This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

2012's XCOM: Enemy Unknown rebooted its parent series of sci-fi strategy games in a big way. Universally acclaimed and celebrated for its difficulty and replay value, not to mention the relationships players established with their crew of alien-blasting avatars, Enemy Unknown won several game of the year awards and provided the kind of shot in the arm for turn-based tactics that few were expecting in the modern era.

Inevitably, then, a sequel is forthcoming: news of XCOM 2 broke ahead of this year's E3 conference, makers Firaxis setting its next game in a world where the alien invaders won, and are now facing up to the resistance of guerrilla forces. We covered the game briefly (and speculatively) once already, here, but at E3 in Los Angeles VICE Gaming got the chance to sit down properly with Garth DeAngelis, senior producer on XCOM 2, to delve deeper into what this anticipated sequel is going to deliver.

VICE: Garth, tell us what's happening, right now, with XCOM 2.
Garth DeAngelis: We have just done our gameplay reveal here at E3, confirming that XCOM 2 takes place 20 years after the events of XCOM: Enemy Unknown and, naturally, it's a turn-based tactical strategy game, again. What we've done is put a little twist on the XCOM premise. We've said: what if XCOM, the unit, never actually won the events of Enemy Unknown, which is kind of cool because a lot of our players lost, as it's a challenging game. That led us to have some internal discussions about what the world would be like if XCOM didn't win. So, if you fast-forward 20 years into the future, the aliens have fended off XCOM, they've scattered them to the wind, The Council (of XCOM-supporting nations) has turned on XCOM and now the aliens occupy Earth. They've built their own mega-cities, they've set up this new world order, to sort of act as this propaganda where they want to draw in the rest of humanity to these cities because, in them, disease is cured, and there's no more poverty or crime. But all that's come about via some nefarious reasons, and so the stage is set for XCOM to have to rebuild itself, so it can take Earth back once and for all.

The E3 gameplay demo showed the character Central returning from Enemy Unknown. Will we see more of these connections between the two games?
Oh yes, you will see some returning characters, and it is a continuation of the timeline. This is the same universe, and it's important that the remnants of XCOM, even though they got scattered, are present. You saw Central, but you will just have to wait to see who else is remaining, too.

Ahead of Enemy Unknown's release, few could have predicted that a turn-based game, born of an aged franchise, would prove so popular. What do you put its massive appeal down to?
That's a great question, and I'm happy that it is popular because, personally, I'm just a huge fan and it's an honor to work on this franchise. There are not too many games out there that are quite like XCOM—it truly is its own beast. We are technically under the strategy genre, but when you break it down it's such a unique mixture of a lot of concepts—you have a high-level strategy game where there's this sweeping war and you are making a lot of decisions trying to build a resistance, but then you control everything, from boots on the ground to firefights with the aliens. And then you have the timeless nature of turn-based mechanics. Combine that with the beauty of the art and the cinematics and cameras and it's a unique package.

Related: The Mystical Universe of 'Magic: The Gathering'

Do also check out VICE's five-part documentary on eSports

What would you say are the key differences between Enemy Unknown and the game that XCOM 2 will ultimately be?
There are a few key differences, and the one that we are most proud of, and excited for people to play, is the procedural nature of the game. There are a lot more procedural components in the maps. In Enemy Unknown we had static maps, and they were great, and hand crafted, but if you played the game for a second time you saw the same exact layout. You're not going to have that experience anymore, as now the maps have completely unique layouts and it will be very rare, if not impossible, to see the exact same one twice. On top of that we have procedural objectives. You obviously have to wipe out each map's bad guys, but you must also try to foster the resistance, and there are other sub-objectives, too. Perhaps you need to hack a workstation to breakdown a security system, or you might be sabotaging a monument, or building, as you saw in our gameplay demo. You need to recover important intel to help push the resistance forward, so there's always something else to do. It's not scripted, like Enemy Unknown was—anything could show up at any time, anywhere in the game.

That level of procedural generation must have presented the team with some new challenges.
Oh yes, it changes a lot of pipelines and processes on how we put things together, and we had to learn a lot from what we did on Enemy Unknown, the way that we handcrafted those maps. There is a lot of value in doing that, from both an aesthetic point of view and a layout perspective, so we took what we learnt and we subdivided that information into this procedural patchwork system. So, you still have logically designed components, but they can be mixed and matched in a bunch of different ways.

'XCOM 2' gameplay trailer from E3 2015.

In Enemy Unknown players developed some very strong emotional attachments to each of their characters, going so far as naming them after people close to them. I expect that's something that you'll be aiming for with the sequel—but did that level of connection surprise you?
I would say so, yes. I played it a lot before it was released, and I was experiencing those emotional losses when characters died—but I was a little surprised that when I was losing a "family member" in XCOM, that would also resonate with everyone else in the same way. But it really does, and it seems like everyone who played Enemy Unknown has their own emergent personal stories about whatever they wanted to create in their minds, with the soldiers, and that's a huge part of what XCOM 2 is about.

Were you holding certain soldiers back, too? Ensuring that they wouldn't be on the front line, even at the expense of leveling them up?
I did that. I always put my wife on the backlines, in my C Squad, so that I don't bring her out that much. I wanted to keep her safe back at base, and a lot of people were doing the same thing.

Mechanically, is XCOM 2 going to play in exactly the same way as its predecessor?
It's a mix, actually. We have a lot of core components that we've carried forward from Enemy Unknown. When you look at the foundations of combat, we really loved the cover system, we loved things like the fog of war and all the alien and class abilities that could be had, but we took those baselines and wondered: how can we inject some fresh new mechanics into that? We've got this new narrative, and with you playing the resistance, with the tables being turned to the extent where you're almost playing the invader, it made sense to emphasize elements like concealment. So, when you enter a map in XCOM 2, things do feel very different. The aliens don't know you're there, and you're able to sneak around, setting up traps, or ambushing unsuspecting groups of enemies.

On Motherboard: What Will World War III Look Like?

What sort of influences are in the mix for XCOM 2, be that on the visuals or the gameplay?
1994's original X-COM: UFO Defense was our source material for where we started with Enemy Unknown, and there are so many influences on the new game. We obviously love the trope of the underdog resistance that you see in so many movies, like They Live or even Elysium. The latter, visually, has inspired some of our game armor and weaponry.

And what about modding potential for the new game?
Because we are running on PC, we can provide a robust toolset to the community and they can mod to their hearts' content. XCOM 2 is a very system-driven game, and those are prime candidates for awesome modding. We look at big titles like Civilization and Skyrim, Grand Theft Auto V and others, at how they've been altered by the PC community, and we can't wait to see what the players do with XCOM 2. It might be that we see total conversations, as we have the Unreal editor, or just partial modification, as we are releasing the gameplay source so people can change alien numbers and abilities and things like that, to make the game feel very different. We can't wait to see what people do with it.

XCOM 2 will be released in November on PC and Mac.

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Pokémon is the world's second most popular video game franchise, just behind Mario. But if you were young-ish in the 2000s, you'd know Pokémon was the best thing ever—until it tapered off. And this is what made the Australian Pokémon National Video Game Championships so interesting. Pokémon Corporation rented out the whole of Melbourne Park Function Centre, so hundreds of young fans could battle one another for two straight days. But who were these fans? And why did they still care? I went along to find out.

Lachlan, 21.

VICE: Hey Lachlan, what's great about Pokémon?
Lachlan: It brings so many people together from all walks of life, at any age, and from any level of experience.

Why do you think some people think this is geeky or lame?
Heaps of people, even grown men, come here to play what on the surface appears to be a kid's game. But there are so many in-depth aspects that someone of any age could enjoy it. Anyway, I tend to not care about people talking shit.

Can you describe the average person here?
Casual, welcoming, and friendly. No rudeness.

And how would you describe yourself?
I'd say very family oriented. I was home schooled. Also my greatest ambitions are to learn the violin and walk the Great Wall of China.

What's your life motto and how do you apply it to Pokémon?
Expect the unexpected. I deliberately use tactics that will throw my opponent off, and make them think I'm going to do one thing, but then I do another. I think that's applicable to life too in a sense that you never know what's around the corner. You have to be adaptable to change.

Adrienne, 21.

Hi Adrienne, why are you here?
Adrienne: I absolutely love Pokémon, and have since I was five. Now I'm 21 and still obsessed.

Are you competing today?
No, I'm not good enough! People don't realize how complex these battles are. It's a lot like math.

Why do some people think this is geeky?
Because it's so mathematical and intense. Also because it attracts really smart people—sort of like nerds, you know? Gaming is always seen as nerdy for whatever reason.

Can you describe the average person here?
Male.

What would you do with the money if you won a championship?
I guess I haven't traveled enough. I'd love to check out the Pokémon World Championships.

