Welcome to the home of Noah Brier. I'm the co-founder of Variance and general internet tinkerer. Most of my writing these days is happening over at Why is this interesting?, a daily email full of interesting stuff. This site has been around since 2004. Feel free to get in touch. Good places to get started are my Framework of the Day posts or my favorite books and podcasts. Get in touch.

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Describing the Past & Present

I don’t know that I have a lot more to add than what Russell wrote here, but I like the way he described the challenge of describing something that is simultaneously happening the past and present (in this case, describing a soccer replay):

This is normally dismissed as typical footballer ignorance but it’s better understood when you think of a footballer standing infront of a monitor talking you through the goal they’ve just scored. They’re describing something in the past, which also seems to be happening now, which they’ve never seen before. The past and the present are all mushed up – it’s bound to create an odd tense.

It reminds me a bit of this post from a few years ago where I described the different levels of exposure/knowledge on the web.

August 3, 2013 // This post is about: , , ,