Joy Williams is one of America's greatest living writers. Her career stretches back to the 1970s, when legendary editor Gordon Lish published some of her earliest stories and George Plimpton published her debut novel, State of Grace (1973), under the Paris Review's book imprint. That novel became a finalist for the National Book Award, while her most recent novel, The Quick and the Dead (2000), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Last year, Random House published The Visiting Privilege, a collection of new and selected stories that span her lengthy career. This year sees the publication of Ninety-Nine Stories of God, a collection of short stories and fables that was previously only available in e-book form.

Despite its title, Ninety-Nine Stories of God is not a religious book—at least not in any traditional sense. These one- to two-page stories mix purely fictional tales with borrowed anecdotes and quotes from newspaper headlines and the lives of such disparate figures as Franz Kafka, Ted Kaczynski, and OJ Simpson. When God does appear, he is more often than not portrayed as a bumbling entity that has forgotten why exactly he did the whole creation business in the first place. He might be seen trying to adopt a turtle or participating in a demolition derby, to the existential horror of the car he chooses. At one point, a pack of wolves tell him how hard their lives are, yet still thank him "for inviting us to participate in your plan anyway." God keeps a straight face, but wonders, "what was the plan his sons were referring to exactly?"

In order to set up this interview, Williams, who famously eschews the internet and other modern technology, sent me a postcard of a barn in Oklahoma with her phone number. Eventually we settled on her finishing the questions and mailing them to me, which she did on hand-typed paper.

VICE: Your fiction frequently deals with animals and the animal world. Critics often talk about literature's ability to increase empathy for other people, but what about the natural world? Can fiction bring us closer to understanding animals, or are they ultimately unknowable for us?
Joy Williams: It's human beings who are unknowable—who can fathom or explain their cruelties and narcissism and nihilism? I used to rather like the word "empathy." Now I feel it's not nearly strong enough. Nor is sympathy hard enough. We need a radical shift in consciousness, a more generous conception of the whole, which is far more inclusive than we prefer to believe. I wrote a little piece about trophy hunters. The magazine that was supposed to take it did not. I maintained in the piece that trophy hunters are psychopaths. This is a dangerous sentiment, I guess, and one not universally accepted.

The stories in Ninety-Nine Stories of God were partly inspired by Thomas Bernhard's similarly hilarious, philosophical, and dark collection The Voice Imitator. Can you talk about the influence of that "cranky genius of Austrian literature" on your writing?
William Gaddis introduced me to the works of Bernhard. I first thought he said an Australian writer, and I said, "Oh, like Patrick White, I really like Patrick..." "God, no," Mr. Gaddis said, "Austrian..." I never understood how Bernhard could be a successful playwright when he disapproved so of engagement with people. Anyway, he's marvelous, delicious, his work can't be broken down. His little book The Voice Imitator certainly inspired me. A few of the early ones were rather in his voice—"#32" and "#82," for instance. I'm not sure where I found my own voice for this venture. Perhaps it was "#2" or "#70." I'm most pleased when God makes a thorough appearance—when he's hanging with the bats or a demolition derby or at the pharmacy, but I resisted this being the primary approach. Many different tones are struck in Ninety-Nine Stories of God. He's everywhere at once of course, but he must get tired of showing up all the time.

Postcard from Joy Williams. Courtesy of Lincoln Michel

Many of the stories seem to be based on excerpts from newspapers or other real-world texts. Do you collect striking anecdotes or interesting snippets of text to use in fiction?
I keep notebooks. "#54" came directly from a newspaper headline. "CANCER DOESN'T STOP HUNTER, 86, WHO KILLS MOOSE FROM HIS RECLINER." There's everything in my notebooks, from the advice in James Cain's Mildred Pierce—"Never sell the beach house" to the photo of the adoptable dog Filo who "is well-behaved while out and about and is interested in a home where he'll get moderate attention."

Why did you decide to put the titles at the end of the stories in Ninety-Nine Stories of God?
I was writing these tiny pieces. They didn't seem grand enough for names of their own. Then I realized it was important that they have their own signs. Some of them descend more deeply into the story or the placement manages to enlarge the thought. Never did I begin with the title. I don't know! Some are more colloquial, funny. For "#89," for instance, it seems the only way out.

"Writing gives me no happiness, I've said this before." —Joy Williams

Your stories are filled with biting humor, and are some of the funniest works I've read. The humor often comes from the syntax and language itself. Do you edit and revise toward humor, or does it arise more organically in the writing?
I don't revise much. I work too slowly. Am I funny? Writing gives me no happiness, I've said this before, but once I told a group that a sentence I wrote in a story called "Hammer" made me laugh. A man had a pet beaver who lived in his house in its own little house made of twigs. "When you broke bread with my friend you broke bread with that beaver." There was silence.

Is humor appreciated enough by critics and readers?
Overly desired, I believe.

There's an anecdote I always remember from your interview in the Paris Review. You talk about showing your brilliant story "Taking Care" to a fellow writer at a writing residency. They like the story, but want you to cut the final line, "Together they enter the shining rooms." You say you are dismayed and will not cut the line because, "It carries the story into the celestial, where it longs to go." Is there an inherent relationship between fiction and the celestial?
When it's art, I believe so. Certainly not fiction in general.

Although that incident took place at Yaddo, not in a classroom, I'm curious how you feel about creative writing classes as someone who has both taken and taught them.
They've become too corporate now, like everything. But writers have to get out of the room sometimes. I hate talking about process or craft. Well I don't, I can't. There's the wonderful story in Bernhard about the dancer and the dance. Can't be too aware of what you're doing.

Typewritten page from '8 Essential Attributes of the Short Story (and one way it differs from a novel)' by Joy Williams. Courtesy of Lincoln Michel

Your work has a lot of stylistic variety, from the dense gothic prose of State of Grace to the more minimalist philosophical prose of Ninety-Nine Stories of God. Do you see your style as evolving, or does each work create its own style?
Each work creates its own path to being told. I don't know how I was doing what I did in State of Grace , but having done it, I wouldn't know how to do it again. Paul Bowles told Jane that she should utilize "the hammer and nails" available to the fiction writer, the tricks and tools of narrative construction. But she had to make her own hammer and nails each time before should could begin.

Despite a lot of talk about how short stories should be a natural fit for today's short attention spans, it seems like short stories are continuing to lose prominence in the literary world. Do you think that's correct? What is it about short stories that readers can't relate to these days?
That's awful! I don't know why the reader can't relate to short stories. Maybe they're not told well enough, maybe they don't engage the reader at the most mysterious level. And that's what they should specialize in after all.

Perhaps inspired by this final question, Williams included a small slip of paper with her list of "8 Essential Attributes of the Short Story (and one way it differs from a novel)." I've reproduced it below:

1) There should be a clean clear surface with much disturbance below
2) An anagogical level
3) Sentences that can stand strikingly alone
4) An animal within to give its blessing
5) Interior voices which are or become wildly erratically exterior
6) Control throughout is absolutely necessary
7) The story's effect should transcend the naturalness and accessibility of its situation and language
8) A certain coldness is required in execution. It is not a form that gives itself to consolation but if consolation is offered it should come from an unexpected quarter.

A novel wants to befriend you, a short story almost never.

Follow Lincoln Michel on Twitter.

Ninety-Nine Stories of God by Joy Williams is out from Tin House in bookstores and available online.

Theresa May meets Nicola Surgeon at Blute House in Edinburgh. Photo by Andrew Milligan / PA Wire

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

When David Cameron arrived in power in May 2010, one of his first actions was to jump up to the Scottish parliament for a chat with then first minister Alex Salmond. A new "agenda of respect" with Scotland was to be established, Cameron promised, as he committed to making the UK work for all of its different nations and regions.

And so to 2016: David Cameron has just resigned, UK politics are a total mess, and the country is as divided as ever. His three-days-into-the job successor, Theresa May, followed his example and came up to Scotland for talks on Friday with First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. Symbolically, it was May's first official visit as prime minister. The concerns of Scotland will be listened to, May promised, as she committed to working for "all parts of the United Kingdom and for all people." Her words sounded vaguely familiar, but the context couldn't be more different from six years ago.

If whoever eventually replaces Theresa May as Conservative leader decides to kick off his or her premiership with a visit to Scotland, he or she may be arriving in a foreign country. The independence referendum two years ago was meant to settle Scotland's constitutional question for a generation, but as the UK hurtles toward Brexit—a decision opposed by 62 percent of Scottish voters—it might just become a thing again. For Theresa May, this could turn into a nightmare.

When May and Sturgeon met on Friday, they apparently had an amicable enough chat. Sturgeon described their conversation as "constructive and successful," with May promising a "UK-wide approach" to Brexit that was fancifully interpreted by some as a Scottish veto. But no amount of polite consultation with the Scottish government is going to change the meaning of May's repeated assertion that "Brexit means Brexit." Short of redefining the borders of Britain, that is, which just so happens to be the whole point of the SNP (Scottish National Party).

Nicola Sturgeon is currently full of talk about exploring other options for Scotland to retain EU membership, with some touting the idea of a "reverse Greenland," referring to a set-up that means the non-EU territory of Greenland is still part of EU member Denmark. This arrangement seems unlikely, though, and while May is trying to hold off an inevitable showdown, her own secretary of state for exiting the European Union, David Davis, has already ruled out such an idea.

The SNP needs to go through the motions as part of its cautious strategy for calling another referendum. By making independence look like the reasonable option—less about flag waving and more about economic certainty and bilateral trade—the party hopes to win over the anxious middle-class and older voters, and the powerful business lobby, who opted for the "security" of the UK in 2014. It might just be that the prospect of an independent Scotland within the EU now proves more attractive than Theresa and Boris's Brexit Britain.

The two manic days after the referendum saw some of the last remaining bastions of Labour Scotland—namely Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling and the Daily Record newspaper—indicate a new acceptance of independence in the changed climate. Given that Rowling donated around $1.33 million to the No campaign last time and the Record is public enemy number one as far cybernats are concerned, this was pretty big news. Independence supporters are hoping this trend will continue, keenly aware that some of the areas that delivered the strongest Remain vote in June, including Edinburgh, voted heavily for No in 2014. Post-Brexit polls are now placing support for independence at more than 50 percent—maybe not quite safe enough ground for another referendum yet, but unprecedented nonetheless.

If Scotland had voted to leave the UK two years ago, David Cameron would have almost certainly tendered his resignation the next day, as he did when the EU referendum vote came through. If Theresa May loses Scotland over the next few years, she will also find herself in the same predicament. Her own EU-obsessed grassroots, not to mention many of her Cabinet ministers, are unlikely to allow the watering down of Brexit for the sake of an SNP Government that doesn't want to be in the UK anyway. Nicola Sturgeon also has to appease her own party's support with the promise, however distant, of a second independent referendum. Hours after her "constructive" meeting with the prime minister, Sturgeon sent out an email to party supporters mockingly titled "Come what may," in which she warned that "warm words about a 'special Union' won't cut it," referring to May's speech.

In public, both parties are content with placid negotiations and #inspiring photo opportunities for now, but as Brexit marches on, things are likely to get a lot messier.

Follow Liam Turbett on Twitter.

(Photo via YouTube)

It's fair to say that anyone who sees the painful end of a relationship on the horizon has had at least one fleeting thought of revenge. You might make sure you take their favourite hoodie with you when you go. Or fantasise about slashing their tyres. Or just maybe, you're this vengeful woman who unblocked her cheating ex on Facebook just to send him weekly GoT spoilers. We asked some folks to show us what happened when they gave into this temptation and what revenge looks like served cold.

Bea*, 22

I dated this guy for a few years and I found out he'd cheated on me. He revealed how he'd never loved me and that he'd lied every time he said it. He left me for another girl, who also happened to be a friend of mine. A couple of months later, he finished it and went around sharing videos of her giving him a blowjob. Ugh.

