During the last few months, there seems to be confusion about bytes, Unicode and how they fit together in python 3 (and also python 2).
This relatively simple overview from a python symposium presentation, tries to put it all into perspective.
If somebody wants a more detailed internals orientated presentation from another python 3 symposium, I also have that.
Enjoy!!
https://nedbatchelder.com/text/unipain.html