There was a murder case in Ireland where the killer and the victim had had burner phones (they were in a secret relationship). Both Nokia, the old school ones.
The killer dumped them in a deep, very muddy pond that often froze over, had a ton of plants, fish, and algae, and the mud was very runny/could theoretically get into cracks easily.
Anyway those phones were down there ages. I can’t remember exactly how long, I’d guess a year or so. Police finally recovered them. They consulted data retrieval experts.
I kid you not, when they learned they were Nokias, they recommended just letting them dry out then trying to power them on.
Sure enough, those babies flashed right up. Like nothing had happened.
Above is true, by the way. I’m pretty sure they refer to the murder of Elaine O'Hara. The phones were found in a reservoir and had been there for little over a year.
Do you ever think about how we’ll never know if the minotaur could’ve learned to speak? To communicate in any way? What kind of a life could he have lived if he wasn’t torn away from his mother and tossed into a prison for the crime of being born? Do you think of the stories that describe the infant as “ferocious” as if that excuses what was done to him?
Do you think about how the only names we know him by are ones taken from his jailer, the man who locked up a child and sent countless others to their doom? At the very worst he was a pawn caught up in the crossfire of an angry god and a foolish king. But truly he was just hurt. Abused. Neglected.
The prince of a kingdom that feared and reviled him.
“but he eats people!” yeah. good.
Note that the monster name is his father’s (His mother’s husband’s) name.
Minotaur. Taur (Taurus) means bull. Mino (Minos), he is the legal son of King Minos. It’s his patrilineal line and a physical description.
His Jailer gave him his own name.
There’s surely something there about projection. The son is serving time for his father’s crimes.
Literally in this case. The Minotaur is a curse from the gods on Minos because Minos dishonored his contract with them. He promised that if he was made King of Crete he would sacrifice his best bull to them. He became King and sacrificed another bull in order to keep that wealth of his best bull. So the gods gave Queen Pasiphaë a lust for the bull and made her bear the minotaur.
Minos was certainly meant to be reminded forever of his transgressions in the face of his child.
But here we can return to this alternate take. Minos has Daedalus build the Labyrinth and confines the Minotaur inside it, feeding it by sacrifices sent in to be killed. Was that the gods’ intent?
Or did the gods grant him a choice? To atone for his sins by caring for the consequences, to do what he should have done in the first place and give up his pride to be the bigger person for the sake of others. To honor the contract of Father where he failed the contract of King.
And Minos chose instead to make his son the whipping boy for his own crimes. To project his crime, which caused the Minotaur, onto the Minotaur.
Is it both projection and victim blaming? I will punish you for my crimes. I will punish you because you are the consequence of my crimes. I will punish you because better you than me.
“writers deserve attention more than actors” literally only 2% of actors can pay the bills with acting. For every megastar on screen there are a dozen other people in the shot who are SAG. Acting gets so glamorized but there are SO MANY people in SAG who NEED residuals to live on. Background Party Girl #4 needs her check too!!!! There are people who play recurring characters on syndicated shows who cant afford health insurance!!! Ke Huy Quan gave an oscar winning performance and LOST HIS HEALTH INSURANCE the next year.
Like, I’m not saying that this is a good thing, but it’s kind of bleakly entertaining how over the course of my life my skill set as an online researcher has gone from being:
Hugely valuable in the late 1990s and early 2000s because the discoverability of information in public-facing databases was fucking terrible and nobody knew how to organise anything; to
Effectively useless throughout the 2010s because search engines enormously and rapidly improved and computer literacy was at an all-time high; and
Back to being hugely valuable once again because SEO bullshit and the proliferation of AI-generated content have degraded online discoverability back to pre-2000 levels and computer literacy is in accelerating decline due to mobile devices deliberately obfuscating basic functionality so that app vendors can sell it back to you with embedded advertising.
It’s always interesting when my posts about technical writing end up doing numbers on librarian Tumblr. I guess we have something in common!
