skeleton key

“Megadoc” is not exactly a skeleton key for understanding “Megalopolis,” but it is useful and insightful, full of scenes of conflict followed by resolution, understanding emerging from confusion.

The skeleton key to understanding reactionary conservatism is quite simple: they are scared, all the time, of everything.

Brigit riffled inside and retrieved old styluses, a moldy Marveller-bar, and a huge skeleton key imprinted with a diamond and wrapped in thread.

Introducing the 688-page biography this way seems designed to address Musk’s recent turn towards combativeness and cruelty — if not justifying it, then offering a skeleton key to understanding where it’s rooted.

“Microsoft should not have had a single skeleton key that, when inevitably stolen, could be used to forge access to different customers’ private communications.”