People spend a hell of a lot of time in the gas station. According to the Association for Convenience and Fuel Retailing Stores (NACS), the average American pumps gas for about three hours a year. And that estimate doesn't account for time spent at the gas station buying cigarettes and lottery tickets, hot food, and slushies. Big chains, like Shell and BP, practice place-product packaging, meaning they all look the same—whether you're filling your tank in Little Rock or Los Angeles. Going to the gas station is a shared experience that transcends class, race, and geography.

Because of all this, gas station employees are unlike any other members of the customer service field. They interact with people from all walks of life, all of whom seem to be agitated and in a hurry. After the Mercedes owner buys a bottle of coconut water, the next person in line might buy a bag of chips with food stamps. Gas station employees don't receive tips, and most earn between $9 and $11 per hour—more than your average Wendy's line cook, but nowhere near what a lot of people consider to be a livable income. During every shift, they see an America that is constantly craving, yet they're overlooked. Some people don't even make eye contact with the gas station employees when they're buying Marlboro Lights. At least, that's been my experience.

I've been working at one of Pittsburgh's busiest gas stations for two months. It's a mega-store: 16 pumps, made-to-order fast food, and a lounge. Shifts are eight-hours long, with two paid 15-minute breaks. This is the story of one of my 3 to 11 PM shifts.

[body_image width='1400' height='870' path='images/content-images/2015/06/02/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/06/02/' filename='a-day-in-the-life-of-a-gas-station-employee-530-body-image-1433205351.jpg' id='61955']

A Shell gas station, which is not where the author works, but which probably looks more or less the same since gas stations are mostly clones of each other. Photo by Flickr user Mike Mozart

2:50 PM

Outside the gas station, I spotted Watchdog's milk crate, but no Watchdog. His real name is Jim, and he begs for change throughout the neighborhood. We're supposed to run him off the property if we see him begging, but only one manager ever does. The Department of Justice's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) lists gas stations as one of the top places where panhandlers ask for money. The typical scam is claiming to have a broken down car. Watchdog isn't that creative, though. "Got any change?" is his go-to line. He panhandles until he has enough money to buy food, and then he sits in the lounge, eating and singing. Last month, he yelled, "Whoomp, there it is!" randomly for an hour. It was amazing how it fit perfectly with the scenes unfolding around him.

There were three cigarettes rubbed out by the crate, and when I walked inside, I saw why Watchdog left: two of the five managers, including the guy who runs him off, stood behind cash registers. The octagon-shaped counter has four registers and a lottery station, but even with 23 employees, the gas station is understaffed. Two clerks work at once, while three people sweat in the kitchen. The morning clerks had left, and the 2 PM person called off, but the managers assured me they had someone coming in to help.

3:00 PM

First customer of the day: a short, middle-aged man stepped to my register, holding out a $10 bill. He wore a black cap and long black T-shirt. I took the money from his hand, assuming he wanted gas. He mumbled the pump number. I asked him to please repeat it, and unable to understand his second attempt, I said the pump number I thought I heard to confirm. The man flipped out.

"Eight on three! Eight on three! I said eight on three!" I asked him to calm down, but he cut me off. "And you snatched the money outta my hand!"

My therapist says I like to live in anger. I struggle to let go of incidents like this, and feeling the rage bubble inside, I took a deep breath and continued with the transaction. The man snapped his fingers.

"Hurry up! I got places to go!"

I slammed the drawer shut, made him reach for his two dollars, and then hesitated to let go of the bills. We shared this moment where we both held the money and looked into each other's eyes. He tore them from my hand and, backing away, he pointed over his shoulder.

"Step outside and we'll finish this."

"Have a nice day, sir." I turned to the line of people and waved. "Next."

4:00 PM

Today, Kayden agreed to work on her day off. She's a beautiful 22-year old, tall and skinny, the tips of her hair dyed green. The hair inspires a lot of jokes. When she pulls it back, the green tips curl and coworkers tell her she looks like broccoli. Kayden laughs and fires back. She has a no-fucks-given attitude. She once got in trouble for playing music on her phone and twerking behind the counter. That afternoon, Kayden logged onto the neighboring register with straightened hair and Adidas pants—a dress code violation.

She turned to me. "Ready to admit you're a cop, Officer Gavin?"

After we met in April, Kayden told everyone I was a cop. One of the kitchen workers called her out on it in front of me, and she stood by the rumor. I joked that I was just a clean-cut white guy, but she disagreed. It was more than that. My build, my posture, how I talk, how I walk—she insists I'm a cop. I showed her my University of Pittsburgh student ID and explained I was in grad school for writing. I'm one of two employees studying for a master's degree; a few other employees are undergraduates, and a couple people have degrees they're not using. Kayden has a high school diploma. Still, she didn't believe me because I had exactly the kind of backstory as an undercover cop.

More on gas stations: Motherboard reports on why a gas station is being submerged in Washington, DC's most polluted river.

"You're either a cop or related to cops," she said, opening her register that day. Kayden was sure because her dad was a cop, her brother was a housing authority officer, and she could just tell. Minutes later, a Pittsburgh police officer walked in, and he was barely two feet past the door when Kayden yelled: "Don't he look like a cop?" The officer played along. "Oh yeah, definitely. We have undercovers everywhere."

I gave in. My brothers are cops. I hated to admit it. Being told I look like a cop is like being told I look like a total douchebag. In the past, people who I thought were my friends have accused my cop brothers of being terrible people without having met them, which pisses me off to the point where I have trouble letting it go. I hoped that by coming clean Kayden would give it a rest, but that didn't happen.

Throughout the night, she'd end moments of silence by saying, "I knew you were a cop."

5:30 PM

A woman wearing a long purple dress and matching sunglasses prepaid for gas. She was about 60, dark black hair. As I punched in the transaction, she leaned across the counter and asked if I would pump it for her.

"I'm allergic to gas," she said.

I'd never heard of anyone being allergic to gas before, and walking to her Jeep, the woman explained that her condition was undiagnosed. She didn't need a doctor to tell her what was wrong with her. "I passed out pumping gas when I was 20," she said. "Obviously, I'm allergic to something."

She felt lightheaded and nauseous standing several feet away from the pump. Lifting her sunglasses, she revealed eyes that were watering and swelling. Her symptoms could be classified as Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS), a controversial condition. The American Medical Association, the American Academy of Asthma, Allergy, and Immunology, and the American Medical Association on Scientific Affairs don't recognize MCS due to a lack of evidence of what causes symptoms. The woman seemed convinced that she had some type of disorder. She even had trouble cleaning her house.

"Anything with aerosol makes me dizzy," she told me.

I joked that I should check her oil and wash her windows. She called me sweet and tried to pay me, money cupped in her palm. I declined. Obviously, I was happy to help, but it also was just nice to get away from the register for a few minutes. Kayden was singing one line from a song and then stopping, but it's only funny when Watchdog does it.

6:30 PM

The bathrooms are in a nook next to the coolers. Facing the men's room, there's a sliding door that leads into cooler storage. At the beginning of my first break, I headed to the bathroom and saw that the sliding door was open. Cases of Red Bull had been ripped open and cans lay scattered on the ground. People steal from the gas station every day, but this took some nerve. I closed the door, and grabbed the manager. The manager groaned. A camera was aimed right at the sliding door, but it was broken. She now had to write a report for corporate.

Munchies: A Suburban Gas Station Serves Some of DC's Best Korean Food.

8:00 PM

A short, heavyset woman wearing a neon green tank top and matching sneakers leaned on the counter and examined the board of winning lottery numbers. Possibly nearsighted, her face was inches off the board as she slid her finger from game to corresponding number. My register was next to the lottery station, and when I asked if she was ready to purchase lottery tickets, she growled, "I'll let you know." Minutes later, she interrupted a transaction with another customer. The board wasn't updated, and she demanded to know all of the day's winning numbers. The customer in front of me was trying to order a can of chewing tobacco, but I missed what he said and was irritated.

"I'm sorry, miss, but the manager posts those numbers, and she's not around. Maybe you could try Googling it?"

Squinting, the woman showed off her tooth. "Why would I go home and Google it when I'm right here?"

I sold the can of chew and began talking to her. She played the lottery every day and bought tickets from several locations. "My aunt taught me this system, and she just won $2 million."

A Pittsburgh woman did in fact win the Mega Millions in February. I asked if her aunt was going to share. "Why should she?" the woman said. "I ain't gonna when I win."

"Two people in the same family hitting the Mega Millions—the odds of that happening must be astronomical."

"It can happen. You just gotta know what you're doing."

9:00 PM

The gas station sits in a diverse section of Pittsburgh. It neighbors one of the city's richest communities and several of its poorest. Some customers purchase food with Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards. I grew up lower-middle class in Pittsburgh's suburbs and had no experience with food stamps prior to being hired. That evening, a man approached my register with a kitchen ticket for a Philly cheesesteak. Customers have to prepay for their made-to-order food and get their tickets stamped before they can receive the order. The man swiped his EBT card, but the computer declined the transaction.

The man wore a faded Pirates T-shirt and dirty jean shorts. He hadn't shaved in days and had brown teeth. "I think I punched in the right code. But I have metal plate in my head." While he cackled at himself, I called Kayden to help. She checked his ticket and looked at me in a way that said you're an idiot.

"He can't buy hot food with EBT, Officer Gavin," she said.

"Is this because I have a metal plate in my head?" the man asked.

The people in line began to laugh, and Kayden waved the man to follow her over to the kitchen, so they could talk to one of the line cooks before they made his cheesesteak. At first it sounded cruel: food stamp recipients not being allowed to buy hot food. But it made sense after a coworker, a gas station veteran who has an EBT card, explained that food stamps focus on cold food because it can be stored longer. The Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) has seen a sharp decrease in participation over the past year, but there are still 46.5 million Americans receiving assistance.

9:30 PM

The gas station has regulars. There's Dee and Jimmy, who read the newspaper in the lounge, and Leia, who works at a pizza place across the street and drinks about 400 ounces of slushy each week. The same group of paramedics and cops stand around and drink coffee together. And then there are the veterans who come in for free coffee. One vet has a white mustache, curly white hair that's receding, and a turkey neck. Every night, he comes to the gas station and gets a large coffee and a chicken salad. He raises the coffee and says "veteran," then puts $4.80 on the counter for the salad. That night, I beat him to the punch.

"Veteran," I said. "Four-eighty for a chicken salad." His turkey neck jiggled as he nodded. "What's your name, sir?"

"Why?"

"I've memorized your order. Wouldn't it be nice to say, 'Hello, Mr. Smith' when you come in here?"

"No, it wouldn't, actually. This isn't Cheers."

The man may have felt self-conscious about admitting that he spends a lot of time at a gas station. With common names like "Kwik Stop" or "Kwik Fill," there's a perception that one shouldn't linger at a gas station.

