For those (like me) on mobile who can't read this (well):

"In an effort to get people to look into each other’s eyes more, and also to appease the mutes, the government has decided to allot each person exactly one hundred and sixty-seven words, per day.

"When the phone rings, I put it to my ear without saying hello. In the restaurant I point at chicken noodle soup. I am adjusting well to the new way.

"Late at night, I call my long distance lover, proudly say I only used fifty-nine today. I saved the rest for you.

"When she doesn’t respond, I know she’s used up all her words, so I slowly whisper I love you thirty-two and a third times. After that, we just sit on the line and listen to each other breathe."

The Quiet World by Jeffrey McDaniel

Now I feel silly after having just read the parent comment on mobile by constantly scrolling left and right.

Materialistic (HN app) sorts formatting out pretty well, at least the comments.

I just rotated my phone.

The 80 character line limit is making it's return (for me it never left though).

I agree, but the longest line in the poem has 45 characters.

People could just use > like the internet has for ages:

> In an effort to get people to look into each other’s eyes more, and also to appease the mutes, the government has decided to allot each person exactly one hundred and sixty-seven words, per day.

> When the phone rings, I put it to my ear without saying hello. In the restaurant I point at chicken noodle soup. I am adjusting well to the new way.

> Late at night, I call my long distance lover, proudly say I only used fifty-nine today. I saved the rest for you.

> When she doesn’t respond, I know she’s used up all her words, so I slowly whisper I love you thirty-two and a third times. After that, we just sit on the line and listen to each other breathe.

- The Quiet World by Jeffrey McDaniel

Not sure what you think you're improving since you still removed all the verse data of a poem.

He also removed the exif data

Well it's a poem, so each of the verses being represented properly, matters.

Usual shorthand is to separate verses with /

Of course, the effect is best when the poem is laid out properly (which sometimes includes using indentation). But using slashes is better than alternatives like using commas (which is ambiguous, since a comma can mean a pause or clause boundary within a line)

Or they could use a browser that displays stuff correctly.

The browser's displaying things just fine. The problem is forums that provide custom markup implementing an insufficient subset of what HTML allows for. In this case, HN provides formatting for blocks of code, but not quoted blocks of prose.

Oh, and HN is still using tables within tables within tables (within...) for their text formatting. I'm sure someone here will defend that. looks at calendar

Anyways, flying cars everyone! We're going to be the VC for flying cars!

My understanding is that YC doesn't want to break scrapers.

Then provide a json api

There is a Firebase API used by most HN apps. I recommend the Materialistic app if you are on Android.

Then what's the problem? I can see the poem on a mobile browser. Although you have to use landscape.

The author of the poem has most certainly made sure not to go over the daily word limit.

These are the words actually spoken in the poem:

> I only used fifty-nine today. = 5

> I saved the rest for you. = 6

> I love you * (32 1/3) = 96 + 1 = 97

The remainder of the words are thoughts which don't add to the daily count.

Plus the author had already used 59 words earlier in the day.

So if we add it all up:

       5
       6
      97
      59
    ----
     167 words total 
    ----

This. This is the reason I love HN :)

He saved all his 167 words for the girl but she didn't.

Surely they set the word limit afterwards, yes?

I was disappointed to find this poem didn't have exactly one hundred and sixty-seven words.

It's kind of weird that it doesn't. You could so easily change the "sixty-seven" to "twenty-five".

he used 97 words to say "I love you" 32.333 times, you're taking away 42, so he would also have to say "I love you" eighteen and a third times

But then, the poem will be 124 words (by changing "thirty two" to "eighteen"), so we will have to change 125 to 124. Then, he will be able to say "I love you" an exactly 18 times. So now we are 3 words shorter (by removing "and a third"). So it comes 121. With 121 words, he will be able to say "I love you" exactly 17 times. So, there you go. Change "one sixty seven" to "one twenty one", and "thirty two and a third times" to "seventeen times".

It's actually "thirty-two" which, by the rules established in the poem, counts as one word only. It works with 125 words by chance. The author missed an opportunity for a neat hack.

Where did he say 97 words to say I love you? I don't see that in the poem. Am I too dumb to see what is happening!???

> so I slowly whisper I love you > thirty-two and a third times.

"I love you" is 3 words. 3 * 32.333333 = 97

Don't ever let a poet see this comment.

> Don't ever let a poet see this comment

Why?

My guess is that sixty-seven has four syllables, twenty-five has three.

In the first verse, there doesn't seem to be any pattern to the lengths (in syllables) of the lines; 10, 7, 8, 8, 12, 8. I'm not sure the meter would really be damaged that much by reducing the last line by one syllable.