One night his ex and I were talking and laughed, imagining him getting arrested for something. At first, I wasn't too sure. Then I figured ruining his reputation – just a bit – could be what I needed to move on. She went to the police about the video, which is pretty much revenge porn. I did the dirty work. He was a boxer so I texted his coach telling him how he used to skip practices to be with me and his other girlfriend. That, on top of hearing about the criminal charges, got him suspended from the team.

His family stopped talking to him and every other girl knows now, so no one goes near him – result. We haven't spoken since.

Illustration by Polly Williams

Jing, 25

We'd met at a university open day and kept in touch even though he was considering moving to America for his undergraduate degree. When we both got rejected from Oxford and accepted an offer at a London uni, he moved into a flat that my parents bought in London. While the first few years were good, we had a virtually non-existent sex life. I'd tried to initiate it loads, and even Googled how to seduce your partner at my lowest point, but in the end after one too many attempts, I just dropped it. Towards our third year, I was sick of juggling an internship on top of my dissertation while he played computer games all day in bed and contributed nothing.

The last straw was when I went on his computer to send an email and discovered that he'd cheated on me with a girl from his course. And it had been going on for a while. Instead of encouraging him to complete his dissertation, I spent evenings gaming with him to distract him, only to pull all-nighters when he'd gone to bed to meet deadlines. Over the summer, he was interning at JP Morgan and they'd offered him a job – on the condition he got a 2:1. He of course missed it and they chucked him out. I kicked him out of my flat that same day. Last thing I heard was that he was working for his mum.

Sarah, 24

I was in a relationship with someone who was a real evil bastard. He'd do low-key things to hurt my self esteem. If we passed a hot girl in the street, he'd stare and make a comment about that I should start dressing like her or follow and 'like' pictures of soft-porn girls on Instagram who looked completely the opposite of me. During sex he always pushed for me to do things he knew I didn't like. Eventually, I looked at his Facebook messages and found him dirty messaging three other girls over that previous year while we were together.

He loved his mum. She was the only person who thought he was an angel. I screengrabbed all the images and sent them in a bumper email to her. Proud of your baby boy now, Angela?

Illustration by Polly Williams

Ruth, 22

I was (and still am) quite religious and when I was younger, I didn't really have the confidence to actually come out. Two years ago, I was in a relationship with an international student. He'd occasionally expressed homophobic remarks which made me really uncomfortable so I held off on telling him I was bisexual. I'd started to really resent him as he knew I was financially dependent on him because my parents had cut me off. Any time I considered ending things, he'd shower me with gifts and dinners so I kept taking him back. That was until I met my current girlfriend Laura*. It was only when he'd revealed to someone I knew that he was only with me to try and get a UK passport because he had "political ambitions" that I finally ended it. Bear in mind that he got a grand total of 12 votes for student president. I'd love to say that I got some serious revenge on him, but it was making things official with Laura* that hurt him the most.

ROBERT*, 34

It was my first serious relationship. It lasted nine years. I'd spent eight years of it slaving away in corporate law, hating every second of it. We'd agreed that when she'd graduated from her nursing degree, I would go freelance to set up my own business. Instead, she got used to it and didn't make any effort to actually look for work. Nor did she once offer to pay the rent and if I ever brought it up, she'd get hysterical and cry for what felt like hours.

I started plotting my escape and secretly squirrelled away money to buy a flat of my own. She discovered my plan and tried to stick it out, thinking she'd have her half of it. As a last resort, I ended up getting my mum to move in (who also happened to have serious health issues at the time and needed round-the-clock care) and she finally moved out. I've not had a girlfriend since but I do have a flat in north London – with my name on it.

@its_me_salma

*Names have been changed

More mean relationship stuff!!:

What Its Like to Be Roommates With Your Ex

Tinder Horror Stories

LA's Museum of Broken Relationships Is a Reminder of All of Your Horrible Exes

A sea of overpriced real estate. Photo via Flickr Rick Harris

"Why don't you move back to Hamilton?" your parents say. "It's up-and-coming! And you could probably afford to buy a house here one day too!" You don't want to move back to Hamilton, you tell your parents, there's very little going on there. "Or Peterborough, how about Peterborough?" Not Peterborough, you say, anywhere but Peterborough.

You came to Toronto because stuff happens here, didn't you? But it's also very expensive and you are young and broke and can't afford to do any of the stuff that happens here, can you? Unless, you wonder, there is a way to live in Toronto with little cash and still enjoy life. Perhaps, you think, there is some great advice courtesy of this English VICE writer, if only you could make your way past this clearly phoned-in introduction, there might be salvation. Well, good news, buddy, you have arrived.

Photo via Flickr user fw_gadget

Actually Do the Goddamn Free Stuff There Is to Do

GREAT ADVICE, JERK, I NEVER WOULD HAVE THOUGHT OF THAT. But for real: do this. I appreciate the fact that going to High Park Zoo doesn't put food in your mouth or help you pay the bills but it can be a vital act of self-care; when you're young and broke in a city that's really not cut out for being young and broke in, your mental health is going to suffer. Your anxiety is pushed through the roof over fears you won't be able to pay next month's rent, depression exacerbated by being stuck in the apartment all day every day–so it's genuinely important to take advantage of what the city has to offer for no cover charge. Some museums and galleries, such as the AGO, open their doors up for free evenings once a week or month, and most do discounts for students and other young folks, and let me tell you: it's a great way to escape the horrors of the world in which we live/Twitter, at least for an hour or two.

In Fact, Get into Art in General

Art shows, regardless of the calibre of the artists exhibiting, almost always have some form of free refreshments and literally the only condition for consuming said refreshments is a willingness to pretend you give a shit about the inner workings of the human psyche thrown onto a canvas.

Watching a cab meter go up to your hourly wage within the course of a couple of blocks is a terrifying and common sight in Toronto. Photo by Jake Kivanc

Become an 'Influencer'

I'm going to let you in on a little secret: literally the only reason anyone does anything online is to get free stuff. Step forward, The Influencers. If you can string together a couple of written sentences or take a nice photo or sit in front of a webcam and talk passionately about nothing for 10 minutes then you, too, can be an influencer! Don't wanna pay for concerts? You don't have to! It's the same thing whether you're a music blogger or an Instagram foodie or a YouTube makeup artist–as long as you can fudge your hits to make it look like you're vaguely important, they'll keep sending you free shit or putting you on the list for shows and, hell, if you make them happy enough, they might even buy you a couple of beers, too. If you actually pull it off and hit the big time, you don't even have to pretend you'll post about these events. You're an internet celebrity now, baby, the world is your oyster!

Get the Best Cheap Bike You Can Afford

At least for the summer months, a bike is a necessity for every thrifty, able-bodied, young Torontonian. Craigslist is a good start for the budget-conscious, but you have to prepared to invest hours into making it vaguely road-safe and, inevitably, are forced to spend every minute you're riding it terrified that the owner from whom it was definitely stolen is going to reclaim what's rightfully theirs. For a hundred or so extra bucks you can get a brand new, entry-level fixie (no gears means significantly less maintenance) and, aside from the odd bit of grease, the occasional tube change and annual brake pad replacement, you can get a good few years of life from that initial investment. Granted, you have to be able to scrape together around $400 for this option and that's not possible for everyone, but if you're someone who takes the TTC twice a day, switching to a bike is a fiscally sound plan: after two months the bike will have already paid for itself, and anything beyond that is basically making you $6.50 a day, which soon adds up. Pro-tip: wear a helmet and have a sturdy lock handy should you need to fight off the angry, angry drivers that Toronto for some reason breeds. And thanks to Foodora and Favour, you can use that bike to make a few extra bucks too.

Alternatively, Just Walk Everywhere

Toronto—and I mean actual Toronto with the stuff, none of this inclusive-of-the-suburbs, GTA bullshit—is relatively small, geographically speaking. There is absolutely no reason to ever venture west of Roncesvalles, east of Spadina, or north of Bloor and, consequently, most of the city is within walking distance.

Photo by Jake Kivanc

Make Friends in the Service Industry

When I first moved to Toronto, my partner worked at one of the top restaurants in Canada, a job that brought with it a not-insignificant 50 percent discount on all food. Now, obviously, if you're actually trying to save money you'd be better off never eating out at all, but if your weirdly out-of-touch lifestyle demands you treat yourself every now and again, you can do yourself a big favour by never paying full price. Make buddies out of people who work in the industry and rinse them for all they're worth enjoy a fulfilling, reciprocal friendship.

Make Friends with People Who Have Rich Parents Preferably with a Nice Cottage You Can Visit for Free in the Summer

You absolutely do not want to be friends with the sort of person who can afford property in their twenties; you absolutely do want to be friends with someone whose parents can afford a sweet holiday home and are totally chill about you using it for free. You don't want to be the guy doing mushrooms in an urban centre.

Make Friends Who Are as Broke as You

Being friends with people who have money when you do not have money never works out well, unless they are exceedingly generous with their cash (which, unfortunately, people who have money rarely are). Find yourself a good group of people who prefer to get wasted on homebrew than sip $15 cocktails; who'd rather watch Mean Girls on a laptop for the 19th time than check out a new non-Lindsay Lohan release at the cinema because frankly no movie released this year or any other will be nearly as good as Mean Girls and I will fight you if you try to tell me otherwise.

Go Back in Time About 18 months and Get on Bunz Trading Zone While It Was Still Useful

Bunz is Toronto's worst-kept secret. In fact, I'm pretty sure it existed previously under a different name but the founder deleted that group and started again after VICE (and others) covered it and it became overrun with VICE (and other) readers, so apologies for ruining everything that's good in this world. It used to be a genuinely great asset: You could find pretty much anything you needed in exchange for a few tall cans or subway tokens. Now it has well over 50,000 members and the majority of the posts and comments are no longer actual trades, but instead self-righteous, holier-than-thou jabs at other members of the group—a wonderful microcosm of the city itself.

Lower Expectations

If there's one thing I've learned from being effectively unemployed and watching House Hunters every day, it's that you're not going to be able to live in a nice place, in a good location, for a reasonable price. Figure out what's more important to you—where you live, or how you live—and prepare to make sacrifices. I will say this: when you're young and broke, there's a lot more free stuff to do if you live in an actual, populated urban space. And, at least while you have no dependents, living in poorly-insulated, damp, pest-infested accommodation in the city can be a lot of fun. It's what you're meant to do in your twenties and, hey, at least the rent's cheap!

Move Back to Hamilton

Hey, at least the rent's cheap!

Follow Jack Urwin on Twitter.

Nurses are essential to the profession of healthcare and the infrastructure of hospitals in general. In addition to caring for patients during their hospital stay, they often get a closer look at what's ailing patients better than doctors do. While this means they're often on the front line of giving medical care, it also means they're subject to seeing some truly gnarly shit being wheeled in from the emergency room, after surgery, and during recovery.

So we asked a group of nurses to offer up the grossest, craziest, and most all-out bizarre things they've witnessed while on call. At the very least, you'll walk away from these anecdotes with an even greater respect for their struggle—and who knows, maybe you'll learn to take care of yourself a little better, too.

DOT

I had a guy whose penis was hacked off with a machete—ugly cut, terribly jagged. The penis looked so small and lost laying there on the gurney next to him. For sure, it couldn't be reattached—but that's what you get when you try to outrun the Zeta cartel.

SHAWN

We've been getting a lot of men who overdose on erectile-dysfunction meds, with erections that last hours as a result. It's very painful and psychologically upsetting, and a lot of the guys we see are crying and in panic. The only remedy is to put needles in each side of the dick and siphon the blood out. It's a lot of blood—like, fountains—and when the doctor describes the procedure to the patients, some protest and ask to wait it out instead. If they do that, though, the blood will clot and kill tissue, which means they could lose their penis. The whole thing is a bad scene, and every part of it is excruciatingly painful.

