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Tangentially related: I had the disconcerting experience of reading a Wired article about his arrest[1] while unknowingly sitting about six feet from the spot w
by wolfgang42 2y ago
Tangentially related: I had the disconcerting experience of reading a Wired article about his arrest[1] while unknowingly sitting about six feet from the spot where he was apprehended. When I read that the FBI agents had stopped at Bello Coffee while preparing their stakeout, I thought, huh, interesting coincidence, I just had a coffee there.
Then Ulbricht walked into the public library and sat down at the table directly in front of me, and suddenly as I was reading I could look up and see exactly the chair he had been in, where the plainclothes police had positioned themselves, how they had arranged a distraction.
Having this tableau unexpectedly unfold right in front of my eyes was a fascinating experience, and it certainly made the article suddenly get a lot more immersive!
[1] https://www.wired.com/2015/05/silk-road-2/ https://www.wired.com/2015/05/silk-road-2/
EDIT: to be clear, I was not present for the arrest. I was reading the magazine, some years after the arrest, but in the same place as the arrest. (I didn’t qualify the events with “I read that...” since I thought the narrative ellipsis would be obvious from context; evidently not.)
- cush 2y agoBefore I got to the edit I was convinced you were in The Neverending Story
- paulsutter 2y agoWait, you were reading about his arrest while he was being arrested? That article was written after his conviction?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- j-bos 2y agoHe first read the article while sitting where Ulbricht was when Ulbricht was arrested.
- EricRiese 2y agoPlot twist: wolfgang42 is Ulbricht
- tocs3 2y agoClearly time travel. He had brought the article back in time so he could read it as it happened. By the way, I thought the post was written well. It did take a little thinking but it was an interesting take.
- syspec 2y agoSorry, it went over my head a bit, you read about his arrest while he was being arrested?
- wolfgang42 2y agoHe was being arrested in the article, not IRL. When I say “Ulbricht walked into the public library and sat down at the table directly in front of me” I mean that I read > He went... past the periodicals and reference desk, beyond the romance novels, and settled in at a circular table near science fiction, on the second floor... in a corner, with a view out the window and his back toward the wall. and realized that I was in the Glen Park public library, at a circular table near science fiction on the second floor, in a corner with my back to the window, and facing directly towards where the article had just said he had sat.
- chrisco255 2y agoI see so you accidentally retraced his footsteps from years prior and then realized it as you were reading about it.
- pwdisswordfishz 2y ago> He was being arrested in the article, not IRL. So the article lied that he was arrested?
- chocolateteeth 2y agoCute
- Satam 2y agoI had the same confusion initially, interestingly chat GPT gets it: So while wolfgang42 wasn't there when Ulbricht was actually arrested, their realization created a vivid mental image of the event unfolding in that space, which made the story feel more immersive. In short: they were reading about an old event, but it happened to occur in the same spot they were sitting at that moment. Hope that clears it up!
- remram 2y ago> When the FBI agents stopped to have a drink I thought You mean "when I read the part where the FBI agents stopped to have a drink I thought"? This part makes your comment super confusing. Where you there then or later?
- coldtea 2y agoIt's obvious what is meant given the context...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- inopinatus 2y agoI believe they are suggesting an experience of imaginatively visualising the events of the arrest linearly as they were narrated in their read-through of the article, serendipitously aided by being physically present at the same location, and are referencing the article's narration partially in the present tense to similarly immerse us in medias res as we follow their remark. Alternatively, they are themselves Ross Ulbricht, describing an out-of-body fever dream or post-traumatic flashback. This seems ... somewhat less likely.
- InDubioProRubio 2y ago[flagged]
- defrost 2y agoIn commonwealth english "they" can and frequently does work to indicate a singular person. Here it's clear the word is referring to a singular stranger.
- oneeyedpigeon 2y agoWhat word would you use instead in this specific case?
- 2y ago
- beejiu 2y agoI assume you mean "I could look up and see exactly the chair he had been in" figuratively?
- wolfgang42 2y agoI mean, it’s possible that the library had rearranged their chairs in the intervening years and that exact one was now at a different table, but it was certainly a chair in the same location.
- inopinatus 2y agothis is Neurath's library¹. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurath%27s_boat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurath%27s_boat
- coliveira 2y agoThe responses to this comment show that people's ability to read and comprehend text has decreased dramatically in the last few years. Frightening...