Sixty-seven has a completely different feeling than twenty-five.

It's likely less about meter than flow.

they don't sound the same.

the passage has 125 words using `wc -w`.

At first I didnt understand why either, but looking at poem more and thinking about if I were writing it; I think he did it so he could use the "Thirty two and a third" line. It's much more dramatic and stimulating ("...I love you, I...") than just saying "twenty-five times".

Edit: Oops, I think I screwed up my math. It would be 22 times.

Edit: misquoted! worked in a record store too long. :)

EDIT: Nevermind, I shouldn't comment late at night. Keeping the comment intact in case someone is currently responding, so context is preserved.

EDIT2: It would work with the actual number of words in the poem (125) though, he would have to say "Eighteen and a third times". 59+11+18*3+1 = 125

OLD COMMENT: What do you mean? "Thirty-two and a third times" means exactly that, and not 22. He used 59 words that day, plus the eleven for the first part of the call, plus 32 times 3 ("I love you"), plus a third of "I love you", which is just one word. Makes 167.

Maybe the author already used the other 42 words for the day.

Perhaps the author's a fan of Douglas Adams then?

The poet saved 42 words for later.

Sort of related, but on a more humorous note, a short film about a man who has only 1500 words left to live:

https://www.shortoftheweek.com/2016/05/25/1500-words/

Please don't use code blocks for anything but code; they're unreadable on mobile.

In this case, it makes sense because the author was trying to preserve the line breaks in the original poem, which give cadence to the writing and are integral to the work.

Don't blame the commenter. Blame HN for having broken <pre> blocks (or at least for consuming single line breaks otherwise).

They can't be that integral, since I didn't even realize it was supposed to be a poem until it was pointed out.

At least the GP used short lines... I hate those single-line code-blocked long comments.

A gift for you: https://www.eternum.io/ipfs/QmVARCKc4tqh82csydiAQ2JVmvvKeckm...

eternum.io looks really interesting and like something that can help move ipfs into mainstream.

I see this more and more. Why is there a recent trend to use codeblocks instead of > ? Is there a popular platform where codeblocks are quotes?

Because HN doesn't preserve line-breaks and `>` doesn't do anything. You'd have to double-space the entire poem which is just silly.

HN should just preserve all line-breaks so we don't have to hack around it.

HN preserves linebreaks. It's the paragraph formatting that gets in the way of poetry like the above.

No it doesn't

(The above was written "No\nit\ndoesn't")

You may be referring to some sort of distinction here, but I'm just talking about newlines.

No, just a brainfart. I was thinking of something else. Sorry.

Or it could do what Markdown does and preserve line-breaks that end in double spaces.

Invisible markup doesn't look like a good idea.

It works just fine for Markdown, I don't see why it wouldn't work equally well here.

I think you (and many valiant others) are fighting a losing battle here. God forbid HN should allow a quote style, that'd be so bloaty.

I suggested this before; according to 'dang it would break the spam filter. I'm unclear on the details.

Sigh. Or at least render code blocks nicely on mobile.

It's not related to mobile, the problem is the very small maxwidth that forces scrolling. Happens on the desktop too and is unnecessary.

Turn your phone to landscape orientation? :)

Nothing valiant about telling users not to use a standard feature. Double-plus anti-valiant to suggest prioritizing mobile over desktop.

Really powerful text. Can't remember when last time couple of words touched me like those.

May I suggest this reading of a Charles Bukowski poem. It's helped me to get out of bed a number of times, when the days look so foreboding. http://youtu.be/yVisTfbVSFE

You may also be interested in this excellent Bukowski poem, with a beautiful matching video:

https://vimeo.com/26946995

> When the phone rings, I put it to my ear without saying hello.

Actually I often do this with unknown callers, it usually confuse them especially when it's advertisement, they usually wait for someone to speak up, but at least it's easier way to save your breathe if someone who is calling you doesn't even know your name to ask "is mr. XY there?", then you can just hang up.

Beautiful and prophetic. Thanks for sharing.

Thank you very much for sharing. Touching. Did not expect something like this in the comment section. You definitely made my day with this beautiful poem.

Great poem. And what I like about HN is that the first dozens of comments on the poem are about technicalities like how it is displayed in the browser, the mathmatics of it etc., not its interpretation :-)

haha, full disclosure I took a screenshot of this comment because it epitomizes HN in a way that made my day

Thank you for bring that to my attention. It's really rather lovely.

it's great seeing a poem by a poet i know.

for the record, jeffrey mcdaniel is also a fantastic performer, so if you get a chance to see him recite, don't sleep on it.

spell bounding!