Joshua, 17 (on right).

Hi buddy, why are you here?
Joshua: To play Pokémon, obviously.

What does it take to become a Pokémon master?
Tough question. I believe endurance is the main thing—keeping your stamina throughout the day as well as your hydration, and focus. You also have to be prepared for anything because a lot of the guys will deliberately choose weak Pokémon to kind of mess with your head. Those are the ones you need to watch out for.

Why do you think some people think this is geeky?
Most people definitely see Pokémon as a child's thing, but you know they have their opinions and I have mine. I have good fun coming here, so it's not going to stop me.

What would you do with the money if you won?
Right now, I'm in year 12, so I reckon the wisest thing to do would be to put it towards university. I know that's not the coolest answer but man, I've got a future to think about.

How's high school treating you?
I like math and science a lot. I guess you could say I'm one of the nerdier kids in the school. I can't disagree with that.

Have you ever dreamed about Pokémon?
Yeah, but the thing with dreams is they're so hard to remember. I can't give you details but yeah, I've definitely dreamed of Pokémon many times. I know that much for sure.

If you died today what bucket list items would still be left unaccomplished?
I'd be pretty bummed if I died today. But if I did, I guess it would definitely be to win a tournament.

Anything non-Pokémon related?
Get a girlfriend.

Got any life advice?
Train hard and good things will come. Sometimes never straight away, but eventually they will come. This applies to both Pokémon battles and the battles we face in life.

Kaden, 9.

Hey bud, why are you here today?
Kaden: Because I came yesterday and made it in the top cut. I won a lot of prizes.

What do you love about Pokémon?
There's always something to do in the game, it's so hard to beat.

Tell me, is Pokémon as cool as it used to be?
I think there are four or five kids in my class who like Pokémon. It's not as popular now.

What would you say to any kids that think Pokémon is for geeks?
It's fun so I'll just ignore them.

Related: Watch our documentary on a different card game competition, 'Magic: The Gathering'

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Classic street style, Brooklyn circa 1986. Photograph by Jamel Shabazz. Courtesy of Cable News Network. A Time Warner Company. All rights reserved

The new documentary Fresh Dressed is caught between two competing desires: wanting to celebrate hip-hop culture's early street style while also condemning the capitalization of that culture by brands, thus allowing traditional fashion institutions to reign supreme. However, this isn't a weakness of debut director Sacha Jenkins's film. In fact, it could be argued this is where we shouldbe stuck, given the trajectory of street style's humble origins to our current, commodified moment.

The film starts off as a tale of working-class black youths in the Bronx finding a voice through rap. The music bled into a street style that Run of Run DMC describes as celebrities wanting to dress in a manner that their audiences could afford, and continued in the 80s and 90s into fashion brands owned by black men, such as Cross Colors, Karl Kani, RocaWear (Jay-Z's brand), Sean John (Puff Daddy's), and FUBU.

Watch an exclusive clip from 'Fresh Dressed' with Nas:

The film mixes talking heads, featuring some of hip-hop's regency—Nas, Kanye West, Sean Combs, and Pharrell Williams—with archival footage showing burnt-out Bronx buildings in the 70s, iconic stores such as Dapper Dan's, and images of 2Pac and the Fresh Prince. In trying to run the gamut from 70s Harlem hustles to A$AP Rocky sporting the finest fabrics from Europe's fashion houses into 83 minutes, Jenkins is left with no time to explore some of the film's most interesting social commentary. Instead, what we get are satisfying, if less complex clips of the freshest apparel and reminders of street style from yesteryear.

The first words of nostalgia are flung from Kanye West, who says that "being fresh was more important than having money. When I grew up, I wanted money so I can be fresh." As to what constitutes fresh, we see some examples, starting with a tribute to the influence of Little Richard ("Liberace without the sequins," says former Vogue editor-at-large André Leon Talley), to Melle Mel's inimitable mix of biker jackets, cycling shorts, and cowboy boots, right through to the birth of sneaker culture, featuring an interview with a cat known as Mayor in his garage housing a collection of Jordans, Pro-Keds, and adidas that he estimates to be worth a cool half million dollars.

Watch an exclusive clip from 'Fresh Dressed' with Dapper Dan:

It's worth mentioning that this was all happening at a time when New York City was five distinct boroughs, before Manhattan gentrified the Brooklyn working-class populace out of their homes. So we get a nice rundown on neighborhood styles, where you said you were from Brooklyn by wearing Clarks on your feet, sharkskins, Cazal glasses with no lenses, and topped off by Kangol creases. Meanwhile in Harlem, it was velour sweatsuits in which the brand of your sneaker matched your sweats. The colors were as loud as the graffiti on the subway trains. Fresh was your ability to wear new clothes and look crisp.

Photograph by Ricky Powell. Courtesy of Cable News Network. A Time Warner Company. All rights reserved

So far, so fun. But there were also indications of something more complex at work, with Nas likening the emphasis of fashion of African tribal leaders to the dandyism of British kings. Or the fact that Sunday-best church clothes were a requisite of white slave owners proving their Christianity by allowing their slaves one set of nice garments to go to a church despite the fact that the film acknowledges that many slaves didn't even believe in the philosophy they were praying to. Former gang member Lorinne Padilla, a former Savage Skulls member, believes the cut-out denims that were the rage in 70s Bronx was inspired by Easy Rider, highlighting the white as well as black influences on the clothing choices. "A lot of people won't admit it," says Padilla, "but that is the truth."

Jack Nicolson, Peter Fonda, et al., play outlaws living on the periphery of society, easy figures for the disenfranchised to associate with, so why not dress like them. But soon hip-hop became part of an aspirational movement that swept America to the sounds of funk, rap, Michael Jackson, and Prince (artists outside Jenkins's remit). To be able to wear Polo Ralph Lauren or Tommy Hilfiger was an assessable sign of upward mobility, even if your home had no furniture and you had 50 cents in your pocket. It's posited by Rocawear co-founder Damon Dash that the threads were "status symbols based on insecurity."

B boys on the street, Brooklyn circa 1983. Photo by Jamel Shabazz. Courtesy of Cable News Network. A Time Warner Company.All rights reserved

The trouble with documentaries is that the narrative of real life is not always linear. So while we get a burst of "My adidas" from Run DMC, we don't get to hear the story of how an adidas employee brought the song to the company's attention when he saw the band bang out the rap in front of 40,000 fans at a stadium gig. Now adidas have buttered the story into making it part of the brand's folklore ("This merge of art and sports not only set the everlasting street fashion trend off but also marked the birth of non-athletic promotions in the sporting goods industry"). Nor does Jenkins mention the Jordan/ Spike Lee collaboration on the Mars Blackmon ads that basically pushed Nike into ubiquity. That's possibly because it doesn't fit the narrative that no official endorsement deals were coming forward—largely true—but failing to acknowledge that as soon as sneaker culture became big business, white-owned brands jumped straight in.

That's a narrative Jenkins spins after he celebrates the rise of urban wear in the 90s and the birth of black clothing entrepreneurs. Those that moved clothes down from the mom-and-pop store into the departments. There was a spirit of togetherness, highlighted by 2Pac refusing to take payment from Karl Kani to promote his brand, because he was black. But it was a dream that had its sale-by date stuck on, once every rapper on the block created their own clothing line. The over-saturation not only tarnished these new entrant rappers own images but those of established hip-hop moguls such as Russell Simmons and Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs.

Watch VICE Meets 50 Cent:

The film kind of throws its hands up in the air when we enter the 00s. A time when luxury brands such as Gucci and Louis Vuitton believed there was enough money to be made, and enough fat black wallets to move into the space. There's no big analysis here. Not even an anecdote on how Burberry tried to rebrand themselves to capitalize on the burgeoning streetwear movement and began to lose stock value when their high-end customers turned their back on their company as it became worn by so called British chavs. We are simply given the fact that the race argument has now become a class argument, and that once you're rich enough, there are certain clubs you allowed to belong, whatever the ethnicity. As for those wanting to ride the gravy train, the price of the ticket on the lapel just got a whole heap more expensive.

Sacha Jenkins's Fresh Dressed is currently in theaters and on demand at www.freshdressedmovie.com, and available on iTunes beginning July 10.

Follow Kaleem Aftab on Twitter.

Photo via Flickr user Stu Spivack

President Barack Obama went after the New York Times during a Twitter Q&A Wednesday. And no, he didn't criticize the paper for helping the Bush administration beat the drum for the invasion of Iraq. Instead, he hammered the Grey Lady for its radical new stance on guacamole.

His beef was with Times food columnist Melissa Clark's suggestion in a recipe this morning that "adding fresh English peas to what is an otherwise fairly traditional guacamole is one of those radical moves that is also completely obvious after you taste it."