MARTY

The hospital I used to work for was well known for its microvascular surgery—they did things like reattaching amputated limbs and digits, etc. We had this one guy who had a truck fall on him while he was working on it and both his ears were severed. He had them reattached, but developed venous congestion, which can quickly lead to loss of blood supply to the reattached area. We would treat this with leech therapy. Leeches release an enzyme that acts as a local anticoagulant. So this guy walked around the unit several times a day with a leech on each ear, like a nice pair of earrings. It worked. He went home with both ears.

BOB

I had a female patient in her mid 40s who would masturbate constantly. None of my co-workers caught her doing it, so they all assumed she liked me, which didn't help. They would say shit like, "Sarah and Bob kissin' in a tree..." I couldn't wait for her to be well again. It was ridiculous.

DOUG

The usual shit—blood, bones, vomit, weird genitalia—doesn't phase me; it's the stuff I don't expect that does. I work in the emergency room of a large hospital, and we see a lot of poor and/or homeless people addicted to drugs and trying to score by making a bogus health claim. There was a girl that would come in regularly with a different story about how she fell every time. It's a front-row seat to a daily parade of despair, and it can be truly heartbreaking.

JEN

An adult male patient didn't want to use the bedpan, so he hung his ass over the bed and took a shit on the floor like a dog and then called me to "come pick it up."

SAMMANTHA

We had a teenage girl come in with her mom, and the girl looked mortified. She looked fine physically, but it turned out that she threw out her back while twerking for some boys at the community pool. We couldn't do much for her, but I just wanted to hold the girl and tell her it was OK. The mom was really going in on her with the slut shaming, though—I really wanted to say to her, "I did much worse in junior high, and I turned out fine. I like to twerk, too—and I'm head nurse."

KIMBERLYN

I work at a hospital in a remote desert town, so we don't see too much weirdness. But there's this one guy who tries to bring his cat into the ER. The vet is a half mile away, but he never gets the message. It never seems like there's anything seriously wrong with the cat, either—it's usually something like, "My cat has a slight cough."

JENNA

Something happens to hospitalized old people at night. They're like gremlins ... you would never believe how strong a confused older person is. I've been kicked, hit, bit, and spit on by someone's sweet nana after midnight. In the morning, they revert to their tender, caring little Mogwai selves.

ANNA

I've seen so much stuff crammed into people's anal cavities that I'm rarely surprised by it anymore. We once had a guy who had a bad infection on his butt, as well as a brutal perirectal abscess caused by having his pets lick the open wounds. I typically have an iron stomach, but seeing that almost made me throw up. The thought of a dog licking its own butthole, and then licking these sores on this guy's butthole, made me feel disgusted and distraught.

MATTHEW

A drunk, high, and barely conscious homeless man once whispered the lyrics of Iron Maiden's "Run to the Hills" to me. I couldn't stop smiling, and if it wasn't for ethics, moral decency, and HIPAA laws, I would've snapchatted it to all my friends.

LINDSEY

We had a patient come in for an emergency C-section last week, and she pulled a joint out of her weave and tried to light up on the operating table.

LUCY

A guy once used a call light as a lasso, swinging it around his head. He hit my co-worker in the face and fractured her cheek bone with it. That was a bummer.

Follow Sean McManus on Twitter.

Daniel Kuettel has vivid memories of the day in 2012 when he renounced his United States citizenship.

A heavy fog hung around the US Embassy in Bern, Switzerland, where he would raise his right hand and swear, "I hereby absolutely and entirely renounce my United States nationality." Right before he entered the embassy, though, Kuettel witnessed a serious car accident right in front of him, which seemed almost like an omen.

"It was really weird, just a really strange day," said Kuettel, 43. "I was sad, happy, scared, relieved, worried, excited, angry, delighted..."

Until that day, Kuettel considered himself both as American as apple pie and as Swiss as an army knife. His distant relatives on his mother's side had come to America on the Mayflower, and Kuettel had spent three years in active service for the US Army. He also had 700 years of family history in Switzerland, where he'd moved to pursue work as a software developer when the tech bubble burst in 2000. While he loved living in Switzerland, he planned to retire to America, the country of his birth.

Now, he can't. Renunciation is a permanent act and, aside from applying for visas like regular foreign travelers, bars ex-Americans from ever residing in the United States.

Daniel Kuettel with his daughter in Switzerland. Kuettel renounced his US citizenship in 2012. His daughter was deemed too young to do so by the US embassy. Photo courtesy of Daniel Kuettel

In 2015, more than 4,000 Americans renounced their citizenship—up 20 percent from the previous year, according to data released each quarter by the IRS.

The State Department does not keep statistics on why citizens renounce. Some say they do it for political reasons or because they cannot maintain dual citizenship. SKL Tax, a US and Canadian tax consultancy firm based in Vancouver, has received about a dozen renunciation inquiries this year with mention of Donald Trump, according to Max Reed, one of the firm's cross-border tax lawyers.

But many Americans renounce their citizenship because of the country's rare citizenship-based taxation laws, which require US citizens abroad to file highly complicated annual tax returns and sometimes even pay taxes to the IRS. They must also pay taxes to their country of residence, whose roads and hospitals they use. The only other country to tax its citizens abroad is Eritrea.

In recent years, these laws have spun off into other requirements that have prompted some foreign banks to stop doing business with local Americans, in some cases preventing them from opening a checking account. Kuettel began considering renouncing when his local bank in Switzerland refused to refinance his $450,000 condominium.

As part of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) of 2010, foreign banks must determine which account holders are US citizens—and potentially disclose their assets to the IRS, under threat of huge penalties. Many banks in Europe consider the risk of FATCA compliance too high, so they bar US citizens from even having a checking account. The law was designed to catch those taking advantage of foreign tax havens, but extends to all 8 million US citizens living overseas.

These complications compel some Americans living abroad to cut their ties to the US altogether, according to John Richardson, a Canadian-based lawyer who coaches clients through the renunciation process.

"They can't afford the onerous cost ," Richardson told me. "They don't want to live in a state of terror, so that is why they renounce."

The US Embassy in Bern, Switzerland, where Daniel Kuettel renounced his US citizenship. Photo via the US Embassy, Bern, on Facebook

Kehrela Hodkinson, a US-immigration lawyer based in the United Kingdom, told me the first step in renunciation is determining if someone has US citizenship. Anyone born in the US is automatically given citizenship; children born overseas to a US citizen also qualify, if their parent applies for them. One of Hodkinson's UK clients, a so-called accidental American, didn't realize his mother got him a born-abroad US citizenship until he was in his 50s.

Those planning to renounce must prepare five years of US tax returns and settle any debts owed in the United States. Afterward, they must book an appointment at a foreign US consulate or embassy and pay a fee of $2,350 (which was raised from $450 in 2014, in part due to the growing number of citizens expatriating). Finally, the US citizen must then raise their right hand and swear the oath of renunciation before a consular officer. When it's over, they receive a Certificate of Loss of Nationality. All in, Hodkinson says the appointment takes about 45 minutes.

Preparing for the renunciation process, however, can be much more expensive and and time-consuming. Karen Alpert, who gave up her American citizenship in June, told me she paid about $55,000 in total, between the $2,350 fee, legal help in preparing the application, and paying five years' worth of back taxes to the United States.

For some citizens, there's also an expatriation tax, a one-time fee if an individual has $2 million or more in assets. The tax, known as the "Billionaires Amendment," was designed for those at crosshairs with the law—people with wallets like Eduardo Saverin, the co-founder of Facebook who renounced his US citizenship just before the company's $104 billion IPO in 2012. (Saverin denied his decision had anything to do with tax.)

Alpert and her husband, both academics, moved to Australia in 1995 to work at universities. With the IRS's heavy taxation on retirement funds for Americans living in Australia, renouncing seemed like the only option to stay financially afloat.

For the renunciation appointment, Alpert, her husband, and daughter—also a US citizen—flew from Brisbane to the US Consulate in Sydney. They turned the trip into a sightseeing vacation, kicking it off by severing their formal ties to America.

"I thought it was a nice touch, all three of us saying the oath together," she told me.

While some celebrate the renunciation process with a champagne toast, others described it like a painful and expensive divorce. Hodkinson remembers one client who, after his consular appointment, had tears streaming down his face. His father had immigrated to the US and raised his family there. "He said, 'I was just thinking what would my father say?'" Hodkinson told me.

"It is very much an emotional process," said Richardson, who is himself a dual Canadian and American citizen. But in the end, renunciation is often worth it because, as Richardson's website puts it, "US citizenship is a problem to be solved."

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MDMA is commonly sold in gel capsules like those pictured above in the US and Canada. Photo via Flickr

MDMA, also known to some as "ecstasy," has been illegal in both the US and Canada for years despite its history being used in a therapeutic setting. Now, Stanford University scientists are calling for a "rigorous scientific exploration of MDMA's effects to identify precisely how the drug works"—the resulting data of which therapeutic compounds could be developed from.

Photo: Lewis Whyld / PA Archive/Press Association Images

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Sex work can be a contentious topic. Take last August, when celebrities like Lena Dunham and Emma Thompson attacked a report that drew on the experiences of tons of sex workers, subsequently pissing off a ton of sex workers. Or this year, over the past month or so, as politicians have been squabbling about the best way to treat sex work.

Some, who called for legal reforms earlier this month, argue that stopping the criminalization of prostitutes and escorts would make their lives less dangerous, while others have expressed the view that consent can't be bought, and even likened paying for sex to rape.

One part of the debate is framed around the issue of choice. Is it so difficult for sex workers to leave that world behind that they are essentially stuck in their professions, or do some men and women simply view sex work as a simple way to earn money? In order to shed some light on this, I asked four former prostitutes and escorts how and why they got out of the game.

Sandra Hobson

Sandra (center), in her former role as the mayor of Bradley Stoke

While touring Europe as an entertainer, I had a love affair with a German man. It all came to an end when his mother found out, and wasn't too pleased I wasn't blond and Aryan, which left me very depressed. I returned to England destitute and suicidal, and bought a house there with the intention of dying in it. Fortunately, I eventually decided that I was going to carry on living after all and attempted to figure out how I was going to pay the mortgage. After trying my hand at several different jobs, I realized that I wasn't going to earn enough by working a regular 9 to 5, so I became a sex worker.

I hated what I did, but told people I loved it and that I was proud of it. The event that made me decide once and for all that I was going to leave the business behind was being diagnosed with cancer. I'd gotten health insurance, which covered the cost of the mortgage, so I knew that once I'd finished treatment there was no reason for me to continue in the sex industry.

Unless you've got a plan for finding another source of income, leaving that life behind can be very frightening. I'd advise those who are trying to get out to start their own businesses rather than working for someone else. That way, they won't be at the mercy of other people's opinions. The money also tends to be better than the wages for the typical 9 to 5 jobs that are available to former sex workers. I started my own bed and breakfast, which is now doing well. I'm a radio presenter as well, with my own weekly show on Bradley Stoke Radio 103.4 FM, which is now the most important thing in my life.

I also entered into the world of politics. Believe it or not, my peers in the political arena were all extremely encouraging, and I never received any judgement from them. I was voted in as a South Gloucestershire councillor for the Liberal Democrats after openly admitting my temporary career in the sex industry to the party. They were fully aware of my past career, and very supportive. That was very empowering. I also became the mayor of Bradley Stoke from 2005 to 2006.

I'm a lot poorer now than I was when I was a sex worker, but much more content. I'm currently part of a committee that will be putting a paper before the Lib Dems' conference laying out the challenges that people who have been in the sex industry face. It points out the job discrimination they receive, and the need for additional help and support. Hopefully it can help to bring about a change.

