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You have arrived at the web home of Noah Brier. This is mostly an archive of over a decade of blogging and other writing. You can read more about me or get in touch. If you want more recent writing of mine, most of that is at my BrXnd marketing x AI newsletter and Why Is This Interesting?, a daily email for the intellectually omnivorous.

July, 2013

Borges and Sharknado

Borges and the Sharknado Problem: questioning the need for a 2-hour movie when a short story or a two-minute trailer might suffice.
I really like this little post on "Borges and the Sharknado Problem." The gist:
We can apply the Borgesian insight [why write a book when a short story is equally good for getting your point across] to the problem of Sharknado. Why make a two-hour movie called Sharknado when all you need is the idea of a movie called Sharknado? And perhaps, a two-minute trailer? And given that such a movie is not needed to convey the full brilliance of Sharknado – and it is, indeed, brilliant – why spend two hours watching it when it is, wastefully, made?
On Twitter my friend Ryan Catbird responded by pointing out that that's what makes the Modern Seinfeld Twitter account so magical: They give you the plot in 140 characters and you can easily imagine the episode (and that's really all you need).
July 30, 2013
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Noah Brier | Thanks for reading. | Don't fake the funk on a nasty dunk.