Even then, the post adds no value to the discussion, so it deserves downvotes anyway. Its a great blog post, and I upvoted it, but its a bad comment, and I downvoted it.

Sure it does. It says that mjd is on HN, and reading this article's comments at least enough to post this, and that he has a sense of humor.

I'm sure if someone so desired, they could ask a specific question regarding the story either in reply to the root comment or as a root comment and expect it may be seen by the author, and possibly get a reply.

I think the quality of the other responses to the parent indicates exactly how likely that is. A whole subtree full of gray comments.

Maybe I'm just getting old.

Indeed. There's no place for humour on HN.