{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/387",
    "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": "whorl",
  "thread": {
    "id": 387,
    "subject": "Shape of gammadion",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1997-07-02T17:58:54+00:00",
    "last": "1997-07-02T17:58:54+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0006-0501@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Jonathan Coxhead",
        "address": "jonathan at doves.demon.co.uk"
      },
      "date": "1997-07-02T17:58:54+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) Shape of gammadion",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "   I've just joined this list. I don't really go for nicknames, but careful\nexamination of my e-mail address would reveal my Whorl name, if I had one.\n\n   As I was reading, my mental image of the gammadion was (eventually):\n\n               XXXXXXXXX\n               XXXXXXXXX\n               XXXXXXXXX\n      XXXXX    XX XX\n      XXXXX    XX XX\n      XXXXX    XX XX\n      XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX\n      XXX                 XX\n      XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX\n               XX XX    XXXX\n               XX XX    XXXX\n               XX XX    XXXX\n           XXXXXXXXX\n           XXXXXXXXX\n           XXXXXXXXX\n\n(only square rather than rectangular).\n\n   Reasons: the religion is supposed to be an evil one, constructed as a\nmockery of the real religion when the Whorl left on its journey. The swastika\nis the biggest symbol of evil the world has seen, and was also an early\nChristian symbol (reinterpreted as an Aryan supremacist symbol by the Nazis,\nbut not invented /ab nihilo/ by them).\n\n   Wolfe's narrative technique often consists of describing a scene in\nneutral terms, to form an image in the reader's head that creeps up on him or\nher at an unexpected moment. Examples: the description of the picture of Neil\nArmstrong on the Moon in the library in the Matachin Tower (in tSotT), the\ndescription of the tower itself as a spaceship.\n\n   So, the reader at some point realises that the \"holy\" men are actually\nvenerating the swastika.\n\n   The void in the centre is there to provide a justification for \"the sign\nof addition\" replacing Christian crossing---another perversion."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}