagues at his rodent consulting firm is the "Rat Czar"), told me while expressing his respect for the animals that he doesn't believe rats should live in cities due to their dangerous and destructive nature.

"The average rat you see scurrying around the curb at night—what benefit is he bringing to New Yorkers?" Corrigan asked. "In the city, it's only a threat."

Outside the city, however, rats (and mice) are of some ecological benefit. Corrigan said that they distribute all kinds of plants through seed dissemination, and they also construct burrows in the ground, which aerates the ground and benefits the soil's ecology. Rats and mice are also a critically important part of the food chain, a key source of protein and nutrients for foxes, coyotes, wolves, dogs, hawks, owls, raccoons, skunks, and other animals.

Rodents make up 44 percent of the world's mammal population, Corrigan told me, while humans make up about 5 percent. "In terms of true success, " Corrigan said, "really the rodents have it all over everybody else."

And for some reason, I'm more at peace with that idea than I ever have been.

Follow Matthew Kassel on Twitter.

Illustration by Elizabeth Renstrom. Photo by Paul Kwiatkowski/courtesy of HBO

Who knows more about you than your weed guy? Dealers are the people you call when you're celebrating as well as when you're at your lowest, the people who you share a secret with and may even invite to a birthday party. It's a more personal, more weighted interaction than you have with your local supermarket clerk or even your liquor-store counterman. The person who gives you your weed may not be your friend, but they are, unavoidably, your confidant.

So it's no surprise that High Maintenance, HBO's fantastic new comedy that premieres Friday, is one of TV's best, most closely observed shows about life in New York, with an eye for funny-absurd-sad details you'd only see if you spent your days going in and out of strangers' apartments.

Centered on a small-time weed dealer called the Guy (played by co-creator Ben Sinclair), each episode is set in the residence of one of his mostly Brooklyn-based clients. The show is true to its roots as Vimeo's first original web series, and happily, Sinclair and his fellow showrunner Katja Blichfeld haven't let the increased responsibility and pressure that comes with a full-on prestige cable comedy dilute any of what made their web series great.

Instead, Sinclair and Blichfield have used their new platform (and resources) to tackle more ambitious themes, particularly immigrant stories of the sort that TV often ignores. In episode two, a rebellious teenager (Shazi Raja) tries to navigate the pressures and expectations of her Pakistani Muslim family. In episode four, we get the perspectives of a can-collecting older Chinese couple (Kristen Hung and Clem Cheung) and their Berlin-based experimental musician son. Another standout is Max Jenkins's reprisal of his web-series character, Max, the insufferable "gay husband" of the equally insufferable Lainey (Heléne Yorke), who decides to make some positive changes in his life, much to Lainey's chagrin. Interspersed throughout, viewers also get more tantalizing glimpses into the Guy's personal life, outside of all the weed-slinging. (There's also an entire episode from the point of view of a dog, which is as affecting as it is artful.)

What's most consistently striking about High Maintenance is the effortless yet stylish way it succeeds in depicting what it's like to be a New Yorker today. It's a town where everyone is griping about your work or your apartment, and the show is a wildly effective dramatization of those two pillars of New York concern. For me, the show is also eerily personal, both in terms of its situations and its spot-on art direction. I watch and am constantly thinking things like: That's my leather jacket. There's our frying pan and Elena Ferrante books. I, too, have been yelled at for casually disrespecting a memorial. I am not exaggerating. The Guy and I literally own the same shirt, which we both cuff the same way:

Ben Sinclair as the Guy (left) and the author, aka me (right)

I met Ben Sinclair and Katja Blichfeld earlier this week at HBO headquarters in Manhattan to talk about the new season, how a city that complains together remains together, and whether weed will ever not be inherently funny. They were as warm, witty, and well-dressed, as you'd expect.

VICE: More than any other show, I'm constantly seeing objects and situations from my own life depicted on the show. Is this something you guys get a lot from people, that the show really hits home in these funny, sad, or even uncomfortable ways?
Katja Blichfeld: Yes, we do. I think it's 'cause we're all living in the same area code, really. always just capturing what we're seeing. When we worked with our art department, too, we were trying to make sure the spaces looked like people lived in them, and not like a set decorator came in and put a bunch of stuff in there.

For example, every apartment we scouted, I remember this one week, we were laughing because all the books : Purity by Jonathan Franzen, all the Elena Ferrante books, Zadie Smith, Jonathan Safran Foer, Junot Díaz. At the same time, everyone's got their Vitamix on the counter. There are just things that carry over, and you can't help but notice. And we're like, "We have to make sure those things are there." So, like, yeah, no shit, you're like, "That's my thing!" 'cause, hey, we live in Brooklyn, and––

Ben Sinclair: And capitalism works.

Blichfeld: And capitalism works. There you go. If you make a certain amount of income and you can have a weed guy coming to deliver your weed, chances are you might have some of the same material trappings that your neighbor's enjoying. It's like, that's all you've got sometimes, is what you're putting on your body, what tote bag you're carrying, what book you're reading on the subway. There are so few signifiers. There are only so many things you can get by seeing a person out in public.

"I think the communal suffering is the glue of New York."

Sinclair: And also, we don't like exposition. We hate clunky exposition when we're watching TV, and there's no faster way of showing something about somebody than—

Blichfeld: Just showing it.

Sinclair: We don't have to tell why you want this, or what you like about it. If you're wearing it, I know you like it.

Blichfeld: And maybe some references are lost on some people, but we don't mind.

Lainey and Max at a Greenpoint diner. Photo by David Russell/courtesy of HBO

A friend noted the connection between the Humans of New York blog and High Maintenance, in the way that both try to depict New York as a kind of village where we get intimate access to people's stories and lives. How do you reconcile this idea of New York as a village of these unique and, I think, ultimately life-affirming stories, with the myriad ways in which the city can beat you down, rendering us anonymous and dehumanized and alone?
Sinclair: I think the communal suffering is what is the glue of New York. The fact that communally we all understand that you don't come here and just skate by, unless you own an apartment here that you're never in anyway, so we don't see you. Oligarchs, whatever.

We show all of these little indignities of living in New York. And that's what New Yorkers bond over. like: "What a pain in the ass." "God, you can't bring anything with you during your day, gotta go home and..." There are all of these things that are familiar to us, and that's really how we communicate with one another here.

Blichfeld: Through complaining?

Sinclair: Through complaining.

That reminds me of that Onion article where it's like, "8.4 Million New Yorkers Suddenly Realize New York Is a Horrible Place to Live" and then immediately leave.
Sinclair: I remember that one. That was a really funny one.

