weirdness ctd. 1:

if you read unicode typed strings that is '<U' or 'U' using np.fromstr as we do inside ` _fromstring_rows` numpy will return -- seemmingly? -- nonsensical values, a string of ints ... OR a very annoying ValueError about wrong startbytes, or `ValueError: zero-valued itemsize`  

Interestingly the Python builtin get's it right. So we'll use that instead.