Clark has been catching flak for it all day online from all the conservatives out there, who stand athwart guacamole history, yelling "stop."

So when @POTUS announced that people could #AskPOTUS, Justin Green of the Independent Journal Review asked him to weigh in:

And Obama responded in solidarity with Clark's critics:

He left out limes, but, over all, a pretty safe answer.

Putting peas in guacamole is drastic, but not as drastic as the bizarre-looking avocado, tomato and cilantro mixture requested in Jack White's tour rider. White's recipe should—in the grand scheme of things—actually offend guacamole originalists much more than peas. After all, if you go in search of real Mexican food, you're going to find peas in there.

Here's Action Bronson's take on Guacamole:

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Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

Yesterday in Australia was Territory Day, a time when citizens of the Northern Territory celebrate achieving self-governance in 1978 by legalizing fireworks for 24 hours. That means for one day out of the whole year Northern Territorians can buy, sell, and set off fireworks pretty much wherever they want. It sounds strange, and dangerous, but the practice totally embodies the spirit of the Northern Territory. For 24 hours they mark their ability to manage a range of governmental matters with a locally-elected parliament by casting off everything OH&S, as well as the fact that you usually need a license to detonate small explosives in public.

Kids get up early to visit the firework shops that are only open for 12 hours to pick up that special something that will freak out their dogs. Friends come together, drink beers, and set off cherry bombs for the first time outside of their teens. And the rest of the country looks on and thinks, "Why the fuck don't we all live in the Northern Territory?"

Photos by Rhett Hammerton

Photo via Flickr user Steve Jurvetson.

We're damn near halfway through summer, and Kanye West still doesn't have a bonafide hit. The tender "Only One," West's first of several recent Paul McCartney collaborations, came, made listeners eyes water, and slipped off the charts. Rihanna's "FourFiveSeconds," featuring Kanye/McCartney (our generation's Lennon/McCartney), came, stayed for a bit once the inevitable DJ Mustard remix hit, and eventually slipped. Then the pugilistic, grime-indebted "All Day" came, but ultimately slipped too (McCartney also had a hand in that one, but that's neither here nor there).

The aforementioned three singles weren't bad; they just didn't stick in the way a Kanye West single usually does. Which leaves us with a conundrum: There's a Kanye West album, tentatively titled SWISH, coming soon without an indisputably strong lead-in. This is a first in human history. We've approached the sands of bedlam. You would be well within your senses to panic. But take a look at West in 2015. He actually comes off as a sane human when he's off the stage. He ignores his duties as Beyonce's guardian and apologizes to Beck. He sheds tears at reasonable times (like, you know, someone's death). And he readily jokes about something as tame and un-rock star-like as being a dad.

It may be weird to see him like this, but I bet you'd have peace of mind, too, if you'd just dropped a sneaker as successful as the Boost 350.

Screen grab via addidas's YouTube channel.

Released Friday night, the Yeezy Boost 350 was priced at $200 (easily the lowest price point of any Kanye-affiliated shoe), and sold out in hours, proving that West was making good on his promise to offer a reasonably affordable mix of comfort and high fashion. Yeah, they sort of look like the Nike Roshe Runs crossed with the adidas Tubular, but that's fashion for you. Nobody gives Rick Owens shit when his sneakers kinda look like Skechers.

On Noisey: Why Is Kanye West's "Only One" So Good?

West's mindset today is a far cry from 2013, when he set out to burn down the universe. His celebrity and attempted moves into the fashion industry were met with continuous roadblocks. He's a king in hip-hop, but to many in fashion, he was a rapper who didn't belong in the upper echelon of high fashion. He also claimed Nike wouldn't grant him royalties even though his Air Yeezys were an unqualified success. 'Ye was enraged, so through interviews and his Yeezus tour, the public was treated to sanguine rants that blasted Nike, taught many who Hedi Slimane was, and made becoming the "Tupac of product" a thing. He also gave us a little album called Yeezus, an avant garde bi-product of colliding with the roadblocks that stand outside music. Hell, even Lou Reed liked the thing.

West said he had to get his money on Jay Z's level, but people were less enamored by that reasonable (well, reasonable for West) goal and more thrown off by his flagrant lack of tact. West—sometimes playing Michelangelo, sometimes playing Steve Jobs—spoke with rhetoric laced with hyperbole. He eventually landed on a deal with adidas, which was supposed to be the start of great things: A high-quality clothing line. Widely available apparel. More 'Ye. More 'Ye. More 'Ye.

Related: Watch Spike Jonze hang out with Kanye West for VICE

His Yeezy Season 1 line was showcased at New York Fashion Week earlier this year. Although it earned a mixed response, West countered by saying, "We're still on mixtapes" to Paper magazine. Which I guess means we still haven't seen the College Dropout equivalent of his sartorial efforts, yet. Following that metaphor with his kicks, the Yeezy Boost 750 is kind of like DJ Envy's Dream Team Paid in Fullmixtape, which featured a pre-College Dropout Kanye trading bars with the whole Roca-A-Fella clique. It didn't light the world on fire, but it proved that he could actually rap with the big boys. And I think the Yeezy Boost 350 is kind of like Get Well Soon, the mixtape that made everyone recognize that Kanye wasn't just alright on the mic, he was on the verge of changing the game forever.

The 750 was more of a Yeezus tie-in than a functional shoe; the fit was a little awkward, the zippers were breaking only after a few wears. The 350 features a more streamlined, eye-pleasing design, and it looks like it is made for the human foot. Both sold out, but the former was met with sneers and jeers. The latter was met with... well, still some sneers, but those were mostly from Kanye haters. Still, there were more reluctant nods of approval and far more praise. The Boost 350 is a sign that Kanye the Creative is rising in the place of simply Kanye the Musician.

But why does West continuously need to prove himself to us despite all of his achievements? Well, he is too good—he spoiled us. He had six straight great solo albums, a streak unheard of in hip-hop. Each, in its own way, signaled a sea change. College Dropout led a backpacker insurrection. Late Registration made hip-hop orchestral. Graduation zipped hip-hop and electronic music up together like a sonic BAPE hoodie. 808s & Heartbreak accidentally birthed Drake's touchy-feely lane. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy led to a surge in rap maximalism. Yeezus made caustic, industrial rap cool for everybody, not just hip-hop's fringes. But you already know this stuff. West's discography is so good that it overshadows his other creative accomplishments. Take Watch the Throne, his collaborative album with one-time mentor Jay Z. It would have been a high-water mark for virtually any other rapper in the game if not for the greatness that had preceded it.

Recently, West has made it a point to start distancing himself from the term "rapper" and favors Vogue over Vibe these days. Although this wrongly implies that hip-hop is some lesser form culture, one can argue that his hip-hop accomplishments obfuscates of his other creative achievements. His appropriation of imagery from Jodorowski's The Holy Mountain is both grandiose and a marvel in design. DONDA's designs (album covers, marketing campaigns) proved it was more of a legitimate creative house than a vanity project. And you remember how much of a frenzy there was over those Red Octobers, which to this day will set you back a cool $4,750 at Flight Club.

West's struggles in fashion are ignominious, but they aren't an anomaly in his resume. Jay Z didn't even believe in West when he first started trying to rap and now West has arguably eclipsed him. Even if West's musical hot streak cools down a bit in 2015, all signs say that we are watching the inception of something greater—West transferring the awesomeness he brought to hip-hop to a bigger, broader canvas.

Follow Brian on Twitter.

Images via Wiki Commons, composite by Drew Millard.

The Full House reboot is warping the way we perceive space and time.

Well, not the reboot itself, and not even the trend of rebooting everything remotely iconic from the pre-internet era—it's the conditions that create the pressure to bring back Full House, or reboot Fargo, or make a Top Gun sequel, or even loudly trumpet Seinfeld's arrival on Hulu that are altering the way we see space-time.

The conditions in question are the way we consume content in the age of the internet. Universal internet access has meant more stuff to watch and listen to, and more outlets on which to watch and hear it. Increases in technology have given DIY albums and self-produced TV pilots a near-professional level of polish. Every TV channel dabbles in original programming, and now even web video sites like YouTube and Vimeo do as well. But the result is more of everything, available all the time, with no end in sight. There is always another self-released mixtape to download, another fresh new BBC America show, another documentary on Netflix.

I'm aware this is a pretty mundane observation in 2015, but it has actual implications on the space-time continuum. I'm going to prove it with basic physics.

Society has a finite amount of attention. While each individual person has a distinct amount of free time and goes through entertainment at a different rate, we are all objectively limited by the number of hours in the day. The amount of available content continues to grow but the attention available is fixed. Slices of the "attention pie" shrink as competition increases; everything matters less.