The easiest way to make friends with a stranger is to find something else to complain about.
Blichfeld: Yeah. "It's so fucking hot." Or, "When is this train gonna come?" or, "The MTA sucks..."

How much do you consider High Maintenance to be a "New York show"?
Blichfeld: I think it's very New York. We are observing New Yorkers and writing specifically about what we observe, both in our personal lives and what's going on in the street. I think the show probably is still more about the urban experience than anything.

Sinclair: I think the reason it is New York–specific is because weed dealing is still illegal . But the system is such that people generally go into people's apartments. And that is the kind of interaction that we're chasing: the moment when somebody goes into somebody else's apartment and has an effect on their life.

"You might not think at the outset that a Chinese immigrant can-collecting couple would have anything to do with my parents, who were not Chinese and did not do that for a living. But there's overlap."

You guys have talked about how each episode is drawn from your own experience. But in the new season, we get some immigrant stories, such as the Pakistani Muslim family and the Chinese bottle collectors and their experimental musician son. Has the process of writing these stories been very different than in the past? Has this been part of a goal for you guys, to kind of move beyond your immediate friend circle?
Blichfeld: Definitely. But one of the challenges to that was that it's a referral-based service we're characterizing. And so, logically, only certain kinds of people know one another. People know one another from a work circle, or a social context. So it would make sense that people coming to this character are mostly coming from the same pool of people. So there was an inherent challenge in trying to branch out without it seeming like, "Well, how did these people get connected?" And what we concluded was, we don't have to make them customers. The Guy can have a brush with some people, but he doesn't have to sell them weed. So I think we just started from there, and then we were just like, "Who do we see all the time in the city?" And obviously the answers are infinite, but I think––

Sinclair: I mean, they're personal, too, though—

Blichfeld: Like, my parents are immigrants; I also grew up in a semi-religious household where there was some multiple-choice religion going on. You know what I mean? Where it was like, "Well, we follow some of those rituals and customs, but not all of them." You might not think at the outset that a Chinese immigrant can-collecting couple would have anything to do with my parents, who were not Chinese and did not do that for a living. But there's overlap, and similarly with the Eesha story too, and for you [ to Ben] as well. Like, you were a teen sneaking your cigarettes and peeping. We were just like: "Why don't we open our minds as to who can have these experiences?" They don't have to just be some creative professional living in Bushwick.

Sinclair: Once we to be someone else with our emotions, then we filled out the details with whomever we might have been working with. Shazi Raja, who played the Muslim teenager, helped us out by being like, "Well, when I go visit my religious aunt and uncle, this, this, and this happens. I behave this this and this way." So, it was just adding to what was true.

Are there any stories that you guys feel that you can't write about, or haven't yet figured out how to write about?
Sinclair: You know, we've attempted to write stories that are extremely personal. We almost wrote one story where you, as the viewer, would've been like, "Oh, they're writing about themselves. And they're being raw about it." And I think that episode—we had to stop. It was too hard to write. We had to keep some privacy to ourselves.

I'm curious how High Maintenance fits (or doesn't fit) into the evolution of stoner comedies. The Times recently did a piece on you guys, and I think it was smart, but they described the Guy as "bumbling." And that was really interesting to me because I think it sort of calls back to the whole history of stoner comedies. But he's not really bumbling. Shit happens to him, but he's not a fool or a clown.
Blichfeld: Not a fool or a clown, but we have demonstrated over and over that he has a tendency to put his foot in his mouth, or like––

Sinclair: Well, he's too open.

Blichfeld: Yeah, sometimes his boundaries are messed up. I think that's probably what they meant. In the very first episode we ever made, he puts his foot in his mouth and talks about prescription.

Sinclair: "Bumbling" is a different word, though.

Blichfeld: I might have used a different word, too.

Sinclair: But I don't know what the word is yet. Someone else commented the Guy's a little less cheery and more guarded this season. And, you know, we're the writers, and I'm the Guy, even though he's a better version of my best side or whatever.

Blichfeld: But also we had to acknowledge that.

Sinclair: It's New York.

Blichfeld: It's fucking hard to live here. Why would the Guy be any exception to crumbling under the stress and anxiety of being a small business entrepreneur? Of course he's getting beat down, too.

Will weed ever not be inherently funny?
Sinclair: When you deal with people getting over terminal diseases, it's not very funny.

Blichfeld: Or when they're an addict, and it's just, like, one of many things they're addicted to. When they're shirking real responsibilities and neglecting people's needs and their own needs. Then it's not funny.

What's going to happen to the Guy if/when weed becomes legalized? Is he worried about eventually losing his job? What would he do instead?
Blichfeld: Wow, people really want to know the answer to that. It doesn't really concern us at this time. It's not something we think about, it's not something we consider when we're writing these stories. It's going to be quite a long time that recreational legalization is so widespread that there's no need for the Guy's services. That being said, could he have another career? Absolutely. Are we going to talk about it here? No way, José!

Follow James Yeh on Twitter.

High Maintenance premieres on Friday, September 16 at 11 PM on HBO.

The BioShock series takes place across different cities, different periods, and even different dimensions. But the three games are united by one thematic constant: change. In the original BioShock, Rapture changes from an underwater utopia into a nightmarish battlefield. In BioShock 2, mostly set eight years later, the city has fallen into absolute ruin; Eleanor Lamb, once a little girl, ultimately becomes a terrifying "Big Sister." Most drastically, BioShock Infinite's flying city state of Columbia is constantly in flux, with different elements, places and people either materializing or vanishing from reality itself, depending which timeline protagonist Booker DeWitt—himself changed by life in the Army—finds himself inside.

Even the title, "BioShock," implies significant, violent change. Variously in these games, it is characters' very biology that is rewritten. The first time the player-controlled Jack, in BioShock, picks up a Plasmid, wretches and screams, we know he has been painfully, irretrievably changed.

Games, too, have been changed by BioShock. Since the original's release in 2007, questions about how stories might best be told, and how players may or may not interfere with plot, characterization and consistency have been predominant in the minds of critics and game-makers. Its philosophies may be basic, its violence and action gratuitous, but undeniably, for anyone working or with an interest in video games, the BioShock series is pivotal.

A scene from 'BioShock 2' (unless specified, screens are from the original 'BioShock,' remastered)

Of that, perhaps nobody is more acutely aware than Jordan Thomas. Originally a level designer on the first BioShock, Thomas was later promoted to creative director on BioShock 2. After that, he returned to Infinite as an advisor, and the BioShock Wiki lists him as a senior writer on the third game.

Alongside Dishonored's Kain Shin and two fellow BioShock alumni, Stephen Alexander and Michael Kelly, Thomas, in 2013, founded an independent studio named Question. Now, with the launch of BioShock: The Collection, featuring remasters of all three games, Thomas considers how working on the transformative game series, specifically, changed him.