- inopinatus 2y agoI was afraid of this too but it turned out to be presbyopia
- internet2000 2y agoIf every reply is pointing out how confusing it is, maybe the original comment is just poorly written.
- wolfgang42 2y agoYou’re not going to hear from the people who thought it made perfect sense, so the replies are a pretty biased sample. (This is also true of the parent complaint about reading comprehension, tbh.) But I see three confused replies and three corrections (not counting my own), so it doesn’t seem to be every reply. I think the problem is that I took an artistic style in an attempt to paint a picture for the reader, but I did it in a long thread on a technical forum where people are probably mostly skimming rather than engaging in literary criticism, so I should maybe have anticipated this would be a problem.
- vonunov 2y agoI thought it was fine, I wasn't confused for a moment. The only real problem here is that HN attracts a certain brand of nerds who are inclined to think it's hilarious when Maurice Moss says "Yes, it's one of those", many of whom are likely frothing right now because I just committed a comma splice in the previous sentence.
- chimeracoder 2y ago> The responses to this comment show that people's ability to read and comprehend text has decreased dramatically in the last few years Or they show that GP wrote an ambiguous piece of text.
- mergy 2y agoGive it up for Glen Park.
- pyuser583 2y agoThis is why I love SF. It’s so small. You can walk anywhere, and there’s a good chance something big happened nearby.
- aaron695 2y ago[dead]
- nick3443 2y agoYou did a Boondock Saints!
- beeflet 2y agoTHERE WAS A FIREFIGHT
- stormcode 2y agoWhat's the symbology there?
- beeflet 2y agoI think that nick was comparing the magazine writer to the detective overly dramatically re-creating the scene of a crime in boondock saints: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsuH1msEkvM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsuH1msEkvM BTW Boondock Saints is like one of the dumbest movies of all time, they made a behind-the-scenes documentary about how the film failed because of how arrogant the directors/screenwriters were. It's so stupid, it's great
- nick3443 2y agoHe walks through a crime scene and exultantly visualizes the events that were happening in that exact spot during the crime. Its a memorable sequence.
- Unearned5161 2y agofor the record, I appreciated your creative prose and enjoyed the trippy narrative
- DrBenCarson 2y agoMaybe the single most confusing comment ever
- 2-3-7-43-1807 2y agoalso single most irrelevant comment ever
- lee-rhapsody 2y agoNot really. If you've ever read fiction--like, at all--it's intuitive.
- alwa 2y agoJust as an additional datapoint, since I’m confused by fellow commenters’ confusion—I thought your narrative was clear, colorful, and entertaining, and I hope you’ll keep things so literary and engaging in your future contributions too :) As with so many matters of crime, punishment, and high dudgeon, the physical reality of the situation always feels so banal. Dread Pirate Roberts’ lawless dark kingdom, where he commissions trans-national assassinations… looks a lot like a nerdy dude’s laptop on a municipal library table.
- pests 2y agoYes, I thought it was an interesting blend of past and present. If this were a scene in a show or movie it could be edited beautifully - the reader, sitting alone in a corner, looks up and in a lucid, almost psychedelic way, the past comes to life with Ulbrict sitting in front of him, that unfold as he continues reading.
- alsetmusic 2y ago> Yes, I thought it was an interesting blend of past and present. Surprise: OP time traveled.
- smcameron 2y agoI also wasn't at all confused.
- Nevermark 2y agoUntil you looked over his shoulder at his Bitcoin account balance rising dramatically in real time. Huge amounts of income can even make something as boring as an online digital scrapbook tech sexy.
- siamese_puff 2y agoI understood exactly what you meant and that is an awesome experience
- pineaux 2y agoYes
- Nevermark 2y agoThis is so off topic. Or maybe not. I once walked home after an evening of some friends and beer. As I came up to my house it was dark but I clearly saw a little person walking through my back garden. About 3 foot tall, at the most, it seemed. And they were holding the hand of a smaller person half their height. Walking together, no hurry at all. I just froze and watched them walking away, and turn a corner. The feelings of disbelief, but wanting to believe were crazy. I came out of my shock. Ran the length of my home and managed to see mother and child raccoons now walking on all fours. They must have walked 20 feet on their back legs together, holding hands. For a minute of my life I was actually Alice in Wonderland and there were tiny people who walked gardens at night.