As culture moves forward it also pushes backward: the new replaces the old with a vengeance, increasing its relevance over the past by a factor proportional to its staying power. An extreme example would be how Nirvana effectively buried dozens of aspiring Bon Jovis with Nevermind. But more broadly, a smaller cultural landscape makes the dominant trends more obvious and makes it easier to notice when they wane. It was easier to reach a consensus on what was played the fuck out.

Conversely, the current era is a dead zone of any kind of judgement. Lil Boosie has been the most popular rapper in at least five flyover states for almost a decade, yet only reached mainstream recognition last year due to a complicated and prolonged court case. Widely mocked bands maintain devoted quasi-underground fan bases (no matter how much you make fun of them, 311 still has an annual cruise). The obtuse economics of television allow networks to tolerate critical darlings with low ratings, knowing money awaits in syndication, streaming ads, and sales. Meanwhile in 2014, the most watched shows on TV were The Big Bang Theory and NCIS.

Simply put, the connection between what is ostensibly good, what is popular, and what is financially viable is tenuous at best. This makes it harder to frame anything as directly opposing what came before it: Which rapper did Kendrick Lamar replace? Whose food is True Detective eating?

Speaking of which, watch our documentary on the real True Detective

Since culture today doesn't turn over as violently, it doesn't push back as hard. As the backwards force shrinks, the rate of cultural decay decreases as well. The Billboard Hot 100 singles of 1994, 2004, and 2014 provide some good anecdotal evidence: "Timber," by Pitbull and Ke$ha, is as far from J-Kwon's "Tipsy" as "Tipsy" is from R. Kelly's "Bump N Grind."

If this seems vague, let's come back to Full House. Today's challenging marketplace, along with the damage internet access did to many of their business models, has made the entertainment industries increasingly risk-adverse. A reboot like Full House (or a decades-late movie sequel, or a repress of an only moderately-important album) is a safer bet: It has buzz and press baked in and a familiar audience predisposed to at least pay attention to its existence. So not only is the past becoming the past slower, aspects of the past are being pulled back up in the present day.

So how does this affect the space-time continuum, in a pop culture sense?

Well, imagine you are sitting in the bed of a Ford F-150 facing the opposite direction of traffic. You are making mental calculations about how fast your cousin is driving based on how long it takes for stationary objects on the side of the road—trees, road signs, Cracker Barrel billboards—to disappear over the horizon. A constant speed means these things recede at a constant rate. When your cousin slows down so you can swing your Louisville Slugger at Old Man Winslow's mailbox, the roadside objects slow down as well.

On Motherboard: The Underfunded, Disorganized Plan to Save Earth from the Next Giant Asteroid

Say your cousin spots a speed trap up ahead and slams on the brakes, and let's assume the brakes are on the front wheels for the sake of simplicity. In real time, the whole truck slows down at a uniform speed. But at the precise moment of braking, the front of the truck decelerates faster than the back of the truck. And in that moment, roadside objects are moving away from your cousin's treasured bright red F-150 slower than incoming objects approach it.

This is kind of where we are, except we are experiencing all of these phenomena at once. Looking forward, we see one speed. Looking back, we see another. The best way to explain this paradox is that the force gravity is rapidly decreasing as we travel forward. It's the opposite of what happens when you cross the event horizon into a black hole and approach infinite gravity: the difference between the pull on your feet and your head turns you into a long string of atoms. (Scientists call it "spaghettification").

We, however, are facing the opposite fate: infinite compression. As long as we keep making any new shit at all, we'll avoid being (metaphorically) squashed into an infinitely dense and stagnant pop culture landscape. But those who trawl the past for content are not just cynically avoiding the challenging work of artistic innovation. They are actively altering the fabric of the universe, and it's going to cause us to all die. Or something.

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Photos by Amy Lombard

There was a commotion in the lobby of the Jack White Theater, the historic auditorium inside Detroit's Masonic Temple where a horde of Juggalos had gathered to watch a double feature of Insane Clown Posse movies. One of the Juggalos, a short man with a dirty goatee, was flailing around a live lobster. He was running around with it until he spotted a friend, a fat guy, who grabbed the lobster and rubbed it against the short man's goatee. Then the short man licked the lobster.

"That's how you get crabs!" shouted a Juggalo in the distance. "That's how Juggalos are born!"

The screams alerted the other Juggalos to the scene. The fat Juggalo bit the lobster's leg off and spat it on the ground. Then a guy in a purple suit bit the lobster's head off. One of them threw the lobster's body on the ground, and then the guy in the purple suit jumped in the air and body slammed the animal. Lobster guts flew all across the floor.

It was the night before Juggalo Day, the band's annual free concert, which is held to collect canned goods for Detroit's food banks. I was there, along with my photographer Amy Lombard, to profile the Insane Clown Posse.

After the lobster incident, a chubby blonde Juggalo named Brian invited us to join him and his friends at a Juggalo motel party in downtown Detroit, so we could see how Juggalos get down after hours.

Inside the motel, we weren't sure which room to go to, until we heard ICP blasting down the hall and followed the trail of weed, cigarettes, BO, malt liquor, and Faygo. We walked in and a room full of Juggalos promptly yelled, "Whoop! Whoop!"

What happened next was a combination of eyebrow shaving, tit flashing, and Faygo chugging. Here are Amy Lombard's photos chronicling the rest of the night.

Follow Mitchell Sunderland and Amy Lombard on Twitter.

A Southern church burning in 2011. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

When nine people were shot at an historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina on June 17, a wound many Americans might prefer to believe has healed since the Jim Crow era of poll taxes and lynchings was ripped open again.

The shooting set off a national conversation about the Confederate flag—one that's still playing out as lawmakers and activists tussle over the symbol's meaning. Last week, retail behemoths Walmart, Amazon, eBay, and Sears all stopped selling the flag, and just hours ago, Birmingham, Alabama, voted to take down a confederate memorial from a local park. Last Monday, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley called on lawmakers to remove the Confederate flag from the state capitol, and Alabama's governor unilaterally made the decision to take the flag down as well.

But could the horrific shooting also be inspiring copycat acts of racial violence? At least six predominantly black churches across the country have burned in the days since the Charleston bloodshed, though officials are only attributing some of them to acts of arson—and have yet to label any a hate crime.

White supremacists have a long and storied history of violence against African-American places of worship, and the terror tactic has continued in the last couple decades. Often, attacks on black churches have closely followed civil rights victories, like the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling in 1954. Hours after Barack Obama was elected in 2008, three men lit up a Massachusetts church in protest.

So when College Hill Seventh Day Adventist church caught fire in Knoxville, Tennessee just a few days after the Charleston shooting, it was tempting to attribute the blaze to racial animus rearing its ugly head. Immediately, however, authorities tried to quell such fears by saying there was no evidence of a hate crime.

It's become harder and harder to believe there's no racial element at play given the remarkably similar church blazes that followed. Two days after the Knoxville fire, another one broke out in Macon, Georgia. Again, the FBI said that just because they were looking into it didn't mean there was any evidence of a hate crime—at least not yet.

A day later, two more fires erupted in North Carolina and Tennessee, though the latter is a predominantly white church that was probably set on fire by lightning. On Friday, Glover Grove Baptist Church burned in South Carolina, and another church in Tallahassee, Florida, went ablaze. On Saturday, a church caught fire in Elyria, Ohio, though initial reports from local authorities suggest it was not intentional.

Finally, on Tuesday night, the same Greenville, South Carolina church that was torched by Ku Klux Klan members 20 years ago burst into flames. It also happens to belong to the same denomination—African Methodist Episcopal (AME)—as the Charleston church allegedly shot up by 21-year-old Dylann Roof. But so far, the feds have found no indication that the Mount Zion AME fire was the result of arson, according to the Associated Press.

Why are officials being so careful to avoid calling the handful of alleged arsons the FBI is investigating hate crimes? To the untrained eye, it might seem like there's some kind of conspiracy—or maybe just willful ignorance—afoot, but experts on racial violence aren't so sure.

Check out our documentary on the modern KKK in the Deep South.

"The kind of things [law enforcement] would expect to find are slogans or slurs—perhaps symbols—and they apparently haven't found anything like that," says Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). "It's not as if they're being stupid or ignoring evidence."

He explained that church fires are really common, citing a National Fire Protection Association report that there were 1,780 per year on average between 2007 and 2011. A federal Department of Justice (DOJ) task force found that between January 1995 and September 1998, there were 670 reported church fires in the country—and only 24 were motivated by hate.

As for the rest? Inclement weather can probably explain some of them, and while the feds continue to look for telltale signs of racial terrorism, we can't rule out old-school #teen mischief.

"Houses of worship tend to be in rural and remote and remote places," Potok said, referencing the sheer volume of church fires. "Drunk teenagers drink two cases of beer and light the place on fire. That sort of thing."

