{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/516",
    "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": 516,
    "subject": "Silly Bus 4",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-04-27T09:47:20+00:00",
    "last": "1998-04-27T09:47:20+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0009-0782@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Alice Turner",
        "address": "al at interport.net"
      },
      "date": "1998-04-27T09:47:20+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Silly Bus 4",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Thinking about \"In the Penal Colony\" sent me back to my old Modern Library\n\"Selected Stories\" yesterday, a fine project for a rainy Sunday, and now I'm\nthinking that \"The Great Wall of China\" ought to be included in the syllabus\ntoo; it is quite wonderful about time in a static civilization and seems to\nme relevant not only to the Autarchy but to the Ascians. Here's just one\namong many striking paragraphs:\n\n\"Just so, as hopelessly and as hopefully, do our people regard the Emperor.\nthey do not know what emperor is reigning, and there exist doubts regarding\neven the name of the dynasty. In school a great deal is taught about the\ndynasties with the dates of succession, but the universal uncertainty in\nthis matter is so great that even the best scholars are drawn into it.\nLong-dead emperors are set on the throne in our villages, and one that only\nlives in song recently had a proclamation of his read out by the priest\nbefore the altar. Battles that are old history are new to us, and one's\nneighbor rushes in with a jubilant face to tell the news. the wives of the\nemperors, pampered and overweening, seduced from noble custom by wily\ncourtiers, swelling with ambition, vehement in their greed, uncontrollable\nin their lust, practice their abominations ever anew. the more deeply they\nare buried in time the more glaring are the colors in which their deeds are\npainted, and with a loud cry of woe our village eventually hears how an\nEmpress drank her husband's blood in long draughts thousands of years ago.\"\n\n-alga-"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}