- Dilettante_ 2y agoYou met some tanuki, 100%.
- Nevermark 2y agoThanks. That was a connection worth knowing! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bake-danuki https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bake-danuki
- keepamovin 2y agoYou may be interested in looking at your experience though this lens: https://youtu.be/y61vpQ9cZ8s?si=jMXF35v6-2t5w0cj https://youtu.be/y61vpQ9cZ8s?si=jMXF35v6-2t5w0cj
- ews 2y agoI used to live in Glen Park at that time and I vividly remember seeing Ross working as a cashier at the Canyon Market, helping me bag my groceries. It was probably around the time he was starting the Silk Road. The place where he was arrested was also my favorite table at the Public Library, where I used to go work. It is incredible to be that close to history.
- palata 2y agoI liked the way you wrote it, I could picture you sitting in the library, picturing the arrest yourself :-). The reactions remind me of a philosophy class I had, where the professor went for a thought experiment in order to explain an idea. "Imagine a world where ...". There was a physicist in the class who kept interrupting the professor, saying "well that's not possible because of how physics works". I would have asked him what he thought about Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings; could he enjoy them at all? But he ruined the class for me so I didn't :-).
- carlmr 2y agoRegarding 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
- kelvinjps10 2y agoBut now It doesn't feel the same as the original comment
- oharapj 2y agoHis 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
- mabster 2y agoAgreed. 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.
- rhatsgf 2y agoI 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.
- oharapj 2y agoNot 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
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoIt would be morbidly neat if that article is printed out and put on the wall over there.
- ErikBjare 2y agoI had a similar experience years ago when I read about the same thing in an Airbnb less than a kilometer from the library.
- PaulMcCartney 2y ago[dead]
- simonvc 2y agoi had a similar experience working in copenhagen. read an article about copenhagen sub orbital rockets, looked up and out my window and my eye landed on the rocket i was just reading about. weird.
- etothet 2y agoIt was almost you not you!
- jraines 2y agoI had a similar experience watching Mr. Robot. There’s a scene where it shifts to first person PoV and the voiceover says something like “am I seeing this? Is this real?” … and it was EXACTLY the PoV I had every day walking out of my office on 36th st back then.
- dekhn 2y agoMy kids used to go to that library! We lived in the neighborhood (Glen Park- one of the "gems" of San Francisco) and the downtown is almost like a little village (except with California levels of traffic and trash). It was a bit weird to think that my kids were probably reading books while this guys was, uh, transacting his business nearby.
- hluska 2y agoThis is unrelated but you just did a wonderful job of explaining why I love history so much. There’s something so exciting (to me) about deeply researching an event, going to where it happened and seeing the land (or library) come alive with images of the past. Good writing!
- Henchman21 2y agoLiteracy and nuance is hard with written words — especially when a large chunk of your audience is either a non-native English speaker or and Adderall addict. I feel like this community is heavily laden with both, and surely there must be some significant overlap between those groups. In other words, it was too well written
- MattSayar 2y agoI read this article when it was first published years ago, and it is written so well I still "see the movie" in my head when I think about it. Your experience must have been next-level.
- moj 2y agoI'll share my experience, too: I live near Glen Park and was in Bello that day, taking up one of those coveted seats, as all this was happening. I recall being aware of a lot of police cars outside, and perhaps seeing the phalanx around Ross as they walked past the window. Clearly something big was going on, but I stepped outside and the street was already back to normal. Shrug, perhaps I'll hear about it on the evening news. Not a peep. :-) It was only some months & years later that I heard about Glen Park, the library, and Bello being part of the drama, and other local landmarks. To this day I keep hearing about other local details. (I learned a few months ago that his group house was on Monterey Blvd, not far from the conservatory). Looking back, I had noticed a number of 'out-of-town' business people in Bello around that time. Glen Park is a busy local scene, but gets very few visitors, so they stuck out. Clean cut, business casual, but not FiDi types. They were cheerful but not interested in chatting. Who would go to a cafe and not want to socialize, I wondered? I thought perhaps realestate people. I went to Bello frequently then, and must have seen Ross there a few times too, but I only vaguely recall once or twice. Something drew my attention to his laptop, maybe it had an EFF sticker on it? But he likewise didn't seem interested in conversation. I do recall once he was talking with an older man, in his 50's or early 60's, about libertarianism.