"The likelihood of this being a conspiracy is very unlikely," he added. "There's a lot of social media buzz about this, but social media is not an investigation."

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

The author enjoying the upsides of robotic arms at Diggerland theme park in Strood, Kent. Photo by Jake Lewis.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

A contractor working for Volkswagen near Frankfurt, Germany, has been killed by a robot. Or, more specifically, its massive robotic arms.

The 22-year-old employee was trying to set up the machine at the plant in Baunatal when it grabbed him and crushed his body against a metal plate. Unsurprisingly, VW spokesman Heiko Hillwig is putting the accident down to "human error" rather than heralding it as the starting pistol for the widely prophesied robo-apocalypse, though he has announced there will be an investigation into the death.

Death-by-machine is not by any means a new way to go; in July 1981, Japanese engineer Kenji Urada was working at the Kawasaki Heavy Industries plant when a robotic arm reached out and pushed him into a grinding machine. Two years earlier, in Flat Rock, Michigan, 25-year-old Ford assembly line worker Robert Williams was whacked in the head by a robotic arm as he was gathering parts in a storage facility. It was apparently the first time a human has ever been "murdered" by a robot.

Really into the idea of becoming half-machine one day? Watch our film with the futurist, Raymond Kurzweil:

But while films like Blade Runner; I, Robot; and Ex Machina, as well as cultural figures like Ray Kurzweil and recreational drugs like weed have made us increasingly fearful of the AI singularity and the exponential pace at which a robot-led genocide could become a reality, it seems all we really need to be afraid of is giant arms.

Giant, massive, swinging robotic arms, batting us around like bits of balled up tracing paper. Sure, it's scary that humanoid cyborgs could develop sentience and choose to wipe our disease-like existence off the face of planet Earth, but in reality the machines are pretty far from being able to achieve that. For instance, if you are on Facebook, I'm sure you've seen the video below:

Again, note the viciousness of the arms

Perversely, plenty of robots seem intent on actually helping us. A New York hospital is using robotic neuro-rehabilitation for children with severe brain trauma. And they're also learning to harvest broccoli, which is great, because now I don't have to spend all my free time harvesting all my fucking broccoli.

But while it's clear that robots are useful to us in many ways, it's important for the survival of our species that they are not, under any circumstances, given arms.

Unless, of course, they are diggers:

Follow Joe on Twitter.

Real-life stripper Mike (left) with the author.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

If you missed the first incarnation of the Magic Mike series, what might have gone over your head is how good it actually was. More than just being soft porn for the kind of people who smuggle rosé into cinemas, the story of a few hard-up guys cutting their teeth in Florida's stripping mecca featured standout performances from Matthew McConaughey and Channing Tatum. It was directed by Steven Soderbergh, who—lest we forget—also directed A Scanner Darkly and Traffic. And while it wasn't exactly Requiem for a Dream, it was at least powerful enough to make you briefly feel sorry for men who appeared, at first glance, to be the biggest douchebags on Earth.

At the end of the first film, released back in the summer of 2012, hunk protagonist Mike (based on Tatum himself, who stripped as a teenager) throws in his lube-covered towel, deciding to do what most ex-strippers do: settle down and make chairs for a living. But this summer he's back for the long-awaited sequel, Magic Mike XXL, which sees the "Kings of Tampa" (as the strip troupe are known) reunite and travel to a stripper convention. They crash a car, get their kit off, perform with drag queen Vicky Vox, and contemplate their dreams for the future... before stripping again at the end to give us our money's worth.

The new film is funny but less charming than the first one. While its big, sexy sequences got me going, the 115-minute run-time felt like a stretch. If you want strippers, this film will hit the spot, but there's less depth of plot and character than before. Beyond the shallow storyline, flashing lights, and Hollywood editing, I wanted to find out what it's really like for a bloke to strip for a living; what the relationship challenges, fitness regimes, and hordes of wasted women mean for strippers IRL.

In order to do so, I headed down to a London preview of the film with a real-life, 6' 2" stripper named—yep—Mike, to see if stripping's really the massive laugh it's cracked up to be in the movie.

READ: Childish Gambino Is the Stripper of Our Hearts for 'Magic Mike XXL' Single 'Marry You' on Noisey

I attempted to make notes throughout the film, but between my handsome date and Channing Tatum things got pretty distracting. One thing I did manage to absorb was the seemingly endless dialogue where they talked about what they'd rather be doing than pumping meat on stage. Turns out Magic Mike remains psyched about making tables, while Ken (Matt Bomer) wants a career in music. Big Dick Richie (Joe Manganiello) would rather be blending smoothies.

Q&A at screening, photo by the author.

Mike the real stripper has been doing it for six years, and the Magic Mike films have inspired a new generation of lads to the game. Despite jumping on the Magic Mike bandwagon himself—his name and tagline ("Magic Mike—six-foot-two and all for you") being a product of the film's success—my Mike thinks he's less sought after now because of the extra competition.

"In the movie, stripping looks amazing," he told me," but can you imagine doing that sort of thing, every night, for years? You'd want to do something else."

Mike now runs a fitness studio in London, and also acts a bit too, doing advertisements and the occasional supporting part in a film. Still, he loves his night job: "Even if I had enough acting work to keep me going tomorrow, I think I'd still strip. You can be creative, design your own routines to entertain people, and it's really easy to be appreciated."

Still from 'Magic Mike XXL.'

As you might expect, there's a lot of sex in Magic Mike XXL. After the opening sequence, the men waste no time in getting down and dirty with some of the local 20-something talent. "Yeah, that's pretty much how it goes down," Mike laughed during the movie.

We chatted for a while about stripper hook-ups, which, when on tour, are "a pretty regular thing." But most nights of passion don't last past dawn. "You're just a fucking stripper," complained Mike, "there's no expectation of anything serious." Still, Mike and his friends have their fun and move on, just like the hundreds of ugly normos having one-night stands everywhere, every night across the UK.

When Tatum's Mike re-enters the world of stripping, just after getting his angle grinder out and making sparks fly around his workshop, the crew are surprised to see him back, given he's supposedly all loved up. "Your girl gave you a hall pass?" one chides. "I don't need no hall pass," Tatum replies, in a startling and all-too rare critique of monogamy in the modern heterosexual relationship.

I wondered what it's like balancing a relationship with a job that puts sex at the center of what you do, given that real-life stripper Mike is currently engaged, with his days of debauchery firmly behind him. He's also no longer touring full time. "If I was still on the road for months at a time, stripping for thousands of women, then maybe a relationship like mine would make no sense," he told me. At the end of the day, he says, it's a job, and IRL Mike loves his fiancée.

But Magic Mike XXL portrays even the professional part of male stripping as close to the bone. Throughout the 115-minute movie, cocks are squeezed, whipped cream is sprayed, and the amount of pelvis jerking that goes on would rival a Ricky Martin concert. Even if you're committed to being Captain Monogamy, this would surely still take its toll on any relationship.

Mike told me that what goes on onstage isn't as explicitly racy as you might think. "If you want to get audiences, and get rebooked, you don't want to fuck the woman on stage. You want everyone to enjoy it—grandmas too. You don't just start dry humping." Holding down a long-term partner, it seems, is a lot less challenging when you see yourself as an entertainer, rather than a sexually charged dreamboat on the prowl.

Still from Magic Mike XXL

After the film, IRL Mike and I decided to go for a burger: just two guys called Mike talking about Magic Mike. Over dinner, he told me various times that most women don't just want an errant dick shoved in their faces. I found this quite hard to believe. Isn't that the whole point? Surely sometimes the crowd take things a little too far?

"One of my stripper friends once had his thong grabbed—he ended up with a fingernail stuck in his ball-sack"

"The girls get really wild, but I don't initiate it. I was doing a strip on a bus for a bunch of fucking crazy drunk girls from Liverpool once. I couldn't even stand up on the bus, and they were ripping my clothes off, expecting a sex show. They were screaming, and started to lose it, so I had to do a runner with my trousers ripped off my legs."

If you think that's bad, once one of his stripper friends had his thong grabbed. It got cut open, "leaving a fingernail in his ball-sack... he had to go to hospital." The perils of the male stripping profession, I suppose.

Still from 'Magic Mike XXL.'

Up on the screen, whenever the strippers get going, money starts to fly from the hands of women hell-bent on having the times of their lives. But are hen parties in Romford really making it rain? Is it not just a succession of clammy 50 pence pieces chucked at a quivering crotch? And who is making sure that the money is distributed fairly among the boys? They seem to just shoot off when they've stripped, no scrambling about on the floor to pick up the small change.

"I've been to a lot of places all over the world, but this money throwing thing just doesn't happen."

