The author now (left) and at 17 (right)

This article originally appeared on VICE Alps

Everything used to be better when I was a teenager – of that, I'm sure. Not only were Pokémon and Gwyneth Paltrow amazing back then but, as I'm continuously reminded, so was I. At 17, I was far more likeable, funny and all 'round more awesome than I could ever be today.

At 17, I was simply unstoppable. Back in those days I could hardly wait till Friday, when I would finally change out of my Catholic school garb and get into my thoroughly cool going-out getup to party through the night and into the early morning hours. I danced in trashy Viennese nightclubs as if no one was watching, lived as if nothing could hurt me and drank as if hangovers were a Big-Pharma conspiracy. Then spent Sunday trying to piece together the events of the night before.

Today, in contrast, my ideal Friday night consists of a pot of tea, a Sex and the City box set and compulsively hitting the "play all episodes" option without a second thought. By the next morning, the only thing that's left for me to piece together is what episode I fell asleep watching.

It's all too often now that I feel like a complete shadow of my former self. I live on the memories of those far-gone glory days. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy with my comfortable, semi-adult life. I just can't help but wonder if there's still a bit of that youthful spark in me. Could I be 17 again if I wanted to – even if just for a day? There was only one way to find out.

8:30 AM

Despite it being abhorrently early for a Saturday morning, I wake up fully rested and would love nothing more than to jump out of bed singing 'Here Comes the Sun'. However, this would be as impossibly out of character for 17-year-old Michael as that episode of Tom & Jerry in which they're friends for some reason – so I decide the proper course of action is to lie in bed for a few more hours.

12 PM

"The dog is getting drunk tonight!"

At noon, I groggily roll out of bed, having very clearly overslept. In a move driven by nostalgia for being scolded, I promptly call my mother.

– "Mum, I just woke up, and it's noon. And I haven't eaten anything yet!" I state in a manic attempt to press all of her buttons at once.

But instead of hissing at me or aggressively vacuuming as loudly as possible over the phone, my mother reacts in a shockingly calm tone: "Good for you," she says. "You work hard and you've earned a relaxing weekend."

Deeply disappointed in her refusal to take part in my "17-again" experiment, I decide to switch strategies.

– "I'll put this energy to good use! Tonight, I'm meeting my friends in the park and we're probably gonna drink a bunch of alcohol," I tell her in my most provocative tone.

– "Alright then, have fun!" she chirps cheerfully and says goodbye. She did not even tell me to remember to bring a sweater. A little later, she inexplicably sends me a picture of a dog sitting at a bar with the caption "The dog's getting drunk tonight!". I roll my eyes in frustration. Mums, right?

1 PM

After I've prepared the favourite dish of my teenage years – a plate of pasta with ketchup – I begin to wonder what I ever did over the course of a Saturday when I was 17. I settle that teenage-me would have probably watched some crap TV shows or played video games.

As it seemed rather fitting for the experiment, I load up Pokémon Go and begin my march down the path of nostalgia through the city, hoping to catch a couple of rare specimens along the way. This portion of my experiment is wildly successful in comparison to the phone call with my mother because sometime after I've caught my third Pidgey, I'm really feeling like a teenager again and I am already looking forward to getting wasted and (hopefully!) making out with someone too.

2:30 PM

I make my way down to the supermarket on a mission to pick up a couple of the favourite drinks of my youth: Eristoff Ice and Eristoff Red – just like with WKDs, the thought of these two reprehensibly disgusting swills flushes all colour from my face. This reaction does not come undeserved; Between 16 and 18 I vomited regularly from having drunk these poisons, most frequently in the parking lot of a gynaecologist's office, which after some time became my designated spewing-zone.

In the supermarket, carrying myself in as covert a manner as possible, I snatch my two drinks up and bee-line to the register trying to hide my bounty as though I were smuggling a corpse across the border. I was so caught up in my 17-year old world, I had a genuine fear that the cashier would ask me for an I.D. She didn't though because I'm 23, and look like 32.

6 PM

"Look what I got!" I chime to my friends, who at this point I've already met and began to picnic and pregame with in the park. I enthusiastically reach for the two Eristoff bottles in my Eastpak backpack, and proudly present them to the group. They are aghast – undoubtedly because they simply cannot grasp how amazing and young I've once again become.

"BOOM! Eristoff!" I proclaim, my announcement met by silence instead of jubilation. It only then dawns on me that my picnic buddies are nauseated, not overjoyed, by my haul. They emit a variety of sounds of disgust that I personally reserve for board games or the music of David Hasselhoff. Obviously, they haven't had good experiences with vodka-infused soft drinks.

"Michael, I've only puked from drinking those things" comes the response from my friend Bianca, the first to break the silence. "Why would I ever want to drink such a thing?" But Bianca has just turned 30, so I choose to simply ignore her so as not to let her dampen my youthful spirit.

Instead, I pop open my Eristoff Ice and steer the conversation to themes like homework, Pidgey and Professor Willow. My friends absently nod their heads, while exchanging looks that can only be interpreted as saying, "Who invited Michael?".

7 PM

You might think that after two Eristoff Ice and three shots of Eristoff Red I would start to feel a buzz coming on, but you'd be wrong. Maybe I've graduated to the master level of drinking, because where I'd be drunkenly prattling on and professing my love to everyone around me at 17 today, I feel steady enough to pilot a 747.

8 PM

I'm beginning to remember why everybody hates vodka mixers. They taste light and fruity, giving you a false sense of sobriety right before they hit you like a mortgage payment. An hour ago I could fly a jumbo jet – the best I can do now is scramble for a sick-bag in my Eastpak. I decide to take a break from drinking for the next half-hour.

9 PM

My new friends

It's worth to note here, just how many teenagers are hanging out in this park. I thought only drug dealers and sex fiends were lurking here at this time of night but I was wrong; There are more teens here than at a 5 Seconds of Summer concert. They're just sitting around on the grass, unperturbed, smoking and drinking away. I make a mental note: "Cool kids love parks!"

I end up managing to engage a group of real teenage girls in conversation. My attempt at extracting their youthful essence ends in abject failure. They give me a couple of tips for cool places to drink at, then get rid of me by disappearing further into the park, undoubtedly to discuss pressing issues like Pretty Little Liars and hoverboards.

10 PM

Inexplicably, about a third of my friends decide to leave me in the park. Along with the remaining group, I make my way to a place my new friends recommended, located right at the centre of the Bermuda Triangle of Vienna's nightlife: the Kaktus Bar. I remember enthusiastically visiting this establishment at 17, on occasion even referring to it as a "real hip joint".

The Kaktus Bar was the spot where, for example, I once snogged a guy named Gerald for about an hour because he bought me a round of tequila shots. But as Gerald made a move towards my genitals, I was forced to bring our romance to an abrupt end, heading out to the parking lot to vomit in peace.

Anyway, what I found was a small, pink-lit room that looked as though Katy Perry had exploded all over the walls. The waiters all wore suits and the guests surprisingly all looked like they were about the same age as me. Maybe they were conducting a "17-again" experiment of their own?

10:15 PM

I order a round of beers for me and my friends, which is brought to the table in record time.

– "Wow! You're quick!" I say to our waiter.

"That's what my girlfriend says," he replies without missing a beat. How many shots of tequila must I drink to forget this night ever happened?

In a moment of teenage rebellion I snatch all the empty beer bottles off the table and sneak them into my backpack – not for the rush of having nicked something, but because my friend makes his own kombucha and needs bottles with attached stoppers.

11 PM

I wish I could claim that I partied the whole night, finally passing out fully dressed in my living room, with my shoes firmly on my feet. Sorry. After spending less than an hour at the Kaktus Bar, I'm already heading home dreaming of a bath filled with disinfectant gel and holy water.

In a last-ditch attempt to relive years past, I head over to the nearest McDonald's and in the midst of a crowd of wasted teenagers, I treat myself to an order of fries. But even this attempt fails in its own way. The fries aren't that bad but taste a bit bland and they are certainly not as good as I remember them back in the day. I see this as a metaphor for myself.

CONCLUSION

Maybe I'm just hopelessly boring or maybe being 17 was never as good as I remember. While I was carrying out my little experiment, I couldn't help but think of all the time I was wasting – time that could be better spent at home, comfortably lying on the couch.

I don't ever want to be 17 again, and I'm even starting to wonder how I ever made it through the first time around. And while I wholeheartedly welcome the Pokémon revival with open arms (and would even prescribe a bottle of Eristoff-Ice for the occasional kick), there are perhaps some things better left in the past: my 17-year-old self being number one on that list.

@michibuchinger

Government supporters burn photos of Fethullah Gulen, who they believe organised the coup. Petros Giannakouris / AP

To plan a speedy political exile from Turkey today you need two things: a world map and the Wikipedia page on "visa entry requirements for Turkish citizens". If you get out a highlighter and start cross-referencing the two, you'll quickly see the bottom half of the map is more accessible than the top. If you can speak Spanish, the options are endless: almost every country in Latin America is happy to have you.

"It can't be that hard to learn, can it?" asked my friend, looking up Duolingo on the app store. We were sitting on a balcony in Istanbul, where we both live. From Taksim Square, just a few hundred metres away, came the sound of thousands of people singing the name of the president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Since an attempted military coup took place last month, Turkey has been more divided than ever. Government supporters and others who took part in the huge public effort that helped stop the coup have flocked to squares across the country every day to revel in the survival of Turkey's democratically elected government.

But others, including government critics like my friend, are not celebrating. They're terrified they'll be caught up in the huge purges that the government has ordered since the coup was thwarted, which have so far seen over 60,000 people suspended from their jobs and over 18,000 arrested – including 17 prominent journalists.

Dozens of institutions linked to Fethullah Gulen, a cleric who is suspected of organising the coup, have been closed down, and 50,000 passports have been cancelled – a move the ruling AKP says is aimed at stopping plotters from fleeing the country. A three-month state of emergency has been declared and the government has begun to rule by decree.

Just a week after the coup, Amnesty International published a report containing evidence they say proves the torture and rape of suspected coup plotters in detention – claims the state has denied.

The most disturbing thing is that you can't figure out what will happen, you can't even make plans.

Though the government claims that they are only targeting supporters of Gulen, who lives in self-imposed exile in a Pennsylvania mansion, critics say the purges are a smokescreen for an attack on any critics of the government. Many liberals, terrified they'll be detained or banned from doing their jobs, are making plans to flee the country.

