{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2447",
    "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": 2447,
    "subject": "PEACE and \"\"The Lottery of Babylon\"",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2000-11-08T10:41:01+00:00",
    "last": "2000-11-08T10:41:01+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0030-0101@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Adam Stephanides",
        "address": "adamsteph at earthlink.net"
      },
      "date": "2000-11-08T10:41:01+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) PEACE and \"\"The Lottery of Babylon\"",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "On p. 16 (Harper & Row), Weer refers to \"the bland chance of the\nscientists (whose blind, piping ape-god, idiot-god, we have met before;\nwe know you, troubler of Babylon)\".  Mantis has pegged this as a\nLovecraft allusion; but the apostrophe to \"chance\" as \"troubler of\nBabylon\" makes it a Borges allusion too.  Specifically, to the story\n\"The Lottery of Babylon,\" in which an omnipotent lottery controls the\nlives of all Babylon's inhabitants.\n\nGiven this allusion, we can see resemblances between the story and\nWeer's life.  The narrator of the story has been (iirc) both a king and\na slave; Weer has been both a poor man and a very rich man.  And Weer's\nacquisition of the factory was pretty much a matter of luck, at least if\nWeer is a reliable narrator on this issue (i. e. Weer did not kill\nJulius and had no idea he was Julius's heir).  Judging from the \"What\nwent wrong?\" passage, Weer seems to regard (or want to regard) the major\ndisappointments in his life as the results of chance as well.\n\n--Adam"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}