Related: Watch 'Life as a Truck Stop Stripper' on VICE

Most of Mike's work comes at the weekend, where he'll be stripping up to eight times on a Saturday. "It comes down to logistics," he explained, "a good booking agent is vital, else it can all be a mess."

When it comes to earnings, Mike gets about £100 [$150] a pop, which—at up to six jobs on a good night—is a healthy income. While touring, he was hitting £150 [$230] a show, plus tips.

"Thunder from Down Under," the big show in Vegas Mike used to work for, pays new recruits just $100 a night plus accommodation, Mike told me. At just over £60 [$90], it's hardly a fortune. "It's because there are so many young lads that really want to join a strip group and get easy access to girls."

Still from 'Magic Mike XXL.'

After Magic Mike XXL, I left the theater feeling a little disappointed. If you were hoping for some fleshy full frontal action, the sequel isn't the film for you. I asked Mike whether I might have more chance of getting a glimpse of the goods if I were to book him for a show.

"In the US and Australia, it's not on the menu, but in England, everyone expects you to get naked," he laughed. And what about enlargement? "I don't pump up my dick or tie it—I never have. Well, firstly, I don't really need to... But also I don't think women just pay to see a big swinging cock; I'll flash a bit, but it's about the entertainment."

But the buff hairless bods, those are real right? Right? "Big Dick Richie shaves all his body hair off after no more than three days, is that what you all do too?" I eagerly asked, as we shook hands, oily with the burger filth of our post-screening dinner date. "There are different strokes for different folks. I make sure I'm clean but I'm not shaving off all the hair. It's nice and tidy down there, though." Good to know, Mike.

Overall, it seems the life of a male stripper isn't far off from the way it's depicted on screen; sex, money, and some super smooth moves are all part of the fun for guys like Mike. Sure, you might end up with a finger-nail stuck in your balls, but If you want to travel the world and fuck around a bit, then why not get your kit off in front of crowds of adoring onlookers? I can think of worse ways to make a living. For strippers like IRL Mike, it seems the thrills and perks are worth it, and while Magic Mike XXL might not be winning an Oscar any time soon, it will keep the likes of Mike in business for a few more years at least.

Follow Michael Segalov on Twitter.

People demonstrating for a "No" vote at Sunday's referendum.

There's an interesting experiment you can try for yourself, if you have a few spare chimpanzees, no academic oversight, and a glinting crystal of murder and malice where your heart should be. If you put an ape in a tiny cage, and subject it to periodic electric shocks, the creature will grow furious, smashing itself repeatedly against the bars, shrieking and howling, desperate to get out. What you then do is open up one side of the cage onto a deep chasm. If no chasms are conveniently available, you could try the roof of a sheer, high building. The chimpanzee will suddenly grow very quiet. It'll peer over the precipice, sniff the air, stare briefly into the emptiness in front of it, and retreat again. It'll become suddenly very anxious. When you shock it again, it'll sit by passively. It has the terror of the void now. It will suffer any indignities you throw at it in a stunned and broken silence.

This imaginary experiment is entirely unethical if you're doing it to chimpanzees, but it's also the European Central Bank's policy toward Greece. Ever since the first rumbles of the country's debt crisis in 2009, its creditors have been subjecting the Greek population to monthly humiliations: benefits and pensions lacerated, new taxes thrown with the force of a ballistic missile, the reduction of a quarter of the country to the status of surplus life, all in the name of economic recovery. Throughout this ordeal, there's always been a kind of sadistic choice—if you don't like it, you can always quit the Euro, default on your debts, throw yourself into that empty chasm, and see what happens next. The expectation is that, like the neurotic chimp in its cage, Greece will always teeter on the brink but never actually make the plunge.

The Greek debt crisis is, of course, a banking crisis: unsafe practices from the financial sector threatened to cause an implosion of the entire industry, and so across Europe the state stepped in as the final guarantor of capitalist relations. Instead of taking over these banks, however, governments tended to just pour money into them—money they themselves had to borrow. Suddenly a banking crisis became a government deficit crisis—and in a spectacular ideological coup, the idea that this was because governments had spent too much on social programs became the received wisdom.

Rather than bailing out the European banks directly, Greece's European creditors gave it a loan, and before long they were demanding interest. In the period from 2010 to the beginning of 2015, Greece borrowed €252 billion ($280 billion) from the rest of Europe, the European Central Bank, and the IMF. Of that, €232.9 billion ($258.5 billion) has been spent on interest payments, or been given to banks and speculators. Almost none of this money is actually going into the Greek economy, but each new loan comes with conditions: Greece has to take away more and more from its people, so that the creditors can have their profit.

But the latest raft of demands might have gone too far. On Sunday, the country will hold a referendum on its creditors' latest offer. The question Greece is being asked is a bit of a mouthful—"Should the plan of agreement be accepted, which was submitted by the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund in the Eurogroup of 25.06.2015 and comprises of two parts, which constitute their unified proposal?"—and also by now entirely irrelevant to the situation. The "plan of agreement" it mentions is no longer even an offer: Germany's confirmed that the deal is off the table, while the government of Greece stepped back from the edge yesterday, essentially caving in to all its "humiliating" demands and being rebuffed. But the real question is pretty simple. What the referendum is asking is this: do we give in, or are we desperate enough to push the big red button, the one marked "fuck everything up"?

What actually happens next is another story. The governments of France, Germany and Italy insist that a vote against the agreement would inevitably result in Greece leaving the Euro; the Greek government disagrees, but it no longer really has control over its own referendum. Nobody really knows what's at the bottom of this chasm. But these are some of the possibilities:

Some people in Athens demonstrating for a "Yes" vote. Photo by Panagiotis Maidis.

GREECE VOTES YES

The actual conditions being offered by the ECB and the IMF are no longer on the table, but this is still the condition they're hoping for. Prime Minister Tsipras, of the SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left) party, has offered to resign in the event of a Yes vote; it's likely he'll be replaced by some putty-faced bank-appointed technocrat. There'll be an emergency loan, and then another loan to prevent Greece defaulting on its emergency loan, and then another to cover that one. Interest payments will be met. First Greece will sell its islands to Chinese billionaires, then its ruins to banking conglomerates that always wanted a nice Acropolis in their foyers, then its children to slave traders. The endless ranks of the unemployed, mere useless flesh, will fade away or be turned into fertilizer. Those who survive will be forced to dig through the dry, dead earth with their bleeding hands, looking for flecks of valuable minerals. You have to pay your debts. Death will be slow and painful, but before long the nation of Heraclitus and Aristophanes will be gone forever.

Likelihood: Moderate. Most polls predict a win for the No camp, but as Britain has learned, polls can't always be trusted.

Some people kissing during a rally for a "no" vote. Photo by Panagiotis Maidis.

GREECE VOTES NO, EVERYTHING IS FINE

This is what SYRIZA is hoping for. A No vote, they seem to think, will strengthen Greece's hand in negotiations: In the face of a clear popular mandate, the IMF and the ECB will have to grant some small concessions toward social democracy. Greece can keep the Euro, and initiatives will be introduced that will actually allow the economy to grow, so that the debt can be paid back in full somewhere down the road. Tsipras has always tried to position himself as a sensible pragmatist willing to work constructively with his European creditors. He seems to think that the people he's negotiating with are also nice, sensible types who believe in democracy and want everyone to live happily. In fact, they're pale, bloated, rapacious monsters who would tear the throats out a busload of children if they thought there was some profit in it. If Greece votes No, they'll want it to suffer.

Likelihood: Zeus will descend from the clouds with armloads of government bonds before this dream comes true.

GREECE GOES COMMUNIST

After a resounding No vote, SYRIZA ditches the Euro, nationalizes the banks, purges itself of reactionary elements, re-expropriates the private property of the capitalist class, and sets up vast labor armies to begin the task of building a new, better future, in which nobody will ever suffer for another person's gain, and everyone can bring themselves to self-realization.

Likelihood: It might still happen. It might still happen. It might still happen.

Related: Watch our documentary about a new drug taking hold of Athens' poorest, 'Sisa: Cocaine of the Poor'

MILITARY COUP

The major European countries have made no secret of the fact that they don't like the current government in Greece; if it keeps holding referendums they might decide to bring in a new one. There's a precedent here. After the Second World War, Britain and America brutally suppressed the popular Communist movement, sowing the seeds for a right-wing military dictatorship that lasted until 1974. Plenty of elements in the Greek deep state still remember the junta very fondly, and might be easily induced to relive their old glory days of bashing commie students with axes and sending their leaders to the firing squad.

Likelihood: Nobody's really talking about it yet, but higher than we might think.