Gaye Dalton

Gaye, then and now

The first time I sold sex was a single traumatic incident while living in Dublin. If I hadn't, my son would have had no food on his birthday, let alone a present. The next was in London. I was alone and in a state of mental and emotional collapse. My world had imploded, but I had nowhere to go and hardly any money.

I met a woman in Marble Arch, where I managed to stop and buy coffee, who worked Park Lane and started to explain to me how she went about selling sex. There was no grooming or trying to exploit me; she was lonely, too—in many ways in a similarly nightmarish situation. We talked to each other about things that, through no fault of our own, set us apart from the world. I went out that night with nothing and came back with about $240.

We eventually parted ways. The fear of arrest was constant and terrifying, so I went to Paris, where I fell in love with an Egyptian teacher. He worked two jobs, but, as an illegal immigrant, still didn't earn enough to live. I'm autistic and can't function in a normal job in English, let alone French, so, in desperation, I insisted on going back to sex work, just to buy us some time. He tried everything to stop me. I resented him every time he failed. We gave up trying in the end. He went back to Egypt, I to London. He gave me his mother's address, but I never wrote.

London was a daisy chain of bad experiences, so I returned to Ireland, where I still couldn't find a way to get enough money to live. The only option left was a return to sex work. I sold sex for six years in Dublin until 1993, when I was approached by an organized-crime group that wanted me to work for them. Tougher laws criminalizing prostitution were coming in, and they planned on using them as leverage for control over the independent street workers. I refused their offer.

I was in so much danger that an old client offered me all his savings to get out. I turned him down at first, but then realized that my situation was not only placing me at risk, but also the lives of my customers, so I took him up on his offer. I needed an income, so I sewed soft furnishings for 18 hours a day, seven days a week, which I hated. I later took up refurbishing computers, started to do really well, and then a market shift brought an end to that. The long hours I worked and the stress I endured completely broke my physical health. I wouldn't say I've ever really even had a life. I never stopped looking for real help and support. There was none, and there is none now.

Paul Lovell

I first became involved in sex work after traveling to London for a job interview and losing my ticket home. I was sightseeing on Shaftesbury Avenue when I noticed a man cruising me. I hadn't come out or even been to a gay bar at that point, so I must have been very intuitive to pick up on it. I asked him the time, and his comically cheesy response was, "I have the time and the money." I had no qualms about taking him up on his offer, and felt empowered by the fact that I was able to use my only possession, my body, to earn enough cash to buy breakfast and another train ticket.

Poverty, abuse, and desperation were also factors that pushed me toward that line of work. I was abandoned by my mother and raised by my father on state handouts, along with four other children. Going without the simplest things created a strong urge to have. Add to that the psychological effects of abuse and a troubled school life that produced no qualifications, and it's easy to see why I went down the road of prostitution.

Even though I lived on the margins of society, I was often in plain sight. I mostly plied my trade in well-known gay pubs, clubs, and on the fringes of cruising areas, avoiding the darkest places for fear of violence. Alcohol and drugs added a rosy haze to everything. They were a crutch that made life bearable and helped me to remain optimistic. There was little to no glamour; I was on the bottom rung of the working ladder. Saying that, the majority of my customers were compassionate and respectful.

Even when I found a regular job, I still didn't quit because I didn't trust my ability to keep it. I had more faith in maintaining my regular customers than in remaining legally employed. The turning point was when I fell in love, at which stage I immediately packed sex work in. I was so smitten that I wanted to give my new relationship 100 percent. The biggest difficulty lay in revealing the truth. But without question, I was accepted. Regardless of the years, it appears there isn't a best before date when it comes to laying down a clean slate.

I didn't miss the money—saying that, my new husband could easily afford to support me. I'm not ashamed to have been a prostitute; I'm slightly proud, if anything. I used what I had to make an interesting life for myself, never stole from people or hurt anyone, and entrusted my destiny to karma.

Rebecca Dakin

I first decided to become an escort at age 25 after becoming sick of dead-end jobs. I originally only envisioned it as a temporary thing, as I thought I'd be getting paid to literally just have sex, and wasn't sure if that was something I could see myself doing on a long-term basis. I ended up catering to clients who wanted the "girlfriend experience," which resembles a real date. Sex was only a small part of the job; it mainly involved eating at posh restaurants and being bought expensive gifts. It was actually quite enjoyable in some ways, and really easy money.

I eventually stopped escorting for a number of different reasons. Firstly, I was getting older, and realized that when a girl gets past a certain age, the punters stop wanting to wine and dine her, and it becomes solely about sex. Secondly, I envisioned having kids one day, and wanted to be able to tell them I'd done something with my life apart from escorting. My confidence had also grown due to all the compliments I received from my clients, and I had enough self-belief to know that I was capable of being successful in other areas. It wasn't that escorting was a terrible job or anything; I just decided that it was time to do something else.

The first step toward leaving that world behind was writing a book entitled The Girlfriend Experience about my experiences and putting my photo on the front cover. I knew that being recognizable as an escort would prevent a lot of clients from wanting to be seen in public with me, so it was a way of closing the lid on that chapter of my life. I still continued to see a couple of my regulars for a few years after that, until one of them developed feelings for me. At that point, I made up my mind that I was going to pack it in once and for all.

I didn't have many qualifications, but had learned a lot about relationships and intimacy, so I decided to pursue a career in offering advice and therapy in that area. I trained in neurolinguistic programming and hypnotherapy, and got a package of skills together to assist me. The fact that I'd been involved in escorting actually stood me in good stead, as I was able to use my previous occupation as my unique selling point. It served as evidence that I knew what I was talking about. Using the name "The Great British Sexpert," I now offer a dating, mating, and relating service, which is going really well.

Escorts can sometimes be addicted to the money and the lifestyle, and become stuck in that line of work. I'm glad I got out when I did, as the profession is completely different now that the internet has made it easier for escorts to advertise their services. There's a lot more competition, which means that there's less money in it and the customers expect more. Nowadays, I would definitely advise anyone thinking of pursuing a career in escorting to think twice about it and consider doing something else instead.

Gaye Dalton writes a blog about sex work, and Paul Lovell has written a book entitled Paulyanna: International Rent-Boy.

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Lynn Midani outside of Cleveland's International Islamic Center. All photos by Peter Larson

Donald Trump has called for a ban on Muslim immigration to the US and surveillance of mosques, and talked openly about a database of American Muslims. A few of his supporters have held anti-Islam rallies, or yelled death threats at Muslims, or committed hate crimes against them. So as the Republican National Convention kicks off in Cleveland, it's unsurprising that the local Muslim community is a little wary of tens of thousands of people—many of them Trump fans—coming to their city.

"I think my community is afraid. They are concerned about coming downtown," said Isam Zaiem, a Syrian American who immigrated here 46 years ago and helped establish the Cleveland chapter of the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). "My daughter is a lawyer who practices downtown and wears a hijab. She's not scared, but has jokingly said that maybe I should walk with her when she's commuting to provide protection. I'm always concerned about her safety because she identifies as Muslim wherever she goes."

The worry Zaiem touched on is pretty understandable considering that reports of attacks and threats against people within the Islamic community have been on the rise in the months since the terrorist attacks at the Bataclan in Paris in November of last year.

Lynn Midani

This climate of fear has been especially tough for young Muslims who have come to this country seeking asylum like Lynn Midani.

The 25-year-old loved living in Damascus. "It's the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world," she told VICE. "Being there is like being in a history lesson, but there is the modern life too, with taxis and restaurants. Just walking the streets was one of my favorite things to do." But by the time she came to the US four years ago to visit her sister, who had just married an American, the civil war tearing her country apart had become too dangerous for her to return.

"I couldn't go back because there were bombings all the time... I had to stay here and figure out how I was going to start my life over," she said. "I didn't get to say goodbye to my family members, I didn't pack, I didn't do anything, because I thought I was just visiting."

Midani, at least, had reached relative safety in America. Many of the Syrians she knew were not as fortunate. "The first year I was here, I didn't sleep," she said. "One time, I was so overwhelmed by the thoughts of my family in danger, that I fainted and hit my head. I couldn't see for a few seconds. I think I had a concussion. And it was in that moment that I knew I was killing myself by trying to be there when I was here."

Though Muslims like Midani are often fleeing the dangers of war and Islamic terrorism, parts of the European and American right have started seeing refugees as something like carriers of a virus. Though President Barack Obama's goal of accepting 10,000 Syrian refugees into the country is a paltry number compared to the masses crossing borders to Europe, and though those refugees are carefully screened, many Republicans think this policy is too lenient. Many Republican governors have refused to settle refugees in their states, and during the primary, multiple candidates blamed last year's Paris terror attacks on Muslim immigration.

Isam Zaiem

No Republican candidate stoked the fears of Islam and Muslims quite like Trump, and his ascension to the top of the party naturally worries people like Isam Zaiem, the CAIR leader, who says Trump signals something troubling about the state of the country.

"America has gone into a deep hole," said Zaiem. "It is sad that Trump, someone who openly speaks as a bigot against all kinds of people, has the chance to become the president. It makes me wonder which direction our country is going."

This fear of Muslims in America has had a profound impact on Midani's experience. It was hard enough living in the US while knowing that so many of the people that she loved were still in harm's way in Syria. But that pain was magnified by the fact that she initially found little love and support here from Americans. Instead, she felt ostracized.

"Right when I came here on vacation, I experienced it. People in Memphis would come up to me and ask me if I lived in a tent or if I rode a camel. I'd have to say, 'No, I live in an apartment, and I've never seen a camel in person.' I realized pretty quickly that people had all these preconceived notions of me."

Ziam views this as a product of ignorance. "The sad part about it is that most of my fellow Americans do not know Islam or a Muslim personally. So, it is difficult to humanize us," he said. "But if you know from experience that these people are human like everyone else, when someone tells you they are crazy or that they hate us, you're not going to take it so seriously."

Midani says that people have accosted her in rage while she's trying to pray, and bosses have gone out of their way to deny her time to observe her faith. This only gets worse in the wake of terrorist attacks like the one that hit Nice, France, last week.

"I had been tutoring a student in French at Cleveland State University. And after the first attack in France at the Bataclan, he came to our tutoring session and said, 'Are you going to kill me now?' I tried to explain to him the difference between ISIS and me and how everything they do is the opposite of Islam. In Islam, if you kill one soul, it is like you killed all of humanity. I wanted him to know that ISIS is killing more Muslims and Syrians than anyone else," Midani said. "The whole thing hurt me so much because he knew who I was, and he still felt he could say that to me. The experience showed me that everything that happens with ISIS or terrorism, it affects me."

Attacks on civilian populations seem to be terrifyingly common at the moment and have been carried out by maniacs with their own motivations and sicknesses. But when the perpetrator is a Muslim, it can lead to a backlash against people like Zaiem and Midani.

"Most Muslims have learned to say, 'Oh God, please don't make him a Muslim,'" said Zaiem. "People assume automatically that because some killer has a Muslim name, they killed based on their faith and not because they are mentally ill. Only white people do things because they are crazy. If you are a man of color, then you're motivation has to be completely different from their perspective."

For Midani, constantly dealing with these notions for the past four years has been exasperating. "It's very unfair that you can't live one day of being normal and not being judged," she said. But it's something that she feels she has to fight by building bridges with people and sharing her story, because the ramifications of this ignorance and fear surrounding terrorist attacks are just leading more people to Trump. And if he wins the election, she worries her entire life could change yet again.

"I don't want to be banned. Where would I go? I can't go anywhere with my Syrian passport. Not a single country would accept me. I can't get a visa... I'll have to learn how to swim across Lake Erie and sneak into Canada." She laughed. "It's funny how unrealistic that sounds now, but it could actually be my reality."

