{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2052",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 2052,
    "subject": "A Little Dotty? M*MILLION artifact of character set",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-12-22T21:15:54+00:00",
    "last": "1999-12-22T21:15:54+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0654@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Talarican",
        "address": "chemmie at mindspring.com"
      },
      "date": "1999-12-22T21:15:54+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) A Little Dotty? M*MILLION artifact of character set",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Dan,\n\"\nHmmm, I always assumed the plate read: M . Million\n\nSometimes a dot is used to indicate multiplication.  \"Monsieur\" is\noften abbreviated to \"M.\"\n\"\n\nYou're right, of course. I would actually have preferred to use a \"bullet\"\ndot floating at mid-line height for this, but of course the email character\nset wouldn't support it, so far as I know. But that's how _I_ envisioned\nwhat Number Five saw, with his hungover revelation proceeding when he\nrealizes that the dot is not a period but a dot at half-height in the line\nof text.\nI tried to approximate it with an asterisk, which of course is also used as\na multiplication sign, esp. in most programming languages.\nBTW I apologize to all for my mishap last couple of posts; I didn't realize\nmy new email software defaulted to HTML."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}