"This is the first time I've started thinking maybe I should leave," said Burcu, an academic living in Istanbul. "I suffer from the termination of freedom to work, speak and even go abroad now. It's completely unstable. That is the most disturbing thing: that you can't figure out what will happen, that you can't even make plans."

After google imaging every country in south and central America, my friend eventually settled on Costa Rica. There are beaches and Americans there, he reasoned, and where you have beaches and Americans there will be work in bars. But others – especially academics – want to move somewhere they can find work in their field. For most, that means Western Europe or the US – neither of which are particularly keen on handing out visas to Turks.

"I wouldn't leave Turkey for just any country whatsoever. Hungary, Russia and Belarus are no better. I would like to go to western Europe, possibly back to Britain," said Ali, a policy analyst at a think-tank who did his master's degree in the UK. "I feel more at home there. July the 15th was a good reminder of why I'd really like to get out again. I used to criticise the government openly... but with the state of emergency and the suspension of the European Convention on Human Rights, I think the atmosphere is too intimidating."

It's a strange position to be in. On one hand, middle-class liberals in Istanbul aren't living in a war zone. Their life isn't in direct danger. But the fear of arrest and the pervasive, haunting feeling of being watched – having to constantly self-censor everything you say and write – is grinding. For most, though, it's not strong enough grounds to get political asylum in the West. They have to find another way out.

"I just feel disillusioned. I don't want to be this involved in politics," said Mert, an academic, sitting in a café on Istanbul's European side. "You can only fight so much. After a point you start thinking that living your life the way you want is a political statement in itself. It's ridiculous."

For many, the desire to leave is driven by a feeling that things are about to get a lot worse. On the night of the coup, almost 300 soldiers, civilians and policemen died. F-16 jets bombed government buildings in Ankara, and attack helicopters strafed the streets with bullets, mowing down anyone in their way. On the Bosphorus bridge, where coup plotters had parked tanks to stop cars crossing to Europe from Asia, pro-government protesters allegedly beheaded a soldier.

Many of the army recruits who were on the streets on the night of the coup have since claimed they had no idea they were part of a plot to overthrow the government, and had been told they were taking part in a military exercise.

No one knows whether the president will use this period to reconcile with his critics, or use the state of emergency to make a grab for power. Such a move could trigger a second coup attempt, or even lead to civil war.

Ayhan couldn't wait to find out which way it would go. A few days after the failed coup, his name appeared on a list of journalists suspected of supporting the plotters – a claim he denies. He knew he had to get out.

Avoiding the airports for fear of detention, he managed to escape the country. "It's not safe," he said, from a secret location. "Whatever you write, they make a case against you. It's not possible for me to work any more. It's very difficult for those who believe in democracy and for liberals who side with the standards of the EU."

Back on the balcony in Istanbul, my friend was looking on Skyscanner for flights to Costa Rica. They were expensive – more than three times the average monthly Turkish wage. The Americans on the beaches would have to wait.

Some names have been changed to protect identities

@louiseelisabet

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(Photo via Oscar Webb)

If you take what's written in the VICE comments section as a given – and may the good lord have mercy on your forsaken soul when he condemns you down to hell for such a thing; I mean, hoo boy; I mean, they are going to have to invent an eighth and ninth circle of that thing for you to go and live in for that one – you will of course know that I am a middle-class Tory boy whose daddy got him a job in the media after I took seven consecutive gap years "finding myself" in Asia. Mate: can you imagine how unbearable I would be if I had a rich dad and an inherent, baked-in sense of entitlement? My god. I'd own all you fuckers. I'd own your houses. I would go to so many rowing club ten-year reunion parties. Fucking hell. My coke problem would just be insane.

Sadly, it's not as interesting as all that: first ten years of my life were spent with both my parents on benefits, then my mum got a job in the big Royal Mail office in town and we went from a family entirely dependent on benefits to a family half-dependent on benefits. It never really got better than that; when my parents split up, dad went to live in a council flat and it was just me, my mum and her meagre salary. When it came to university time, she filled out the grant application forms without blinking: "Loan, grant, loan, grant, and you're going to be eating a lot of plain pasta for the next three years." Those were my instructions. "What's a grant?" I remember asking, because I was a fucking idiot. "It's free money," she said. "It's the only way you're going to university." Okay.

This isn't about me, though, because I went to university, I got my 2:1, I have my debt and I am above the earning threshold to be deemed enough that I can start paying it back. This is about the thousands of lower-income and straight up poor kids who wanted to go to university and just had those dreams extinguished. Those thousands of smart, ambitious voices that just, in one fell swoop, got sounded out. Today is the Death Star of higher education. A planet we will never know the shape of just got exploded.

As of today, student grants no longer exist. They are instead going to be replaced by loans. This was announced in the 2015 July budget, but nothing seems so real as when it's actually happening, as we just found out with Brexit. "Under changes that came into effect on Monday, grants for students from low-income homes are replaced by loans," the BBC reports. "Previously, students from families with annual incomes of £25,000 or less received a full grant of £3,387 a year."

How is this bad? Well, without that £10,000 or so of money, I absolutely could not have gone to university: my fees were paid by student loans (and my fees were the £3,000-a-year fees, not these sickening £9,000-a-year ones you have these days, which, for about six hours a week of disinterested lecturing from MA second year students, i.e. more or less what I got for the duration of my degree, is an absolute fucking pisstake) and my rent, food, the money I literally lived on, that was all paid by grants and the overdraft I am still living in now. That's it. I remember when I moved into halls and my mum did me a big Morrison's shop to get me started (lots of mum-approved foods: oats, rice, apples), and her friend Barb gave me £20 to keep me ticking over until my loan came in. And that was it. I was on my own. £20 in an envelope, three Golden Delicious and a load of LEA paperwork. Enjoy the next three years. Don't fuck it up.

I wasn't the first in my family to go to university – my dad went, and my overachieving sister before me, and my cousin had found his purpose as a mature student and retrained entirely, changing from "weird punk" to "weird punk with a biology degree and a wife and kid" seemingly overnight – but even if I had been, university always seemed like such a natural, assumed progression: first week of sixth form was essentially spent marvelling at the fact we didn't have to wear school uniform any more while being bombarded with the UCAS application process. The only reason people took on hobbies and interests was to make them a more rounded person to appeal to the various universities they were courting. When you're 17, the only reason to be better – to be anyone, to do anything other than get stoned behind the tennis court, back where the dinner ladies can't see the smoke clouds – the only reason for any of that is the vague promise of the future, of university; that final step in the progression of You.

There are, as we are told often these days, a number of alternatives to university: apprenticeship schemes, traineeships, straight up just getting into an industry at the bottom rung and working your way up. If they are for you, great: I have friends who dropped out of sixth form and are beating me in terms of money earned and general having-their-shit-together-ness. But 18-year-old Joel Golby was a shit show of a human who just about knew he was good at writing. I needed to go to university to learn how to be a person: to fend for myself, meet a new and diverse set of people, learn to critically engage my brain, lose weight, spend all-nighters in the library, love football again, learn to drink, socialise, bone. Consider this: I was, by all metrics, a smart kid, but I did not know the difference between a noun and a verb properly before second year. Kids mature at different rates, and I was clearly lagging behind. I needed the in-at-the-deep-end three years of university to become who I am today. I would literally be a different human being without university. A poorer, dumber, still-in-my-hometown¹ human being. Without university, the amount of spare time I would spend on 4chan is incalculable. Ten years of that and I would be into such, such, such weird anime porn. University, for me, was some proper butterfly effect shit.

When announcing the budget change last year, George Osborne – a man with a face I would never tire of punching; I could punch that cunt's face until my arms were nubs; I would punch my arms down to the shoulders, his face would just be a pink spread of gristle and mist and I would still be punching; I would be grinding my sockets down to something smooth and soft; scientists would have to develop special robot arms like those ones they test sofas with at IKEA just to mount on to me so I could keep punching him – George Osborne said that there was "basic unfairness in asking taxpayers to fund grants for people who are likely to earn a lot more than them", and honestly, hyperbole aside, reading that quote back makes me feel more than a little sick. Point fucking one: a university degree is no longer any promise of a higher earning potential (you basically emerge, fresh-faced and full of hope for the challenges of a life ahead of you, only for supposed entry-level jobs to somehow expect a year of working experience already, and you are asked to do a thousand internships before someone deems you worthy enough to pay). Point two: as announced today, any potential increase in earning potential is eclipsed by the fact that student debt wipes out any pay premiums, i.e. the cost of the smarts in your head that supposedly make you more valuable eclipse the actual value of the smarts in your head near-perfectly. Point three: as the IF further reported today, the £400,000 figure that has long been cited as the average overall lifetime earnings of a university graduate was formulated in 2002, which may as well have been a thousand million years ago, and now that figure is closer to £100,000, which over the course of a lifetime may as well be nothing. And fourthly: fuck the taxpayer. Why are we so precious about people who are loudly proud about the fact they pay taxes? Every fucker pays taxes: it's taken from your pay before it even gets to you. And the only reason I am able to pay as much tax as I pay now is because I earn more because I went to university. Fucking come on.

(A quick sidebar: student loans debt is often sold as "good debt"; that you only repay it once you earn above a certain threshold; it's such a low interest rate; Don't Worry About It, Kid, Go Out There, Have Fun. To kids who have never seen £9,000 in their life, three years' worth of that is daunting enough to make you second-guess whether you should even to go university in the first place. Add on some grants' worth of money to the mix and you're looking at a near lifetime of debt. A lifetime. To go and eat Pot Noodles and talk to kids called Rory about books you have actually read and they haven't. For three years fucking about in Exeter when your family needs money, needs income, when you could just get a job and help them, use your smarts and be smart. There's no good debt in that situation.)

Why, then, given the above, should anyone ever go to university? It's becoming an ever more difficult question. Essentially, the way it's going: no, nobody should go to university, ever, really. But fundamentally: everyone should have the chance to choose whether they get to go or not. Time travel Yung Joel to the year 2k16, and all I can see is me and my mum, her sat and me stood by the computer, running the numbers and her just shaking her head. If I was 18 this year, I absolutely would not have been able to take the opportunity that changed and forged me as a human, and that truth absolutely takes the wind out of me. How many smart, ambitious kids who happen to have poor parents just had their legs cut off today? How many people just had that choice – not the opportunity, but the choice as to whether they could take it – stolen from them? How will that affect this country in ten years' time, 20 years' time? This is the Toriest thing that has happened in living memory. They have condemned an entire class of people to stay in their lane for generations.