"Right up until BioShock 2, I really wanted to be that classical auteur," Thomas explains. "Afterwards, I had so many questions about, firstly, whether that was right for me, secondly, whether that was a good way to build a video game. I was very happy with the game we finished, but in terms of my own contributions I will always be hyper critical."

'BioShock: The Collection', launch trailer

Thomas' first major design credit was on the tie-in game for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, back in 2001. Afterwards he moved to Ion Storm, where he co-created the famed haunted house level, named Shalebridge Cradle, for Thief: Deadly Shadows and made design briefs for the eventually cancelled Deus Ex 3.

Subsequently transferring to what was then called 2K Boston, Thomas was assigned to the original BioShock's "design pit." His biggest contribution was Fort Frolic, a level he co-designed, wherein players encountered psychopathic artist Sander Cohen.

"My original pitch for BioShock 2 was that you'd play a former Little Sister, in an underpowered return to Rapture. Very Silent Hill." – Jordan Thomas

"The pit on BioShock was a very special room," Thomas says. "I liked what I was learning from that constellation of minds, and I had the incredible good fortune to be with good people but also left to my own devices at times. Fort Frolic was a loose skeleton when I arrived. But then the script was written, word for word, by (director) Ken Levine, and (artist) Scott Sinclair, (designers) Nate Wells and Stephen Alexander helped flesh out the narrative scenes. Still, I had it in my head, at that time, to beat the Shalebridge Cradle. I wanted to make it as much my own as I could, and I nearly damaged myself building it—I worked on Fort Frolic until 3 AM every night.

"I've asked myself so many times why I was picked to direct BioShock 2, but the reality is, while I was working on that first game I was sat next to Alyssa Finley. She became executive producer at BioShock 2's developer, 2K Marin, and she was the one who had watched me stay late every night—it was Alyssa who got in touch and asked me to come to California to work on the sequel."

Article continues after the video below

Related: Watch VICE Gaming meets indie game designer Zoë Quinn

Level designer to creative director: it was a huge jump. And alongside Thomas's professional ascent, the original BioShock, by now a year old, was establishing itself as the benchmark for smarter, more sophisticated triple-A video games. Reviews were unanimous, sales were huge, essays were everywhere—using BioShock as his example, in 2007, game designer Clint Hocking coined the term "ludonarrative dissonance," destined to become one of the longest surviving phrases in popular game criticism.

In short, Thomas had his work cut out. Not only was he taking on the fresh responsibilities of a director, he was doing it on one of the most anticipated game projects in the world.

"What I should have done is two things," he explains. "First, commit to making a stripped-down horror game. My original pitch was that you'd play a former Little Sister, in an underpowered return to Rapture, full of fertile trauma that would be uncovered as you went. Very Silent Hill. But I was told—I don't even remember by who, it could have just been Marketing Person X—'We think BioShock can be a big shooter franchise like Gears of War or Call of Duty.' And I thought, 'Good Lord... Why did you hire me?' So the second thing I should have done is learn to say no. Going from a level designer to a creative director is dizzying. I wasn't ready to say no. And that is just the worst. If you don't know how to say no, especially to yourself, you are, at best, a rookie director.

"But this was a life-changing moment—somehow, someone had identified me for this job. So in order to say yes, I had to create a Mr. Hyde who was willing to also say, out loud, 'Absolutely. This is going to be a 2.0, and we're going to improve on the original.' But who knows what the other guy, the version of me which had existed just minutes prior to being offered that job, would have said about the necessity of sequels at all."

Far removed from the belt-and-braces work of level design, Thomas found directing BioShock 2 involved, mostly, attending meetings and holding discussions. Like the game itself, a cautionary tale regarding collectivist philosophy, wherein one character, Gilbert Alexander, tries to inject himself with the feelings and memories of everybody in Rapture and is driven insane as a result, the creation of BioShock 2, by Thomas' account, was egalitarian "to a fault."

"Looking back, I think the second game has a greater range of sympathetic characters than the original, and also more women that matter." – Jordan Thomas

"When BioShock 2 was finally real and we were all officially attached to the project I doubt I was alone in feeling, 'This is bigger than you, and unless you start sprinting from the word go, you will fall into the sky.' So, it came over like college sometimes. And I was responsible for that a lot—I was a bit of a hippy and wanted everyone's voices to matter."

Some aspects of the game were totally out of Thomas's control. Originally set in a new city with new characters and a new story, due to its relatively short production schedule—two years—BioShock 2 had to return to Rapture. Responsible for the game's script, Thomas tried to make the best of what he'd been given.

"Looking back, I think that game has a greater range of sympathetic characters than the original, and also more women that matter," he says. "Its handling of morality is more fuzzy-edged and grey, too. Now, moral choices in games are fraught—I'm not saying we solved it, with a trademark symbol. But I do enjoy hearing why people chose to do what they did, because their lines of reasoning are so textured.

"Still, I was constantly fighting the idea that people had seen and done it with Rapture. That's what we heard a lot: 'Yeah, it's just that underwater place again.' The first half of the story is the weakest because it's rehashing. And I don't think the writing reaches a crescendo like the original."

"I wanted Aliens. I think I ended up with a solid Pitch Black." – Jordan Thomas

When BioShock 2 launched in 2010 it was a critical and commercial success. Within a limited production schedule and under tremendous pressure, 2K Marin had created a game arguably better than the ground-breaking predecessor. Nevertheless, Thomas, even now, is still trying to make peace with his own contributions.

"I try to think of it as Aliens to BioShock's Alien," he explains. "But Alien is still the one I truly love, and if you're going to ask me to direct something it's probably not going to be the one with more guns.

"We didn't kill the franchise, and BioShock 2 found some real merit in the direction it did go. But, naively, I wanted my very first game as a director to be as good as one by a legendary developer who'd been working for ten plus years longer than me—all I can see, in every single frame, is a series of decisions and compromises we made."

A scene from 'BioShock Infinite'

"BioShock 2 made money," Thomas continues. "No one said to us, 'You guys failed.' But I think everyone was hoping to relive Obama's original election. I wanted Aliens. I think I ended up with a solid Pitch Black."

Almost immediately after shipping BioShock 2, Thomas went to work on another 2K project, The Bureau: XCOM Declassified. It wasn't long, however, before a meeting with the head of 2K and a phone call from Ken Levine carried him back to BioShock, for what would become Infinite.

"There wasn't much detail available at the time," Thomas explains, "but I felt like I owed 2K Boston—now Irrational—whatever it might need, so I said yes.