Historically speaking, though, the opposite is true. Gas stations were meant to be community hubs where everyone knows your name. Frank Lloyd Wright probably would agree. The famous architect loved gas stations, and he predicted they would be "the future city in embryo," which would "naturally grow into a neighborhood distribution center, meeting-place, restaurant... or whatever else is needed."

Wright's vision is coming true. Fifty years ago, my dad hung out at a gas station every weekend learning how to work on cars. America's car culture is gone and in its place we have gas stations with lounges featuring free WiFi.

10:58 PM

Two 15-minute breaks is barely a rest when standing on concrete for consecutive hours. There's a mat by each register, but they don't really soften the blow to knees and feet. I move constantly, squatting, rocking, alternating feet. No matter what I do, by the end of a shift, I'm exhausted and in a little pain. We had gotten slammed that night, which can make time fly, but can also be stressful. I had a non-stop line for about three hours, and as I counted down my drawer, I didn't want to talk to anyone.

Hearing voices, I looked up and saw a customer standing outside the front door. He was looking down, digging into his pocket. The man entered the store and Watchdog followed. Watchdog wears all black: a knitted cap, hoodie, jeans, sneakers. He has gray streaks in his long beard and his breath smells like brine mixed with rancid milk. It's so pungent that I can smell it from across the counter.

"Can I have paper money?" he asked, sliding across a handful of quarters.

Exchanging the money, I asked if he had family in the area. Watchdog said he has four children, but the closest one, a 32-year old daughter, lives in a neighboring county. Her age struck me as odd. Watchdog doesn't look that old.

"I'm 48." He shrugged and laughed. "Maybe 47. I don't know. I'm a little screwy since I got shot."

Watchdog spun around and began lifting his shirt. In 2010, he was shot just above his tailbone, and he loves showing off the wound. The problem is he tends to moon people, and the last time he did this in the store, the counter area smelled like his ass. I ordered him to stop, and changing the subject, I asked what he was doing for Memorial Day.

"Drinking a whole lot of beers and smoking a shit ton of cigarettes," he said.

Watchdog bought food and sat down in the lounge, while I finished counting my drawer. The gas station becomes chaotic during a shift change. Employees are usually relieved during peak times: 6 to 7 AM, 2 to 3 PM, and 10 to 11 PM. The switch can create long lines, and as I filled out my end of the shift paperwork, customers tried to ask me questions, but I just pointed to other people. "Sorry, I can't help," I mumbled. The lines stretched to the donut and coffee stations, and the people waiting looked bored and angry.

The store's music is awful. The manager cranks this station that plays "Mambo Number 5" and "My Heart Will Go On." The shift change got so loud that night that I wished I could have hear the shitty music. Leaving my paperwork by the safe, I punched out and left without saying goodbye. The manager didn't care; no one ever counts my drawer. Outside, the neon lights hummed over a Shania Twain song we were forcing people to listen to as they pumped gas.

Follow Gavin Jenkins on Twitter.

Presidential campaign announcements often inspire a range of emotion: fanfare, excitement, optimism, anger, abject terror. They're moments in which the country gets a preview of its possible future, giving voters a minute to consider whom they might vote for and why. But with the presidential campaign announcement of Lincoln Chafee, who will announce his 2016 bid for the Democratic nomination Wednesday evening, the response is a little different: Who the hell is Lincoln Chafee?

This may be the first time in the history of the United States in which residents of Rhode Island know something the rest of the country does not. Chafee was a Republican US Senator from the Tiniest State from 1999 through 2007, first appointed to fill his deceased father's seat, and then serving one full term before losing his reelection campaign in 2006. In 2010, he was elected governor, only by this time he was no longer a Republican, but an Independent. Now he's running for president as a Democrat. This is a man who appreciates variety.

In fact, Chafee was a peak RINO, a term conservatives like to throw around for Republicans who don't like to talk about guns or baby-killers. Chafee was pretty much the most liberal Republican in the US Senate for the entire time he was in office. He supported gay marriage and higher taxes on the wealthy, voted against the war in Iraq, and opposed drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Instead of supporting incumbent George W. Bush in his 2004 reelection efforts, Chafee put down the other George Bush as a write-in candidate. Because in addition to being versatile, Lincoln Chafee is also very clever.

The other thing you need to know about Chafee is that, after attending a series of elite Northeastern schools, like Andover and Brown University, he packed up and moved west to learn how to become a farrier, which is someone who shoes horses. He went to horseshoeing school in Montana, and then did that for seven years. Lincoln Chafee: He'll Shoe America.

Related: George Pataki Is Running for President Because What the Hell, Why Not?

Anyway, none of this answers the question of why Chafee is running for president. His position couldn't be weaker: Chafee has zero name recognition nationwide, and he has literally never won an election as a Democrat before. He's also running against Hillary Clinton, whose nomination seems so inevitable Democrats keep forgetting they haven't already elected her. Needless to say, Chafee won't win this one—it's not even worth considering the possibility, intellectually or otherwise.

So what exactly is the point? Good question. Apparently, even people in his home state can't even figure out why Chafee's running, which means the rest of us never really had a shot at understanding his motives. The New York Times wrote today that even "political analysts in Rhode Island were surprised to learn of Mr. Chafee's presidential aspirations.

"Some have suggested that Mr. Chafee is looking to rebrand himself after opting not to seek re-election as governor amid weak poll numbers and the threat of a primary challenge," the Times piece continued. "However, even critics say that he is sincere and that his presence will press [Hillary] Clinton on foreign policy."

Maureen Moakley, a political science professor at the University of Rhode Island and a frequent commentator on the state's politics, thinks this assessment is on target. "Lincoln Chafee is clearly in that category of running for political or career purposes in terms of rebranding himself, because he had a difficult situation in Rhode Island," Moakley told me in an interview today.

"It seems to me that at least at first glance, it's more understandable from an outsider's point of view that he would run, because after all, he was a governor, he was a senator, he comes from a prestigious family," she continued. "The problem is that he was not successful as governor, even though he had some really good policies and supported some really good policy initiatives."

But while Chafee had a reputation in Rhode Island for sticking to his principles—he oversaw the state's legalization of gay marriage and pushed through pension and education funding reforms—he was also known for having some weird priorities, the most obvious example being the fiasco over what to call the Christmas tree in the Rhode Island statehouse. Even as the state's economy languished, plagued by some of the country's highest unemployment rates, Chafee spent an incredible amount of time insisting it be called a "holiday tree." You can imagine how well that turned out.

"This is the most Catholic state in the country, and there was a lot of pushback, including pushback from the bishop," said Moakley. "Instead of dropping it, he expended an enormous amount of political capital for virtually no gain. Given the fact that the media had already begun to stereotype him as somewhat inept, this only fed into the stereotype."

Like this? Watch The Business of Life: Millennial Veterans and the Cost of War.

After debacles like that, it makes sense that Chafee would seek out the quickest—and most conspicuous—fix to his reputation. Like, say, a presidential run, even if it's doomed from the outset. Still, the way Chafee's gone about launching his White House bid has so far only reinforced suspicions that he is, in fact, incompetent.

As the Associated Press reported this morning, Chafee has made no attempt to actually, you know, set up a campaign operation. The most visible campaign activity for Chafee so far has been his wife's Facebook posts, first complaining about how little attention Lincoln had been getting since announcing his exploratory committee —"No one has contacted him. so SAD!" she wrote in April—and then wondering aloud whether anyone had the login credentials to his old page when he was governor, because, well, the Chafees certainly didn't.

It appears that Stephanie Chafee has now closed her Facebook page, but as of this morning, her most recent activity appears to be taking a quiz on 12 etiquette questions from a website called quizpug.com. She got A+, perfectly polite, so even if her husband's actual interest in winning the White House appears to be nearly zero, at least he has a qualified First Lady.

Kevin Lincoln is on Twitter.

[body_image width='720' height='480' path='images/content-images/2015/06/03/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/06/03/' filename='encapuchados-chile-sam-edward-722-body-image-1433326386.jpg' id='62552']

A bus stop is set on fire at a demonstration. All photos author's own

May was an unusually bloody month for the long-running student protests that have dominated Chilean politics since 2011. Two protesters were killed by a homeowner after allegedly writing graffiti on his building during a May 14 march in the city of Valparaíso, and a week later a young man was left in critical condition after being hit with a water cannon. In response, 100,000 people marched against excessive police force in the capital of Santiago, where, following the largely peaceful demonstration itself, masked figures reportedly looted several shops, firebombed a bank, and injured several police officers, one of whom received burns in an acid attack.

Rather than isolated incidents, these are only extreme examples of the regular violence that frequently hijacks peaceful protests of all stripes in Chile.

The clashes at demonstrations in Chile typically follow a similar script. Shortly after the end of a march, while the vast majority of the crowd mills around the main stage listening to speeches from protest leaders, a small but immediately identifiable minority will congregate nearby. Busy putting on masks or wrapping T-shirts around their heads, they are preparing for a clash with their nemesis: the Special Forces Riot Police.

[body_image width='720' height='480' path='images/content-images/2015/06/03/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/06/03/' filename='encapuchados-chile-sam-edward-722-body-image-1433329837.jpg' id='62599']

Taking the man to task. In this case the green man of a traffic light.

Known as encapuchados—literally "hooded ones" in Spanish, but in Chile synonymous with masked vandals—they come prepared with backpacks full of broken concrete, hammers, and, in many cases, the materials for Molotov cocktails.

Over the next few hours the encapuchados will play a cat-and-mouse game with the police officers. The protesters will set fire to bus stops, destroy street signs, and reduce kiosks to dust until the police charge forward in military formation under the cover of water cannons and tear gas.

The encapuchados, for their part, will try to inflict as much damage as possible on the ungainly police officers, throwing large chunks of concrete at their heads, Molotov cocktails at the engines of their motorbikes, and, in some cases, even tossing acid at those who venture too close. Journalists who photograph the violence have also been known to become the target of the encapuchados' rage. Detested equally by the police they attempt to maim and the many Chileans fed up with seeing their streets transformed into a war-zone every few weeks, these young radicals are seen as social pariahs to mainstream society. Politicians frequently promise to end the hostility, but the clashes continue.

[body_image width='720' height='480' path='images/content-images/2015/06/03/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/06/03/' filename='encapuchados-chile-sam-edward-722-body-image-1433326413.jpg' id='62553']

Activists battle with riot-cops.

According to Igor Goicovic Donoso, historian at the University of Santiago de Chile and an expert on social violence, there are, broadly speaking, two distinct components of the modern gangs of encapuchados. The first, familiar to the international audience and recognizable from recent street violence in countries including Greece, are young people identifying with radical anarchism. Also in this bracket are those influenced by other far-left groups such as the various Marxist guerrilla organizations that maintained an armed resistance against the Augusto Pinochet military dictatorship, which ran from 1973 to 1990.