I don't want universities to be full of braying rich kids who can somehow wear seven or eight polo shirts at once spending three years playing rugger and fucking pigs' heads before they get a job their brother arranged for them in the City. I want those posh cunts to have to confront us. I want poor kids to go and stare them in the white of their eyes and say, "I am smarter than you. I am better than you." I want the kids who never thought they could afford success to fucking triumph. I want them to be their bosses, I want them to crush the rich, I want them to fire them from their jobs and send them back to their daddy's country pile with their tails between their legs. We shouldn't need the heat of our anger at the system to be the only motivation to succeed. We should be allowed the opportunity to get on and be better regardless.

University doesn't make you a better person, or a smarter person. It does change the odds in your favour. It gives you an extra couple of rolls of the dice when you think you are crapped out. It lets you meet people who can pull you up. It gives you two little letters by the end of your name that you can wear like a shield. No matter how they fuck with you, you've got that in you. When I graduated, I went back to my hometown, and everything seemed smaller, narrower. For a summer I worked in the same gigantic Royal Mail office my mum worked in. And that's where I'd still be, if I'd never been given the agitation to get out. I know exactly what view I'd see when I looked out of the window – where I'd sit, because I already sat there, I already did it. I had a temp job that was looking to go perm, and where would I have got from there? I had a little tin of Coffee Mate I kept in my desk drawer because we weren't allowed actual milk. I was on the fast lane to becoming an office drone. I had patter with the old guy who sat behind me at my cubicle. I had a tie and three shirts on rotation. I took my lunch at the exact same time every day and went and ate my sandwich in a high park and I looked down upon a town I hated and an office I hated. If that's what you want, great, but I didn't, and a university education gave me the opportunity to bust out of that. I am in the absurd position now where I can say, with my sort-of-small overdraft and my ~£12k of remaining debt and my university degree, that I am lucky to have that. An entire generation – maybe two, maybe three – of smart, forward-thinking kids just got that chance taken away from them. That's a crime. Absolutely fuck this awful country.

@joelgolby

^{1. Obvious caveat: there's nothing wrong with staying in your hometown, but my hometown is ranked pretty badly in terms of "total deprivation", i.e. employment, income and life expectancy metrics are all pretty low, and I'm not saying "London is great, it is the be all and the end of all," but also I don't want to maybe work in a big anodyne office – if I can get the job there, that is – and die on the dot at 60, no shade↩}

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Some pub food, not served in Pubby McPubface (Photo: Sean Whitton, via)

Sometimes you see a headline that takes your breath away. A headline that reminds you that life is just an endless series of disasters, both natural and man-made, and that it's merely a waiting game until the explosion of the sun and the sucking of all humanity into the vacuum of space, to be forgotten by all that has lived or ever will live. Sometimes a news story can remind you of that. This is one such story.

In the town of Newbridge, Wrexham, The Newbridge Arms pub sits awaiting its new landlord, a fella by the name of Peter Daniels. Daniels decides that under his presidency, the pub should undergo a name change. After seeing the furore surrounding the Boaty McBoatface ship-naming debacle – which we have covered extensively here on VICE – and seeing the name Pubby McPubface on a website of potential London restaurant names, Daniels knows he has found the perfect moniker for his new public house.

"I thought, 'If we're going to be daft about it, we might as well be totally daft about it,'" the 54-year-old adult man of Cefn Mawr said. Apparently people from Lanzarote have since been "liking" it on Facebook.

Look down. The dirty red and yellow speckled carpet melts through the floor and the yawning chasm opens. It's a black you've never seen before, the kind of black you imagine falling into upon death. You plunge, feet-first, stiff as a board, through the darkness. The choking black pulls the air from your lungs. The liquid in your ears stays still, there's no wind rush, but you somehow know you're falling, and will be forever and ever. Your organs are constricted in an endless panic, and beads of sweat roll across your dried heart, and you squeeze your eyes closed tightly and beg for your thoughts to stop, will your conscious mind to die. And then a voice from the blackness twists your neck back into the room. It's Peter Daniels from Cefn Mawr. "Can I get you anything else?" he asks. You're in Pubby McPubface in Wrexham with a pint of lager in front of you dribbling on a beer towel. You reply that you would like two packets of dry roasted nuts.

@joe_bish

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Hi there.

We know there are certain times when it's hard for you to read VICE – for example, when you are cycling or making love to your significant other. For those moments, we have created the VICE UK Podcast, a listen-y kind of way to enjoy our take on what's going on in this country and throughout the rest of the world.

In this pilot episode we discuss some of the weirder stories from the past week, including that vlogger people thought had been kidnapped by ISIS and the guy who hid cocaine in his foreskin. Also, Joel Golby takes umbrage with his grandma and we take a look at generational resentment following the EU referendum.

It'll be back in a couple of weeks with the full run, which you'll be able to subscribe to from iTunes or Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts. In the meantime, listen to this on the Soundcloud below or download it to your computer.

Follow Sam, Becca and Bish on Twitter

"I've made a huge mistake." Will Arnett as GOB Bluth. Photo via Fox

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Guilt can be a good compass, one that keeps you on the track of something resembling an upstanding, moral life. If you've done a shitty thing to someone—be it subtle or outrageous, big or small—you should carry some guilt around about it. If not, you're a sociopath. And that's not a good thing. With that in mind, we asked from friends and co-workers things they've done in the past that they still feel guilty over. The people that said they didn't have any are the ones we now avoid.

"I arrived on Thursday – I drove from the UK. Barely slept. Now all I do is polish, even underneath the truck. You never know where the judges might look."

This article originally appeared on VICE Netherlands

Last weekend, about 50,000 people travelled to the Dutch TT Circuit racetrack in Assen for the 36th edition of the biggest and baddest transport event in Europe: Truckstar Festival. Photographer Sander van der Bij expected to find the usual TT-crowd — extremely loud drunks that only seem to like really loud honks and binge drinking. Instead, he found a lovely bunch of avid amateurs and serious professionals. Trucking and transport is serious business, after all.

Sander walked along the entire track, where 2,200 trucks were displayed. He photographed the most beautiful trucks and their proud drivers, and asked them to say a few words about their prized possessions.

You can find more of Sander van der Bij's work on his website.

This article contains images from across the length of Abzû, showing various areas of the game. No actual "story" spoilers are featured.

It's not uncommon, with the world going to shit on a daily basis, to turn to entertainment for temporary escapism – at least amongst those of us who can afford televisions, stereos, evenings at the cinema, computers, games consoles and the like. Exploring virtual worlds through video games has long been a way to blow off steam, to find a centre, to remove oneself for just an hour or two from the pressures of the everyday. It might be that's with a gun, or twelve; it might be entirely non-violent, or brain teasing, or every bit as epic of scale as the most bankrolled Hollywood blockbuster. Abzû is none of these things, really, but it's absolutely the game of 2016 that most generously welcomes refugees from the real world.

Abzû, the debut release from Californian studio Giant Squid, is a diving simulator, of sorts: you play, third person, as an unnamed diver, who travels from the shallow waters of crystal seas, through kelp forests down to the deepest depths of the ocean, where hydrothermal vents maintain an ecosystem almost totally alien to the rest of the world. Come the end of this journey – which won't take too long if rushed through, but you'll most likely want to luxuriate in its colours and calm – the player will have seen creatures that no human ever has, and to say any more on the fauna of Abzû is to spoil the discoveries ahead.

What's no spoiler whatsoever is the summarisation that, in terms of how Abzû plays, it's essentially Journey 2. The diver solves very simple puzzles, always interacted with via a single button press, to open gateways through to the next stage, while keeping an eye out for collectible shells and shimmering "portals", which when activated release new species into the already bustling collection of sea life. You'll bring robotic drones back online down here, too, which will zip around you as you swim; and just occasionally run into some angry inverted pyramid things that will, should you get too close to them, zap you, temporarily paralysing your progress, much like the patrolling guardians of Journey's later stages.

These shocks are only moments when Abzû becomes something other than a becalming meditation, a relaxing distraction, and more like a game in which there is emphasis on the player to actively avoid harm. At all other times you are sharing space with the creatures that call the subaquatic world their own, all the while without worrying about oxygen or your fingertips shrivelling up.

The "you" of this experience is a mystery at the very beginning, with some clarity established come the game's second half via vivid murals on ancient ruins. But again without stepping into spoiler territories, there's the definite sense on even a cursory poke around each stage's relics and wildlife – both very much alive and reduced to skeletons – that this isn't quite the Blue Planet we know in the today of 2016. Look to the skies, too, if you get the chance, and peek at what's behind the clouds. Something is definitely fishy, here.

The Journey comparisons will surprise nobody given the team on this game – artist and Giant Squid co-founder Matt Nava worked on thatgamecompany's breakthrough hit of 2012, as did Nick Clark, credited as "advisor" on the studio's website. The music, which is as much of an attraction here as the compelling immersion of the drink itself, comes courtesy of Journey composer Austin Wintory. Its strings and voices surge and swell, recede only to rise once more, never suffocating moments of intimacy and perfectly accompanying set-piece style occasions – you'll swear that these blue whales are dancing just for you. Abzû has both a concert running time and comparably pleasing rhythm of highs and holds, its soundtrack allowing for natural pauses and periods of reflection, as well as complementing the pure pleasure of leaping from the water with dolphins all around you.

Everything is strictly linear – while each stage is full of murky corners and jellyfish-filled caves to poke around in, flap your flippers too far from where the game needs you to be and a kind of tractor beam emerges from the diver's chest, redirecting them towards the goal. Again, this is the Journey model, but under the sea rather than in the desert. The diver's playful chirps, reciprocated by the drones, are like those of Journey's travellers, and there will be times during this new game where the experienced Journey player will feel that they've seen this all before. Sure, Abzû frames the familiar in beautiful ways, but this isn't a title that challenges how creators approach gentler experiences. That's not a problem, but if you're coming to Abzû wanting to feel a true sense of achievement comes its credits, you won't get that from it – this is autopilot fare, albeit dressed in the most wonderful way.

Twelve meditation spots are scattered throughout the game – and once active, these can be revisited at any time via the pause and main menus. These allow you to treat Abzû like an interactive aquarium, using the left stick to switch between species, following them as they go about their business totally unmoved by your presence in their territory. (In the main game, you can also grip onto larger creatures, and go for a ride.) You'll want to find all of these points, which are shark statues covered in a fine layer of sediment until you blow it away, likewise the coral-surrounded portals and glowing shells. I'm yet to discover them all, so I've no idea what gathering them all does, but it could be akin to Journey's scarf, granting the diver greater speed from the game's beginning.