"People who have spoken to me recently have referred to Infinite as the 'Citizen Kane of games'," he continues. "Things must have gotten scrambled, because that's also what they were calling the first one. Whenever we heard that we'd smile to ourselves. It seemed overblown even back then—it's a short cut for people who desperately want something to say."

BioShock is about change. After working on the entire series, imagining and destroying idealistic cities, devising ways for players to alter themselves and creating countless mutated enemies, all the while observing—helping to catalyze, in fact—an evolution in the conversations around video games, Thomas, himself, was transformed. The decision to co-found Question came partly because a certain kind of game-making had permanently altered Thomas' perspectives.

"After BioShock 2, my world view had been utterly shaken," he says. "My career and sense of self were altered forever by working on it. I wasn't soured on triple-A immediately after, but I had a blasted hellscape in my wake in regards to my personal life. I barely recognize the memory of the guy I was when that game was finished. The fairly smart, put together person I was at the start of the project had become half crazed by the end. My parents remember that time. In my dangerous, do-not-try-this-at-home level of sleep deprivation they could see my eyes rolling. I was becoming like a Splicer."

Question is now working on its second, as-yet-unannounced video game. Working alongside Shin, Alexander and Kelly is, Thomas says, "as good as it gets."

Meanwhile, not only in the form of its remastered Collection, but the innumerable games that have learned from or imitated it, in various large and small ways, BioShock lives on. Only this year, Firewatch, Adr1ft, and The Witness have all, in their individual, permuted ways, propagated the BioShock style of telling story using environment; Far Cry Primal, Quantum Break, and the reboot of DOOM are all shooters which combine guns and "magical" abilities. The change has come. And on both video games and Jordan Thomas, BioShock has left an undeniable mark.

"I wonder if I'm the right person for video games," he concludes. "I wonder if this is the form of play to which my attitudes most closely align—there is that voice, always. But I started at 19. I wouldn't know the first thing about switching industries and developing a new set of skills. Games are in my DNA now. And I never lose sight of the incredible luxury experienced by a paid game developer."

BioShock: The Collection is out now for Xbox One, PC, and PlayStation 4.

Follow Ed Smith on Twitter.

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Oh to be a "student" in Vancouver. Photo via Flickr user Heritage Vancouver Society

In Vancouver, AKA real estate's Twilight Zone, a bunch of students own $57-million worth of property in the city's affluent Point Grey neighbourhood.

These nine homeowners, who we can only assume have never had to subsist off instant noodles, are literally listed as "students" on land title documents obtained by BC's New Democratic Party.

Despite not having any income streams, the students managed to secure mortgages.

Read more: A Student Owns This $31-Million Vancouver Mansion

"How did the students qualify for mortgages? Where did that money come from?" asked NDP housing critic David Eby at a press conference Wednesday.

Eby questioned how major banks were qualifying students for mortgages without asking where their income was coming from. He said he was prompted to look into the issue by a Globe and Mail investigation that examined banks' policies around approving mortgages for foreign buyers. That investigation found that banks don't scrutinize the source of income of foreign buyers the same way they would with Canadian citizens.

One of the nine student homeowners made headlines in May, when it was revealed that he had purchased a $31-million home—among the most expensive properties in the city. Another student reportedly had bought and sold a home, making $1.15 million, according to Eby.

According to a 2015 study that looked at 172 properties on Vancouver's west side, homemakers/housewives were listed as a primary occupation for 25 percent of homeowners, followed by businessperson at 21 percent, and students accounted for four percent.

Eby said the province should investigate whether or not this is a widespread issue by examining home sales across the province.

In July, the BC Liberals introduced at 15 percent tax for foreign homebuyers to help address the affordable housing crisis.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

He speaks with activists, victims, government officials, and soldiers on different sides of the war on terror to investigate the brutal and sometimes surprising history of these organizations.

"Both sides of the war on terror see the universe as binary—good versus evil, us versus them—a view that's endlessly self reinforcing" says Alvi about the series. "It's been as bad for Islam as it has been for the world. The question I want to answer is how do we stop that cycle. I'm trying to understand the past 15 years—terrorism and the war on terror—and whether there's any end in sight."

Check out the trailer for the five-part series premiering on VICELAND in Canada starting October 11.

This isn't a photo of the porn cinema; it's a photo of people watching a screen that we photoshopped a photo of some porn onto, then pixellated. Just to give you an idea of what a porn cinema looks like. (Photo: US Navy, via)

A little bald man is butt naked apart from a pair of black socks. He pads softly down the laminate hallway, his dick happily bobbing around in front of him. He's heading for the first of two screening rooms where city workers and hawkeyed, sportswear-wearing boozers goggle at My Husband Is Fucking the Nanny Vol 2. The film, unfortunately, is entirely lost on me. I never saw part one.

We're at the opening night of The Office, a new porn cinema in London's East End. It's the only X-rated movie theatre of its kind left in the city. Situated in a residential block off a main road in Limehouse, this is the third incarnation of the cinema in as many years.

Those interested in the history of public masturbation to grot movies will recall the furore around the closure of Fantasy Video in Islington in 2014, a business that had offered the sticky trench-coated denizens of King's Cross somewhere to go for a friendly communal wank for 40 years. Counsellor Paul Convery had resolved to close down what he considered a blight on his constituency. Sadly, for London's wrist-exercisers, he was successful.

We're all aware that gentrification is rife in London, what with the closure of Fabric and other high profile venues. Greedy property developers and compliant counsellors are courting the vanilla brigade who want to turn the city into an Oliver Bonas-inspired wet dream of chic, "tasteful" mediocrity. On the sharp end of this deal are the little guys – like The Office's proprietors – who cater for people whose tastes are neither tasteful nor chic, but who are still human beings whose voices are increasingly not being heard.

Fantasy Video moved to New Cross in January of 2015, reopening as Club 487. Soon the venue attracted swingers, and sex acts were reported on the premises. A crusade of locals outraged that such a business was operating in their neighbourhood – and so close to a school – got the place closed down.

There is a psychogeographic rightness in the fact that The Office has popped up again in Limehouse, given the area's long association with sleaze. Traditionally home to sailors whose ships moored at the nearby docks, as well as the nascent Chinese community, Limehouse was where Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray went to get fucked up on opium. In more recent times, the White Swan's amateur strip night is the stuff of legend, and Sailor's Sauna and Majingo's gentleman's club are both a stone's throw away.

"Past nine o'clock and they're still coming in," says Bob, one of The Office's owners, looking around the place with pride. Apparently word is out among long-term fans, as at least 20 silent men and a woman stalk the subterranean premises. With little publicity other than a website and word of mouth, there is clearly a small but enthusiastic fanbase keen for a venue in which they can all have a communal wank.