"The majority of the encapuchados, however, are young people from the poorest neighborhoods and have no identifiable political or ideological affiliation," Igor told me. "Instead they express a deep anger at the lack of economic opportunities and social exclusion they suffer."

Goicovic said it was important to realize that these young people were not the only groups responsible for street violence in the country, pointing to the frequency with which all manner of demonstrations end in protesters fighting the police. But what separates the encapuchados from, say, striking port workers is the "spontaneous" nature of their violence.

"Notably, even the anarchists or similar groups wield no effective control over the targets at which they direct their violence," Goicovic said. "Many of which are senseless and lack any form of justification. For example, the looting of a school in a poor neighborhood, robbing a local store or vandalizing a nursery."

Related: Russian Grave Robbers

While much of this violence has no overt political target, the phenomenon of the modern encapuchado is considered by many experts to be the latest symptom of the huge disparity of wealth that has blighted Chilean urban society for more than a century.

"This is not a new phenomenon," Sergio Grez Toso, a historian at the University of Chile, told me. "Street violence has a long history in Chile, and its root has always been in profound inequality and the social discontent of the poorest sectors of society."

Following massive immigration to the capital from rural areas in the late 19th century, Santiago's population skyrocketed with many of the new arrivals living in abject poverty in peripheral slums. A litany of bloody encounters between security forces and protesters followed in the subsequent decades.

Since then, Chile has undergone massive change and reduced poverty dramatically, but extreme social segregation remains a problem, and some claim that the country's much-publicized "economic miracle" has left many behind.

[body_image width='720' height='480' path='images/content-images/2015/06/03/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/06/03/' filename='encapuchados-chile-sam-edward-722-body-image-1433326427.jpg' id='62554']

A demonstrator is doused with a police water cannon.

For Grez, long-standing frustrations with politics and the economic difficulties facing the poorest communities are two of many factors behind the formation of a class of marginalized, angry young men.

While this latter group may not actively identify with the demands of whichever protest they hijack, these events provide an opportunity for marginalized, frustrated youth to vent their anger, according to Goicovic.

Student leaders frequently claim that the riot police themselves are guilty of provoking violence. Their aggressive tactics and excessive force is well reported: the alleged 2013 beating of a teenager, a protester losing most of the sight in his right eye after police shot him with paintball guns the same year, and reports of sexual abuse toward suspects in custody, to name a few.

Over on Noisey: There's a Mysterious NOFX Mariachi Cover Band Out There Somewhere

"The police also contribute to this social and political violence through their frequently brutal and heavy-handed approach to dealing with [the demonstrations organized by] the social movements. In many cases the police have appeared more concerned with provoking protesters than maintaining public order," Grez said. "Between 2011 and 2014, there have been various well-documented cases of police infiltrators, some of them dressed as encapuchados, who incited students to attack property and even the riot police themselves."

Goicovic suggests the organization of the Chilean police force provides a further twist: many of the officers in the Carabineros—uniformed police—hail from a similar socio-economic background to the demonstrators on the other side of street barricades.

"[The specialist riot police] are on one hand from the same social class as the protesters, but they have been shaped ideologically, politically, psychologically to carry out repressive action against those from these same groups," he said. "The presence, then, of the riot police, seeking to suppress the actions of protests becomes perhaps the most common argument justifying violence on the part of the encapuchados."

Following the eventual failure of a bill first proposed in 2011 which would have introduced tougher sentences for those guilty of protest violence and made covering one's face at a demonstration a criminal offense, politicians and police have experimented with other means of tackling the encapuchados, but most observers agree there has been no respite in the violence so far.

For Grez, though, it's important to place this violence in perspective. "Social and political violence has never been far from the history of the Chilean Republic," he said. "The violence we see today is very mild if we put it in context [of Chile's social conflicts over the last 200 years], throughout which the government and the dominant classes have always employed the greatest share of force."

The more immediate context is Chile's ongoing social struggle for educational reform, and the street-based protests that have formed a major part of that. So long as they continue, it seems likely that the encapuchados won't be far away, ready to cause chaos at every opportunity.

Thumbnail image via the HidrateMe Kickstarter page

With so much of our lives these days focused on bright, ever-glowing screens, it's easy to forget that we still inhabit fleshy forms that require routine maintenance like eating and washing and sleeping. Luckily, a company called Hidrate Inc. has launched a Kickstarter to fund a product they call HidrateMe. It's a smart water bottle that syncs with your iPhone through an app and starts to glow when you need to drink. The company feels this is necessary, since apparently humans are so technologically dependent that we have lost all ability to comprehend simple thirst signals in our bodies. People seem to agree—so far the Kickstarter campaign has raised almost three times its initial $35,000 goal, and it still has 40 days to go.

The app and water bottle sync with Bluetooth and use your GPS location to adjust your "daily water goal" depending on the weather around you. There was a time when you had to listen to your strange bodily pangs and assess when you were in need of a glass of water. Thanks to HidrateMe, that time has passed.

Want Some In-Depth Stories About the Future of Humans?

1. Watch Our Documentary, 'Life After Food'
2. The Future of Plastic Surgery According to VICE
3. The Roads of the Future Will Charge Your Car, Keep You from Crashing
4. The Future of Sex According to VICE

The fact that the ads for San Andreas are comforting really says it all. It's not just the vaguely serene expression on Dwayne Johnson's face—it's the fact that he's even in this movie in the first place, and that he's upgraded from fighting Jason Statham to fighting entire continental fault lines.

Sure, part of it just stems from the genre. Disaster movies carry with them the cathartic aroma of voyeuristic blood sport. You can strap into an Independence Day or a Day After Tomorrow and gawk at the ways our national monuments can be toppled without the safety of your own sofa. These films are a (somewhat) grown-up answer to the childhood thrill of building a big tower out of Legos only to smash it to bits. Sometimes it's enough just to watch things go boom.

But San Andreas is not just being sold on the promise of simulated devastation. Rather, its fundamental appeal comes in the promise of protection from that apocalypse—a safety net that arrives with an infectious grin, an impossibly ripped physique, and a charismatic, decidedly paternal nature. Of course, we're talking about Dwayne "the artist formerly known as the Rock" Johnson. He's such a surefire box-office draw that he's joked about being "franchise Viagra," but it's no longer enough for him to merely save the occasional sagging sequels—Johnson has moved on to saving entire genres, directorial careers, and with any luck, our summer movie climate.

As strange as it sounds, there was a time when people did not know how to use Johnson on screen. After all, his first real cinematic endeavor was 2002's The Scorpion King—a film that then seemed like the nadir of the Mummy franchise, little did audiences know. For all of that movie's dated effects and crappy one-liners, most of its failings lie in the fundamental miscasting of Johnson, who, prior to that, had been hamming it up in wrestling arenas, enticing audiences with the scent of what he's got cooking. His natural charm as a suave, Wahlberg-esque goofball was left stranded in a role that should have been reserved for our most stoic of Schwarzeneggers. If we may compare Johnson to Channing Tatum, another charming meathead with a history of being miscast, this was his G. I. Joe period.

Official trailer to 'San Andreas' (2015)

While Tatum was saved by a lasting creative collaboration with the great Steven Soderbergh, Johnson's salvation came in the form of a partnership with the always intriguing Peter Berg, whose 2003 action comedy The Rundown, gave him the chance to let loose. He used a turntable as a weapon, he was harassed by a monkey, he talked in a funny voice. On top of that, he got to share the screen with Christopher Walken as the latter delivered a monologue referring the enslaved denizens of his mining town as "oompa-loompas." If you have not seen The Rundown, and haven't gotten the hint, it is a delightful riff on Midnight Run, and absolutely worth your two hours and $4 for a Sunday afternoon iTunes rental. (His next team-up with Berg is coming to HBO this summer, in the form of a series that will take a debauched dive into the world of sports management.

Berg's film paved the way for the SNL-hosting, Fast and Furious lynchpin Johnson that everybody loves today. More interestingly, though, The Rundown also planted the seeds for a slightly more elusive, intriguing sidebar to Johnson's film career—his predilection to lapse into unabashed, bug-fuck weirdness as a character actor. This side of Johnson—or Weird Rock, as we'll refer to it—pops up again in 2007's wildly underrated apocalyptic comedy-cum-musical-cum-political satire Southland Tales. That Johnson—playing a childlike, twitchy action star with a case of amnesia—manages to stand out as an oddball highlight in a movie where Justin Timberlake lip-synchs to the Killers in an arcade full of women dressed as Marilyn Monroe is an accomplishment of its own.

It would be another six years before Weird Rock resurfaced in full, glorious form, in Michael Bay's 2013 opus Pain & Gain—a warped, neon-shaded American flag reflection of a movie, where the stripes are etched in blood and tanning oil. Bay, a filmmaker lost at sea following his initial trilogy of Transformers movies, saw this as a chance to return to his roots. As he told Grantland prior to the start of principal photography, "I'm gonna do a small character piece next. I love this script. It's well-written. It's just great to work with actors." Yes, for Michael Bay, a small character piece means a cracked-out action comedy about homicidal bodybuilders.

Speaking of getting buff, check out "Virtual Reality Home Gym Means Bodybuilding on Different Planets" on the Creators Project

For all of the reasons that Pain & Gain is messily fascinating and compulsively watchable, Johnson's performance remains the crown jewel, the frosting on the cake made of Muscle Milk. If Pain & Gain can be viewed as Bay's attempt at making a Coen brothers film, then Johnson acquits himself admirably as Bay's John Goodman: a fiercely committed true believer of a performer in the face of cinematic anarchy. In his role as a born-again ex-con coke fiend, Johnson brings a sense of sincerity and sweetness to the film that's not just comical, it's revelatory. Even when he's barbecuing a pile of severed hands in a moronic attempt to remove the fingerprints from them, you still want to give the guy a hug. Johnson's so good that he doesn't just give you faith in Pain & Gain—he gives you faith in the career of Michael Bay again.

In San Andreas, though, Johnson is back doing what he does best: cracking wise, doing stunts, and playing up his normalcy. Johnson's playing an everyman in the body of a superhero. His character, Ray, is a blue-collar search and rescue worker who is bummed about his divorce—but who also tears the door off of a car that's hanging off the side of a cliff with his bare hands . But he's still there to have fun. After helping his ex-wife (Carla Gugino) perform a parachute landing in the middle of San Francisco's AT&T Field, he remarks, smirking, "It's been a while since I got you to second base."

Throughout the movie, he looks genuinely happy to be there. With Johnson, there's nothing glib at work, no ironic remove to distance himself from the silliness of the spectacle around him as opposed to, say, the palpable disdain of a John Cusack. He's as eager to deliver an earnest, potentially embarrassing monologue about the daughter he couldn't save as is he to motor a boat up the crest of a CGI tsunami.