You'll want to prolong your time under the surface, ticking off the game's slight selection of achievements. But once Abzû's ostensible targets are met, it's hard to see too many people returning to it, unless they really fancy a date with a goblin shark or tomopteris, or want to further explore theories regarding the alien-like tech that's both operational and smashed to pieces throughout the environments. While it lasts, though, this is the most fantastic recession from reality that gaming can offer right now, in advance of No Man's Sky's promised near-infinite discovery.

Abzû isn't totally without conflict, not that you'll ever swing a punch. It's grand of art design but limited of investigable space. It bars progression using locked doors, but cracking them open requires no action beyond following a chain or a cable to the switch or generator in question. As a Journey "sequel", spiritually at least, it misses that game's singularly attractive multiplayer component. In some respects, many indeed, Abzû is not much to recommend at all, neither challenging nor original. But then you play it, and realise that it's so much more than any on-paper list of qualities and shortcomings can do justice to.

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If you're looking for somewhere to spend a little time, to lift the weight of simply living, to just be for a while without demands or distress, Abzû is a perfect digital destination. It doesn't need to be anything more than what it is: a deep dive into requiescence that lasts just long enough for the outside world to slow to a silent stillness.

Abzû is out now for PlayStation 4 and Microsoft Windows. Find more information at the game's official website.

@mikediver

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"Snitches get pickets" read one home-made placard in the drizzle. It was as good a three-word summary as you could hope for of the latest terrible chapter in the history of rainy fascism island.

Filling the pavement and most of a busy London arterial road in the middle of rush hour, several hundred people turned up outside Byron's Holborn restaurant on Monday to protest against the company's involvement in an immigration sting which led to the immediate arrest and deportation of a substantial number of their own employees – apparently on the instruction of the Home Office.

On the 4th of July, immigration raids at numerous Byron premises led to scores of arrests, and 35 members of staff were deported back to countries including Brazil, Nepal, Egypt and Albania, with the "full co-operation" of the gourmet burger chain, according to the Home Office. It was to be a fortnight before the Spanish-language newspaper El Ibérico broke the story, sparking a huge public outcry during the last week. According to the paper, another 150 members of staff are now in hiding.

After skirmishes over the weekend, the first substantial #BoycottByron protest achieved one picketing victory before it even began – the Holborn branch was shut down hours beforehand (a sign cited, with impressive vagueness, "technical reasons" ). Holding signs reading "No human is illegal" and "Bun down Babyron", protesters braved the depressing summer weather to chant catchy slogans like "How do you like your burgers? Without deportations" and listen to (anonymous) testimonies from Byron employees and the numerous groups who had called the demonstration.

Alex from Dissidents wasted no time in addressing some of those who had defended the burger chain as an innocent party, with no choice but to follow Home Office rules: "I just want to speak to the people who have been saying, 'But it's the law.' It's quite simple, really: the law doesn't say, 'Rally your workers in the building, under the guise of fake training, lock the doors and call immigration enforcement,'" she said, to the loudest cheers of the day.

"The other thing is when people say, 'But it's the law,' it's important to remember that some laws need to be changed – and the Immigration Act needs to be changed. The Immigration Act was put in place when Theresa May decided that they needed to create what she called a 'hostile environment' for so-called 'illegal' migrants. That hostile environment means that it's almost impossible for people to work, it's almost impossible for people to rent, to go to the doctors, and just live a decent, dignified life – and that's something we need to talk about: it might be legal, what happened at Byron, but it doesn't make it right."

One Byron waiter who witnessed the raids on kitchen staff in her restaurant was left in tears. She arrived at work half-way through the sting, set up by bosses as a bogus morning meeting: "I realised what was actually happening after about 10 minutes of being there and got really upset and was told by the area manager to start opening the restaurant. I tried but was having, I think, a mild panic attack," she said, emphasising how hard her deported colleagues had worked, many of them doing over 50-hour weeks for the minimum wage, in some cases for several years.

"I was so appalled that the area manager, directors and all those at head office would do this to these guys, all to avoid a fine because they didn't have the proper procedures in place to check their ID in the first place," she said. "They were fed to the lions."

Larry

For 22-year-old legal aid caseworker Larry, the Byron raids were the tip of an iceberg we are just beginning to realise is, in fact, an iceberg. "I just feel it's totally outrageous – the whole 'hostile environment' project is just encouraging fear and aggression and racism," he said. "It's so clear in the results of the referendum, and the aftermath of that. This is just one example, and we're all really angry about it, but given the direction Theresa May wants to go in – immigration raids in employment, through landlords – this kind of stuff is going to become more frequent, and it's terrifying to think it might become normalised."

A spokesperson for the organisers of the protest emphasised the "horrifying impact" of the raids on families left behind, adding: "There is no evidence whatsoever to prove that this government's 'hostile environment' is achieving its purpose (to limit migration to this country), but instead it's forcing already vulnerable migrant communities into further exploitation at the hands of employers, landlords and so on."

Byron's apparent cynicism seems to have caught the public's attention, but what should Byron have done in the circumstances? According to the spokesperson: "They should support their workers with insecure immigration status, helping them to apply to regularise their status – they have a duty to do this as they reap so much profit from these vulnerable, exploited workers."

One week after the raids took place, a little-noticed story ran in the business press pointing to the current health and future expansion of the company: Byron has just secured a £12 million fund, provided jointly by Santander and RBS, to expand from the 65 restaurants they currently have nationally to 100, over the next three years. In a sense, the immigration uproar has come at the worst possible time for the company.

Hosting a noisy, disruptive protest – not to mention the massed ranks of press, radio and TV – in a prime central London location, outside a closed restaurant, is pretty terrible PR; perhaps especially so for a business which trades on an aesthetic of carefully-modelled ruin-porn authento-hipsterism. And the scrutiny may intensify. Yesterday, CorporateWatch published research accusing Byron's owners of "siphoning millions of pounds offshore"; investment fund Hutton Collins bought the chain for £100 million in 2013 and are taking advantage of a new scheme "helping the owners move their earnings from the burger chain into tax havens".

Defenders of Byron will continue to argue that the company was "just obeying the law", but they will struggle to convince everyone that the situation is as simple as all that.

@danhancox / @CBethell_photo

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"Well then, time to save the city."

It's the sort of line you'd expect to hear uttered in a gravelly rumble, barely decipherable, by the cowled, gadget-packing vigilante of Gotham himself. You can picture the scene: the Dark Knight, rigid like a gargoyle on the very edge of a towering structure gnarled by the rigors of fantasy fulfilment, all architecturally unlikely swoops and curves complementing gleaming glass and dazzling neon, looking out over the city he's guarded for 77 years.

But it's Batman's other half, his alter-ego, the man behind the man behind the mask, Bruce Wayne, who steps out into a fundraiser for Gotham DA Harvey Dent after muttering these words to his faithful butler, father substitute and confidante Alfred Pennyworth. Having just patched himself up after a City Hall dust-up with gun-toting bad guys, he's hosting the party at Wayne Manor, throwing his weight behind Dent as he campaigns to become mayor of Gotham. There's small talk with old family friends. A reporter, Vicki Vale, slips into the fray to ask a question or two – strictly off the record, for appearances anyway. There's the briefest glimpse of someone called Oz – we'll come back to him. And then Carmine Falcone makes his entrance, and the mood sours, never to be sweetened.

The player's not even seen the title card of Telltale's new Batman series before they're thrust into one of the studio's trademark game-affecting decisions: does Bruce, voiced by The Last of Us and Uncharted 4 actor Troy Baker (who has previous Telltale form, too, in Tales from the Borderlands), shake this notorious mafia boss's hand, or decline to play friendly with him. Falcone's got connections, and his influence could make a difference in Dent's efforts to dislodge the corrupt Hamilton Hill from the city's mayorship. Whatever your decision, it has repercussions that are felt before the end of episode one of five, "Realm of Shadows".

But this is all familiar, all seen before – we know how Telltale Games play, so what's important is the stories they're telling. While Batman: The Telltale Series, to give this episodic feature its full and proper title, features action sequences, they're no different to what we've promptly responded to in the past in the likes of Game of Thrones and ...Borderlands: mostly it's a case of nudging sticks and tapping face buttons, but there is some basic targeting, too, and, this being the broad-fisted Batman, special finishing moves are activated by combining commands. Even Bruce gets the chance to throw some punches (and dodge plenty, too), as the game splits itself fairly evenly between the two playable identities.

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Watch VICE's film on the real superheroes of Montreal

What is new, and makes sense given you're playing as the world's greatest detective, is crime scene investigation sequences in which clues must be connected to find a hypothesis regarding the absolute state of the situation. It's simply handled, just a case of clicking one point in the environment and dragging a line to the related evidence, but does make you feel like you're as smart as a man who possesses genius-level intellect. Another interesting part of proceedings is the planning of an assault on Falcone's club – before the quick time events begin, you essentially draw a path of carnage through the throng, taking out goons as you go, and the game then asks you to act accordingly. Do you put this gangster through a flimsy, decorative screen, or introduce his face to a solid oak table? It's barely a choice, but one you have to make all the same.

The Falcone here is the standard angry old man in a suit, albeit excellently voiced by another Uncharted series performer, Richard McGonagle (he plays Sully). Batman is Batman: pissed off and given to extreme (albeit rarely lethal) violence. Wayne is as much of a prick as you choose to play him as, and Catwoman is the conflicted thief we know so well, when she's not Selina Kyle. Where Telltale does throw a curveball is with the aforementioned Oz, aka Oswald Cobblepot, aka The Penguin – only he's not (obviously) yet the villainous umbrella-lover. He's an old school friend of Bruce's, back in town and going through some tough financial and personal times. You can choose to play nicely with him when he helps the unmasked Wayne out of a sticky situation, but his plans are clear: he's here to claim some of this city for himself, and won't be responsible for whoever stands in his way.

