{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/370",
    "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": 370,
    "subject": "Beans and other pollutants",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-02-10T09:11:35+00:00",
    "last": "1998-02-10T09:11:35+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0007-0550@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Charles Dye",
        "address": "raster at highfiber.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-02-10T09:11:35+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Beans and other pollutants",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "CRCulver at aol.com writes:"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "In _Shadow_, chapter XXXV, there is the tale of the woman who brings black\nbeans from the stars. This woman threatens to cast them into the sea unless\nshe were obeyed. The lords of the time \"a hundred times more complete in\ntheir dominion than [the] Autarch...had her seized and torn to bits.\"\nThis story seems, in my opinion, to show the planting of the black hole in\nthe Old Sun. I think that the sea mentioned is not Ocean but rather\nOroborus(sp?), which is outer space. The lords, I think, are the monarchs,\nbecause they were more powerful and had a larger empire than those of the\nautarchy. Thus, the black hole was put into the sun because of the tyranny of\nthe monarchs."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I had interpreted this as the arrival of Abaia, Erebus, Arioch, and company.\n(Like Baldanders, we're told, they grow ....)  Still, perhaps the one is\nsymbolic of the other?"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "There is an alternative interpretation of this story. Jonas mentions that\nthis happens before the city was called Nessus, because \"the river\" was not\nyet poisoned. Perhaps the black beans that the woman brought from the stars\nwere simply a device used to poison Gyoll.\nI would like to know the etymology of 'Nessus' and what relation it has to\npoison."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Nessus, if I recall aright, was a centaur murdered by way of a poisoned\ncloak.  (Larry Niven's \"Ringworld\" includes puppeteers named Nessus and\nChiron.)  As for the poisoning of the river, I don't see anything\nterribly mysterious there.  Gyoll is both the sewer and the drinking-\nwater source for a very large city.  The city climbs the river as the\nlower reaches become too polluted to sustain even the most desperately\npoor.\n\nraster at highfiber.com"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}