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Adam Garnet Jones gets paid to watch filth. Photo via Adam Garnet Jones.

Watching blowjobs and bukkake scenes all day long may seem like a sweet gig, but it can be a tough slog when you're doing it for a living. While working with the Ontario Film Review Board, Adam Garnet Jones watched hundreds of films (both mainstream and adult) in order to classify them and come up with advisory warnings. We found out what it's like to be a professional movie watcher.

VICE: What are the big misconceptions about what you do?
Adam Garnet Jones: Have you ever seen the Atom Egoyan film The Adjuster? It's actually partially set at the Ontario Film Review Board, and it is a completely bizarre, dark, sexy version of what we do. Which is what people who were watching the film in the 90s sometimes think. In the film, people are having sex with each other during the screenings. So obviously it's not like that.

Spoilers ahead for the second episode of The Night Of.

Almost nothing happens in the second episode of The Night Of. Prestige cable has trained viewers to appreciate the joys of slowly moving TV shows—Don Draper smoking and thinking at his desk, True Detective's long shots of landscapes—but even by those standards, HBO's gripping criminal justice drama comes at the viewer in a slow drip.

The episode's plot, such as it is, has everyone dealing with the fallout of the arrest of Naz (Riz Ahmed) at the end of the last installment. His parents struggle to arrange a visit with him; Detective Box (Bill Camp) tries to pry information out of him; cantankerous, gold-hearted defense attorney Jack Stone (John Turturro) helps him navigate the strange world of being arrested; Naz himself is freaked out by jail, pleads not guilty in front of a judge, gets denied bail, and, at the episode's end, winds up on Rikers Island. That's it—that's the whole 60 minutes.

So what occupies the show's time, if not moving the plot forward? Here a stretcher is being wheeled out to carry the woman Naz is accused of murdering out of her fancy brownstone. Here is a hand wiping a taxidermied animal head for prints. Here's that body on the coroner's slab, the rings being removed, an ugly-looking saw being fired up. There are shots of people walking down hallways, up stairs, through the bowels of a Manhattan courthouse. When the victim's stepfather is asked to identify the body, we're treated to a surprisingly long sequence where he's warned how grisly the photos will be, mistakenly tells the cops it's not her, corrects himself, then stumbles around in a fog of shock. The business that classical procedural shows glide over or simply skip is the only business The Night Of cares about. This is a murder mystery where the mystery is set to one side and dealing with the murder is mainly a matter of paperwork.

There have been countless shows about cops and lawyers and jails before. What makes The Night Of different is that it insists on showing you every step of Naz's progression through the system. You see him shackled, taken in a van from his cell at the precinct to the courthouse, led up to a pair of officers searching him and the other inmates. One is caught smuggling a cellphone in his rectum; the officers toss the contraband in the trash as Naz looks on, bug-eyed. They're placed in the cell. One vomits loudly into the toilet until another yells at him to shut up and kicks him. And we're not even in jail yet—after the trial, when the bus carrying Naz rolls across that long bridge and "Rikers Island" appears on the screen, we know what to expect, and what Naz must be dreading.

The world of the show is grounded in realism but can seem somehow primordial, a fable about bureaucracy. Naz's parents are told they can't see their son by officers reading names from a paper book like something out of Dickens. Nearly every scene is about someone being made to answer to one authority or another. Civilians are interrogated by cops, defendants have their fates decided by judges, and even Box is quizzed about the case by the prosecutor. The show's color palette and feel is relentlessly institutional as well: gray stone buildings, florescent light on cell bars, windows patched with tape behind which tired cops sit eternally. Going to jail is boring. Being arrested mostly means being made to sit on a variety of hard surfaces.

All of the spaces The Night Of takes us through—cells, courtrooms, police stations—are thoroughly male, and thoroughly dominated by men. The show's most prominent female character is the dead Andrea, and she appears in this episode only as a bloody body. If the gender politics here don't exactly inspire, the rules about police procedure are carefully calibrated to outrage. Can cops really record jailhouse visits in order to get fresh information, as Box does? They can. Can they take the computers of an entire family when only one member of that family is charged with a crime? Yup.

But the show doesn't really seem to be too concerned with advocacy. It's descriptive rather than prescriptive—what makes it powerful is the sense that we're descending, along with Naz, into an underworld where the rules are unknown to us but obvious to everyone else. The criminals lingering in confined spaces, the officers charged with watching them, the mechanisms of control and surveillance that surround every cell in the country—these are things that we usually have the privilege of forgetting about, but The Night Of wants us to remember, one agonizing episode at a time.

The Night Of airs on Sundays on HBO.

In the column "How Scared Should I Be?" VICE staff writer and generalized anxiety disorder sufferer Mike Pearl seeks to quantify the scariness of everything under the sun. We hope it'll help you to more wisely allocate that most precious of natural resources: your fear.

Sometime before death, but after your useful phase, there's supposed to be this in-between time called "retirement" that sounds pretty great—sorta like childhood, but without anyone trying to teach you anything, and with more drinking.

But from time to time, someone around here repeats a depressing truism: Retirement will soon no longer be on the table thanks to the harsh economic and political realities of the 21st century. Just like the rest of my generation, I will supposedly spend my 60s, 70s, and maybe 80s, at my cluttered desk, eventually going into cardiac arrest one day in the middle of accidentally replying all for the ten-thousandth time.

But is the possibility of my retirement sometime before 2050 really as elusive as we've all come to believe?

One page on the website of the Social Security Administration says that because of "changes to Social Security enacted in 1983"—a reference to Social Security Amendments signed into law that year—the administration will stop being able to pay benefits in full in the year 2037, about a decade before I could ever reasonably hope to retire. Without Social Security, in order to eat, the wrinkly, gray-haired version of me will have to rely entirely on investment income, or money I wisely squirreled away during my productive years, something that's not currently happening.

But there's hope for an expansion in Social Security, according to Teresa Ghilarducci a labor economist at the New School, and author of the book How to Retire with Enough Money: And How to Know What Enough Is.For "the last 25 years" in her estimation, serious political debate has focused on how to privatize Social Security, or reduce payouts due to the eventual shortfall. That just flipped, she said. "For the past 18 months, there has only been discussion about how to expand it," Ghilarducci told me.

It's true that killing (or further maiming) Social Security doesn't appear to be on the political menu at the moment—at least not in the presidential race. Hillary Clinton's campaign website says she plans to "expand Social Security" for the not-yet-old "by asking the wealthiest to contribute more." And even Trump has now backpedaled away from his plan to raise the retirement age from 67 to 70, which he proposed during his 2000 presidential campaign.

Stashing away a percentage of your income every pay period is a bit like being told, "'Just hold a balloon underwater for the rest of your life,'" Ghilarducci said.

To be clear, no politician so far has rescued Social Security from the coming shortfall, but, Ghilarducci is sanguine: "Millennials don't have to worry about Social Security if they are willing to fight for it." And we likely won't have a choice but to fight for it, and the American Association of Retired Persons is a pretty powerful ally—one of the lobbies on Capitol Hill powerful enough to win policy fights against other lobbying giants like the big banks.

But even that might not be enough to keep the cat food flowing into my cat's bowl as I approach the grave. Looking at people who are currently old, the average retired American—any length of time from retirement—is making $31,742 annually, according to the most recent analysis, with a measly $16,020 per year of that coming from Uncle Sam (that's $1,335 per month). Nearly half of that income is coming from somewhere else—often, an investment.

Investing is complicated, Ghilarducci told me." If millennials were robots and they had the comfortable life of a robot with an Excel sheet, they could save 5 percent of their pay for 40 years, and at the end of those 40 years, redeem it." But in practice she said, it doesn't just work that way. Stashing away a percentage of your income every pay period is a bit like being told, "'Just hold a balloon underwater for the rest of your life,'" Ghilarducci said.

But my generation isn't just a bunch of fiscal slouches, according to Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at the consumer financial services company Bankrate.com. "Among adults under age 30, 14 percent had started saving for retirement while still in their teens, more than any preceding age group," said McBride, citing research carried out by his company. And millennials also seem to have a frugal attitude just in general, he went on. " less consumption-focused, and are pretty squeamish about adding more debt and have a greater inclination toward saving."

"If you ask the question, 'Will millennials ever get to retire?' my retort will be: Employers will retire them."—Teresa Ghilarducci

But Ghilarducci pointed out that all that frugal thinking may be just that: thinking. It's not uncommon for us to already have $100,000 or more in debt annihilating our disposable income. When payday comes, the path of least resistance is to write a rent check, stock up on beans and rice, make a loan payment, and spring for a couple of beers with what's left. That's if we don't stupidly blow that month's money on new laptops we need for our jobs, or luxuries such as tanks of gas.

"If you get past all those temptations, you still have to guard yourself about the predatory practices of banks, and IRA and 401k administrators," said Ghilarducci. Indeed, in the wake of the financial crisis, financial experts began warning us that the mutual-fund industry—the industry that used the pooled investments of many people to buy shares of a large number of companies, in order to make safe, long term gains—was actually just a sort of waiting room for money, with fund managers pocketing a fortune, and investors only seeing a tiny fraction of what they expected.

Bankrate, for its part, advises against most mutual funds—the ones where someone actively uses your money to buy and sell stocks. "Eighty-five percent of actively managed mutual funds underperform their benchmark," McBride claimed. He recommended a "broad-based, low-cost index fund," instead. An index fund is a type of mutual fund that just sticks your money in a shit-ton of publicly traded companies that are part of a stock market index, like the S&P 500, and leaves it there for ages. Hopefully then, as the stock market trends upward over the decades, so does your savings. This is something we've covered before, by the way.

But I'd better figure out an investment strategy if I really do plan to reach 70-or-so-years-old, because according to Ghilarducci I literally have no choice. "If you ask the question, 'Will millennials ever get to retire?' my retort will be: Employers will retire them." She says while the angles on a good retirement will be tough to work out, there's no evidence that jobs for millennials in their 70s will exist. "In terms of their ability to work or keep up with their logical progress—the job requirements are changing a lot faster than human beings can be trained," she said.

But she's open to the possibility that in some future economic reality, a class of jobs could exist in which the elderly are "the new teenagers." In fact, that phenomenon is here already. "More and more older people are finding that they don't have the pensions, and they are having to enter the world of baristas and low-level service work," Ghilarducci said.

Fucking. Terrifying.

Final Verdict: How Scared Should I Be of Never Retiring?

5/5: #Dead

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

VICE sent photographer Peter Larson out Monday morning to Downtown Cleveland to capture all the weird and contentious stuff that is happening outside of the Republican National Convention. It wasn't until he thought his day was done and he started to head home that he happened to come across the West Ohio Minutemen. The militia group, which featured a couple of veterans, was hanging out in a parking lot in Ohio City. They agreed to let Larson follow them as they made their way to the heart of Downtown Cleveland.

As they walked the streets of Cleveland, the militiamen chatted with cops who simply told them to be safe. Texas delegates fresh from the convention cheered them on. And they told Larson about their mission, which they said had nothing to do with Donald Trump or even the Republican Party. Instead, the group told him they were dedicated to protecting and supporting their community and did not discriminate against race, sex, gender, or anything else.

Although this open carry demonstration was relatively harmless, Clevelanders and law enforcement have been weary about citizens coming to downtown with arms given the recent police shooting in Dallas and Baton Rouge. The Cleveland Police Union even asked the Ohio Gov. John Kasich for a suspension of open carry during the RNC. Kasich responded by saying that he didn't have the power as governor to do such a thing.