'Batman: A Telltale Series', launch trailer

This Oz is the sole genuinely interesting character in "Realm of Shadows" – clearly a sandwich, flask of squash and chocolate-coated wafer biscuit short of a picnic, but without the hat and the nose and all that bloody squawking, quite likeable in a menacing kind of way. If Telltale takes him down the road of realism, so far away from the character seen in Tim Burton's Batman Returns and countless comic stories, it'll be fascinating to see what the hardcore fanbase's reaction is. His relationship with Bruce looks to be one of the central narratives of the series to come, even more so than Batman's beat downs of Gotham's various thug elements, and I hope that we'll be able to keep him more on Bruce's side than not. The Penguin as (almost) an ally could be quite the twist.

By the close of "Realm of Shadows", we've seen Bruce in a spot of bother with the local press and facing some serious damage to his family's reputation. He's about to ask some questions of someone very close to him – I expect you can work out who that is – while also nurturing a professional partnership with Jim Gordon. At least, that's how I left things, when my credits rolled. As with all Telltale productions, your mileage is likely to differ – you might choose to be polite to the snooping Vale, whereas I essentially told her to get the hell out of my house. It's all intriguing enough, but not exciting, yet – but then, it's the rare episodic game that does more than begin to position its pieces on the board in part one.

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Batman is its makers' best-looking game yet, running on an updated engine, and its cast – which includes Erin Yvette as Vale (Snow White in The Wolf Among Us) and Laura Bailey as Catwoman (...Borderlands' Fiona) – is undeniably excellent. But without anything really radical happening in this opening 90 minutes – some trademark growling, a splash of gore, probably-going-somewhere flirting between Bats and Cats – it's going to take another episode or two of plotline development before we really know if this is a Dark Knight worth following to its conclusion, or a Batman & Robin best left in the bin.

The first episode of Batman: A Telltale Series is out now for various platforms. Find more information at the Telltale Games website.

@MikeDiver

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Photo by Denis Bocquet via

Last week, we asked women all over Europe what gets them to swipe right. You should obviously read the whole thing but here's the tl;dr version: Look decent, hold a puppy in your profile pics, don't hold a puppy in your profile pics and/or don't be an arsehole.

This week, we've asked a bunch of men from all over Europe to tell us how to make a good first Tinder impression on them.

WILL, 28, LONDON

VICE: What made you originally download Tinder?
Will: I wanted to meet girls! If I'm being perfectly honest, half of it is just to get quick dates and hook-ups and half of it to meet a potential girlfriend.

What's your biggest turn-off?
Girls who ask too many questions – when they're basically testing you, and it's almost like they're having you fill out a questionnaire. I prefer starting off with a fun, friendly chat.

What gets you to swipe right?
I like girls with dark, curly hair – and Mediterranean girls. I love pouty selfies. If a girl does a mirror selfie, she has to look in the camera and not in the mirror – that's a turn-off, actually. So I appreciate a sexy, seductive mirror selfie but it's nice if she also has one outdoorsy shot, so I can see her in her entirety.

That's pretty specific. What kind of photos would make you swipe left?
This will make me sound terrible but I really don't like goofy photos. I don't find it sexy at all when someone's looking silly. I remember this girl who had a picture of herself dressed up as a clown for Halloween, or something. She was doing this silly pose and I'm sure she was really nice and cool but I just don't think that's sexy. I'm a chilled out guy and I definitely have silly photos but I just wouldn't swipe right on Tinder.

What's the worst opening line?
"Hi" or "hey" are shit. And "ASL" . I mean – you already have all that information. I never know what to say to follow up on that.

AUDUN, 32, COPENHAGEN

VICE: Why do you use Tinder?
Audun: One of my mates told me about it and. Tinder feels like a natural way of dating for me. I'm not necessarily more serious on it but it's not just about the hook-ups, either.

What do you look for on Tinder?
Well, I'm looking for a potential boyfriend. I usually go for guys who look a bit more masculine – not the overly flamboyant types. But aesthetically what I like varies. I like funny people, especially if their humour is self-deprecating. In order to consider someone for something more long-term, I need to feel physical attraction and he shouldn't be too high on himself.

How do you communicate?
I'm usually very forward – endless chat conversations bore me to no end.

Do you go on dates with a lot of people you match with?
No, I actually rarely go out on a Tinder date. I get a lot of matches, but it hardly ever turns into a date. But it comes and goes – things are kind of slow during the winter but it heats up during the spring and summer.

ARISTIDE, 22, BARCELONA

VICE: What would you swipe right for?
Aristide: I don't have a type exactly, and I don't care about the pictures much because you can never really know what someone's like from them. So I swipe right a lot and then talk to whoever I match with.

When you talk to girls, what spikes your interest?
Well, I really like girls who are looking for something more than sex – nice, respectful girls with a strong personality.

Have you had any luck finding that kind of girl?
Not really, most of the girls I've found only wanted to have sex with me and that was it. That's fine with me if they're being honest about it, but some of them told me they were looking for more and then never texted me back after we hooked up. So I end up doing the same and using it to find something casual. It's great for that but I'm looking for something more.

So would you say that Tinder works for you?
Yes, but only for quick sex.

DAAN, 25, AMSTERDAM

VICE: Why do you have Tinder?
Daan: Mostly because it's pretty funny. I got it when it just came out in the Netherlands and there were only locals on it. You'd see all these people you knew. It's a bit more boring now but I did make a lot of friends on there.

Do you use it often?
No, not really. Mostly when I'm in the loo, shitting and swiping.

Do you swipe based on the first picture only?
No, I usually look at the other pics as well. A lot of girls do the "Tinder surprise" thing – they only have pictures from the neck up, so you have to look at a few more photos before you can make any kind of decision. If it's a match, you need to take a good hard look at her Facebook page as well.

What are the biggest turn-offs?
I really can't stand pictures of girls hanging out with tigers or monkeys in Thailand or some other exotic location. And you know what kind of girl you're dealing with if her first picture is a bikini shot. When it comes to group pics, you always have to watch out for the cheerleader effect – a group of mediocre looking girls together can look pretty great, until you look at them all individually.

EMANUELE, 23, MILAN

VICE: How long have you been on Tinder?
Emanuele: I've been on Tinder for almost a year. I'm quite addicted – when I wake up in the morning I open the app almost automatically and then I check it several times during the day.

What kind of pictures do you like?
I like genuine and clean guys – I hate posers. If you're all about showing your abs or making weird faces, I have no desire to get to know you better. But I'm also very picky when it comes to how people approach me.

So let's talk about the perfect approach.
The perfect approach is warm and friendly – but not overwhelmingly so. I also don't like guys who immediately get to the point. I need to have some kind of chemistry with a guy to want to meet him or have sex with him.

How many guys have met your standards so far?
I went out with six guys I met on Tinder, and those dates all went very well. I guess that's because when I agree to meet someone, I really see something in him.

MARVIN, 21, BERLIN

VICE: What are you looking for on Tinder?
Marvin: I'm usually looking for something casual, which has been working well so far. I just enjoy every moment, whatever happens. I chat with people a lot – sometimes that's interesting and sometimes not so much.

What will get you to swipe right?
It's Tinder and I'm not expecting to find my soulmate there. So if I like the way she looks, I'll swipe right. If she has a lame faux-inspiring quote from some poet or philosopher in her bio, I'll swipe left. That's so impersonal and boring.

What was your worst chat on Tinder like?
It was kind of funny, actually. I messaged her and she would only write back these very clipped, short replies – one or two words. That was so stupid – I have to be able to have a conversation with someone. So at some point I just let it go and didn't get back to her – and that's when she asked for my number.

PETRUŢ, 21, BUCHAREST

VICE: Why do you have Tinder?
Petruț: Because I'm bored. I like the concept – you just directly contact the girls you like, and that makes hooking up easier.

So what are you looking for on Tinder?
I'm looking for my future wife. Ha, kidding. I'm looking for sex. It would be pathetic to try to find the love of your life on Tinder.

What kind of girls do you usually hook up with?
I used to swipe right on girls with whom I shared no interests or friends. But I quickly realised that you have to have something in common. Like this one time, there was a girl who liked the same independent political leader I liked. So I made a joke about politics which broke the ice and gave us something to talk about.

JESSY, 21, PARIS

VICE: What convinced you to get on Tinder?
Jessy: I just wanted to give it a go – I figured it would be easier to hook up with girls. I never really had any trouble meeting girls, but when you don't have enough money to go out in bars and clubs, it can be really helpful.

Do you care about what girls write in their bio?
I'm always curious to see how someone would describe themselves but, to be honest, I don't care all that much. I mostly look at the pictures. The thing is, a girl can always lie about her character – a photo never lies.

DJORDJE, 22, BELGRADE

VICE: How long have you been using Tinder?
Djordje: It's been almost a year, but I don't use it all the time. I'll uninstall it, and then I'll get bored and install it again, and when I'm done with it, I'll uninstall it again.

What kind of people on Tinder are the most annoying?
Foreigners who are in Belgrade for just one night. I'm not interested in that at all.

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Abu Qaswara in a Jabhat al-Nusra van filled with explosives

Today sees the release of a new documentary about men who want to blow themselves up. Journalist Paul Refsdal's Dugma: The Button shadows a group of fighters from the Syria-based, al-Qaeda-affiliated group al-Nusra Front. These men have all added their names to the so-called "martyr list" and are waiting to be deployed with bomb-laden trucks in their battle against Assad's regime. Once they get to the frontline, they'll press the button and hitch a ride to paradise.

Through Refsdal's camera we get an unfettered insight into the mindset of these men as they teeter on the cusp of sweet immortality. Central among them are Abu Qaswara, a joker from Saudi Arabia with a love of fried chicken, and Abu Basir, a principled British jihadi who wants to fall in love and have a family.

Last Friday, al-Nusra Front leader Abu Mohammed announced that the group are cutting their ties with al-Qaeda and changing their name to Jabhat Fatah al-Sham. Seemingly an attempt to legitimatise their operation in the eyes of the West, their battles continue on the ground regardless, and their ultimate aims – defeat of Assad, control of Syria – remain unchanged.

Ahead of its release, Paul – whose previous work includes the documentary Behind the Taliban Mask – Skyped me from his home in Norway to chat about martyrs, humanity, kidnapping and gaining the trust of al-Qaeda.

The trailer for Dugma: The Button

VICE: Hi Paul. What made you want to make this film? Were you trying to humanise the martyrs-to-be?
Paul Refsdal: The subject of the bombers wasn't even my intention when I first got there. I just wanted to make a portrait of a group of low level al-Nusra fighters. I wanted to follow them for as long as possible and get some kind of grasp of their psychology. So in a way the answer to the question is yes, but I went in with an open mind. If they were to do, say, executions in front of me, I wouldn't have had any problems showing that. I didn't want it be Sesame Street or something.