Over on VICE Sports: Krgystan Is Both a Haven and a Dumping Ground for West African Footballers

GLOBAL NUCLEAR WAR

If you don't pay your debts, eventually a cop will show up. Disputes between creditors and debtors always come down to armed force, and armed force tends to be on the side of credit. In the 19th Century, war was standard practice in this sort of affair. France fought two wars with Mexico, in 1838-1839 and 1861-1867, when the latter refused to pay its debts. Tens of thousands of people died. In its long and storied history, war has always been Europe's strongest export. It can't be long before German planes are once more buzzing over Athens, before British death squads are again pushing through the countryside, before the Aegean is mined. Greece will have few friends, but there's one that might count. Russia is the traditional protector of the peoples of the Orthodox Church, and also the world's largest nuclear power. Warheads will pop like blisters on the face of an acne-scarred Earth, cities will melt in their Luciferian blaze, and it'll all be because some nice old Greek ladies couldn't collect their pensions.

Likelihood: Death is certain.

Follow Sam Kriss on Twitter.

Plumes of smoke travelling away from forest fires. Photo via the Government of Saskatchewan website

Courtney Wozniak spends every hour he can during the summer on the water in northern Saskatchewan, but he doesn't remember a time in the past 30 years that ash coated his car, house, or the boat on Candle Lake.

"I had a white shirt on and it looked like I rolled around the mud for a while. It was gnarly actually," Wozniak said. "It was actually snowing ash."

Candle Lake, SK. Photo by Courtney Wozniak

On Canada Day, there were 110 active fires in Saskatchewan and only about 10 were contained. During a week that normally sees cars lined up on the highways heading north for heat, boats, debauchery, and celebrations, this year saw an exodus of people travelling south.

"It's pretty smoky and it's dead actually," Wozniak said from his cabin. "Usually there's lot's of boats on the water and people on the beach and stuff. You can't even see across the lake right now."

With the fires raging and dry weather continuing, the yearly tradition of Roman Candle duels—shooting fireworks at people—had to be cancelled across northern Saskatchewan. There is a fire ban in the northern provincial forests and campgrounds in Lac La Ronge Provincial Park have been closed. Businesses aren't even allowed to sell fireworks in some of the provincial parks, including at Emma and Christopher Lake, known for their rowdy Canada Day celebrations.

Candle Lake. Photo by Courtney Wozniak

"Usually we go to Candle Lake for Canada Day for the parade and everything, but they are done and the fireworks aren't happening," Wozniak said. "In town we saw people with masks."

Even without a nearby fire blazing, the thick heavy smoke coated the province for days leading up to the annual patriotic party. Environment Canada issued air quality statements province wide because "visibilities have been reduced to less than two kilometres in many areas especially in Central and Northern Saskatchewan. Air quality is poor in many areas due to the smoke. Smoke near the ground may cause potentially high health risk conditions." Throughout the week, the air quality has hit 12 on the index—seven to ten is considered "high risk."

The South Saskatchewan River and downtown Saskatoon, mid-afternoon on July 30. Photo by Geraldine Malone

By Wednesday, more than 4,000 people had been forced to leave their homes and communities and were staying in evacuation centres or hotels in North Battleford, Prince Albert, Saskatoon, and Regina.

There is a benefit to the heavy smoke that's passed beyond Saskatchewan's border into the United States. The smoke is blocking the sun so that it's not hitting the ground and directly warming the fires, according to Steve Roberts with Saskatchewan's environment ministry. But it has also made it difficult for firefighting aircraft, with the bombers grounded on Tuesday and only the helicopters hitting the sky.

There are about 600 firefighters, 40 helicopters and 19 planes involved in fighting the fires. Other provinces have contributed firefighters and equipment, and a crew from South Dakota was on its way to help on Wednesday.

Fires in Northern Saskatchewan. Photo via the Government of Saskatchewan website

Jonathan Dunn lives and works in La Ronge, a town about 250 kilometres north of Prince Albert on Highway 2.

"They evacuated all the elderly and all the children under a certain age, pregnant women... then all the people that panicked left too," Dunn said. "Working and living in the north, [fires] are a yearly thing... But this one is a little closer than most years, and a littler earlier, too."

Dunn and his friend Emily Rucks decided that with the heavy smoke and silent streets they'd pack up and head south for some adventure.

On the highway. Photo by Jonathan Dunn

"It was getting kind of thick and claustrophobic feeling," Rucks, who is originally from Southern Saskatchewan, said. "Saturday night was the worst. We went and tried to look for the fire. We were the only people on the highway that night actually. So we turned around."

"It's just a wall of smoke up there," Dunn added. "We also went for a boat ride to go look at the fire but we didn't get to the fire because it was too smokey and we didn't want to get lost on the lake."

It took two attempts to join a convoy, but Dunn and Rucks finally hit the highway and made it to Saskatoon on Tuesday, where the smoke continued to cover the city, which is a 3.5-hour drive to the south.

La Ronge, 3.5 hours north of Saskatoon. Photo by Jonathan Dunn

"There was a fire burning... there was a lot of burnt trees, still hot stuff, smoke," Dunn said of the drive.

In the end, to escape the smoke on what was supposed to be a holiday, Dunn and Rucks ditched their Saskatchewan Jazz Festival tickets and headed west to clearer air. JazzFest is the largest festival of it's kind in Western Canada and brings out around 85,000 music fans to venues around the city but the largest stage, which showcases the main acts is outside at the Bessborough Hotel gardens. For most of the week, acts like Michael Franti and Parab Poet & the Hip Hop Hippies were shrouded in smoke on stage, but it finally began to clear on Canada Day for a sold out show featuring The Roots. The crowd packed the gardens as people who had been spending the week hiding in their homes came out to breathe in some fresh air.

This article was originally published on VICE Serbia.

I've been scouring Belgrade's Kalenić and Bajloni farmers' markets for vintage photographs since 2009. The fact that I'm able to unearth these gems among boxes of tomatoes, carrots, and celery has always been a point of pleasure for me, but recently I came across something that ramped all of that up another notch.

A few months ago I came across some vintage erotica photos posted to Tumblr by a collector. I figured there'd be no harm in asking my usual vendors if they had anything similar in stock, and, as it turned out, some did—though they weren't all quick to show me, and the question, "Do you have any nudes?" made a number of them blush before they were able to dig out what I was looking for.

For a while, my main vendor for this stuff was an elderly woman named Biljana at the Kalenić market. She had a metal box filled with about 100 photos that she kept out of sight below her stall. I make a regular routine of visiting her and picking the ones I liked, or the ones I could afford at the time, until one day she told me she was out of stock. Apparently a priest had come and bought it all up.

As a collector, I'm extremely interested in the history behind each one of my photographs. I've done some research into the erotic pictures, mostly online, but it hasn't always been easy, as many of them don't have a date or any other kind of inscription written on the back—the first place you check when buying old photos.

Still, I've managed to find out who shot some of them, and who some of the models are in others (most are Soviet pinup girls from the interwar period). The easiest photos to research have been those in which the models were dressed or partially naked, as it allows me to approximate a date based on details in the photos, like the fashion or the furniture.

So far, I've managed to gather about 90 photographs, but it's been a while since I last counted. I'd like to turn them all into a book, but I have no idea who would buy it in Serbia. Any potential buyers out there, HMU.

Words: Biljana Marinkovic, as told to Magda Janjic.

Photo courtesy of Pyrotecnico

Each year around the Fourth of July, Americans of all political persuasions set aside their differences and come together in celebration of one inalienable truth: Watching shit blow up in the sky is cool as hell. While fireworks displays have become an inextricable aspect of contemporary Americana, it's easy to overlook just how long they've been with us. The practice is, of course, a tradition that stretches all the way back to seventh-century China, which is appropriate, since the majority of the 17 million pounds of fireworks set off in July every year by professionals, and 170 million pounds by amateurs at home, are actually made in China. USA! USA!

For all the wonder and spectacle that fireworks evoke, they're also a pretty efficient delivery system of another tried and true American pastime: fucking ourselves up. In 2013, for example, an estimated 11,400 people went to the hospital for fireworks-related injuries.

While there's certainly a thrill to setting off your own display in your backyard, and getting wasted and handling explosive devices that scare the shit out of your neighbors is undoubtedly a good idea, more often than not, as with many things, it's best to leave fireworks to the professionals. I asked a few of those professionals about what goes into becoming a fireworks pro. My panel included Mike Tockstein of Pyrotechnic Innovations, a California group that trains prospective pyrotechnicians, who's done shows for the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and New Year's Day at the Rose Bowl; Jonathan Gesse of Kentucky's Melrose Pyrotechnics, the group behind the 2012 Super Bowl show; and Rocco Vitale of Pyrotecnico, one of the biggest operators in the country.