Check out Ultra-Violent Ugandan DIY Action Cinema

Maybe that's why the disaster film has suffered as a genre in recent years. It's a fundamentally goofy type of movie, one that requires a lead who will be in on the joke without ruining it for everyone else. You can't be too cool if you're going to star in a Roland Emmerich movie. Or you can, but it doesn't tend to work out well.

And that's why Johnson's had the career that he's had. He's got a sense of humor, but he'll always crack the first joke at his own expense. He'll do the weirdo sci-fi movie from the Donnie Darko guy that goes to Cannes, and he'll fully commit to it. But that doesn't mean he'll thumb his nose at headlining the sequel to Journey to the Center of the Earth . And despite looking like the Rock, he remains a fully accessible performer.

If any other celebrity broke the record for most selfies taken at a time at the premiere of their new movie, it'd look like a shameless, out-of-touch grab at social-media relevance. For Dwayne Johnson, hey, of course he did. After all, what are a couple of selfies compared to a California-splintering earthquake that you can feel on the East Coast?

San Andreas is in theaters now.

Chris McEwen is on Twitter.

[body_image width='1024' height='678' path='images/content-images/2015/06/04/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/06/04/' filename='the-problems-with-access-to-sex-reassignment-in-ontario-980-body-image-1433429655.jpg' id='63142']

CAMH's Queen Street location in Toronto. Photo via Flickr user Chris TylerTO

How would you feel if, before getting treatment for a medical condition that was making every day of your life a living hell, you were told that not only did the health system have to check to see if you were sane enough for the treatment, but you would also have to wait three years before finding out?

That's not a hypothetical scenario: for many, it's the painful reality of trying to obtain gender reassignment therapy in Ontario, and there's one clinic at the centre of it all.

The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto is currently the only place in the province that has the power to green-light the funding needed for a person to get sex reassignment surgery. Opened in 1975, the clinic has two main divisions for gender identity: adult and childhood/adolescent, with the former being anyone 19 and older, and the latter being anyone under.

Both divisions are, according to CAMH, meant to provide "assessment" of the patient and offer treatment in varying degrees. For adults, it's pretty straightforward: on the date of the appointment, the patient will see a psychiatrist and/or psychologist, who will determine whether they are mentally ready for reassignment surgery. If that answer turns out to be a yes, they're good to go and OHIP will cover the costs of both post-op hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and the actual reassignment surgery. If that answer is no, they will either be rejected and have to come up with the surgery money themselves, or will be put back on the waitlist until they can be reassessed.

Unlike their ability to green-light surgeries, it's worth noting that CAMH is not the anointed or sole provider of primary HRT care, yet it is, in a sense, the only ticket to a complete transition. After receiving an appointment date at the clinic, those who are approved for surgery are sent to the office of Dr. Pierre Brassard, a Montreal-based plastic surgeon who, along with his colleague Dr. Maud Bélanger, are the only two doctors in Canada who perform OHIP-funded gender reassignment surgery.

You didn't read that wrong: the only doctors providing care on an Ontario health plan are not even located in Ontario. And that, unfortunately, is not the end of it.

Once a person undergoes surgery, they are allowed to stay in an aftercare facility for a few days before being sent home. For many, this is a trip coming home as a different person, one still trying to get a feel for what they have just experienced. Couple that with the distance traveled, which can be from one end of Ontario to the other, along with the multi-year journey of getting to this point, and you end up with a process that can be incredibly taxing.

In the case of Chrystofer Maillet, a former patient of the clinic who launched a Charter challenge in May against the province's policy on the process, it was a tangled and tormenting path.

Initially visiting the clinic in 2010, Maillet was deterred from jumping on the waitlist after an intake worker told him to "rethink" and "take some time" on his decision. By 2011, Maillet was sure of himself and was put on the list, eventually receiving an appointment date in late 2013. Due to the wait, however, Maillet had gone ahead nine months prior to his appointment and paid for his own double mastectomy, a procedure needed due to the side effect of painful breast development from his prescribed hormone regiment.

When he eventually told the doctors he saw at the appointment of his decision, Maillet said they both agreed it was a good idea. It was only after the appointment that Maillet learned that OHIP would not reimburse him for the treatment on the grounds that patients are obligated to obtain approval before, not after, their procedures. Thus, the debt began to climb and the battle began.

"It's put me in an incredibly tough situation financially," he said. "I never thought it'd turn out this way."

Since his original appointment in 2013, Maillet has had two appeals about the decision shot down: the first one before CAMH and the second one before an advisory board in Ottawa. Now around $10,000 in debt after taking the surgery out on a line of credit Maillet says his concerns were not taken seriously, adding that at the second appeal, he was convinced that his argument had won until the decision came through and informed him that he would not be reimbursed. It's just one experience in a neverending battle that's left a bitter taste in his mouth about the clinic.

"It's not healthcare," he said. "It's a bottleneck system to convince people to not have surgery. I spent more time answering questions and giving my life story to my plastic surgeon than I did to the people at CAMH."

Maillet's tale is just one in many horror stories from the clinic. In February, CAMH announced that they were conducting an internal review into the clinic's practices after accusations arose that the head honcho and chief psychologist, Dr. Kenneth Zucker, had been performing conversion therapy on patients of the pediatric wing, a claim supported by both witnesses and patients and Zucker's extensive history of research into the controversial treatment method.

NDP MPP Cheri DiNovo, who brought forth a bill aiming to ban conversion therapy in Canada to Queen's Park in March, says that the discovery of CAMH's activities were a surprise to her.

"I was as shocked as anyone that this was ongoing," she said. "It shouldn't be happening."

DiNovo's Bill 77, which passed second reading in May, has received unanimous backing from political parties in the province and has garnered vocal support from the Liberal government's Minister of Health and Long Term Care, Dr. Eric Hoskins. What's surprising, however, is that, DiNovo says the resistance to the proposed reformations is actually coming from doctors themselves.

"There's an incredible pushback from the medical community," she said. "It is kind of a protectionist community. Whenever they're challenged, their tendency is to fight back and it's a problem. It's a real problem."

CAMH's process of accepting and approving new patients has also come into question. Prior to the 1990s, the rejection rate for the clinic was 90 percent, and it wasn't until recently that the requirement for incoming patients to live in their chosen gender role for two years was dropped to just one.

The most troubling about CAMH's handling of their responsibility as Ontario's sole decision-maker for trans people is the fallout for those struggling to have their concerns taken seriously. A 2013 paper published by TransPULSE, a community-organized trans research group, revealed that at least 25 percent of all trans Ontarians treating with hormones had obtained them through nonmedical routes at one time or another. What's even more concerning and frightening, some five participants in the study of 433 admitted to conducting self-surgeries on themselves.

While the risks of self-operation are clear in and of themselves, the dangers of self-medication through hormone use are a little more pervasive. Purchasing synthetic hormones illegally can sometimes lead to the user finding themselves with botched drugs or inaccurate dosages, not to mention the side effects of using hormones, which require other pharmaceuticals to counteract.

For example, a female-to-male transition would require the administration of the male sex hormone, testosterone. But an increase in testosterone will simultaneously cause an increase in a process called aromatization, which is the body's mechanism of balancing out hormone levels by converting excess testosterone to estrogen, the female sex hormone. Without the use of an estrogen blocker or aromatase inhibitor such as anastrozole—a drug used in the treatment of breast cancer—the person may see abnormal, sometimes painful, breast development.

According to Jordan Zaitzow, Trans Health Connection Coordinator of Sherbourne Health Centre in Toronto, both the inability for trans people to access hormones safely and Ontario doctors' lack of training in hormone therapy have pushed a lot of those seeking to transition to obtain the drugs through other means.

"I think it's happening really often and, of course, as you would suspect, in Ontario, if you are in a super-remote area or in a small town where there aren't many options, getting trans care requires you to know the system really well and do a lot of self-advocacy," he said, noting the trickiness of getting prescribed treatment in Ontario. "There aren't enough places that are providing treatment. I know people who will travel all the way from North Bay to St. Catharines because that's the only place that's providing primary care."

In a 2013 open letter, CAMH clinic head Dr. Christopher McIntosh urged more family doctors to employ the use of hormone therapy on their patients before referring them to the Toronto clinic, noting that CAMH was "managing increasing demands with very limited staff resources."

McIntosh, who joined CAMH in 2009 before being promoted to clinic head in 2011, said that he believes that process of obtaining the OK to transition needs reworking.

"The whole process needs to change," McIntosh told VICE during a phone interview. "It used to be that [transitioning] was a highly-unusual thing, that a very small number of people were going forward with, and nobody in any other part of the system had any idea what to do with individuals who wanted to change their gender...But I think things are changing."

McIntosh defended the clinic as not being solely responsible for the wait times, pointing out that CAMH is limited in the number of specialists it has on staff and can only process so many requests at once. He also added that the lack of access to surgeons is largely due to the complexity of reassignment surgery itself.

When asked about the accusations of childhood conversion therapy under the supervision of his colleague Zucker, however, McIntosh declined to comment.

Zaitzow, who also acts as a coordinator for Rainbow Health Ontario, an LGBTQ-focused medical advocacy and education organization that provides training and knowledge on trans issues to doctors, says that one of the biggest hurdles to overcome is teaching doctors to know how to safely treat patients willing to transition.

"A lot of doctors will say, 'This is outside of my scope of practice, so I can't do it,' and part of that is good—it's good to know what doctors are capable and not capable of doing—but a lot of the time we find that this is really just transphobia," he said. "The class of hormones that refer to transition are viewed as really complicated by default because [doctors] don't know about trans people. It's not in medical school, it's not in curriculum, so they're entering into the field without any knowledge."

The barriers on the path to transition in Ontario are many and for Maillet, as well as many like him in the trans community, the ability of the medical community to control the fate of trans people is one that is unacceptable.

"Healthcare professionals always worry about whether you're healthy enough to go through with this decision," he said. "No one's ever 'healthy' enough to go through with that kind of decision. Until you're on the other side, you're not going to know."

Follow Jake Kivanc on Twitter.

Media reports of sexual assaults on campuses have risen dramatically over the last few years. More and more survivors and their allies are stepping forward to denounce a pervasive culture of sexual violence that they say is out of control. But the controversy around the sheer number and frequency of these attacks has overshadowed a related problem: Universities are handling these cases in their own makeshift justice systems, behind closed doors.

For this week's episode of VICE on HBO, host Gianna Toboni visited American campuses to see what's really going on, and why many students don't think their safety is their schools' priority. Watch a new clip from the upcoming segment, titled "Campus Cover-Up," above.

To learn more about how to prevent sexual assault from happening on college campuses, go to the official It's On Us website and follow them on Twitter.

Watch VICE Fridays on HBO at 11 PM, 10 PM central, or stream it via HBO Now.

