lordy, i hope there are tapes!

kuh und überkuh

Not content to limit their party’s ideology regarding eugenics to human beings, Reichsminister Hermann Göring (bedauerlicherweise, nür auf Deutsch) wanted to create a quarry worthy of the Nazis to hunt.
Inspired by historical accounts of the fearsome but unfortunately extinct aurochs—including encounters by a conquering General Julius Caesar—Göring worked with the husbandry experts, the Brothers Heck, who tried, through careful breeding, convinced that no animal’s bloodline truly disappears from the face of the Earth, scoured different types of wild and domesticated cows from all over the globe and selected for traits that they believed would reproduce the monstrous and formidable beast. The offspring of this experiment, the Heck cattle—sort of like The Boys from Brazil—were not the genetic heirs of the giant aurochs hunted to extinction in the seventeenth century but were perhaps close enough. The defeat of Germany prevented the project from coming to fruition but Göring planned to allow his Überkühe to roam in a wildlife reserve in an primordial forest in Poland—a Nazi Jurassic Park.

bbs

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.