VICE: What exactly is it that you do?
Mike Tockstein: I've been doing pro fireworks displays as an operator for about 15 years now. I'm basically the guy that is in charge of putting together a crew and setting the display up and firing the display, whether it's just the display itself or choreographed with music or whatnot. I train a lot of the new technicians that come in. I originally got my license back in 2001. I started Pyrotechnic Innovations to recruit people to work my crews. Usually when you first start you have the "Friends and Family Crew," and it's a lot more stressful for the operator in charge because you're responsible for the success and execution of the show. The "Friends and Family Crew" are more there to hang out, like, "Hey, this is kind of cool!" They're not the kind of people that you can say, "I need you to set up this part of the show and knock it it out." That takes a lot of training. You need people who are passionate about pyrotechnics.

Rocco Vitale: Our company dates back to 1889. My great-grandfather started it. My brother runs it, and we are both fourth generation. It's a family business. Our company now has offices all over the US, from New Hampshire out to Los Angeles, so we cover the majority of, not every state, but we have a big footprint. We've got about 85 full time employees and do 2,500 displays a year. We're a fireworks company, and we have a special effects division that handles indoor pyro, close-proximity effects, lasers, and so on.

Photo via Flickr user Scott Cresswell

What are some notable events you've worked?
Vitale: We do a diverse amount of events every year. We actually have our event, PyroFest, that we produce in Pittsburgh. It's one of America's largest fireworks festivals. We do about nine displays thorough the weekend. We do anywhere from two to three shows per night, every Memorial Day weekend. That's one we're very proud of. From an Independence Day standpoint we do a lot of major municipalities: Pittsburgh, Houston, Dallas, Fort Lauderdale, Philadelphia, and as far out west as Las Vegas. So it's a busy day for us.

Tockstein: Me personally, I've participated in Fourth of July displays for about 15 years. The last few years, including this year, I'm the operator in charge of the display at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, which is a a pretty big display in California. I've done tons of weddings, corporate events, homecomings, graduations. I did fireworks on the Queen Mary on Long Beach for years, and I was part of the crew that did the show for the 125th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty in 2010. I've done shows at Dodger Stadium and New Year's Day at the Rose Bowl.

When did you get the fireworks bug?
Jonathan Gesse: Like most guys, fireworks have always been interesting to me. [I have] the typical Fourth of July memories: lighting 1.4/Class C fireworks [Editor's Note: "1.4/Class C" refers to the regular fireworks you can buy at a store] off at home.

Tockstein: I've liked fireworks ever since I was a little kid. And I couldn't wait until I could do it legally and professionally. I got licensed two weeks after my 21st birthday and shot my first Fourth shortly thereafter.

Vitale: It's always kind of been a source of survival for my family, so I grew up in it. I remember hanging out in the office when my dad was running the company, and during the 80s we used to do the Washington Monument show every year, and it was an annual thing to go spend the Fourth in Washington, DC. I think my earliest fireworks memories kind of start there. I started working in our warehouse where we have all our equipment when I was 16. There were no explosives there, you can't handle them until you're 18, so I started unloading trucks. When I turned 18, it was a summer job for me. Maybe when I was like 20 or 21 it kind of grabbed me a little bit. I started working full-time at the plant headquarters in Newcastle, Pennsylvania.

How does one go about getting a job in fireworks?
Vitale: We hold annual classes every year throughout the regions where we have facilities, typically in the spring. And if someone calls up or emails and says they're interested in getting on a fireworks display or special effects show, we go through necessary channels to get the paperwork filled out, to meet all the regulations as far as touching explosives go. I always say it's an apprenticeship, essentially. You go on your first show and you'll know if you like it or don't after your first couple. Then, you know, from there you kind of work your way up through the system. Some move more quickly than others.

Tockstein: You have to apprentice for a couple years before you can apply for your license. There's a lot of red tape to go through. California's one of the strictest when it comes to the red tape to get the license. You have to apprentice on a crew for two years, working a minimum of eight public displays, and you have to get five letters from five licensed operators. You have to submit your fingerprints and take a written state fire-martial pyro exam. A lot of the guys that work for me have no intention of getting their license. You can be unlicensed and still be part of the crew.

Speaking of the Fourth of July, Noisey gives you 1776 Songs About America.

Is it possible to make it a full-time job?
Vitale: The majority of the people who go out and execute shows, a lot of them are essentially licensed hobbyists. This is what they like to do in their off-time. I always say it's one of the few hobbies that you actually get paid to do as well. I don't know the statistics, but there is a percentage who do it just because they like it.

Tockstein: It's very seasonal, even though there are shows year round. I just shot one on Friday for a big private wedding at a resort in Orange County. You do make a few bucks on the bigger shows.

How much does one get paid?
Tockstein: It will vary quite drastically. It depends on the crew they have to pay, people to feed, the supplies needed. The operator in charge gets a percentage of the show. Most people work as independent contractors for the display company. It depends on the size of the show and the number of crew. I wouldn't say I fall under any sort of average, because I always have really big crews because I'm training people. Most of my shows are worked with volunteers because it's not realistic to pay everybody, except for the bigger shows. On the Fourth of July I take care of my crew really well, but the show has to be pretty substantial. Like I said, it's more of a hobby. Very few people get the opportunity to do this. Pretty much everybody that does fireworks has a real passion for it. It's a lot of hard work, but it's very rewarding at the end of the day.

Related: In the second part of Doin' It Baja, a few friends play with fireworks on the beach.

Do people in the field need to have technical or scientific backgrounds?
Tockstein: I can tell you that the licensed pyrotechnicians I know have a big variety of backgrounds. Does having some technical prowess help? Absolutely. Is it necessary? Not really. During your apprenticeship you're learning all the little ins and outs, how the different electrical firing systems work, how to debug a continuity issue... so you learn the technical aspects that are required to do the job when you're being trained.

Photo courtesy of Pyrotecnico

Have you seen a lot of accidents over the years?
Tockstein: I've never witnessed an injury or accident. There are a lot of laws in place to help prevent that. Common sense goes a long way, also. As an operator in charge, the responsibility falls on my shoulders for the safety of my crew and that of the audience, so I'm a big stickler on safety, as most operators are. Going the extra mile to make sure you understand the materials you're dealing with and you understand how they are safely set up, that's obtained through training.

Most of the accidents you hear on the Fourth of July are from people playing with consumer fireworks. It's very rare that there's an accident in a professional event, even though we're dealing with much more energetic materials.

Do you have a favorite firework?
Tockstein: One of the all-time favorites, among most of the people I've worked with, are the big golden brocades. It's basically a golden glitter shower, a shell that fills the sky with golden glitter stars. When you break multiple of those shells at a time you're really filling the sky. It's a really spectacular look. On top of that there a lot of really neat things people like: pattern shells, happy faces, hearts, letters, stars, planet Saturns, rings. There's quite a variety you can do as far as patterns in the sky. You usually hear a little bump from the audience when you see a happy face break in the sky.

Photo courtesy of Pryotecnico

What's a big misconception about fireworks among the public?
Gesse: There are many people who will ask me, "What do you do the rest of the year?" They don't realize that it takes year-round work to prepare for a successful Fourth of July. We actually begin designing in December. We import and test product, prepare and maintain equipment, design displays, work on marketing and advertising—the list goes on. We also put on fireworks displays throughout the year—the NFL and NBA in the fall and winter, baseball is a long season, and we usually do some international displays in the fall as well.

Tockstein: A common misconception is what you're shooting in the sky. Most people associate what they see with rockets, but that couldn't be further from the truth. At 99 percent of the shows you're not going to ever use rockets—they aren't as safe because they continue to be under propulsion once they leave the site of launch. If they start to trend in an undesirable direction, they're still being propelled. Professionals use mortars, we fire the aerial display shells out of mortars. It's a lot safer to use, far easier to set up, and more consistent in function compared with a rocket, and you're not very limited on how big of a shell you can fire in the air with a mortar, whereas you would be with a rocket.

People are now shooting fireworks at drones. Motherboard has footage.

How does that actually work?
Tockstein: A mortar is like a cannon. You have a black powder charge underneath the shell. That's ignited, and it fires the shell out of the gun up into the air. At the same time it also lights a tiny fuse on the shell that burns for a set number of seconds. The bigger the shell, the longer the lift time into the sky. And once the shell gets to its apogee or highest point in the sky, the shell is ignited, with burst charges, not black powder, but something similar. It burns really fast and hot and produces a lot of gas so it will cause overpressure inside the shell, blowing it open at high velocity. The first charge also ignites all of the contents inside the shell, which is typically the stars that you see.

Has there been much innovation in fireworks in recent years, or, you know, ever?
Gesse: Technology has changed the industry greatly. Melrose no longer hand-fires displays. Every show we do is fired electrically, which provides distance between the technicians and the fireworks and also allows us to script every show for timing.

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