Despite the fears expressed by some locals over the sight of men walking around with AR-15s, AK-47s, and G3s, what they did is 100 percent legal under Ohio law. And considering they did this on the very first day of the RNC, it is likely this isn't the last open carry demonstration we see this week.

See more of Pete's work here.

Netflix releases the third season of BoJack Horseman on Friday, July 22—a big relief to the poor souls who actually identify with the show's deeply unhappy protagonist. BoJack (voiced by Will Arnett) and his friends may live in a cartoon alternate universe where humans and bipedal animals with human bodies happily coexist and intermarry, but the inner struggles of those animal-people, and the fictional Los Angeles in which they live, reveal one melancholic truth after another about life in the 20-teens.

So when a horse-headed man drinks himself into oblivion while endlessly re-watching DVDs of himself at the height of his fame, it makes for a darkly funny tableau at first—something you might see any night of the week on Adult Swim. But unlike other recent dark comedy protagonists, BoJack craves deeper happiness, and he seems to know that finding it will be hard work.

Show creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg clearly wants the people on BoJack to be entertaining when they literally lose their minds, but he also keeps the scenes rooted in bone-deep humanity—or horsemanity, or whatever. We got in touch with Bob-Waksberg to ask how he pulls it all off, and to find out if season three will finally put BoJack on a path to inner peace.

VICE: Did you set out to make a show about mental illness?
Raphael Bob-Waksberg: I don't know if that was something we were really that conscious of when we were writing and pitching the show. The goal was never like, Let's really create an expose, let's really investigate this kind of thing, let's diagnose BoJack in a certain way. I think it was more about just trying to write this character truthfully, and taking him seriously. The idea a character trope that is maybe a little archetypical, or that we've seen before, but really believing in it, and trying to be honest and respectful to it.

"I still don't know if we're telling the story of, ultimately, BoJack's redemption or more of BoJack bottoming out." —Raphael Bob-Waksberg

The first episode of BoJack placed that character trope front and center, and I remember that turning a lot of people off. Did that disappoint you?
The first episode has a two-minute scene between BoJack and Diane talking about the ephemeral nature of happiness, and it's like, "Yeah! That's the heart of the show." That's what we're interested in. And all the other stuff, of like BoJack having sex with a groupie, and him vomiting cotton candy over the side of a building—that's all fun and games. I think some people were looking in the wrong direction. I don't blame them, because why would they automatically know what we're trying to do?

Do you feel like the overall conversation around the show got more favorable after season two?
Actually, I've seen some reactions recently of people not liking the show that really excite me, because at least they're not liking the show for the right reasons. They get what we're trying to do, and they still don't like it, and I applaud those people. "It thinks it's so deep, but it's not actually that deep, and it's manipulative, it just kind of makes me sad, and it's not really funny." I'm just like, OK! That's a fair critique. Good. You gave it a fighting chance at least. You're not accusing it of being something that it's not trying to be. Or, you're not accusing it of doing a bad job of something it's not trying to be.

Will Arnett, Raphael Bob-Waksberg, Paul F. Tompkins, Alison Brie, Aaron Paul at the BoJack Horseman special screening

BoJack feels like a lot of struggling people in my life who have crossed a line of destructive behavior and made me want to write them off. But BoJack doesn't quite cross that line. Do you walk that line on purpose?
I was talking to Michael Eisner about this. We were talking about the character, and there's one joke, where he was like, "I think this is going too far."

Which joke?
I think it might have been the September 11 joke, in episode 104. That was so long ago. he said the beauty of BoJack is exactly what you described—that he goes right up to the line but never crosses it. And it was in this conversation that I realized, no, actually, everything about the character is that he does cross the line, and then he crosses back, and then he crosses back and you're never quite sure if you're supposed to "like" him or not.

Do you worry that BoJack will become one of those antihero men that have become kind of a new TV cliché?
I think there are a lot of shows like this—I don't want to single anyone out, but Californication, for example—where you have this kind of unlikable, asshole character but he's also like, really cool. And you like him, and you're into it. I wanted BoJack to be more of a cautionary figure than someone that you aspire to be.

In your own mind, do you know where BoJack's mental and emotional problems come from?
I don't think there is one origin. Something that we have tried to explore is that there are lots of explanations for why BoJack is the way he is, and there isn't just one interpretation. I always think that's really lazy, when I'm watching a TV show or a movie or something and there's a flashback and the idea is, "This one moment is the reason that everything happened. This character saw this guy and this guy said this thing to him, and that's why he is this way."

Because I think in real life, it's not so one-to-one.

You see him working at things and he is doing work on himself, but there is always going to be that backslide.

But to be specific, his mother's insanely high expectations, and Secretariat's suicide had a major effect, right?
One thing we're trying to show is that a lot of stuff that's happened to BoJack—both as an adult and as a kid, and whatever is in his genetic makeup already—combine to make him who he is. Some good things, and some bad things. We're not necessarily pointing at one thing and saying, "This is why. This is where this comes from. This is why somebody feels inadequate or self-loathing or self-aggrandizing; this is what makes someone like this." To me that feels lazy, but also convenient—I understand why writers do it, because it can make for a cool moment.

BoJack has had some false starts, but when we last saw him that baboon had just told him running gets easier, but you have to do it every day, and it seems like BoJack really took that to heart. Is he on a real path to happiness in season three?
I think if you watch season three, you'd have to say no, unfortunately. I think you can see in the beginning of this season, him trying to be better in small ways—as opposed to the beginning of season two, where he just kind of refreshed his whole life and thought that would be the answer. You see him working at things and he is doing work on himself, but there is always going to be that backslide. I think, really, what the baboon is telling him, is that it's more complicated than just a straight path up a hill. That it is very two steps forward, one step back, eight steps forward, eight steps back.

Is BoJack necessarily headed in a better direction at all?
I still don't know if we're telling the story of, ultimately, BoJack's redemption or more of BoJack bottoming out. That is what's kind of exciting about this show—the audience not necessarily knowing where we're going. I have a little bit of an idea of what story I want to tell ultimately, but I don't want to give that away and hopefully, we'll be on the air for many years, and the story we're telling is a long one, but it's not as simple as: BoJack gets a pep talk from a baboon and then he's on the up and up and everything's going to be fine.

Last question: I've been worried about Mr. Peanutbutter ever since he punched that mirror. Does he have rage problems?
That also is for the audience to decide. What his problems are, I leave that up to you.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

BoJack Horseman season three premieres on July 22 on Netflix.

Melania Trump addresses the Republican National Convention. Photo by Chip Somodevilla / Staff via Getty

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

US News

Melania Trump Accused of Plagiarism
Donald Trump's wife, Melania, has been criticized for allegedly plagiarizing a passage from Michelle Obama's 2008 convention speech for her own address at the Republican National Convention. One section was strikingly similar, with some phrases mimicking exactly what the current first lady said eight years ago. —USA Today

GOP Lawmaker Salutes White Contribution to Civilization
Representive Steve King, an Iowa Republican, has come under fire after arguing that white people have contributed more to society than other "subgroups" throughout history. Discussing the GOP convention on MSNBC, King said: "Where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization?"—The New York Times

Supreme Court Urged to Reconsider Immigration Plan
The Obama administration wants justices to hold another hearing on the president's plan to shield undocumented immigrants from deportation once the court gets a ninth member. Acting Solicitor General Ian Heath Gershengorn admitted that it would be "exceedingly rare" for the court to re-hear a case. —The Washington Post

Clinton Meets Philando Castile Family
Hillary Clinton said she had met with the "courageous" family of Philando Castile, the school employee who was fatally shot by police in St. Paul earlier this month. Speaking at the American Federation of Teachers convention in Minneapolis, Clinton said, "We cannot let this madness continue. This violence cannot stand." —NBC News

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Photo via Flickr user Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

International News

German Train Attacker Had ISIS Flag
A hand-painted ISIS flag has been found in the room of an Afghan refugee accused of carrying out an axe and knife attack on a train in Wurzburg, Germany. The 17-year-old wounded four people from Hong Kong in Monday evening's attack. The police shot him dead as he fled, and he had reportedly shouted, "Allahu akbar" ("God is great").—BBC News

Turkish President Prepares to Reinstate Death Penalty
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said he is ready to reinstate the death penalty following the failed miliatry coup, so long as the Turkish people demand it. EU officials have warned that talks on Turkey's joining the EU would end if the country restored capital punishment, which it abolished in 2004.—Al Jazeera

Anti-Doping Agency Calls for Russia Ban at the Olympics
The World Anti-Doping Agency has recommended Russia should be banned from this summer's Olympics and Paralympics in Rio after a new report revealed the huge scale of state-sponsored doping from 2011 to 2015. The International Olympic Committee will decide today whether to bar Russian athletes from Rio. —CNN

Mexican President Apologizes for Mansion House Scandal
Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto has apologized for a scandal in which a favored government contractor built his family a multimillion-dollar mansion: the so-called Casa Blanca, or "White House." Peña Nieto acknowledged he made a "mistake" that "damaged the institution of the presidency."—VICE News

Chuck D. Photo via Flickr user kowarski

Everything Else

Fifty Retired Wrestlers Sue WWE
More than 50 retired wrestlers have filed a lawsuit against World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. over neurological injuries. The plaintiffs say WWE intentionally avoided liability for injuries by classifying wrestlers as independent contractors. —TIME

Chuck D Hails New Era of Political Rap
Chuck D is delighted at how politicized hip-hop is becoming, saying, "Every single artist has something to say about what's going on." The rapper performed with Prophets of Rage in Cleveland before joining a march in the city hosting the GOP convention. —Buzzfeed News

'Game of Thrones' Delayed Until Summer 2017
The airing of season seven of Game of Thrones has been pushed back to the summer of 2017 and will run for only seven episodes, HBO has announced. The delay means it will miss next year's Emmy nominations.—Vox

Police Shootings Drive Blue Lives Matter Bills
Several states are considering legislation that treats attacks on cops like hate crimes, based on Louisiana's "Blue Lives Matter" bill. Lawmakers in Wisconsin, Florida, and Kentucky have all introduced bills modeled on the Louisiana law. —VICE News

Taser Wants to Livestream Police Body-Camera Video
Taser International's CEO Rick Smith has revealed his company plans to begin livestreaming body-camera footage to the cloud by 2017. Paired with facial-recognition technology, this would allow police to identify people with outstanding warrants as they walk by them on the street. –Motherboard

Opera Singer Apologizes for 'All Lives Matter' Lyrics
Remigio Pereira, the member of a Canadian opera group who altered the lyrics to "O Canada" to include "All Lives Matter," has apologized. In a Facebook video, he said he "grew up in a multicultural environment where my best friend was black." —VICE

In our new VICELAND series Black Market, actor Michael K. Williams meets society's outcasts—from New Jersey's carjackers to animal poachers in South Africa to stick-up boys in Brooklyn to London's heroin-addicted shoplifters. The show offers a rare look into the lives of people driven by desperation to work in underworld economies.

On the next episode, Williams investigates America's illicit gunrunning business. He sits down with a group of Atlanta dealers who transport cheap illegal weapons up to New York, where they sell them, often to gangs. Williams discusses the violent implications this underground economy has on black lives, and why the dealers feel like they have no viable alternative.

Watch the clip above and make sure to catch the show every Tuesday night at 10 PM on VICELAND.

It's 9AM on a Thursday and 300 young men are lined up along a street in Soho. The guy at the front of the queue, 18-year-old Nick from Wembley, lets out a sort of pissed off yawn when I approach him. He's been waiting here 23 hours, he says, trying to sleep on one of the camping chairs now piled up across the road. The guy at the back of the queue, 17-year-old Werner, flew into London this morning from his home in Finland, just to stand in this line for the rest of the day.