[body_image width='970' height='932' path='images/content-images/2015/06/03/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/06/03/' filename='why-women-are-getting-underground-butt-injections-456-body-image-1433365539.jpg' id='62899']
Photo via Kelly Mayhew's Facebook

A 34-year-old woman named Kelly Mayhew died on Saturday in a basement in Queens because of complications from a black market butt injection performed by an unlicensed quack, who is still on the lam. As peculiar as this might have sounded a decade ago, it's becoming all too familiar in our era of unrealistic ass. While there are no reliable stats on exactly how many American women have died from black market booty enhancements, with cases like Mayhew's popping up in the news constantly it's safe to assume the problem is on the uptick.

I've seen the unfortunate growth of this black market firsthand. In 2013, I traveled down to Miami, Florida, the epicenter of ass enhancements (legal and otherwise), to learn about the underground cosmetic surgery rings that are proliferating throughout the US. I was brought there by the notorious case of Oneal Ron Morris. Morris, known as the Duchess, had reportedly injected the asses of at least 25 different women in the early 2010s with fluids like Fix-a-Flat and mineral oil, causing at least one death.

What I discovered in Miami was that although underground butt injections may have started on the fringes—among the trans community, sex workers, and strippers—women from all walks of life are now willing to gamble with their health in the hope of getting a butt like J. Lo or Nicki Minaj by going to a nutjob with a syringe instead of a real board-certified surgeon.

Kelly Mayhew's tragic death exemplifies that. She was an educated, naturally attractive woman. She worked at BET in Washington, DC as a platform producer. She had a loving mother who unfortunately accompanied her to get the injections and watched her as she died, and a boyfriend who has claimed to the press that he tried to steer her away from the sketchy operation.

[body_image width='1000' height='1500' path='images/content-images/2015/06/03/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/06/03/' filename='why-women-are-getting-underground-butt-injections-456-body-image-1433366254.jpg' id='62901']
Photo via Kelly Mayhew's Facebook

So what is it that drives a woman like Mayhew, who had previously had work done on her butt by a legitimate surgeon, to fall into the netherworld of ass shots? I believe that to understand why so many girls are willing to put their health on the line it is important to first understand the difference between legitimate and illegal butt augmentation.

In really simple terms, there are only two ways a board certified plastic surgeon will make your ass a badonkadonk. They will either do implants, which is pretty much a boob job on your ass, or they will do a fat transfer, which involves taking fat from other parts of your body and depositing it back into your ass.

Although you can get a fat transfer or implants performed by a doctor, a board-certified surgeon in the United States will never agree to inject free-flowing fluid into your ass like the guy "operating" on Mayhew did, because it is really fucking stupid and dangerous.

Dive into Miami's black market butt injection scene with 'Buttloads of Pain':

The luckiest ass shot recipients will just get a booty that over the course of five to ten years will start to look and feel like they have an anvil in their pants. But as Mayhew's case shows, it can also be incredibly lethal. If you inject just 555cc of silicone into a body, it can break apart into 30 billion small globules, and all of those bits have the ability to cause infectious reactions such as polyps, boils, skin discoloration, and even necrosis. In the worst, most deadly cases, the fluid can travel through the bloodstream causing a pulmonary embolism, fusing onto organs, or causing septic shock.

Other than the horrific results, the main difference a lot of people will point out between black market injections and legal augmentation is the cost. Butt shots can be as cheap as $200, while fat transfers and implants can cost several thousand, helping make legitimate ass augmentation a $26 million industry. And while many like to paint this burgeoning health epidemic as a symptom of poor people wanting a body they can't afford, I believe that the speed and convenience of the procedure is as much of a draw as the price.

Ass injections are practically instantaneous. As one stripper told me in Miami, "I got my butt [shots] on a Tuesday... I came back to work on a Friday and made triple the amount it cost in one night." Implants and fat transfers, on the other hand, require weeks of recuperation and are really fucking painful, because the procedures are real deal surgery. Even after you can start moving around, it takes months for your new ass to settle and the results to really shine.

Injections are like flipping a light switch and having a new body. They are especially convenient when you are an upwardly mobile woman who has lots of shit to do. Oscarina Busse, a woman from Coral Gables, Florida, who I interviewed back in 2013, received some heinous illegal ass shots that caused her entire butt to turn purple and cave in on itself. She is a wife, a mother, and a prominent businesswoman who owns her own salon. She spent $6,000 on the disastrous injections—and she had to spend another $70,000 on getting work done from a real plastic surgeon to reconstruct her body after the injections went sour. It wasn't the money that caused her to take the risk in the first place, it was the ability to quickly transform without sacrificing any of her business or familial responsibilities.

The Watermelon has the biggest ass in Brazil:

This scenario highlights the trick bag many American women find themselves stuck in when they try to meet all the unrealistic expectations of society—run a household, work a full time job, and look like a video girl—all at the same time. I'm sure when Mayhew contemplated getting her injections, it all seemed so easy.

Although butt injections exist on the black market, they are talked about pretty openly among women at beauty salons and spas. And sly people who present themselves as quasi-medical professionals offer to do them with all kinds of promises and guarantees. Considering all the rumors that stars like Nicki Minaj and Beyonce have resorted to ass shots, they have attained an air of luxury around them—even though the reality is a dirty syringe pumping who-knows-what in your ass. Oftentimes, girlfriends get them done together in events called "pumping parties" at hotels or in the back of the same places where they get their nails and hair done. It's easy to see how these women can be misled about what's right and what's wrong, or why they'd suspend their disbelief in the blind hope of easily attaining that thing that everyone is after right now—a big booty.

Dr. Constantino Mendieta, the well-known surgeon who reconstructed Oscarina Busse's butt, talked to me at length two years ago about all the ladies who came to him to repair the damage done to their bodies after receiving buttshots. Of course he couldn't name names, but the man who is known for creating some of the most sought after and expensive asses in Miami told me he had repaired the behinds of everyone from known entertainers to wealthy housewives. All of them had hoped they could get a perfect apple bottom without paying the dues.

My hope is that the tragic deaths of women like Kelly Mayhew will wake other women up to the fact that ass shots are just not worth it. But considering the surprising amount of illegal injections happening in communities across the country right now and the reality that these procedures can kill you months and even years after the fact, I'm afraid we've only seen the tip of the toxic-ass iceberg.

Follow Wilbert L. Cooper on Twitter.

A drug called Truvada is the first FDA-approved means of preventing HIV infection. If an HIV-negative person takes the pill every day, he or she is nearly 99 percent protected from contracting the virus. Controversy continues to surround the broad uptake of Truvada, but the landscape of safer sex and HIV prevention changes fundamentally from this point forward—particularly within the gay male community, the population hit hardest by HIV in America. In this episode of VICE Reports, VICE explores the future of the Truvada and its revolutionary impact on ending HIV/AIDS.

Rick Perry's disastrous bid for the White House in 2012 was foiled by back surgery and a spotty memory, but the man is giving it a shot again. Today, Perry officially announced his plan to run for president in 2016's upcoming election, packing himself into a clown car already overstuffed with Republican presidential hopefuls. Perry made the announcement Thursday morning on his official website, which features an introduction video that leans heavily on Perry's military background and political experience, and shows the presidential hopeful looking smart and bespectacled. He has a speech later today at an airport in Addison, a Dallas suburb, to more formally announce his plans. It remains to be seen if Perry has done enough to move past his 2012 stumble, but one thing is pretty clear—the dude really, really, really wants to be president.

Want Some In-Depth Stories About the 2016 Election?

1. A Very Early Preview of the 2016 Republican Debate Cagefights
2. Everything You Need to Know About Rand Paul's Crusade Against the Patriot Act
3. Rick Santorum Begins His Slow Slide into Frothy Irrelevance
4. How Mike Huckabee Turned Running for President into a Business Empire

[body_image width='1200' height='831' path='images/content-images/2015/06/03/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/06/03/' filename='the-outpost-middle-east-magazine-399-body-image-1433342423.jpg' id='62743']

Egyptian dancers in a photo spread from 'The Outpost.' All images courtesy of 'The Outpost.'

Three years ago, when Ibrahim Nehme launched The Outpost, the Arab region was in a state of flux. In Tunisia, one year earlier, Mohamed Bouazizi had set himself on fire and unknowingly become a catalyst for what was soon to become the Arab Spring. Years of suppressed frustration across the Middle East and North Africa were unleashed in the region's various public squares by a politically-active youth with a vision for a new Arab world, free of corruption and dictatorial regimes.

The Outpost is a bi-annual magazine published out of Beirut. It calls itself "a magazine of possibilities" and believes in the power of editorial to inspire a new wave of change in the Arab world—not an easy task back in 2011, and even less so today, with Syria still engulfed in both civil war and the rise of the Islamic State.

I spoke to Nehme, the editor in chief, about the magazine.

[body_image width='960' height='720' path='images/content-images/2015/06/03/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/06/03/' filename='the-outpost-middle-east-magazine-399-body-image-1433342352.jpg' id='62741']

Editor-in-Chief, Ibrahim Nehme.

VICE: Hi Nehme. So why did you start the magazine in the first place?
Ibrahim Nehme: It was in 2011-2012. The state of print media in the country was really sad and depressing, and I felt like doing something about it. At the time, the Arab Spring was happening, which was a sort of kick in the ass.

Yeah, the perfect time to start, really.
There was an inspiring energy flowing throughout the region. It was something I'd never witnessed or felt before. Thousands of young people wanted to take control of their own future. They believed that change is actually possible, despite the bleakness of the situation. It's true that the spring quickly descended into winter, but it was a turning point, and in many ways a point of no return: The entire establishment was shaken to its core, and you can sense that young people are now more empowered to speak out and express openly their fears, frustrations, and dreams, despite the crackdown that is happening on freedom of expression and liberal thought.

Related: Watch our film 'Miss Camel Beauty Contest,' about a beauty pageant for camels in Abu Dhabi

So what's the mission now?
The Outpost was born as a magazine of possibilities from the womb of the Arab Spring. Its mission is to help ignite the much-needed and long-awaited cultural renaissance in this region. It's a tall order, I know, but we think it's possible. And The Outpost is just one small initiative among hundreds of thousands of other initiatives sprouting across the region and pushing for change in every way possible

You call The Outpost "a magazine of possibilities." What do you mean by that?
I think that the magazine's tagline—a magazine of possibilities—is in, and by itself, reflective of what the magazine stands for: it's optimistic, forward-looking, and believes that change is possible in a place where change seems to be so impossible. We believe that the Arab region has so much untapped potential and that there are possibilities on all levels—socially, culturally, economically, and politically. We believe that this is our time as young Arabs to unlock these possibilities and reclaim our future. When more and more people start exploring and unlocking these possibilities—empowering women, including the minorities in the conversation, lobbying against outdated laws, fighting corruption and inequality, inventing new technology, writing new narratives, etc—then change will happen eventually.

