Ask HN/PG: Why can't I collapse comment threads?

I just spend 10 seconds scrolling through the first comment in the "Steve Ballmer retires" thread. There have got to be a better way, I thought. Then I remembered, every other news aggregator around has collapsable comment threads. Why not HN? I remember PG once saying that the nested comments were rarely interesting beyond the first one so why not let us easily skip them? I mean, the Ballmer thread is ridiculous... regards,