In about an hour the doors to Supreme's London store will be opened, and everyone here – tired Nick; patient Werner; teenagers from Cardiff, Newcastle and Canterbury; the guy wearing a Supreme sleeping bag like a slanket – will get their chance to walk inside, past the sculpture of a smiley white ghost, and flick through the first batch of caps, coats, hoodies and T-shirts released this season.

The majority of queuers are heading straight for the shirt featuring a photo of gloomy vegetarian Morrissey. The photo he didn't want Supreme to use, he said, because they once collaborated with a burger chain – and also just because he didn't like the face he was pulling. Werner knows he isn't getting the Morrissey shirt; it'll have sold out long before he makes it inside, along with all the other stuff he actually wants. But that's fine. He's happy to pay for a flight and a hotel – and then queue for six hours – in the hope he'll find anything in his size, even if it's just a pair of boxer shorts.

This is completely normal. Every time Supreme releases chunks of new stuff at its ten stores across Europe, America and Japan – which is every Thursday from the start of each collection – hundreds of people skip school or work to get first dibs. A couple of weeks after my visit, the London shop manager tells Supreme's British disciples that if they're planning a pilgrimage they'll need to start queuing on the Thursday morning – instead of the Wednesday night – because the weekly influx of rough sleepers in £300 trainers is rankling the local council.

The queue outside Supreme's London shop on the first drop day of SS16

No other clothing brands command this kind of devotion. Ralph Lauren had its "Lo-Lifes", a group of guys from Brooklyn who spent the early 90s stealing as much Polo as they could. Sneaker-heads tend to be Nike lifers. At some point down the line, your mum might get extremely into Boden. However, by Supreme standards, these are all middling brand obsessions – their followers the fair-weather fans to Supreme's ultras: the kids who queue, the adult men who'll pay silly money for vintage Supreme-branded incense sticks.

The fandom is essentially a subculture in itself. Europe's largest Facebook page to buy, sell, trade and chat Supreme is SupTalk, which, with nearly 60,000 members, surely outnumbers the continent's lesser-populated youth tribes – cyber-goths, say, or people who are deadly serious about vaping. In this group you'll find the many denominations of Supreme devotee, from ageing hype-beasts and 13-year-old rich kids to skaters, Insta-celebs and the stamp collectors of the streetwear generation: the guys – and they are always guys – who'll buy up every colour of one specific cap, or the full set of Supreme x Stone Island jackets, or each and every T-shirt featuring the brand's iconic box logo.

Before each "drop day", SupTalk members discuss their favourite upcoming items – the Morrissey T-shirt, for example, or the snakeskin shoe from an Air Max collaboration that's released a couple of months after I visit the store. Online, these hyped up pieces sell out in milliseconds – for £100 you can buy a "bot" that purchases your desired piece as soon as it appears in the e-store – and Supreme produces limited stock, so when it's gone, it's gone.

Until, that is, it appears again, on SupTalk or eBay, for considerably more than its original price. Some items go for twice what they cost on the rail, some for the sort of mark-ups more commonly applied to cinema popcorn. This is especially true for the last couple of years, as interest in the brand seems to have shot up exponentially. A £160 pink denim jacket from SS16 is flipped for nearly £2,250 to a buyer in Kyoto. On Grailed, a high-end clothing resale site, you'll often find old Supreme for the same price as a plane ticket to Bangkok. Where privileged schoolboys once spent their parents' dividends on PlayStations and plasma TVs, turning their noses up at fashion, they're now paying "proxies" to queue up on drop day and buy them £130 pullovers.

So why all this hysteria? Why do people build Supreme shrines in their bedrooms and not get embarrassed about it? Why are teenagers buying plane tickets to pick up a pair of boxer shorts? What kind of neurochemical reactions drive you to buy eight near-identical versions of the same very expensive T-shirt? Why, fundamentally, do so many people become so obsessed with Supreme?

Hype is the most cited reason: that the buzz around the brand is what sustains that same buzz; that a sighting of Drake or Kanye in Supreme is what inspires people to bid themselves into bankruptcy when the same item appears on eBay. But there has to be more to it than that. Surely humans – the most evolved of all land mammals, creators of space stations and two-man umbrellas – aren't that easily swayed?

Equally, if you're the kind of person who actively worries about what's cool and buzzy, it follows that you'd lose interest in Supreme the more popular it becomes – yet the brand doesn't seem to be shedding any diehard followers as it continues to grow (bar a few cool-guy commenters in SupTalk who'll slag off anyone who only started wearing Supreme this year). You could also argue that the brand just produces really nice clothes – and, for some people, that's undoubtedly why they'll dip in and out. But for others, the levels of devotion have to be provoked by something more than cotton and thread.

Some of the Supreme T-shirts belonging to collectors Musa and Akbar Ali

In 1994, Supreme opened as a skate shop in lower Manhattan. Press-shy founder James Jebbia declined to be interviewed for this feature, but told Interview Magazine that skate companies in the early-90s catered more to 13-year-old suburbanites than older skaters in cities like New York, who wanted to avoid dressing like awkward man-children in the hope girls might pay them some attention. To remedy that problem, the shop started making T-shirts in small runs; and then hoodies and sweaters; then shoes in collaboration with Nike and Clarks, coats with The North Face and Stone Island, hoodies with Comme Des Garcons and jeans with APC. New T-shirts featured the work of freaky surrealist painter H.R. Giger and pioneering hentai artist Toshio Maeda, skate decks the designs of contemporary artists like Richard Prince, John Baldessari and Jeff Koons. Supreme morphed from a bricks and mortar hangout for downtown skate kids to a cult global brand whose eclectic output rivals that of some of the world's most established fashion houses.

Through all that, Supreme has continued to make a limited amount of product. This, says Jebbia, is because "we don't want to get stuck with stuff nobody wants". But considering the online shop sells out minutes after anything new is added, being straddled with a warehouse full of dead stock doesn't seem too much of a worry. Instead, your GCSE Economics teacher might argue, ploughing into your life to weigh in on Supreme's business model, keeping supply low is an effective way to create demand. At his home in West London, Musa Ali, a Supreme collector, explains: "In some regards, what makes people want to buy Supreme is the competitive, social aspect – to be able to go out in public and feel like you're less likely to be wearing clothes that everyone else is wearing."

But why? Why do we place so much value on unique stuff? Who is actually going to be impressed that your kitchen tiles are one of a kind? Nobody. Nobody gives a fuck about your bespoke kitchen tiles. But then, really, it's not about other people; it's about you.

"In evolutionary terms, we all collected," says Dr Dimitrios Tsivrikos, consumer psychologist at University College London. "We collect articles or resources to survive, but survival doesn't only rest upon what we need physically. We need, psychologically, to distinguish ourselves. In the past, tribes would decorate themselves with feathers or precious stones to set them apart from other tribe members and attract potential mates. In the same way, collecting Supreme really allows people to build their identities with rare objects."

Thing is, the average Gary and Sue aren't going to realise your ultra-rare, Sopranos-inspired box logo tee took you eight months and £900 to secure. To them, it's just a T-shirt, like the ones you get in H&M or on the telly. However, in psychological terms – says Tsivrikos – that's of little importance: "Millennials in particular are very aware of different consumer tribes; they look to inspire or impress peers who share the same kind of interests as them, who will recognise that particular T-shirt. So really, we do it for a very small group of people."

Back in the queue on the first drop day of the season, this couldn't be more obvious. Everyone's come dressed in their Thursday best: the kind of ultra-rare coats, hoodies and T-shirts you'll often see described as "grails" – as in "highly coveted" – by SupTalk members. "The appeal is all in the exclusivity," admits 19-year-old Londoner Nelly, waiting for his proxy to deliver the Morrissey T-shirt he ordered. "If it's got a box logo on it, people will buy it. People want to be seen to be wearing Supreme, and there's no better way to communicate that than with the box."

Tayler Prince-Fraser, one of SupTalk's administrators, agrees. "You see kids spending hundreds of pounds on something that has 'Supreme' plastered all over it," he says over the phone. "And I think that's less for the design aesthetic and more to let everyone know that it's Supreme."

That these kids are keen to let everyone know they're wearing Supreme represents another important psychological factor in the brand's success. "They've got a lot of things going for them," says Jonathan Gabay, author of Brand Psychology: Consumer Perceptions, Corporate Reputations. "But importantly, Supreme was started in the right bit of New York by skaters. That makes it authentic, or seen to be authentic. The fact that they've brought in other designers over the years is irrelevant; it all goes back to the fact that the original people who wore this stuff were authentic – they weren't wearing it because it was trendy."

Over the past decade or so, a huge amount of importance has been put on "authenticity", both by brands and individuals. We're terrified of being exposed as fakes; being called a poser can be hurtful to some because it implies they're living a kind of false reality – that they don't have ownership over their own self. Granted, that sounds a bit strong in a discussion about a clothing brand, but psychologically it all plays a role.

"A brand is an extension of one's self – psychologically, in terms of how you want the world to see you, or what you want the world to believe you are," says Gabay. "But deeper than that: what you believe you are, through that brand."

Jebbia told the Business of Fashion that "what we do is a mindset", and if Supreme represents authenticity, for certain fans, even subconsciously, the obsession likely comes down to exactly that: it's as much about what the clothes represent as the quality and design of each item. Wear those shiny white Armani trainers and it implies you like blowing money on bottle service. Wear Vetements to tell the world you're chill with spending £1,000 on a hoodie. Wear Supreme and you're part of their club, and everything that entails. When they release clothes featuring the faces of Dipset, William Burroughs and Raekwon – all traditionally Pretty Cool Things – you Get It (even if you don't). Wearing a box logo T-shirt implies you have the same breadth of cultural knowledge as those behind the brand; that you're as authentic as the brand itself (even if you're not).

In the space of six years, Palace – a British skate company – has become another streetwear heavyweight. That's in part due to the hype, the right people wearing it and the fact their design plays into the sportswear revivalism thing currently going on in the UK. But it also has to do with the fact it's a brand that comes off as inherently authentic: started by and worn by skaters in London who weren't concerned with the fact it was trendy to do so. There's a video on YouTube of a clearly moneyed teenager saying he prefers Palace to Supreme because it's "more road", which kind of tells you everything you need to know: lots of people buy this stuff because it helps to project a version of themselves they want the world to see. Perhaps the obsession – for some, at least – starts when this projection has to be maintained.

For others, like collectors Musa Ali and his brother Akbar, the obsession comes from a slightly different place.

"I've never felt obliged to like the brand for its roots," says Musa. "I can just about cruise around on a skateboard, but I haven't been on one for at least a couple of years. For me and my brother, it's more to do with the designs – the consistency; the fact they put out a lot of nice stuff and will collaborate with all these varied people – and the collector's habit. We've been collecting things from a young age – we still have all our Yu-Gi-Oh cards – and have always been very competitive about it."

All three colours of the Supreme x Public Enemy jacket, belonging to collectors Musa and Akbar Ali

To illustrate what he means by "the collector's habit", Musa pulls out a coat Supreme made in collaboration with Public Enemy in 2006. "I first bought this in the red and was wearing it a lot," he says. "So I thought, 'Why don't I get it in another colour?' The yellow version was hard to track down because it was such an old jacket. When I eventually got it, I thought, 'I've got two out of three; I might as well get the third one.' I did the same with this shirt: got the burgundy one, then the yellow, then thought, 'Well, it would be rude not to get the others.'"

While Musa and Akbar wear a good portion of their collection, about a third of it – mostly the T-shirts featuring box logos or the faces of celebrities like Mike Tyson and Kate Moss – stay wrapped in their original packaging.

"Every Thursday for the four or so years I've been into it, Supreme has taken up all of my time every Thursday morning. I thought to myself, 'I'd like something to show for this, and something that holds its value,'" says Musa, explaining why the T-shirts have never been worn. "The gold box logo shirt – the one they released when they opened the store in Nagoya – I saw that it went all flaky when people wore it and washed it. Another T-shirt we have, which was released in 2001 or 2002, I'd hate to wear it and for it to get marked."

