Hacker News Reader

Comment by carlmr | Hacker News Reader

Regarding your edit. The first paragraph kind of lines up with you reading about it. But the second one is kind of confusing, and I think it's because "then" can mean two different things here. You meant "at the time of his arrest". If you casually read it without cross referencing the first paragraphs context, you might think it means "as I was sitting there".

And there's nothing in the following sentences that corrects this garden path assumption.

>Then Ulbricht walked into the public library and sat down at the table directly in front of me

Would not confuse as many if you wrote

>At the time of his arrest Ulbricht walked into the public library and sat down at the table directly in front of me

Or even clearer

>At the time of his arrest Ulbricht had walked into the public library and sat down at the table which was now directly in front of me

View on HN

His writing employs a little bit of poetry in order to capture his feeling. Not all writing benefits from being as clear and bland as possible. HN should probably read some non-fiction books from time to time

Agreed. It was well written.

The focus wasn't on the exact timeline and facts of the situation. It was on what it felt like as he read the piece.

I have read at least 1000 European and American novels, play, poetry etc. and never had a single issue.

The comment you refer to is just poorly written.

Not sure which novels you’re picking but in my experience novels are frequently more ambiguous and harder to parse than the parent comment, often on purpose. If you’ve really ’never had a single issue’ maybe you’re not choosing challenging texts

That is it! Another HN genius knows it all! Perhaps end your sentence with a full stop if you are lecturing.

Are you sockpuppeting? Lollll

Do you mean fiction books?

I think they want to confuse us.

Whoops, yes I did

Why is he describing emotionally a factual event? He is leaving facts up to assumptions. I suppose sure, his intent was to confuse people. It worked.

Wow, you've totally cracked the mystery. This explains why all the commenters are at each other's throats - half of them are reading it one way and half are reading the other way, and only one of the two ways makes any sense.

Yes, it took three reads before I worked out what the story was trying to say.

Even just adding one word "Then Ulbricht had walked into the public library and sat down at the table directly in front of me" would be enough of a clue.

Exactly, that was my point about then being a word that can be interpreted in two ways, and the following sentence does not error correct this assumption.

If you read it one way, it's almost impossible to not be misdirected, because the following sentence works with both meanings.

If you include the had this would be enough of a clue to correct the incorrect assumption. Although it still might make for slightly bumpy reading.

But now It doesn't feel the same as the original comment

Reply on news.ycombinator.com