That sounds great. How are you able to do that through a magazine? Can you talk about its structure?
The magazine is divided into three sections, each a different state of possibility, in a way. The first section, "What's Happening," is about the possibilities that are being realized, and it has a positive spin, shedding light on young change agents who are pushing the Arab region forward through their work, creations and activism.

The second section, "What's Not Happening," is about the possibilities that are not being realized. So we talk about the projects that are not happening, the ideas that are not being discussed, the laws that are being broken, and other loopholes that we think need to be fixed in our social, political, or legal systems.

The third section, "What Could Happen," is about the possibilities that could be realized. In a way, it's our playground to imagine a more inspiring future. Taken together, the three sections reflect a region that's being unmade and made on a daily basis by legions of young and ambitious Arabs. It's a region that is facing tremendous challenges and attempts to reinvent itself on a daily basis in the face of extremism and terrorism. The stories we publish capture this period of transition the region is going through in order to help us understand how change is actually happening, and who is leading that change, while attempting to inspire the reader to become part of this movement.

[body_image width='760' height='456' path='images/content-images/2015/06/03/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/06/03/' filename='the-outpost-middle-east-magazine-399-body-image-1433342587.jpg' id='62747']

A feature about how the South Hebron Hills are being used as a training ground by the Israeli army, eroding the traditions of local people.

Do you ever run into problems because of stories you publish?
So far we haven't encountered any real problems. I think the reason is mainly because we are not a political publication in the general sense of the word. It's true that we do have a political stance and that a lot of our stories are politicized, but we do not cover news or run political analysis. What we're more concerned with are stories of people and places that capture the zeitgeist and allow us to understand and make sense of the transformations that are going on around us.

These transformations may still be small, silent and, in some ways, insignificant, which is why they're not on the mainstream radar yet—and probably why we haven't run into trouble so far—but taken together, they're powerful and indicate to profound changes that will happen in our societies in the near future.

Why did you decide to publish in English and not in Arabic?
It's not either, or. We started out in English because we wanted to reach a lot of the young people in the region who consume their media primarily in English. It was also an attempt to reach a global audience and help to break the stereotypes about this region. Publishing in English allows us to reach a critical mass of young Arabs while, at the same time, inform a global public opinion. That said, we do have plans for Arabic media projects in the future.

TRENDING ON VICE NEWS: A Year on from the Caliphate: The UK's Fight Against the Islamic State

There's been a fair amount of enthusiasm for the magazine since its first issue. Did you expect it?
Not at all, to be honest. Without sounding pretentious, I knew we had a really good product, but I didn't expect that it would go a long way—at least not from the very first issue, which I now hide, by the way! A few months ago we won "Best Magazine of 2014." Before that, the Guardian referred to us as a "successor to The Economist." And we've been receiving a lot of great feedback from great people. Which is incredible, especially when you realize that, three years ago, we were here in Beirut trying to make plans for a magazine from nothing.

What's next?
We just finished wrapping up a big book project that we were involved in. In the past year or so, we realized that we could actually leverage our editorial and creative capacities to generate revenue, and this is important for us as independent publishers. We're also working on our upcoming issue, which started after a lot of conversations about taboos and social restrictions on young people in the region.

We're looking for stories about people pushing the boundaries of their micro-worlds and then looking at how this affects their immediate communities and moves societies forward. We're also working on other projects that intend to take The Outpost to the next level, like our web platform and a series of events with change agents from across region.

Follow Alberto on Twitter.

[body_image width='1200' height='800' path='images/content-images/2015/06/04/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/06/04/' filename='northwest-territories-looking-at-another-record-breaking-summer-of-forest-fires-289-body-image-1433438392.jpg' id='63206']

All photos of 2014 summer wildfires. All photos by the author

It usually takes at least a few months before forestry officials in the Northwest Territories start talking about firefighter fatigue, but all 28 fire crews had the last weekend of May off in order to avoid impending burnout.

The proactive measure is just one indicator that this year's fire season is shaping up to be as intense as last year's record-breaking blowout, in which 3.5 million hectares and $60 million were consumed as crews desperately tried to control an inferno previously unseen in the typically fire-ready part of Canada.

Residents were held hostage last summer by blocked highways and smoke that made air quality levels unsafe to go outside.

And this week, the territory's environment minister all but quashed any hope that things would be different this year.

"I do not wish to be the bearer of bad weather reports, but as Mother Nature may have it, and based on the reports from our meteorologist, we will once again experience drought over the summer of 2015," Environment and Natural Resources Minister Michael Miltenberger announced Monday in the NWT legislature.

Just a month into fire season, the NWT has already seen 51 fires and over 69,000 hectares burn. That's seven times the 20-year average, which would see around seven fires and approximately 5,000 hectares burned at this point of the year.

Of this year's fires, six are confirmed holdovers from last year's fires, which burned so deeply into the ground they survived the harsh northern winter to pop up in the spring.

Mike Flannigan, a professor of wildland fire at the University of Alberta, agreed there is "great potential" for an extremely active fire season ahead.

"We've never had this much fire activity this early, in my recollection," he said. "This is unknown territory to have fires—intense fires—in May. Usually the fire season is July."

[body_image width='1200' height='800' path='images/content-images/2015/06/04/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/06/04/' filename='northwest-territories-looking-at-another-record-breaking-summer-of-forest-fires-289-body-image-1433438430.jpg' id='63208']

Fire conditions extreme
It's the fourth year of a severe drought in the NWT. With no fall rains, below average snowfall over the winter, and a hot, speedy spring that broke record temperatures up and down the Mackenzie River valley, most of the southern half of the territory began the year with drought indicators already in the danger zone.

In addition to the holdovers, another 37 fires were caused by lightning that came with no rain. Some were caused by humans—likely accidental, where flames weren't extinguished enough for the tinder-dry conditions.

"That's a very good indication of how dry things are, is when a fire smolders underground over the winter and then pops up in the spring," according to Rick Olsen, fire operations manager for the NWT.

"Even starting out this spring, our drought levels, or measurements of moisture within the forest floor, in those areas [were] a lot higher than what we would normally expect," he said. "The extent of really dry areas seems to be increasing from last year."

When those kinds of pervasive dry conditions continue for that long, it makes fighting the inevitable fires that much more difficult.

"We're under the effects of a very long-term drought," said Frank Lepine, associate director of forest management with the NWT government. "When you have the kind of drought we have right now, fires will burn deep. What will normally take a crew a day or two to put out will take longer than that. It may take two crews to put the same fire out and may take three or four days. We have an increased workload for the crews on the ground and control is really difficult."

[body_image width='1200' height='1800' path='images/content-images/2015/06/04/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/06/04/' filename='northwest-territories-looking-at-another-record-breaking-summer-of-forest-fires-289-body-image-1433438481.jpg' id='63210']

'Tornadoes of fire'
Not only are the fires burning deeper and larger than ever before, but the extreme combination of hot, dry, windy weather is causing fires to take on new characteristics that make them more dangerous for crews to extinguish.

"The drier the fuels, the more fuel burns, the more energy is released. Drier fuels, prolonged drought means the potential for very high intensity fires, which will have fire whirls, fire tornadoes, very active spread, spotting—where firebrands are carried aloft by the wind and dropped a kilometre or two in front of the fire and start a new fire," Flannigan said.

"Sometimes they're so intense, we get something called a pyroCb, which is a fire-generated thunderstorm."

Those wild conditions led to the destruction of two structures in the territory last year: a wilderness tourism lodge and a fly-in family homestead. Luckily, those were the only pieces of property consumed by the fires, which also fortunately caused no serious injuries or fatalities.

Though Flannigan, a former weather forecaster for Environment Canada, said he can't predict this summer's weather with any certainty, he said active fire seasons tend to come in "clumps" and all indications so far show this year's will be intense.

Further into the future, he said a warming world caused by climate change will likely lead to more fires. Firstly, warmer temperatures mean longer fire seasons. Warm temperatures also bring lightning, which causes the majority of fire starts in the NWT. But most importantly, he said, hot weather means rapid evaporation of moisture from vegetation, increasing the quantity of dry fuels for fires to consume. The only thing that can combat that is more rain, but while temperatures are rising, precipitation levels are not expected to follow.

"All future projections suggest we're going to get the warming, but precipitation is going to stay about the same," Flannigan said. "Not nearly enough to compensate."

New research also shows the jetstream is becoming "lazy" due to Arctic warming, causing high pressure ridge systems to "park" over areas—like the NWT last year—for long periods of time, sustaining drought.

"This is what the future may hold. I tell people that weather's really wacky, but it's going to be even wackier and crazier in the future," Flannigan said. "The crazy weather, this extreme weather, is when we get most of our fire activity. In Canada, three percent of our fires are over 200 hectares, but they burn 97 percent of the area burned."

[body_image width='1200' height='800' path='images/content-images/2015/06/04/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/06/04/' filename='northwest-territories-looking-at-another-record-breaking-summer-of-forest-fires-289-body-image-1433438493.jpg' id='63211']

'We're being more vigilant'
While no communities in the NWT are currently at risk, fire crews aren't taking any chances this year. All 28 Type 1 fire crews are engaged with the assistance of four air tanker crews and another 10 helicopters.

Last week, crews initiated a burnout operation—essentially using fire to fight fire by consuming dry fuels before Mother Nature can—along the only route in and out of the capital of Yellowknife.

A second fire, also near a roadway in the southwestern part of the territory, is being actioned simply because it shows the possibility of exploding into an out of control blaze like the massive complexes seen last year, which sat at communities' doorsteps for weeks and exhausted human and financial resources.

"We have been being a little more vigilant in terms of our response to some of these fires, just simply to maybe put a little work upfront to prevent a lot of work at the end of it instead," Olsen said. "We've deliberately actioned fires with the potential to grow big."

Though Sunday and Monday brought a bit of rain to the territory, that moisture is expected to be wicked away by mid-week, leaving a dry territory with above average temperatures and the chance of more lightning.

Olsen is hoping that weekend of rest has left crews refreshed.

"We're really at the beginning of the fire season, so we don't want to be overworking people, unless we absolutely have to," Olsen said. "There's a recognition from last year and previous years that individuals, just like with any exercise or exertion, become less and less effective. The more you give a person a chance to rest their mind and their body and allow them to recover and relieve the stress that comes with that position, the better they'll be able to perform the best they can without risking themselves or others."

Follow Meagan Wohlberg on Twitter.