How did you go about gaining access?
It was like any job application, really. I had released a documentary about the Taliban in 2010, called Behind the Taliban Mask. In that I presented a more humane side to the Taliban, so of course I mentioned that. I gave references, like a CV. I was also helped by the fact that when the US special forces killed Osama Bin Laden in 2011 they found a lot of letters in his compound. One of those letters was from an al-Qaeda media officer and listed some recommended journalists. I was on that.

Did al-Nusra ever put you under any pressure regarding the content of the film?
Not at all. They said, "Do what you want to do." They wanted it to be objective. For instance, there's a scene in the film where the coalition bombs the area near us, and an angry man is shouting, saying they are only bombing civilian houses. But there's a man correcting him, saying, "Please tell the truth," because it was also a military base. That man was a commander from al-Nusra. They could have had the chance to make some propaganda but they didn't want to do it. I think they just wanted to be honest.

Abu Qaswara

What attracted you to your main subject, Abu Qaswara?
He was exactly the opposite of the stereotype of bomber you would expect. I thought they would be a young person with little idea of life outside his town, and maybe narrow minded. But he's totally different. He's from Saudi Arabia, very generous and a nice guy.

One of the most moving parts of the film is when Abu Qaswara reveals that his father will be on the phone to him when he's in the truck.
The thing you might not understand is that his father is pushing a lot. I've heard that's quite common among the Saudis. As a martyr you reach the highest level of paradise, but you can also ask to bring 70 members of your family. Sometimes the family designate a son to save the family in the afterlife. It's not said outright in the film, but indicated... his father wanted to be on the phone at the time of explosion. He sent him a message saying, "When are you going to die?" So I think his father is pushing him. I'm not so sure he really wanted to do it.

Not to give too much away, but things don't quite go to plan. Do you think Abu Qaswara is happy the way things worked out?
I got a WhatsApp message from him yesterday. I just told him to stay safe, and he said he would be safe as long as there were chickens in the world. He loves fried chicken.

Abu Basir al-Britani

What about the British guy, Abu Basir al-Britani? Did he lose the respect of his brothers by deciding to come off the list?
Well, it was hard for Abu Basir because he'd told me his highest dream was to complete a martyrdom operation, but I don't think there was a problem because it was normal to change your mind. And it's always part of a bigger operation anyway; they send in the truck with the bomber, he blows it up on the frontline, makes a hole and the main force attacks through that hole. But they always have back-up in case the first bomber changes his mind. There's a lot of people on the list, so I don't think there's any stigma for him.

How would you compare your experience with al-Nusra to filming the Taliban for Behind the Taliban Mask?
Oh, it's much easier with al-Nusra – not just because of the language, but the cultural understanding. There are people there who have lived in Gulf states, with university degrees. It was very easy to communicate. In Afghanistan, most of them aren't literate. They didn't have any clue of the risk involved. They were men who may not have ever been out of their own valley – so it's quite different.

Plus, the Taliban kidnapped you while you were making that film.
It was the kind of thing that happens there. The commander wanted to re-marry, so he needed money, so he though he could just capture this journalist. It was absurd in a way.

You were were kidnapped for a week. Where were you kept?
I was just in a family home with an old man and his sons. I could go out of the compound to the toilet at night, but the translator said if we escaped the kidnappers would punish the family. If I wrote it all as a script people wouldn't believe me. I was handed a loaded Kalashnikov because they were worried another jihadi group would take me. They didn't have enough credit on their mobile phones. In the end I was the one who managed to call the Norwegian embassy. They tried, but didn't get past the switchboard. So I called it and was speaking in Norwegian with the security officer in the embassy, and was explaining where the place was, how many people there were and everything. It was like Monty Python's Flying Circus. But that's Afghanistan.

Thanks for talking, Paul.

@Gobshout

DUGMA: THE BUTTON is available on iTunes Worldwide from today.

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Theresa May on Andrew Marr. (Screengrab via the BBC)

When Gordon Brown lost the 2010 election, everyone said he'd fucked himself because he was too nervous to call a vote three years earlier when he was still riding high in the polls. Now, Theresa May is in a similar position, and like Brown, she has said it isn't going to happen.

But is she a woman of her word? There's already immense speculation about whether or not she'll go for it – perhaps later this year, maybe next. Why? Because some say this could be her chance to bury Labour and give the Tories a bigger majority. The Conservatives are currently 12 percent ahead in the polls and May is in her honeymoon period. Meanwhile, the Labour Party has managed to deteriorate even further since her taking office. In some ways, she couldn't be in more favourable circumstances.

However, some Conservatives fear that the government would be punished by voters for Brexit, and London Tories are worried following Sadiq Khan's victory. Also, MPs are generally pretty exhausted after the last general election and referendums. Nevertheless, the pressure is on her to make a call. But will she do it?

I spoke to Andrew Blick, lecturer in Politics and Contemporary History at King's College London, to get to grips with what is going on.

VICE: Hi Andrew. How likely is it that May will call a snap election?
Andrew: If she's going to do it, announcing it at the Tory Party conference in September would be a good time. The Conservative conference comes last, so Labour will likely have sorted out their issues and she'll know, for instance, if Corbyn's staying. If he's been beaten she may not want to call one. If he isn't beaten it will be quite tempting to call one then.

How hard is it to call a snap election?
Procedurally, it's slightly more difficult post-2011 after the fixed-term Parliaments Act was introduced by the Coalition, saying that the parliament would run for the full five years unless one of two conditions are met. The first is that 66 percent of all MPs have to vote for an early general election. Obviously, to do that you'd have to get at least one of the opposition parties on board, which could be quite difficult. The other way of doing it, which is the one she might well have to take if Labour don't play ball, is passing a motion saying this house has no confidence in the government. It would look on the surface slightly odd, but there's nothing strictly to stop them doing that.

How did it used to happen?
In ordinary circumstances in the past, the Prime Minister would have gone to the Queen and asked for a dissolution of the government and, generally, you'd get it. There was an unspoken understanding that if you abused this right you might possibly be refused – for instance, if you asked very soon after a general election when there was no real need.

So they've made the Queen redundant?
Yes, it's taken her powers away!

Do you think May would be wise to call one soon?
She initially said she wasn't going to do it, so if she does it might look a bit opportunistic, that she is blatantly exploiting the difficulties of the Labour Party when the country has other problems to think about. On the other hand, the temptation must be enormous; Labour's not in a serious position to mount an election campaign at the moment.

Might that get resolved once the leadership election is over?
If Corbyn stays there's going to be problems, but if the party jettison him there's still going to be divisions. If he did lose it probably wouldn't be by a big majority, so there would be issues in the grassroots of the party and they wouldn't be in great shape.

So when would be a good time for the Tories to go for it?
There are boundary changes coming up and a reduction in the number of total seats. This is generally considered to be good for the Tories, so there's something to be said for May hanging on longer until they go through in 2018. On the other hand, in favour of calling one is that she hasn't got a very big majority in parliament and she hasn't got her own personal mandate.

What about pressures from within her own party?
The Conservatives have patched over their difference regarding Europe for the time being, but there are still issues. Even though they are all agreeing Brexit has got to happen, they're not agreeing what will happen in reality. Those that are Brexit-lite, such as May, think that we can basically minimise all the changes; and then the more fundamentalist end of the spectrum are saying no, we want to hold out for total control of our immigration policy, for instance. Those divisions may resurface and she might want to be going into that kind of argument having won her own majority so that she can withstand rebellions in her own party and claim to have a clear mandate. Otherwise, she has to wait until 2020, which is quite a long while, and by that time we could be out of the EU or still in the middle of long negotiations, which is not ideal. She actually might be better to call a general election before she starts the horrific negotiations.

May is riding high in the polls at the moment – is there always a honeymoon period when we get a new prime minister?
Yes, even Gordon Brown had one, the so-called "Brown bounce". May might look at Brown's lift in the polls in 2007 when he thought about calling a snap election. Like her, he was quite cautious about a general election and thought that he could have one and lose and become one of the shortest serving prime ministers ever, and no one wants to be that. He didn't call it and was accused of bottling it, and then the credit crunch came and he never really recovered. May could look at that and think she doesn't want to make the same mistake that he made.

Would Labour definitely lose if she did call one?
My guess is that the Tories would certainly increase their majority, no question about that. Although, if she leaves it, Corbyn may carry on until 2020, by which time Labour could be in an even worse position. So in some ways, a quick election might not be quite as bad for the Labour Party. Even though there will be a heavy defeat, it could mean Corbyn leaving sooner.

Why, then, are some people on the left calling for a snap election?
This always happens when a new unelected prime minister comes in. Opponents challenge the legitimacy of them – that's standard. Even when it's the last thing on earth they want, they feel obliged to do it. The don't want to be seen to be scared of a general election; even Cameron called for Gordon Brown to have one.

How hard is it for the opposition to force one?
It's impossible for the opposition to force one. At the very least you need a majority, and if they had majority in the House of Commons they wouldn't be in opposition. The governing party has to be on board, so no, they can't force it; they can wait for five years and they have one anyway.

If May called a snap general election would she be able to scrap parts of Cameron's 2015 manifesto she didn't like?
By winning an election she can have her own manifesto and, exactly, if there are things in Cameron's she doesn't like then she can dump them. At the moment the extent to which she is really bound by the existing manifesto is an interesting question; they've already dropped fiscal targets post leaving the EU. Clearly it's not the absolute be all and end all.

With two big votes in the space of a year, as well as leadership and mayoral elections, is there such a thing as voter fatigue?
Good question. Will they have had enough? Who knows – perhaps people are in the habit of voting and do it more, but I wouldn't be surprised if it looked like a forgone conclusion, so election turnout could be low. Labour voters would be demotivated and think they're going to lose anyway, and the Conservatives might be disinclined to vote, thinking the Tories are going to win anyway. That could have downward pressure on turnout. But actually going and voting – how difficult is it? It takes 15 minutes. I'm never fully convinced about voter fatigue. It's no more difficult than going out down the shops, and people do that every day.

What do you think – will she call one? Yes or no?
I'd be surprised if she does, but there may be something I don't know about. I think she'll wait until 2020.

Thanks, Andrew!

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PrEP medication (Screen grab from our documentary 'Stopping HIV with the Truvada Revolution')

Earlier today, a High Court judge ruled that NHS England should fund a drug that can prevent HIV. Earlier this year, NHS England maintained it wasn't responsible for HIV prevention (yes, really), arguing that local councils should fund the pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) medication as they are responsible for preventative health.