In the main room a Sony speaker sputters out a tinny soundtrack of limp techno and female moans. In front of me, a guy in a badly-fitting suit wanks thoughtfully. Another guy, this one wearing trackies, sips from a can of Fosters. A third sits there upright, just staring.

Next door is a second screen. Down the hall are five tiny rooms, each the size of a toilet cubicle, lit only with bare red bulbs. Apparently glory holes will be drilled in soon.

The thin corridor behind the screening rooms is not partitioned off, allowing people there to watch the porn and the real-life action in front of it. Here is a nexus of erotic activity. In the corner, three men enjoy a cuddle. "You like willies in your mouth, and poppers," one breathes, a bit anachronistically. And then: "Oh yes – spunk. Yeah, your spunk's really good."

Suddenly there's a technical glitch. The porn stops on Screen One, and the crowd are left staring at a still of a blowjob scene on a chaise lounge. It looks like an X-rated ancient Greek mural. But the couple next to me don't care: the only woman here tonight is casually giving the guy next to her a handjob as they kiss in the neon glow of the busted screen.

To be fair, there were always going to be teething problems on the first night. I get chatting to Jason, a former regular in Islington.

"It's a bit bright," he says, looking at the whitewashed walls.

I think they're going to paint the place black soon, I say. It's also a little dusty in here, but presumably that will correct itself.

"Yeah. Still, it's great to have the old place back, isn't it? I just like somewhere where you can go and wank."

He has one eye on the screen. I look down and spot that he is wanking as we are talking. I move away to give him some space.

READ: I Went to the South London Sex Cinema and Made Some Weird New Friends

Of course, it's understandable that some will find the notion of a bunch of strangers wanking next to each to dodgy US porn a little distasteful. But writer and urban historian Stewart Home cautions that it is important to remember that sanitisation and change are two different things.

"Change is a necessary part of the city and life, but the change can be good or bad – too often people look at it from a position of nostalgia and have an unrealistic rosy picture of the past," he said over the phone. "Old Compton Street in the 1970s, it was sleazy and dirty; today, it is squeaky clean and, to me, bland, but if you look back on photos of that part of Soho in the 50s it also looked pretty clean."

Everything is cyclical then, despite prevailing economic trends. And Home also points out that the decline of cinemas in general has more to do with the internet than anything else. Still, it's hard not to feel that in the current climate, the harried wankers at The Office are fighting a losing battle. But as Jason says, "It's not like we're doing anyone any harm – no one even knows we're here."

Libertarians everywhere will be delighted that The Office is now open for business. At least there is one tiny corner of London where sleaze is not only tolerated, but thrives.

All photos courtesy Winnipeg police

Winnipeg police have issued a public advisory after seizing 1,477 blotter tabs they suspect could contain the deadly opioid carfentanil.

Travis Vader arrives at court in Edmonton in March 2016. Photo by CP/Amber Bracken

Travis Vader has been found guilty of second degree murder in the death of a senior Alberta couple, who vanished just days after starting on a road trip to BC, in the first ever legal verdict to be televised in Canada.

This article originally appeared on VICE Greece.

One by one, the children walk down the stairs, wearing backpacks that seem bigger than them. They gather for breakfast in the main lounge of the City Plaza hotel, the walls of which have been decorated with hand-painted cardboard signs that read, "Tomorrow, we are going to school."

City Plaza is a self-organized refugee housing project in Victoria Square, in Athens, Greece. The seven-story building currently houses about 400 people—more than 180 of whom are children—but it used to be a hotel. It closed down seven years ago, at the beginning of the Greek economic crisis. On April 22, 2016, a local organization called Solidarity Initiative for Economic and Political Refugees, together with tens of refugees, occupied the empty building to the chagrin of the owner. Their aim is to provide decent living conditions for refugees, who have been stuck in Greece since Europe's borders were closed.

The sign reads, "Tomorrow, we are going to school."

It's just after 7 AM, and the volunteers, who help out at the squat, are trying to get everyone ready for school. It's no simple task: They must divide about 50 children into age groups and safely guide them to the local public schools, for their first day of lessons.

Most of the volunteers are college students. They woke up really early to be here—at a time when a lot of them are taking exams—but they all seem so happy and proud, almost as if they're taking their own children to school.

For the people of City Plaza, today is pretty special. Thanks to their efforts and those of a few local teachers, children living in the old hotel are able to start school today, unlike the children living in refugee camps.

In a recent interview, the deputy minister of education, Sia Anagnostopoulou, pledged that "children of preschool age will receive education in the camps. Primary and secondary school pupils will be transferred to nearby schools—at first, in reception classes." This has not happened yet.

Eleni has been volunteering at the squat since its first day. "For us, what's happening is also important in a political sense. We've fought for this, and we will continue to fight," she tells me. "Our experiment is part of a general effort to create a society that includes refugees. Refugee children going to school here is the first step toward integration. While the government has failed to do the same for the children living in the camps, the children of City Plaza and some other occupations are able to go to school today. That only goes to show that when you want something you have to try hard to get it. Nothing in life is for free.

"We have been working on this day since June," Eleni adds. "There is a group of teachers at City Plaza, who together with the Aristotle society (a local teachers' club), worked all summer to register and enroll the children. The books, the bags, and other supplies were all donated."

She goes on: "Most of the parents are excited. Some even went and registered their children at the schools without our help. The only thing that seems to worry them is the language barrier, and the possibility that Greece might not turn out to be their permanent home. Still, we all know how important school is to the socialization and psychological growth of children, even if they end up leaving the country."

She also explains that they have tried to register as many of the children as possible. So far, the children of high school age are the only ones who have not been accepted to any school. "We've filed five children's applications, but the principal of the local high school won't register them, because they don't have the documents that prove they finished primary school in their countries. There is a process to get a certificate, either through the UNHCR or the Greek Council for Refugees, but we have not had the chance to do that because these children came to City Plaza very recently."

I speak to Dina Garane, who was one of the teachers who fought for the refugee children to be able to attend school. She says that "teachers are part of the great movement of solidarity toward refugees that unfolded in the last year. We fight for refugees and their children to be welcome, for the borders and towns to remain open, while opposing the austerity imposed by the government and the EU that is destroying the public education system."

But Garane says individual actions are not enough. "Mass education hires are what's needed to integrate all refugee children into public schools. Classes can't be held in the refugee camps or led by staff from NGOs. Kindergarten-aged children must be placed in formal education, and reception classes must be created in secondary education," she says.