[body_image width='2244' height='1496' path='images/content-images/2015/06/03/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/06/03/' filename='child-prodigies-all-grown-up-839-body-image-1433361657.jpg' id='62884']

Julian Rachlin.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

As a child, did you ever chew on and swallow soil? Or drop a chocolate digestive into a glass of milk and then scoop the mush out with your entire hand and eat it? Or take literally any test and get less than 97 percent? Yes? Well then you probably weren't a child genius. But then you know that already, because this morning you tripped over your own foot while on your way to your job, which is not at the neuroscience lab at King's College.

Another thing you'll know, likely from Daily Mail splashes and Channel 5 documentaries, is that the life of a child prodigy can either go one way (the bad way, in which all the pressure leads to failure and a lifetime of misery), or another, in which you're Mozart and people still buy your music 200 years after you die.

"It's very dangerous to be portrayed as that sort of prodigy, because 99 percent of those prodigies don't last very long," says violinist and conductor Julian Rachlin. "I have never been treated by my friends and family as a prodigy. I have been treated as little Julian who loves making music, so I never felt a prodigy."

Rachlin started at the Conservatory of Vienna at the age of nine and has been performing professionally since he was 13. In 1988 he won the title of Eurovision Young Musician of the Year at the age of 14. "Mozart was a prodigy and [violinist] Yehudi Menuhin was a prodigy, but definitely not myself—I was just a kid."

So, as he says, totally not a prodigy.

Like Julian, Lavinia Redman is a musician. An oboist who was a finalist in the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition in 2010, she performed professionally throughout her teenage years. "I don't have any regrets starting at that age, apart from the fact that starting early, especially as a wind player, can allow you to pick up bad habits," she says.

As a teenager, Ollie Baker had the photographic world hooked when he ripped the guts out of an old Konica (and later Leica) camera and replaced it with digital innards, while retaining the original rangefinder. "I'm very lucky that my talents overlap completely with my passions, and this work was entirely a product of my interests and hobbies," he tells me. "I started the project using some money donated as part of a nationwide engineering scholarship scheme, so I had a lot of freedom in what I could spend it on. This ensured I was passionate about my project and I was my own employer, customer, and motivator."

[body_image width='1365' height='2048' path='images/content-images/2015/06/03/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/06/03/' filename='child-prodigies-all-grown-up-839-body-image-1433361520.jpg' id='62883']

Anne-Marie Imafidon

Anne-Marie Imafidon is the eldest child in a family who were championed by Sky News as "Britain's brainiest family." The terrifying Imafidon children have all passed a GCSE aged ten or younger, and the youngest, twins Peter and Paula, did so at age six. The Imafidons seem like evidence that nature is capable of its own selective breeding, but Anne-Marie insists that she had a normal (ish) childhood.

"Now that I'm older, I appreciate the opportunities I had as a child a lot more, and also appreciate the lessons that I learnt very early on," says Anne-Marie, who founded Stemettes, an organization that aims to get more young women into science, a couple of years ago. "Like how to deal with people, and even my self-confidence and self-esteem. Having those experiences really early on has given me a solid, firm base. As every day passes that I'm working with young girls, I take it for granted less and less. There's nothing like the confidence of passing an A-level at 11!"

If you've got the drive to succeed as a child, it stands to reason that drive will only increase as an adult. Child geniuses don't experience normal formative childhood experiences—like pulling a worm in half and discovering you can make two worms—because they're already functioning at a level that most people will only arrive at after years of study punctuated by hormonal temper tantrums and procrasturbation. "When you come to doing your A-levels later," says Anne-Marie, "these exams no longer worry you because you did them when you were so young and they were so inconsequential then."

"I should have tried doing more different things," says Gabriel Carroll, Assistant Professor of Economics at Stanford. "I mostly stuck with a few things I was good at and developed them. Well, really, one main thing: solving mathematical puzzles."

In seventh grade—the American equivalent of year 8—Carroll scored the highest SAT score in his home state of California, which included a perfect 800 on maths. Two International Maths Olympiad gold medals followed, as well as degrees from Harvard and MIT, before his current teaching job at Stanford. But Carroll's not quite as sold on the prodigy childhood as some of his contemporaries.

"I had no interest in sports, or knowledge about popular culture, say, and didn't try to learn," he says. "I didn't figure out how to ask for help. I didn't date until 20, for example. That left me unaccustomed to failure, which is a weakness I continue to deal with."

Anne-Marie began her A-level adventure at the age of 11 and got her masters from Oxford by the time she was 17. Her tertiary educational experience was deformed: no drink or drugs or sex, but an awful lot of watchful scrutiny from press and faculty.

"I had parents who never ever forced me to practice and who always loved me just because I was their son and not because of my achievements," says Julian, the violinist and conductor. "They didn't really want me to be a musician, in a good way, because they knew that being a professional musician is extremely difficult. We emigrated from the Soviet Union to Vienna when I was three years old, so, as you can imagine, we came to Vienna with £200 and absolutely nothing else. No German language, no connections, nothing. They wanted to make sure that I had a beautiful childhood."

Like Julian, oboist Lavinia claims that her parents never pushed her towards music. "As an oboist, you can't really start as early as string players or pianists, so I suppose I was lucky. I started age nine and I was very keen. My parents were very supportive, and I was the one who pushed them to let me play."

For most of us, the transition into adulthood revolves predominantly around room temperature Foster's, Clearasil, and discovering what a P45 is. Being an adult seems to be defined by little more than alcohol and bureaucracy. Unsurprisingly, everything's slightly more complicated when you're exiting a period of being worshipped for your precocious talent.

"I wasn't fully aware of the scrutiny when I was younger," says Anne-Marie. "I don't know if I was shielded from it, but the scrutiny now tends to be in the form of people wondering what's coming next, or if I've used my skills as best as I could."

For photographer Ollie, the pressure of the financial support he's received for his project has started to dictate the way he approaches his work. "I'm no longer just working for my own pleasure, although that hasn't diminished the joy I get from it," he tells me. "Working for an actual goal, both monetary and having a product to distribute, gives me more purpose and allows me to justify spending time and money on my projects."

READ ON NOISEY: The Joys and Pains of Touring with Kids

Gabriel's switch from mathematics to economics shocked the creepy world of child prodigy enthusiasts, but it was a transition he'd thought long and hard about. "Probably the biggest difference is that, as a child, everything involved following well-worn paths: read this chapter, answer those test questions. I did great at that," he says. "My biggest accomplishments consisted of solving puzzles that other people had created and had already solved. As an adult, you need to chart your own course.

"My ambitions and motivations did change somewhat. As a child I liked getting prizes. I liked to show off and get attention. Now I've had enough of that. At this point I basically want to be a good person, which is much harder."

Lavinia is now studying music in London, taking it a little slower than during her days on the child circuit. "Since starting at music college my playing has progressed, but slightly slowly at first—the pressure is very different, and when I joined I found things rather tricky," she says. "Coming to a music college it felt like I was a small fish in a very big pond, and that was very difficult.

"As a child I could get away with a lot more, mainly 'cause of the instrument I play. I did face some criticism in my teens as a performer, but it was all very constructive. When I was younger I mainly got lovely comments, but sadly I did rest on natural talent for a while longer than I should have. In my late teens I could have worked harder."

[body_image width='2244' height='1496' path='images/content-images/2015/06/03/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/06/03/' filename='child-prodigies-all-grown-up-839-body-image-1433361724.jpg' id='62885']

At 40, Julian is a generation older than Lavinia, Anne-Marie, and Ollie (though he still has the cherubically youthful face of an Eastern Bloc pop star).

"It's nice when you get older, because you have a little bit more life experience," he tells me. "I'm still not totally old—everything is relative. I have nearly three decades [of playing experience] behind me, but I still feel completely inspired and completely curious, because—especially now with my conducting activities—there is a whole new world opening up. Playing the same concertos—for me, they are like completely new works."

Three decades on from his concert debut, it's hard to believe he feels quite as sprightly about the whole business as he claims. When pushed, he concedes, "Yes, of course things are changing with age, perspective. The pace is changing, the interpretation is changing, and it's a very exciting ride. I feel that I'm not in the middle of it, but in the beginning."

Beginnings, middles, and ends are more discernible for common folk like us. When we're born, we're dumb as shit—we can't read or write or walk. In the middle, we learn how to survive and wrangle our brain into feeding ourselves and paying the bills. And then, at the end, we're pretty much back to where we started.

For prodigies, beginnings, middles, and ends are blurred into one. I asked the older generation if there are any tips they would give the new wave of child geniuses, considering that after years of acclaim, arrival at adulthood can be quite a shock to both the system and the ego.

"Do what feels right for you and always try to push yourself," offers Anne-Marie. "Enjoy yourself while you're doing that, but push yourself—it will pay off in the end."

Related: Watch our film about kids using medicinal marijuana, 'Stoned Kids'

Ollie, meanwhile, is more cautious, focusing on practical considerations: "Find a way in which you can use your skills and talents that is financially responsible but doesn't detract from your love of the subject, and still allows you a fair amount of freedom."

"Don't let anyone pressurize you into doing anything you don't want to do," warns oboist Lavinia. "And don't become complacent as you get older, because there is a lot of talent out there to compete with."

"Play a lot of chamber music and play a lot with really interesting musicians," says Julian, whose lesson is, admittedly, quite specific. "This is my one piece of advice!"

For other ex-prodigies, success is a more uncertain goal. "One piece of advice I'd give is to be encouraging toward friends and classmates," says Gabriel. "Help pull others forward; don't run on ahead without them. Those of us who stand out as children are drawing on all kinds of advantages we don't fully realize we have, and that makes it easy to be dismissive of others who don't do as well, or to be predisposed to criticize their inadequacies instead of helping them find ways to get better."

All of these adult geniuses are well adjusted, sensible, and successful. But that doesn't necessarily represent everyone who was lauded for their abilities as a youngster. Child prodigies who have gone on to enjoy the mediocrity of the masses are harder to find. There are no support groups or internet forums dedicated to them, and just as the prodigies I spoke to all seem to look back on their childhoods with boundless enthusiasm, if you discover an ex-genius now selling home insurance over the phone, it's unlikely they'll be as keen to chat about what once was.

And so the baton for ex-child geniuses is carried by people who've gone on to a life of legitimate adult success, of their own companies and dedicated Wikipedia pages. That's the pot of gold at the end of the gifted-child rainbow. But the price of failing to make a smooth transition into adulthood is online oblivion. It's being haunted not by the ghost of "what could've been," but the ghost of "what used to be."

Follow Nick on Twitter.

[body_image width='640' height='480' path='images/content-images/2015/06/03/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/06/03/' filename='owen-hatherley-landscapes-of-communism-833-body-image-1433342567.jpg' id='62746']

A "Khrushchyovka"—a type of apartment named after former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev—in Tbilisi, Georgia. Photo by James Emery.