Leading HIV charity National Aids Trust campaigned against the NHS' position, and today applauded the judge's ruling, dubbing it a "game-changer". They're not wrong: PrEP can reduce the risk of being infected with HIV by up to 99 percent if taken consistently. Should the NHS decide to start funding the drug, those at risk of contracting HIV would be able to access PrEP for free.

Joe Morgan, editor-at-large at Gay Star News, said: "This is incredible news. Once available on the NHS it will save thousands of people from being infected with HIV in the future," adding that the ruling wasn't just a landmark win for the LGBTI community: "This isn't just about gay and bisexual men, but it will be useful for all groups who are at most at risk," he said. "PrEP will ultimately lead to the NHS saving money in the long run."

Thing is, nothing's definite; NHS England is planning to appeal the decision, announcing that it will commission a review on the effectiveness of PrEP while it waits for a decision from the Court of Appeals. NHS Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are yet to make a decision on the matter.

A wreath laid for Pedro Barrera outside the Belizean High Commission in London on the 5th of June, 33 years after his death (Photo by Lou Macnamara)

Using papers found at the UK National Archives, VICE previously revealed the extent of cooperation between British forces and the murderous Guatemalan junta at the height of that country's 36-year long civil war. In 1983, Britain had a garrison of 1,500 soldiers stationed in neighbouring Belize. They were supposedly there to prevent a Guatemalan invasion of the former British colony, but our investigation showed how they ended up helping the regime of former president Rios Montt – currently awaiting trial for genocide – and hunted down Guatemalan rebels sheltering in Belize. They also shared intelligence about rebels with junta officers that had been linked to human rights abuses.

Following our investigation, a former Belizean spy who worked with the British has claimed that a rebel informant was handed over to the junta's forces, who later killed him. As the British passed him over, they played a recording of the rebel detailing massacres carried out by the Guatemalan government's forces, something which could have led to the informant's death.

We sent a man to his death

Our investigation told how a British patrol to find rebel bases was guided by a 27-year-old Guatemalan, Pedro Barrera – a former rebel turned informant. Barrera failed to lead the patrol to any rebel bases, so he was interrogated by Belize police's special branch before being handed back to Guatemalan authorities, who went on to murder him.

A former Belizean special branch officer is claiming to be the interpreter for that patrol with Barrera. Commenting on the VICE investigation, the man said: "What I read there is what I did." The retired spy, who did not want to be named, told Belize's Amandala newspaper that, "Pedro Barrera wanted support – that we grant him refugee status in Belize to protect him and stay here, so he started to cooperate with us and he promised that he was going to show us a guerrilla camp."

The patrol was inserted into the jungle by a British "Gazelle" helicopter. When the patrol failed to find any guerrilla activity, the ex-spy claims Barrera started crying, begged for refugee status and offered to "share everything he knew about the Guatemalan army". British officers allegedly recorded as Barrera detailed Guatemalan army massacres of indigenous Maya people. When Barrera was handed into Guatemalan custody, the officer alleges that "the British played the recorded tape ... upon hearing Barrera's accusations the faces of the Guatemalan officers contorted with anger".

Shortly after he was handed over, Barrera was executed by Guatemalan government gunmen. "We sent a man to his death," the ex-spook told Amandala.

The agent did not regret working in intelligence. "I enjoyed it. Sad to say, but I find it intriguing... the James Bond type of thing," he said. However, he reflected that, "At the time, you feel you're doing something good; you don't see the bigger picture. You don't see the consequences; for example, the thousands of peasants that were massacred in Guatemala... i n time it bothers your conscience."

A wreath laid for Pedro Barrera outside the Belizean High Commission in London on the 5th of June, 33 years after his death (Photo by Lou Macnamara)

His revelations will reinforce concerns that British forces in Belize failed in their legal duty of care towards Pedro Barrera. Lawyer Daniel Carey from Deighton Pierce Glynn Solicitors, who won an award for his work in Guatemala, commented that Britain has "a human rights obligation not to hand prisoners in its custody to regimes where they face a risk of torture or death."

At the time, British diplomats did not appear to take the issue seriously, scribbling in the corner of one telegram that the patrols were "real Sherlock Holmes stuff".

DINING WITH THE ENEMY

Belize's special branch was funded by UK aid money and effectively run by a British policeman. The ex-spy claims that intelligence officers were invited into Guatemala to dine with the military regime, including the officers from the notorious Kaibiles special-forces unit, which is believed to have murdered Pedro Barrera and carried out genocidal massacres.

These diners were "characterised by excesses of Guatemalan Gallo beers, game meat and marimba music", he told Amandala. "During the night, the Guatemalan soldiers would chauffeur them into the seductive Flores night life," a riverine town almost 100km inside Guatemala.

A file found at the UK National Archives supports this allegation, and shows that a Belizean major visited the Kaibiles' notorious training academy, even drawing a crude map of the camp. (Belize's tiny army was then under the command of a British officer.)

Despite the Kaibiles appalling human rights record , the document shows that the visitors "had a very good lunch with most of the instructors ... barbecue chicken, beef, corn tortillas, bread, soup made from carrots and pumpkin, cheese chips, watermelon, pepsi-cola in cans and beers".

According to the file, one Kaibiles officer "was anxious to find out if Belizean security forces were patrolling the area, as he believed that whenever his patrols came near to the guerrillas they would cross into Belize and evade capture". The major replied that British and Belizean soldiers constantly patrolled the border, which made the Guatemalan officer "visibly relieved".

The ex-spy also claims he carried out surveillance of left-wing groups in Belize who were supporting the Guatemalan rebels, by providing them with "food, medicine and possibly arms", which they buried in secret dumps along the border. "All of the players in those support groups were interviewed, photographed and monitored by the Special Branch," he told Amandala.

The Ministry of Defence did not reply to our approach for comment.

The initial VICE investigation detailed some of these secret surveillance missions, such as Operation Octopus, which was mentioned in a file found at the UK National Archives. Parts of the file were classified, so I submitted a freedom of information (FOI) request for full access to the file. Although official guidance stipulates that FOI requests should only take one to two months to process, the Archives claims it needs four-and-a-half months to consider the public interest. Can this secret file really be more damaging than what has already emerged about the British army in Belize's cooperation with a murderous Guatemalan regime?

@pmillerinfo

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Illustration by Sophie Castle

Most of us will be cheated on at one point or another in our sad and meaningless lives. A new piece of research out today finds that we are all too trusting of our partners and that they are inevitably more likely to cheat than we believe they are. Monogamy is a dying – if not already dead – way of life. Whether you believe the studies that show 60 percent of men and 45 percent of women have cheated in their marriages – or just remember your first teenage love getting fingered by a hotter, cooler version of you at Reading festival – it's almost guaranteed that at some point you will feel the burn of unfaithfulness.

But what if your partner cheats on you with someone you know? Your best friend? Your mortal enemy? Your mum? What does it feel like when you don't even have to do any self-flagellating Facebook stalking because you already know exactly what they look like? I spoke to some people who had not only been cruelly shunned for another person, but had the added misfortune of knowing the object of their lover's indiscretions.

SARAH

VICE: What happened?
Sarah: My boyfriend and I had been together for about three years when we decided to take a break. We were still living and sleeping together when I found out he had been having a love affair with my best friend.

Did you suspect anything?
I thought he had a really close relationship with my best friend, but like most first loves I trusted him blindly and without question, and always believed he was faithful. And she was my best friend; I trusted her with anything.

How did you find out?
A bunch of us were at the pancake parlour at 6AM after a night out on pills, when a mutual friend of ours blurted it out over waffles and syrup. We were all drunk as shit and coming down over breakfast when he looked at me and said, "Did you know Tory is sleeping with Damo?" The whole table went silent and I burst out laughing because I thought it was a joke. Then I looked at everyone else's faces at the table, and when I saw their reactions I could tell that they knew, and then the penny dropped. I felt like the wind was knocked out of my lungs. Ten years later I still remember the moment perfectly: what I was wearing, how stunned I felt, how cold it was outside on the way home.

So it had happened more than once?
Yeah, turned out the scumbags had been seeing each other for months. They had even slept together in my bed, in my house, while I was asleep in the same room. My "BFF" didn't even have the humility to keep it a secret – she had told pretty much all of my friends that she was desperately in love with him, so everyone knew what was going on except for me.

What happened when you confronted them?
He said he was sorry and that it was a mistake, that he was confused and didn't know what to do. She sent me a text which I never replied to – I can't even remember what it said.

What was the fallout?
I was totally devastated. I trusted both of them unconditionally and they were also the two people closest to me. Who do you turn to when everything goes to shit and it's the people who are supposed to be there for you who did it? It was also totally humiliating because all of our friends knew, and it was hard to accept that no one told me.

How do you feel about both of them now? Did you ever make up?
I have absolutely nothing to say to either of them. I know he is married with kids now; I actually saw him in a grocery store a few months ago and put my hood up and pretended to look at feta cheese until he was gone.

JAKE

VICE: Jake, talk to me. What's your sad tale?
Jake: So she was my first ever girlfriend and we'd been dating for almost a year. We were both 14 going on 15. I decided to have a small party for my 15th birthday and ended up erecting a tent in my garden to get drunk in. It got late; I went back inside my house while she stayed in the tent with another dude from our mutual friendship circle.

So did you walk in on them?
No, her best friend told me afterwards. Then she told me herself a few days later. I was so shocked – she was a cute, polite and slightly introverted person, and never really gave off that cheating vibe. I guess you can never really tell, eh?

So you never had any suspicions about that guy?
I was a naïve and nerdy 15-year-old who was lucky to even have a girlfriend, and the other dude wasn't that much of a looker. Plus, he was boring as fuck.

Did you ever confront her?
I don't think I even confronted her face to face – I think it took place on Myspace because we were both addicted to the new technology and also because I was super bummed out and didn't want to see her IRL. Sort of how I deal with my problems in 2016. I remember getting a long winded "I'm sorry" message, and I just dipped out after that. I felt pretty shitty, but there wasn't much of a fall out – I just ghosted her after that.

