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The phrase “paid prioritisation” is as antithetical to the principles of net neutrality as it sounds, but once upon a time when corporations supported building independent infrastructure rather than parasitically profiting from it, communication companies helped out potential competition that came in the form of universities and municipalities establishing Free-Nets, dial-up, public-access bulletin boards and could expect a measure of reciprocity. Though some operations have since folded, many others remain, existing parallel to the world-wide web and have shifted their focus to community wireless movements and upholding the mission of fostering digital literacy. In times where the online world is weaponised and maddening and we’re trying (and failing) to look away, it’s refreshing to relive more hopeful, engaging moments of cyber history.

i love a parade

This joyous three-minute parade of happy cats marching and playing musical instruments, via Misscellania, is from the opening of a popular Japanese video game app called Mitchiri Neko, whose goal of collecting sightings of a various virtual cats and journaling about it sounds really bizarre and complicated but cute, made us smile. Versions spanning ten hours and more are available as well, if you need a longer break. Neko (猫) means cat of course and the Maneki-neko, the iconic one waving its paw, means the beckoning cat.

dawn’s early light or up and atom

Over a decade ago a cadre of staunch Cold Warriors including Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn publicly reversed their stance on classical nuclear deterrence and disavowed the strategy that arms race made the world a safer place but rather was making it a far more dangerous one—propelling another round of decommissioning.
Reaching back further to 1981, Harvard Law Professor Roger D Fisher, a specialist in negotiations and conflict management, suggested unflinchingly in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, that should the President of the United States of America want to active his or her nuclear arsenal—rather than having the codes kept at arm’s length in the nuclear football which the president could access whenever the impulse possesses him or her (Reagan preferred to keep the codes in his jacket pocket)—the Commander-in-Chief ought to be made fully aware of the gravity of the decision, which would result in the death of millions of innocent civilians if not the whole of humanity. The launch codes rather ought to be implanted in the heart of a volunteer attaché that accompanies the president at all times with a large knife. To retrieve the launch codes means that the president must personally kill and butcher one person that represents all those faceless millions that chauvinism and phoney patriotism make into abstractions. I wonder if such a theoretical volunteer would be a willing martyr or if Trump would even be dissuaded by such measures.

dinosaur court

Via Messy Nessy Chic, we are introduced to the world’s first paleontological park of Crystal Palace in the borough of Bromley commissioned as an extension of the Great Exhibition of London in 1854. Though considered scientifically naïve by contemporary standards, the attraction predated Charles Darwin’s publication and contrary to Victorian affection for the supernatural these “antediluvian monsters” weren’t taken as patent evidence for dragons and weathered subsequent derision well enough to earn protected status and become a cultural touchstone. Learn more about the historic park and the mythos surrounding it at the link up top.