The Null Device

Allegedly the next big thing in Berlin: cannibal cuisine:

In a prominent advertising campaign on the internet, in German newspapers and on television, the restaurant, Flime, is appealing for willing donors and diners to become members of what it hints at being a new dining movement. "Members declare themselves willing to donate any part of their body," the advertisement reads, adding that any resulting hospital costs will be taken on by the restaurant. They say they are also looking to employ an "open-minded surgeon".

The restaurant cites as its inspiration the indigenous Brazilian Waricaca tribe, which once practised the ritual of "compassionate cannibalism", or eating parts of the corpse of a loved one to emphasise the connection between the living and the dead, which was said to help with mourning.

¶ berlin cannibalism culture pranks society 0

There is a tradition of restaurants serving meat having happy anthropomorphic cartoons of the animals whose meat they serve as their mascots. Of these mascots, there is a subset in which the animals actually slaughter or eat their own kind, usually with great gusto. There's a set of such logos here:

(via Boing Boing) ¶ cannibalism cartoons design logos morbid wrong 1

The latest consequence of global warming: starved of food because of longer iceless seasons, polar bears are eating each other.

¶ cannibalism environment global warming polar bears 0

Today's heartwarming story of interspecies friendship: In Brazil, a cat has befriended a bird which hurt itself when it fell out of its nest; the cat then raised the bird as its own. It is there that the story becomes somewhat twisted: the bird helps out its new friend and stepmother by luring other birds where she can catch and eat them, and has also learned to eat meat. (Whether the meat comes from other birds was not mentioned.)

(via 3RRR) ¶ birds brazil cannibalism cats 4

Researchers in the US have made advances in the production of cultured meat, i.e., meat grown in nutrients from cell colonies, but barriers, both technical and cultural, remain:

They envisage muscle cells growing on huge sheets that would be regularly stretched to exercise the cells as they grow. Once enough cells had grown, they would be scraped off and shaped into processed meat products such as chicken nuggets.

The idea of doing away with traditional livestock and growing steaks from scratch dates back at least 70 years. In a horizon-scanning essay from 1932, Winston Churchill said: "Fifty years hence we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium."

"Right now, it would be possible to produce something like spam at an incredibly high cost, but the know-how to grow something that has structure, such as a steak, is a long way off," said Mr Matheny.

"It won't appeal to someone who gave up meat because they think it's morally wrong to eat flesh or someone who doesn't want to eat anything unnatural," Ms Bennett [of the Vegetarian Society] added.

¶ cannibalism food psychology science vat-grown meat vegetarianism 1

Four people in the Philippine province of Palawan have been arrested for murdering a wedding guest, and serving his roasted remains at the reception: (via darwin)

Farm laborer Eladio Baule, his son Gerard Baule and nephews Sabtuary Pequi and Johnny Buyot allegedly killed the victim, Benjie Ganay, on July 17 after Ganay accidentally touched Eladio Baule's daughter's bottom during her wedding party, Bacuel said. The four suspects, who were drunk at the time, then set fire to Ganay's body and Bacuel said the aroma of roasting flesh may have tempted the group to eat parts of the burnt body.

(Which translates, essentially, as "seemed like a good idea at the time".)

The crime was only discovered about eight days later, after the two nephews confessed to the police who originally found their accounts too shocking to believe. The nephews insist that they did not take part in the murder but were only forced to eat parts of the body.

¶ cannibalism philippines 0

Soy sauce manufacturers in China have developed an ingenious way of cutting costs, by substituting soy beans with human hair. Soy sauce technically consists of amino acids, with soy beans being merely the most common source, and other sources (such as, say, human hair) may be substituted whilst still producing something resembling soy sauce. (via Found)

(Which makes one wonder whether the kosher status of human hair sauce would be influenced by whether or not the hair came from a Hindu hair-cutting ceremony.)

¶ cannibalism hair judaism religion soy beans 0

Gangsta rap, it seems, is the new Norwegian Black Metal, with performers competing fiercely for who can be the baddest. One rapper allegedly murdered his roommate and ate her flesh, apparently to be the most stupendous badass who ever cut a record. It has been alleged in court that Death Row Records supplied Antron "Big Lurch" Singleton with drugs "to encourage (him) to act out in an extreme violent manner so as to make him more marketable as a 'Gangsta Rap' artist."

"Part of what makes a Gangsta Rap artist marketable is the fact that the artist is a current ongoing participant in violent gang activities," the lawsuit said.

¶ big lurch bizarre cannibalism gangsta rap thug life wtf 5