From all the children in the squat, my attention is drawn to a little one from Afghanistan. He must be younger than everyone else going to kindergarten today. His mother and two older sisters are also with him.

I decide to follow his group to school, which is made up of eight children, some mothers, and three volunteers. We arrive at the school ten minutes late. The children run into the yard, pointing excitedly to parts of their new environment, while the volunteers take instructions from teachers.

I ask the principal of the school, Dimitris Kritikos, how he plans to integrate the children. "It is important to keep the numbers small. For the time being, they'll just be in the classes, but we are also planning to give them separate Greek lessons. Additionally, one extra class will be created to support the teachers we already have at our school."

I ask him if the Ministry of Education has arranged for a reception class for refugee children. "For now, they haven't sent us any staff, no. Our own staff will volunteer a few hours of teaching—as much time as each of us can donate. We would like to be able to hire at least one more teacher though."

Before leaving the kindergarten, I ask if there have been any bad reactions from local parents. "So far we have not had any negative feedback. And don't forget, this is a downtown school," he replies.

Marios Strofalis is the president of the parents' association of the 51st elementary school in Athens. He confirms that there have been no negative reactions in the area, unlike in some other parts of the country.

"This school is multicultural—a lot of the pupils already come from immigrant backgrounds. The one thing all parents worry about, whether they are Greek or not, is health. Many of them have asked me if the children have had a medical check up, and they have. In any case, we must endeavor to remain level-headed. When it comes to children, the only thing to do is open our arms and treat them with love and kindness."

Strofalis goes on to address the issue of the refugee children learning Greek in good time: "One problem that is generally observed in this school and other multicultural schools is that some pupils struggle with the language. Naturally, when a child enters the classroom and does not know a single word, they become marginalized and that's a problem.

"What should a state do in this case? Create integration courses. Unfortunately, that does not happen in Greece. Children are not the problem. The problem is the state. If the government doesn't hire more teachers, all of our efforts will go to waste."

We leave the new kindergarteners at school and return to City Plaza, where the mood is festive. Anastasia, a third-year student of political law, tells me that "for the people of City Plaza, this was the second battle we won. Our first aim was to occupy the building, and the second was to ensure that the children go to school. We are now able to offer those kids a routine, and this is a massive feat. The next goal is to get the parents accustomed to that routine, as well as the local culture."

Of course the new routine will create new needs, which is why the squat is looking for more volunteers. "We need people to organize afternoon study sessions, to help the children after school," Eleni says. "And for the kindergarteners, we need water bottles and plastic microwavable lunch boxes."

If you'd like to help, contact the City Plaza occupation through its Facebook page.

Screenshot via 'Easy' trailer

On Thursday, Netflix released the first teaser for its new eight-part series, Easy, from director, writer, and executive producer Joe Swanburg—and it makes dating in 2016 look a lot like the terrible hellscape that it truly is.

Swanburg, who's made his mark as the master of low-budget mumblecore films like Drinking Buddies, has assembled an all-star cast to tell eight stand-alone stories about young Chicagoans fumbling through a minefield of mobile dating apps and shifting cultural norms in search of love. According to Deadspin, the series features a whole slew of big-name actors like Orlando Bloom, Malin Akerman, Marc Maron, Dave Franco, Hannibal Buress, Jake Johnson, Michael Chernus, Elizabeth Reaser, Emily Ratajkowski, and many others.

In the trailer, characters dish about terrible dates, terrible sex, trying to get pregnant, trying to keep a marriage interesting, and the complications that come with trying to engineer a threesome. It sort of looks like a Netflix version of those multi-celeb dramadies of the late 2000s—like He's Just Not That Into You or Love Actually—but after the success of Stranger Things , Narcos, and Orange Is the New Black, we really have no reason to think the streaming powerhouse would steer us wrong.

Give Easy a watch when it hits Netflix on September 22.

Read: 'Lady Dynamite' Is the Funniest Show About Mental Health That You're Not Watching Yet

Thumbnail via Flickr user zombieite

Last weekend, police arrested a 55-year-old man after they clocked him driving 88 MPH in his DeLorean outside of London, the Guardian reports.

Nigel Mills copped the iconic time-traveling whip of Back to the Future fame for £22,000 , presumably in some midlife crisis-induced attempt to turn the clock back on his life. Unfortunately, the used car didn't come with a flux capacitor, and when he brought it up to 88 MPH on a public road last Sunday, all he wound up with was trouble from the cops.

"I wasn't trying to time travel," he told the Guardian. "It was at 11 AM on Sunday and the road was completely clear," which sounds exactly like the kind of thing someone trying to time travel would say.

Mills admits that he doesn't drive the car very often and really only took it out for a bit of a "run around" before he was pulled over and arrested. Luckily for him, his case was thrown out when the cops who arrested him didn't even bother to show up to court, so Mills can get back to work installing a Mr. Fusion or whatever.

Read: Time-Travel Movies Are Garbage

A still from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, featuring Lady Chablis playing herself. Via Warner Bros.

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Before Transparent, before I Am Cait, and before Chaz Bono was on Dancing with the Stars, there were trans performers, artists, and public figures who blazed the trails for the unprecedented level of visibility trans people see in our media today. And in the past week, two of them—the Lady Chablis, a performer made famous through the 1994 nonfiction best-seller and subsequent movie, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, and Alexis Arquette, of the Arquette family of actors—have passed away. Both shaped the public's perception of trans people before trans lives were as familiar to us all as they are now, and for that, we owe each a great debt.

Arquette was perhaps destined for fame, given their family name, and as the rare figure born into the public eye as a trans person, the struggle of dealing with that visibility defined much of their life. (At the time of their death, Arquette was "gender suspicious" and ambivalent about their preferred pronoun.) But rather than hide their gender identity, Arquette embraced it in early roles, like the 1986 film Down and Out in Beverly Hills, where they played an uncredited, androgynous musician, or in their first major role at 19 years old, in the 1989 film Last Exit to Brooklyn, as a trans sex worker named Georgette. Even before "transgender" became part of the popular vernacular, Arquette shaped notions of what it was to be gender-nonconforming through their entertainment career.

Eventually, Arquette decided to use their career to bring national attention to trans issues with the 2007 documentary Alexis Arquette: She's My Brother, which chronicled their physical transformation into womanhood. Through therapy sessions, hormone treatment, and self-examination preceding sex confirmation (reassignment) surgery, Arquette allowed viewers to see the most intimate portions of their transition. The documentary stopped short of sharing details of whether they did or did not receive surgery, because Arquette remained adamant that they wanted to bring attention to trans issues, but that the intimate details of their body were not up for public discussion.