This may sound counterintuitive to some – spending months tracking something down, or hours queuing for it, only to keep it stowed away in a cupboard. But view a Supreme stockpile the same as a collection of fine china or rare coins and it makes more sense. You're not going to eat pasta off a bone china plate or buy a pint with a 17th century guinea, but that doesn't stop you from collecting them.

"There are people out there who have warehouse spaces for their collections, and it's almost like their second bank balance," says Musa. "They rely on all this cotton that's aged, essentially, like a fine wine to eventually sell to someone who's ready to start their journey into collecting Supreme, which – for collectors – can be endless. It's endless for me."

Musa (left) and Akbar Ali sitting among their Supreme collection

Supreme has its detractors – those who, bizarrely, get very offended by what other people choose to wear, and then kick up a fuss about it online. But that's not stopping waves of new fans from developing an obsession with the brand, whether it's via that subconscious hunt for authenticity or because, like Musa and Akbar, they're psychologically pre-disposed to hoarding with a purpose. What's left to be seen is how long Supreme holds out.

Physical growth has been intentionally slow: the brand has only opened two new stores in the past six years. But if Supreme continues to reach more people at the rate it's been reaching them, it will be harder to maintain the sense of exclusivity and authenticity the brand's been so successful at trading on. "I can't help but feel that's already deteriorating a little," says Musa. "Especially since the opening of more stores."

That said, if any brand is in control of its image, it's Supreme – so you get the sense they've got a fair few years left at the top of the streetwear pile, no matter how many stores they open along the way.

@jamie_clifton

More on VICE:

Life After Supreme: Noah Is the Streetwear Brand That Rejects Conspicuous Consumption

Living the Lo-Life

Spliffs, Unity and Rebellion: the Iconic 90s Brand Dready Is Making a Comeback

Photo by Chiara Cremaschi via Flickr

This article originally appeared on VICE France.

I'm a clinical psychologist and have been working in a medical center for a number of years. My patients suffer from a wide variety of anxieties, but it's striking to me how many of those anxieties are in some way related to my patients' sexuality.

Some of them would never dare to talk to me about it, but for many the subject is too crucial and closely connected to them to avoid. I am always surprised by the sheer number of different sexual problems people face today, and the psychological effect those problems can have. Between porn, the hyper-sexualization of the body, and the pressure to perform, a large number of young people find themselves lost in their own libidos.

Like G*, a 26-year-old patient of mine. "I had a relatively boring sex life until I met M," she told me. "I was 23, and he was 35. I was crazy about him, and we had an incredible time in bed at first. But then, little by little, he grew rather demanding, sexually. For example, he would push for anal and insisted I wear certain underwear that I would never choose myself. I did it because I was insanely in love with him and didn't want him to leave. I didn't realize I was letting him construct and define our sexual relationship based on his desires alone."

Now that she has been broken up with this man for six months, she's going through an identity crisis. When you're just trying to fulfill the desires of a partner, when you're not creating any boundaries for yourself, you lose sight of what you want and don't want. We had discussed G's sexual experiences during a few sessions, when she said: "At first I thought I was fine, that I was just trying new things. But the longer it went on for, the more I realized this wasn't good for me. I left because I finally accepted that I was just doing it all to make sure he wouldn't leave me for another girl, someone who would be willing to do the things that I didn't like to do."

The societal pressure to perform in bed can turn sex into a race for success. If all you focus on is satisfying your partner at all costs and making yourself irreplaceable, you can easily lose sight of who you are.

Photo by Chris Marchant via Flickr

As you can imagine, the men at my practice aren't doing much better. F, 24, seemed very fragile when he confided in me that his sex life is, according to him, a catastrophe. "I've had a few sexual experiences, and each time it was awful. I can't help imagining that the girl isn't going to come, that I'm boring her, that I'm not touching her right or in all the wrong places." He's been unable to stop this incessant barrage of thoughts during intercourse ever since his first time, five years ago.

And so here we are, at the heart of performance anxiety. Performance anxiety can eat away at young people trying to establish their place in their work and social lives, but also in bed. In the cases of G. and F., I prescribed some old fashioned refocusing on one's self. Although being attentive to the expectations of others is a good thing in itself, there's no need to take it too far. Our sexuality is not something we can give away. It's more like a garden that needs two or more people to look after it. If you want to give something to someone in the hope that he or she will like you, bake this person a cake.

Another problem I see a lot in my practice isn't about the performance itself, but rather the absence of it. H, a 29-year-old, has been in a relationship with his boyfriend for four years and hasn't felt like having sex with him for a few months now. It's the main reason for him to come to his first consultation. "I love my boyfriend," he told me. "We live very happily together, we provide for each other, and we love spending time together. I basically think we're happy. I don't feel like cheating on him with someone."

Sexual rejection can give off a psychologically very violent message—like, "Your body doesn't deserve to be reproduced with."

When I listen to him talk, I feel that the problem here is mainly external. "I'm afraid to tell my friends that we haven't had sex in a few weeks and that we're just not that interested in it. I've tried to tell them once or twice, and their response is always the same: They suggest we have a threesome, use toys, role play—as though not fucking were an illness."

H isn't alienated from his own partner, but he's socially alienated. From what I understand, his boyfriend is understanding or might see it as a phase in their relationship. In that context, his problem isn't that serious—a relationship isn't based solely on the frequency of sex. But H feels guilty and feels the need to hide the reality of his sex life from his friends. He quickly overcame his anxieties, however, by focusing on the quality of his relationship.

The absence of desire is one thing, and the absence of opportunity is another. A good third of my clientele are people forgotten by sex. Like R, who at 26 finds herself in a pretty closed social and professional environment, with a reduced social circle, and who, after having had too many disappointments with online dating, is tired and fed up. "During the rare evenings I do go out, if there is a guy I like, he's either gay or taken." Worse than that is her feeling of never being chosen or noticed, which makes her feel like a failure. Apart from the occasional one night stand at college, it's been four years since she slept with someone.

Photo by Flickr user Angrylambie1 via

"I was never stressed about the future of my love life," she told me. "But every time I really felt like having sex, I realized there was no one I could sleep with. I felt so worthless." Romantic rejection is always difficult, but structural sexual rejection and the ensuing loneliness can also touch us deeply. That rejection could give off a psychologically very violent message—like, "Your body doesn't deserve to be reproduced with."

This pain is universal, which my male patient A can attest to. At 28, growing up in a very male environment, he told me about what he considers his utter failure with women. "My colleagues have girlfriends or one night stands, but at least they have something. I just know that every time I get rejected I don't become stronger—I get a little more scared of the next attempt." Sexual solitude isn't just frustrating for the individual going through it; it changes how we're perceived by friends, family, and other people who can add to the already pretty sufficient personal shame.

What do you say to that? Sometimes, not much. Sexual pressure and sexual competition are part of being young. I'll always advise a patient dealing with this kind of shame and fear to focus on themselves and their personal development. The opinion of the outside world won't change, so what should change is how the person struggling with it is looking at the situation. We need to arm people with the weapons to deal with public opinion. During our sessions, I try to undo the damage and create new dynamics to find a little place inside the patient where he or she can be at peace.

When these young people come to see me, I can see how strong of a hold certain cultural and social phenomena have over them, and it makes me sad. Sexuality, a natural and glorious thing in itself, is being stripped of its spontaneity and subjected to contradictory rules. Those rules paradoxically suggest that we're relaxed and open and "listen to ourselves" while tending to a minimum of three sexual partners a month and/or four positions a night.

The people I speak to have lost their footing in their own sexuality or relationship, and when that happens, I can only conclude what I'd conclude in many other situations: You have to constantly assess what it is you want, what your desires are. That's the beginning and the end of being comfortable with your own sex life—and consequently, life in general. Knowing what you want and don't want is possibly the sexiest thing there is.

*Names have been changed.

Photo by Chris Bethell

This post originally appeared on VICE UK.

The UK has never been known as a stronghold of revolutionary zeal, but in the past few years, disengagement, apathy, and hopelessness seem to have increasingly given way to active fury.

Everyone's angry, and thanks to the internet, it's never been easier to express that anger. In part that's good, but harassment and threats toward politicians are becoming a genuine problem, with Labour leadership contender Angela Eagle getting death threats and a brick through her window for standing against Jeremy Corbyn.

As concerning as that is, incidents like this are now being used to discredit people en masse. If you want to be critical and avoid being lumped in with bullies and sociopaths, it's best to think carefully about how you express your criticism of politicians. The goal is to persuade people to listen. Don't give them any excuse to dismiss what you're saying without paying attention to the actual content of your arguments. Here are a few tips on giving politicians a hard time without being a dick about it.

DON'T BE RACIST OR SEXIST, OBVIOUSLY
It doesn't matter how awful you think the target of your criticism is, if you attack their gender, ethnicity, sexuality, or any other aspect of their identity you're acting like an asshole. The problem with Theresa May is not that she's a woman. The problems with Angela Eagle don't include the fact that she's a woman and a lesbian.

You don't have to directly mention identity for your comments to be out of line. If you insult female politicians using words that would never be applied to a man in the same situation, that's not OK, just like David Cameron saying "calm down, dear" wasn't OK. Don't go there.

DON'T MAKE THREATS
This is another one I shouldn't really even have to mention. If you threaten a politician's safety, you are not only at risk of being lumped in with the bullies and sociopaths, you actually belong in that category. What the hell is wrong with you? An MP was murdered just over a month ago. Arguing that politicians have also caused harm by voting for particular policies is besides the point. Two wrongs don't make a right, dickhead.

DON'T THROW MORE LEGITIMATE THREATS AROUND LIKE CONFETTI
Hear me out with this one. Threatening to deselect an MP isn't the same as "harassment" and "intimidation"—it's part of the accountability process within the Labour Party. But what's the point of telling MPs you're going to try and deselect them at the drop of a hat? Yes, I get it. You're frustrated that 172 Labour MPs have voted no confidence in Jeremy Corbyn's leadership. But reaching straight for the most extreme response just makes you seem unreasonable. It's never going to persuade anyone who isn't already on your side. Think carefully about which situation would make it worth playing your final card.

MAKE YOUR CRITICISM SPECIFIC AND WELL-INFORMED
With the biggest no-nos out the way, here's a positive bit of advice. The more specific and carefully researched your argument is, the harder it is to dismiss. Calling every MP who voted no confidence in Corbyn a Blairite is inaccurate and is likely to make people who don't already agree with you switch off. If there really were 172 Blairites in Parliament right now, that would be more than there actually were under Blair. And, I bet you didn't know that some Tory MPs actually spoke against the Trade Union Bill. Don't make assumptions.

DON'T GIVE ANYONE AN EXCUSE TO DISMISS WHAT YOU'RE SAYING
The calmer you seem, the more difficult it is for people to dismiss the content of your arguments. The most angry, frustrated members of the public can be the ones who politicians need to listen to most, but unfortunately that's not how things tend to work. These people are nerds, and the language of cool rationality is all they understand.

DON'T RELY TOO MUCH ON SOCIAL MEDIA
If you want to share an opinion with a wider audience than whoever happens to be within earshot at the bar, the obvious option is to post on Facebook or Twitter. The thing is, it's quite likely the people you're aiming to persuade already receive a lot of social media messages, and there's no guarantee they'll notice yours among the general noise. Emails and letters are more likely to be read, and you could also publish a copy on a public blogging platform. It doesn't hurt to try writing to newspapers, either.

Join campaign groups, attend protests, and think creatively about ways to get your message heard.

Follow Abi Wilkinson on Twitter.