KIERAN

VICE: Who broke your heart?
Kieran: I was going out with this girl, Lucy, and her best friend was called Andy. She had slept with him in the past, and I think at one point he declared his love for her, but she didn't feel the same about him and wanted to get away from the drama. That was all before we started dating. There were always rumours about her and Andy during our relationship, and it transpired after we broke up that they were true. She'd also been with other guys. In fact, the last time I saw her when we were technically still together, I saw her making out with somebody else. Here's the kicker: the rebound relationship I had shortly after also ended when I saw my new girlfriend making out with this same Andy guy, in the same club that the drama with Lucy concluded. As you can imagine, I'm certainly not his biggest fan.

Fucking hell. What did you think of Andy before you found out he'd been boning your girlfriend?
While Lucy and I were getting together he would talk to me when he was drunk in a way that was quite angry, patronising and generally hostile towards Lucy for the way she had apparently "played with his emotions" and "didn't respect the emotions of anybody in her pursuit to get what she wants". We were from the same town but he was her friend, really. I never liked him, for obvious reasons.

So did Lucy and Andy stay together?
The time with Andy was a one-off, I believe, but I would find out after we broke up that there were a number of others, around four, that had been with Lucy during our year-and-a-half long relationship.

What happened when you confronted her?
She was aware of the rumour that they'd hooked up. Initially she tried to claim nothing had happened. She suggested we go out to dinner, where she blamed Andy's friends for trying to break us up, redirecting my anger towards them and away from her. I guess over this time I just felt really blank. I worked through every possible scenario in my mind as to how, where, what could have happened; it was mental torture.

So then what happened?
We actually stayed together until we were going away to university. We were going to separate parts of the country and I believe that my trust in her had begun to finally show cracks. The last night we were supposed to spend together I saw her making out with somebody new in a club.

What would you say to her if she called right now?
I understand she's married now. We're not in contact. I wouldn't want to see her again.

I haven't hate-read his tweets in months, so that's usually safe to say my heart has healed.

KELSI

VICE: Who cheated on you?
Kelsi: I was in my first year of university and hoping to have a "slutty" summer – my body count was very low and I'm terrible at casual dating. I think it's because I'm a Cancer. He was a 21-year-old medical student with two different coloured eyes who I started seeing at the same exact time he ended a three-year long relationship with... let's call her Girl Zero. We soon became "exclusive", but I always felt that if I ever called myself his girlfriend it would go to shit.

Were there any indications that he was a cheating scumbag from the get-go or was it a total surprise?
I had some suspicions about him, as his three-year relationship did not end on great terms and there was some infidelity. But university is weird, and monogamy can be as well, so whatever, right? Also, we were together 24/7 – it literally did not seem like he was ever not in my sight for long enough to have an opportunity to cheat.

What did you think of the "other woman" before you found out about the cheating?
I'd known her from on campus and in classes, let's call her Girl A. She's on my social media and we would head nod to one another in passing, small talk every now and again. She was one of those girls who is involved in every single extra-curricular activity – including student council, that he was in – but I generally thought she was OK, if a bit annoying.

How did you find out?
He'd been a bit distant for a few weeks. We were spending every single day together and sometimes I'd crash there. One night we were in the awkward deciding-without-words-if-I'm-sleeping-there-tonight hour when he tells me he's going to a concert. This guy only ever plays Xbox and drinks with the same med student asshole who was dating my roommate, so that was out of character. His phone kept ringing over and over again. He picked up and was increasingly vague, not saying names or locations. Then he told me he was going out with Girl A. His demeanour completely changed and I just felt it. Just in my stomach I felt it. I said, "Have you? her?" and he said yes. I sat there for a few seconds, staring at my hands. I absolutely hate crying in front of people so I was just silent for 30 seconds. I screamed some really hurtful shit at him, including calling him a narcissist, telling him that he loves wallowing in his own self-pity. I went home, smoked a few cigarettes and stalked Girl A on Twitter. Her most recent tweet was something along the lines of "wow I'm sleeping in my own bed and not after 3AM for the first time in days" and then some sad Maroon 5 lyrics – which I felt was both confirmation of the affair and that she is the absolute antithesis of myself. An hour later he showed up to my apartment and calling up Girl A to tell her he can't go to the concert with her, he does not want to be with her and it's never happening again.

How long had he been seeing her behind your back?
About two weeks – it was so humiliating.

What was the aftermath?
God, it was so messy – Girl A took a photo of me at a party flirting with another guy and sent it to him as some sort of, "Look at her happy without you, maybe you should see me still" type of bullshit. I cut him out for about a month, but when I started talking to him again he'd started going out with someone else (Girl B). But he broke up with her and told me he wanted to try again. Then he went on a cruise and began to date someone else from the other side of the country (Girl C). He's now back with Girl B and probably still dragging her life through the mud.

Are you still in contact with any of the parties involved?
Well, actually, I've since been able to kindle friendships with two of his exes, Girl Zero and Girl A, and hopefully Girl B will come to her senses and dump his ass soon. My ex has since followed and unfollowed me on Twitter a few times. I haven't hate-read his tweets in months, so that's usually safe to say my heart has healed.

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This article originally appeared on VICE Poland

Every year, at 5PM on the 1st of August, thousands of people across Warsaw stop whatever they are doing to observe a minute of silence. The yearly tradition marks the anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising – a struggle against Nazi Germany that begun on the 1st of August, 1944 and ended tragically for the Poles 63 days later.

So, on Monday afternoon, I joined the crowd of war veterans, workers, students, bikers, football hooligans and nationalists who walked through the Polish capital as a way of paying their respects to their fallen heroes. Here are some pictures from that march.

'That' bus (Picture by: Stefan Rousseau / PA Wire)

Remember when the Leave campaign kept harping on about how the UK sends the EU £350 million a week? So much so that they put that claim on the side of a bus?

Well, in news shocking to almost no one, new official figures have exposed Vote Leave's inescapable campaign slogan as a lie. According to research by the Office for National Statistics, the UK's net contribution to the European Union was around £199 million a week last year – a significantly smaller amount than Vote Leave claimed.

The Remain side of the campaign disputed the £350 million figure at the time, insisting Vote Leave was misleading the public because the hefty sum didn't take the amount of money the UK also received from the EU into account, but this got a bit lost in the drama of it all. Before the application for rebate, the UK contributed around £19.6 billion a year (that's £376 million a week) to the EU. But the rebate worked out to 4.9 billion a year, decreasing the UK's yearly contribution to £14.7 billion. And after taking the EU's contributions to the UK public sector into account, the final figure decreases to £10.4 billion per year, which is roughly £199 million a week. Which is still a lot of of money, granted, but quite a lot less than £350 million.

The truth has come out now, one month on from a referendum in which one of the key issues was the cost of membership. And look what happened: Nigel Farage torpedoed the Vote Leave promise to give the NHS £350 million a week just hours after victory was assured, and now it turns out there wasn't even £350 million to be saved. Oh, what a time to be alive.

@YasminAJeffrey

All screenshots by Dylan Roberts

After traveling several miles over the plains, I scramble forward and head through the forest. The leaves are a magnificent shade of violet, the ground is covered with a blanket of familiar green grass, and small birds fly overhead. There are bizarre creatures, with silhouettes that evoke earth creatures such as frogs and birds, but which are decidedly alien in origin. As I exit the thicket, there is a nearby mountain over a few more hills, and since I've already come so far, I scale it.

Photo via Flickr user David Blaikie

This article originally appeared on VICE US

If foods like bread and pasta make you feel sick, you may have had a rough time in 2014, when you rolled out the news that no, you didn't have celiac disease but were nonetheless "sensitive" to wheat. In those days, backlash against the anti-gluten craze was at its peak, and the bubble-bursting Penn Jillette in your family undoubtedly dropped a couple internet truth bombs about how dumb you were for buying into a pseudoscientific fad.

But the really stupid thing to do would have been to eat something that made you feel gross, including gluten—a collection of the the world's most studied proteins found in wheat, barley and rye. But now, a new study led by a Columbia University researcher indicates that your suspicion that something was wrong might be rooted in actual biology.

Published in the journal Gut last week, the study tested people without celiac disease who reported having wheat sensitivities. They turned out to show signs of their immune systems going haywire, and had indicators of damage to their intestinal walls. In other words: if anyone gave you a hard time about your "fake" illness, science has taken one step towards vindicating you.

A word of caution, however, to people who have already diagnosed themselves: the term "gluten sensitivity" might still turn out to be a misnomer, Armin Alaedini, head researcher on the new study, told VICE in an email. "t has not yet been definitively established whether gluten proteins or some other components of wheat are responsible for the symptoms in patients," he said. "There is some ambiguity there, which is why many investigators are calling it non-celiac wheat sensitivity for now."

Further research is needed to lock down what exactly it is in wheat that causes this reaction for some people. But one of the most important aspects of these findings, Alaedini pointed out, is simply that "the symptoms reported by individuals with this condition are not imagined."

Whether or not the effect comes directly from gluten, though, the takeaway for patients will likely be the same: They'll need to avoid wheat.

Talia Hassid, a spokesperson for the Celiac Disease Foundation, and a celiac disease sufferer, was cheered by the results. A significant number of the patients her organization deals with, she said, "have symptoms of celiac but didn't test positive for the disease." Until now, "if someone gets a test and it comes back negative, they'll be told that their symptoms are in their head, or they'll be misdiagnosed," Hassid explained.

With new research, according to Alaedini, diagnosis will become easier. "A blood test may become available in the future for diagnosing patients," he suggested. And with greater understanding of the condition, he continued, researchers "we'll also hopefully be able to identify and evaluate new treatment strategies."

Hassid told us that people with adverse reactions to gluten "are often misdiagnosed with IBS and crohn's disease." If a gluten-sensitive patient is misdiagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome in particular—as sometimes happens with celiac disease—doctors may recommend a bland diet, which can involve even greater consumption of wheat products like plain crackers, bread, and pasta.

For celiac patients like Hassid, and now, for patients with this mysterious but scientifically verified new non-celiac wheat sensitivity, there's been a real advantage to the gluten-free craze: "There are more products on the market."

Hassid called the study a "large step," toward distinguishing gluten sensitivity from fad dieting, but she cautioned that it was "just one study." Going gluten-free is still frequently misrepresented as a good way to lose weight, even though it really isn't. And unhealthy gluten-free food is still sometimes lumped in with health food—even though, as Hassid pointed out, "A gluten-free Oreo is still an Oreo."

Noting that a huge number of people suffer from these symptoms, and there's finally hard evidence that they're not just imagining things, Alaedini was cautiously optimistic."These are important areas to investigate, and deserve more attention and funding," he said.

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