"It got to the point when I wasn't willing to answer the questions about hormones, surgeries, or genitalia because it felt like backstepping," they said at a press conference for the film's premiere. "It wasn't a subject that needs any more exploitation; it needs clarification." Their willingness to bring visibility to their gender nonconformism while refusing to allow their body to be made into a spectacle was, suffice it to say, groundbreaking—especially given that it happened almost a decade ago.

The Lady Chablis, for her part, would use outrageous humor to offset public nosiness about private identity issues.

Chablis stepped into the national spotlight in 1994, following the publication of John Berendt's best-selling nonfiction novel Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, which chronicles the lives of outlandish residents of Savannah, Georgia. As a character in the book, she garnered adoration from readers with quips like "if I offended anyone, two tears in a bucket, honey. Motherfuck it." The book set a record, at 216 weeks, for length of time on the New York Times bestseller list; her scene-stealing appearance certainly helped.

And her appearance brought an intimate portrayal of one trans life into the popular American imagination: In her very first scene in the book, Chablis had just left the doctor after receiving hormone injections and proceeds to relate the experience of transitioning into a woman. An unprecedented account of the physical sensation of taking estrogen, trying to "pass" in public, and dating follows, wrapped up in her trademark sassy patois.

Following the success of Midnight, Chablis parlayed her notoriety into public appearances on Oprah, Entertainment Tonight, and even cooking segments on Good Morning America (her 1996 biography Hiding My Candy featured recipes like "Titillating Taters" and "Brenda's Beefy Surprise"). She insisted to Clint Eastwood that she portray herself in the 1997 movie adaptation of Midnight, which only added to her fame. Berendt would capture her rise in the introduction to Hiding My Candy: "Chablis has become a major tourist attraction in Savannah," he wrote. "Busloads of visitors, most of whom have never set foot in a gay club before, crowd into Club One to see her... Before Midnight, she made $250 a week, plus tips. Now she has a business manager, an agent, and a bodyguard."

Although the Lady Chablis worked in the context of drag, she lived as a woman. According to her biography, Chablis began dressing as a woman before she ever left home. It wasn't until Chablis was 18 that she discovered drag; Cliff Taylor (drag name Tina Devore) introduced Chablis to the art form at the FoxTrot club in Tallahassee; the two would eventually move to Atlanta and perform in cabarets. For Chablis, drag performance provided a reliable source of income, community, and social acceptance, which allowed her to continue living as a woman, and the queens she worked with in Atlanta encouraged Chablis to pursue hormone treatment at a local hospital.

It was a support network that encouraged her to live her life in public, with pride, and knock one more chip from the straight, white monolith that Hollywood, at that point, was. As a black trans woman entertainer, she provided inspiration to the likes of Laverne Cox, who wrote that Chablis "represents a generation of trans women entertainers we must never forget" in a tribute on Instagram.

Performers like Chablis and Arquette set the stage for stars like Cox to live publicly as trans people. While our society has a ways to go in terms of achieving trans equality, and Hollywood remains far from a paragon of trans representation, without Chablis and Arquette, what progress we have seen over the past decade would be impossible. Before Caitlin Jenner and Chaz Bono, Chablis and Arquette were sharing their stories publicly, despite the vulnerability it entailed, and they should be honored for their contributions to trans visibility as such.

Follow Matt Terrell on Twitter.

Tig Notaro is not a quick comedian. She doesn't jump from joke to joke in her standup. She speaks slowly, measuring her words, sometimes as if she's coming up with what to say on the spot and thinking hard about whether she's going to land the punchline or not. She's physical, hunching over, reaching out, shuffling sideways, always patient, trusting her audience to stay with her.

Her sense of timing makes the title of her new Amazon series, One Mississippi, which came out last Friday, absolutely apt. Timing is, after all, essential for a comedian. As Notaro said in her now famous live show, "The equation is tragedy plus time equals comedy." She added, "I am just at tragedy." But the roars that greeted her at every turn during that set prove that the equation is actually tragedy plus Tig Notaro equals laughter. This second formula is the key to the success of One Mississippi.

The trials and tribulations that ground the show are semi-autobiographical. Notaro takes the events of her life, which she's written and talked about extensively in her book (I'm Just a Person), her Netflix documentary (Tig), and her standup—cancer, double mastectomy, an intestinal disease called C diff, and the death of her mother in a freak accident—and switched around the order a bit to make everything just that much more devastating. Every terrible occurrence hits her all at once, instead of in the leisurely four months they took to happen in real life. Timing plus tragedy indeed.

The show's pilot has been discussed a lot in the last few days, with special attention given to the scene in which Tig—the character—asks a nurse whether she just leaves her freshly dead mother at the hospital and goes home. The nurse begins to laugh, and soon both she and Tig are in hysterics, with Tig then wheeling her mother's gray corpse out of hospital room, waving joyously to doctors and nurses in the hall. She then snaps back to the moment when she asked the question, with the nurse sympathetically telling her that she should, of course, go on home. It is the first moment in the show that even hints at comedy, as if the laughing characters are telling the viewers that it's OK, they're allowed to laugh at death, since what else can you do?

The dreamscape tactic is used multiple times throughout the show, with the zany images that are in Tig's mind translated to the screen before reality pulls her back. These scenes feel like a direct homage to showrunner Kate Robin's past work on HBO's Six Feet Under, which used them to excellent effect. One Mississippi has a lot in common with Six Feet Under, even though their premises are completely different. In both shows, death, dying, and disease are main plot points, as is a freak accident causing the death of a parent in the first episode. They also have a reluctant character returning home to their remaining parent's house. And, most importantly, both programs use seriously depressing themes in a way that makes us uncomfortable, and as a result, makes us laugh.

But to call One Mississippi a comedy, as it's being marketed, is a stretch for me. Like SFU or the Showtime sitcom The Big C, there are definite moments of humor. And while the show's runtime, which is less than 30 minutes per episode, suggests comedy, I'd align it more with the dramedy genre. Here, humor is a relief tactic. Vox writer Todd VanDerWerff made an interesting point when he wrote that the entire show, about three easily binge-watchable hours, is like an extended pilot rather than six distinct episodes.

Both One Mississippi and Six Feet Under use the serious and seriously depressing themes in a way that makes us uncomfortable, and as a result, makes us laugh.

