An encyclopedia of once-common things passing us by.

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The Unabomber’s possessions are getting auctioned off. Among the storied objects on the block: his typewriter. I think I felt safer when this was a loonytoon’s weapon of choice, instead of email. At least you can see a typewriter. Or throw it across a room in self defense. From Motherboard.tv: Today, the U.S. Marshals office is selling some of his possessions through an online auction. “We will use the technology that Kaczynski railed against in his various manifestos to sell artifacts of his life,” said U.S. Marshal Albert Nájera of the Eastern District of California in a press release. “The proceeds will go to his victims and, in a very small way, offset some of the hardships they have suffered.” This isn’t just weird in and of itself, the selling of the trappings of a serial killer at auction, iconic possessions that immediately present a kind of caricature of the lone madman (knife, check; hatchets, check; grey hoodie, check). The selling of these artifacts is an attempt to compensate the victims, but it’s also the sort of pseudo event the Unabomber would appreciate and ridicule. The effects being auctioned and trotted out for the media present a bizarre kind of restitution. They’re artifacts in an ongoing online Unabomber exhibit, one that will perpetuate the myth long after the man himself, now in a supermax prison in Colorado, passes away.

The Unabomber’s possessions are getting auctioned off. Among the storied objects on the block: his typewriter. I think I felt safer when this was a loonytoon’s weapon of choice, instead of email. At least you can see a typewriter. Or throw it across a room in self defense.

From Motherboard.tv:

Today, the U.S. Marshals office is selling some of his possessions through an online auction. “We will use the technology that Kaczynski railed against in his various manifestos to sell artifacts of his life,” said U.S. Marshal Albert Nájera of the Eastern District of California in a press release. “The proceeds will go to his victims and, in a very small way, offset some of the hardships they have suffered.”

This isn’t just weird in and of itself, the selling of the trappings of a serial killer at auction, iconic possessions that immediately present a kind of caricature of the lone madman (knife, check; hatchets, check; grey hoodie, check). The selling of these artifacts is an attempt to compensate the victims, but it’s also the sort of pseudo event the Unabomber would appreciate and ridicule. The effects being auctioned and trotted out for the media present a bizarre kind of restitution. They’re artifacts in an ongoing online Unabomber exhibit, one that will perpetuate the myth long after the man himself, now in a supermax prison in Colorado, passes away.

Notes

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