[skrebbel]

English is not everybody's first language. And, fwiw, I like to think that I'm as fluent in English as I am in my native language but still the article threw me off too (even while I otherwise liked it).

Notably, it doesn't start with something like "I'm from Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and worked at the local Google branch back in 2007" or something like that. Instead, it says this:

> let us go back in time and space, and journey to tropical Brazil in the distant time of 2007…

I mean if you're from Brazil, this is kinda weird no? Who describes their home country as a tropical place to "journey" towards? It reads like the start of a small anecdotal flashback, and not like the setting of the entire story. It took me many paragraphs to figure out that actually Arizona was the trip, and Brazil was the home base, and not the other way around. I did figure it out in the end, but I can understand why people might be thrown off.

[rdlw]

If I read something that isn't in my native language and don't understand it, I don't claim that it's poorly written.

[skrebbel]

I didn't defend that claim, I agree that it's ridiculous.

I was responding to this accusation, which I think is also ridiculous:

> I am baffled by the number of people on this website, who I assume have rudimentary reading comprehension, getting confused [..]

It's hard to admit publicly that you're confused by something. It's easy to call people who do so idiots, "ha! i did understand it so you must be stupid!". You didn't use those kinds of words but you did imply it and I didn't think it was good style.

[rdlw]

And yes, if I was telling someone a story, I might say "cast your mind to the snowy wastes of Canada..." as a fairly standard rhetorical flourish for someone who doesn't think of their country as the default location.