Which brings us back to the fact that Notaro is not a quick comedian, and that she takes her time, whether onstage or, now, on television. The opening sequence shows Tig stopping at multiple bathrooms on her way to her flight to Mississippi, clutching her stomach after exiting each ladies' room and looking exhausted. It's a slow scene that shows Notaro's continued trust in her audience. The rest of the episodes show an evolution of grief for Tig's dead mother, as well as a gradual introduction to the character Tig, who is a storytelling radio show host in LA. Tragedy first struck her at a young age, and it just won't let up. We find out that Tig hasn't yet looked at her mastectomy scars when she doesn't let her pretty awful girlfriend see her chest and, more movingly, when she keeps her eyes rolled up in the bathtub and dabs awkwardly at herself with a sponge. And, central to this first (hopefully not last) season is that we find out, alongside Tig, that her mother wasn't as perfect as the immediate post-death memories indicated.

What's funny about tragedy is how utterly used to it we become. This is the biggest strength of One Mississippi. By the time we reach the third and fourth episodes, the fact that the cat belonging to her stepfather, Bill, goes missing becomes as upsetting as (if not more than) Tig's cancer and C. diff and her mother's death. The sympathy we have for Bill's awkwardness becomes all-consuming. And when Tig gets stood up at a Farron concert by a femme reporter who is super into Tig's mastectomy scars, we feel for this gayest of gay ghosting as we watch Tig mouthing the lyrics to herself with an empty chair as her date. Notaro makes us forget the big tragedies in favor of the little everyday ones that we ultimately are able to understand much better than disease and death, even if we've experienced them. Which also makes the good moments, like when Tig flirts with Kate (Notaro's real-life wife, Stephanie Allyn) all the more thrilling.

In the depths of tragedy, Notaro seems to be saying, we smile at only two things, really: gallows humor, love, or both.

Follow Ilana Masad on Twitter.

One Mississippi is now streaming on Amazon Prime.

Photo by Steve Pope/Getty Images

Everything you need to know about the world this morning, curated by VICE.

US News

Trump Campaign Accepts Obama Born in the US
Donald Trump's senior spokesman said the Republican nominee now believes President Obama was definitely born in the US. Jason Miller said Donald Trump had brought "closure" to the issue by "successfully compelling" Obama to release his birth certificate. Trump had refused to comment on the birther issue in an interview on Thursday.—NBC News

Ohio Cops Kill 13-Year-Old Boy Holding a BB Gun
Police in Ohio are investigating how a 13-year-old boy was fatally shot by an officer in Columbus Wednesday night. Tyre King had "pulled a gun from his waistband" when officers attempted to take him into custody, according to Columbus Division of Police, but the weapon found at the scene was determined to be a BB gun.—VICE News

Snowden Rejects House Intelligence Report
Edward Snowden has dismissed a House of Representatives intelligence committee report condemning his activities as those of a "disgruntled employee." Snowden accused the report of being "artlessly distorted" and an "act of bad faith." Two rights groups have launched a campaign for Snowden to receive a presidential pardon.—BBC News

NYPD Shoot Man Who Attacked Officer with Cleaver
A man was shot by police in midtown Manhattan after attacking an NYPD officer with a meat cleaver during rush hour Thursday. Akram Joudeh, 32, is in critical condition. An off-duty police detective who attempted to tackle him is being treated at the hospital for a six-inch knife gash from his temple to his jaw.—ABC News

International News

Aleppo Aid Plan Stalls in Syria
The UN has called on the Syrian government to allow life-saving aid into Aleppo "immediately." Staffan de Mistura, the UN special envoy, said there were 20 aid trucks ready to cross the border from Turkey into Syria. The Syrian government has yet to withdraw from Castello Road, the route into Aleppo, to allow trucks into the city.—Al Jazeera

75,000 Refugees Trapped on Jordan-Syria Border
About 75,000 Syrian refugees have been cut off from humanitarian aid for two months in an area between Jordan and Syria known as "the berm," according to a new Amnesty International report. Jordan has restricted humanitarian access to the berm after six of its soldiers were killed in a car bomb explosion in the area in June.—CNN

Turkey Detains Four for Suspected Plot Against Embassies
Authorities in Turkey have detained four people in an investigation into a potential threat against British and German embassies, but discovered no links to any terrorist groups. Britain shut its embassy in Ankara on Friday for "security reasons," and the German embassy said it would only be available for "limited operations" on Friday.—Reuters

Labor Law Protestors Clash with Police in France
At least 15 police officers were injured in Paris during clashes between cops and protesters opposing a new labor law. Around 13,000 people took part in the rally against changes that aim to make it easier for companies to increase working hours and facilitate lay-offs. The interior ministry said 32 people were arrested.—France 24

Everything Else

Jay-Z Says War on Drugs Has Been an Epic Fail
The rapper and label boss has declared America's war on drugs an "epic fail" in an animated four-minute op-ed video. Jay Z discusses the ineffectiveness and inequality of the anti-drug drive dating back to Richard Nixon's presidency.—The New York Times

Feds Recall One Million Samsung Galaxy Note 7s
The Consumer Product Safety Commission has announced a recall of one million Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphones, calling the overheating devices "serious fire and burn hazards."—NBC News

Chance the Rapper to Launch #StayWokeandVote Campaign
The artist is partnering with the NAACP for a presidential election campaign called #StayWokeandVote. NAACP volunteers will be offering Chance the Rapper fans the option to register to vote during his Magnificent Coloring world tour stops. —TIME

Skepta Beats David Bowie to Music Prize
British grime star Skepta has won the Mercury Prize, the UK's most prestigious music award, beating both Radiohead and David Bowie (nominated for his final album). One of the judges said Bowie "would want" the prize to go to Skepta.—Noisey

China Sends Space Lab into Orbit
China successfully launched its second space station, Tiangong-2, into orbit on Thursday. It will receive two taikonauts (the Chinese term for astronauts) in late October, who will then spend 30 days doing experiments in space.—Motherboard

Texas Is the Worst State for Health Insurance
The state's two biggest cities, Dallas and Houston, have the highest percentage of uninsured residents in America, according to the US Census Bureau. Another Texan city, San Antonio, ranks fourth for rates of uninsured residents.—VICE News

Photo by Colin Perkel/Canadian Press

A coalition of media and free speech organizations will be fighting to have their say on VICE's appeal of a court order requiring national security reporter Ben Makuch to hand over all notes and communications between him and a suspected Islamic State fighter to Canada's federal police.

VICE sits down with director Matt Johnson and his team to discuss their new movie Operation Avalanche, moon landing conspiracies, and their unorthodox approach to filmmaking.

All photos via Facebook

Every morning when he wakes up, Brad Firth applies thick swatches of red, black, and white paint to his face.

All photos by the author

Last week, at the end of our session, my therapist said, "I think one the reasons you're unhappy is because you fetishize the past. You continually focus on your youth, and if we're being honest, during that time period you were pretty miserable. I want you to try and be present, take an objective view on things, and stop idealizing what's gone by."