Close your eyes for a moment and try to picture the architecture of the Soviet Union. Let me guess, you're seeing one giant, cuboid mass of monolithic, factory-produced concrete sprawling across a frozen Eastern Bloc vista, right? You're probably not alone. Despite the housing issues the US is going through, the sight of Moscow's state-built apartment buildings are enough to convince us that an entire political ideology is invalid.

Part of this loathing is obviously understandable. They may have been designed with good intentions, but much of the housing that was produced in the soviet bloc was oppressive, poorly constructed, and plain fucking ugly. But these depressing apartments—however entrenched they are in our heads—certainly weren't the only thing that got built during a time of immense political change.

In his new book Landscapes of Communism, British architecture critic Owen Hatherley offers up four years worth of work drifting through the cities of communist Europe, detailing its architectural complexity—both good and bad—in extraordinary detail. From opulent metro stations to baroque skyscrapers, Hatherley shatters the misconceptions many of us are familiar with.

VICE: Hi, Owen. This is your sixth book about architecture in just six years. Why do you think the built environment is such a good way of exploring and thinking about politics?
Owen Hatherley: Well firstly because it's there. It's incredibly easy to explore because you're completely surrounded by it at all times. But also architecture, unlike pretty much any other art form, has a very direct relation to power. Architecture is so capital intensive and requires so many resources and materials, which means it's almost always done by either big business or the state. So the very fact of what gets built is an expression of quite naked and straightforward power. If you want to know the values of society, who is in control and who is not, it's very useful.

[body_image width='640' height='984' path='images/content-images/2015/06/03/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/06/03/' filename='owen-hatherley-landscapes-of-communism-833-body-image-1433341475.jpg' id='62729']

Cover design by FUEL.

Most of your work so far has been about British architecture. Why did you decide to write a book about communism in Europe?
I wanted to question what happened in a city when you have no property developers. One of the first things that took place after October 1917 was land nationalization, which was then imported after the war across Eastern and Central Europe. That meant those in power had this enormous instrument which they could wield in cities. And the results were very mixed. In many ways this is a book about what not to do when you get rid of landlords and capitalists, it's about the problems you face. But still it's really interesting to ask the question, "Did something happen that was different?" In the end there's certain stuff I think is quite admirable and certain stuff I think is completely terrible.

When people tend to think about architecture in communist countries, what sort of picture do you think they build up in their minds?
I imagine stag tourists on their way to the center of places like Prague, Vilnius, Riga, and Krakow. As they get on the bus that takes them to the center rather than seeing the lovely spires and churches they've seen in the tourist brochures, they're seeing block after block after block of gigantic prefabricated towers and they think, This is terrifying, this is like Broadwater Farm times 1000 . They think, This is what communism is. Then they get to the old town and they're like, This is lovely. And they come away with the idea that pre-communist architecture means lovely old towns and communist architecture means gigantic concrete slabs.

[body_image width='640' height='425' path='images/content-images/2015/06/03/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/06/03/' filename='owen-hatherley-landscapes-of-communism-833-body-image-1433343215.jpg' id='62752']

Moscow State University, built under Stalin. Photo by Nickolas Titkov.

So why is that wrong?
Well during the first 15 years from 1917 to 1932 you have modernism of various different kinds and competing movements, most of them with the idea that in a new society you should do architecture in a new way.

Then from about 1932 to Stalin's death in 1953 you have this change to a very eclectic neo-baroque and neoclassical style. Often it was on a very large scale, like massive skyscrapers and huge boulevards. But it was also very decorative, and in many cases much closer to what people actually think they like.

From about 1953 to about 1989 you get modernism again. You have the notorious estates on the outskirts and the very strange concrete expressionist buildings.

Then later on in the 1980s there's an emphasis on post-modernism, on ironic, more traditional architecture, as much as there was in the West. In actual fact the old towns people are visiting survive so well either because they were reconstructed to the last detail under Stalinism, or left alone by them because there was no financial pressure to build on them because of land nationalization—really, Stalinism is the reason why they're so much prettier than most capital cities in the west.

Right, so the architecture produced when Stalin was at the helm is precisely the opposite to what the lads on the tour bus think when they describe something as "Stalinist"?
Exactly the opposite. Stalin tended to build very decorative, grandiose classical things.

[body_image width='640' height='480' path='images/content-images/2015/06/03/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/06/03/' filename='owen-hatherley-landscapes-of-communism-833-body-image-1433343455.jpg' id='62754']

A Moscow metro station, built in Soviet times. Photo by Jason Rogers.

What about the mass-produced housing estates? Were they as bad as people think, architecturally?
In some cases, yes, and they were often worse than those built in the West. The standard of construction was often very low. And there's just so much of it. There are particular ones—if you go to Mustamäe on the outskirts of Tallinn, for example—that just seem to go on forever. I think if you are used to a certain kind of Western European city there is something Orwellian and totalitarian about a gigantic housing estate from the 1960s.

But I think that is what happens if you have an industrial revolution in the age of the mass production of housing. The industrial revolution happened in most of Central and Eastern Europe in the 1950s and 1960s rather than the 1860s. So the massive urbanization that happened there occurred in the era of the concrete panel. You also had a huge housing problem that needed to be solved fast and which hadn't been solved at all under Stalin.

I guess giant, homogenous, oppressive buildings are hardly peculiar to the Soviet Union either. We have lots of volume house builders over here producing some dreadful stuff, right?
Absolutely. And actually your average cubicle built in a concrete bloc on the outskirts of Warsaw in the 1970s is probably bigger than the average Barratt Homes flat today.

Related: Watch our film about the battle to live in London, 'Regeneration Game'

So what were the other architecturally unique things you found while writing the book?
The first chapter is all about boulevards, because there was nowhere really in the West after the war where you got these huge Haussmann- style things being ploughed through. I thought it was interesting how the kind of planning that was basically introduced by Haussmann to stop a revolution—boulevards are very wide so you can't build barricades—was then used by a government that constantly tells you that it's "revolutionary."

There's also a chapter on high-rises, which is mostly about the skyscrapers built under Stalin in the 40s and 50s. They are placed strategically around the city and have huge footprints. Unlike the little plots you get in New York they occupy several blocks and come down in tiers which makes them look incredibly authoritarian.

There's also a chapter on the metro, which was the most fun to write. It's about how the Soviet Union produced probably the most interesting public spaces of the 20th century in the metro, as well as how huge the human cost was. What happened there in terms of these incredibly opulent public halls filled with artwork—there's nothing else like it on earth.

You say at the end of the book that a city which is communally owned, democratically managed, and made by its inhabitants is yet to be built. Why do you think the Soviet Union failed to achieve this?
Two main reasons. The first is not their fault—they had to contend with an economic situation that no country could have dealt with. They had a country that was almost totally non-industrial, with the heritage of Tsarism and obscurantism. They also had a brutal civil war and World War II to deal with. So much of what they did and the reason why they failed was because they wanted to be better and more economically successful than the West, rather than just trying to provide a good quality of life. The idea was implausible because the West had hundreds of years of economic success already behind it.

The other reason—which is definitely their fault—is the complete suspicion of any kind of popular democracy and the instinct for suppressing any dissent. They thought if they let people make their own decisions they would all turn out to be closet capitalists, so they completely distrusted ordinary people.

Follow Philip on Twitter.

Landscapes of Communism is published by Allen Lane.

At 91 years old, it's safe to say that Walter Thomas has done and seen quite a few things in his life. He was alive to cheer as America put a man on the moon, and to watch as computers went from being clunky contraptions to magic devices you can hold in your hands. He might have gone to war, gotten in fights, saved lives, passed on lessons to younger generations. And, given that he has a family, he definitely had sex with a lady at least once.

But as the AP reported Wednesday night, there was one last thing the Chicago-area man wanted to experience before his time on this earth ended. And when he found out that a family member planned on replacing their garage door, he finally got the green light he'd been waiting decades for. Thomas donned a helmet, slid into a SUV, hit reverse, and plowed through that sucker full-throttle.

"I don't know what I could do to top it. I'm getting too old to top anything. Just live life to the extreme," the nonagenarian said afterward, presumably right before taking a giant gulp of Mountain Dew.

Want more in-depth stories about cars?

1. Life in the Fast Lane
2. How to Hack a Car
3. Taking on the World's Most Difficult Off-Road Race in a VW Bug
4. Four Driverless Cars in California Have Been Involved in Crashes

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE Greece.

On April 17, 2013, nearly 200 Bangladeshi immigrants working in the strawberry production fields of the Peloponese town of Manolada, in Greece, demanded to be paid the six months outstanding wages that they were owed. In response, their supervisors opened fire on them, injuring 28 people.

The controversies surrounding the Manolada case and it's judicial proceedings seem to keep unfolding. The Bangladeshi migrant workers have not only been denied any sort of witness protection or financial compensation, they are now expected to pay legal fees related to the case.

The court recently ruled their employer—strawberry trader Nikos Vaggelatos—as well as one of the accused gunmen, Kostas Chaloulos, not guilty. Two of the other supervisors were, however, charged. One for grievous bodily harm and the other for aiding by omission.

Related: Immigrants Are Walking Hundreds of Miles from Greece to Germany

During the trial, the legal team defending the workers asked for the president of the Mixed Jury Court of Patras, to be removed from her position. They said the judge's attitude seemed biased towards the accused throughout the proceedings. Eventually, the judicial council rejected the request and, given that they considered it unfounded, ruled that the migrants should pay the costs incurred.

These costs amounted to almost €360 [$405] per person for each of the 35 migrants: €12,000 [$13,500] in total. Petrol Konstantinou, the coordinator of KEERFA (United Against Racism and the Fascist Threat) said to VICE:

"During the trial, lawyer Moses Karampidis made a request for an 'exemption of seat.' Actually, he asked for the judge to be completely replaced by another person, because he perceived her behavior as completely scandalous.

"We see these fines as racist and we demand for them to be erased," he continued.

Related: Life as an Illegal Immigrant in Greece

Immigrants have already staged a protest at the Ministry of Finance where they were welcomed by the Director of the Office of the Deputy Minister of Finance, Kostas Papadigenopoulos. The workers submitted their request for the annulment of these fines. Ari Achman, who represents the immigrants, told us: "These guys were shot at and they haven't even received the wages they're owed. Now, they have to pay fines. Mr. Papadigenopoulos told us that the Ministry would help with the cancellation of the fines. He also said that it was a shame that the fines were ever issued."

The majority of the workers have left Manolada. Some are abroad, some others are searching for work elsewhere in Greece, but according to them, the situation in Manolada is chasing them:

"When employers see that these guys have been working in Manolada, they are afraid to hire them," Arif told us.

Liton, one of the Manolada workers, currently lives in Athens where he's looking for a job. He doesn't have money to pay the legal fees.

"Do you know how long I've been out of work? Things are really hard," he said. "They haven't given us the money they owe us. I can't find a job. I had one for a while but I got fired because the employers saw me on the news."