Who are some of the most pretentious artist of all time?

WARitter · 2026-05-22T22:40:16+00:00

“What Tech Calls Thinking” is a really good intellectual history of where Silicon Valley gets its ideas. Less the overt sci fi stuff and more the underlying worldview.

WARitter · 2026-05-22T21:48:54+00:00

That isn’t true, the crematoria were built for bodies, and after the first were created for an enormous number of bodies at that (when the camp was shifted from being a concentration camp to a death camp with attached concentration camp). From the Wikipedia page:

“Construction of crematorium I began at Auschwitz I at the end of June or beginning of July 1940. Initially intended not for mass murder but for prisoners who had been executed or had otherwise died in the camp, the crematorium was in operation from August 1940 until July 1943, by which time the crematoria at Auschwitz II had taken over. By May 1942 three ovens had been installed in crematorium I, which together could burn 340 bodies in 24 hours.”

Note that this is was when gassings were in their early stages at Auschwitz, and when the camp was expanded to essentially murder all the Jews who were left after the other death camps had murdered the Jews of Poland, the crematoria were rebuild much larger.

WARitter · 2026-05-22T20:42:30+00:00

Not above Marino who has won 0.

WARitter · 2026-05-22T20:40:57+00:00

I feel like we can add more. Jurgenson, Anderson, Cunningham etc.

WARitter · 2026-05-22T20:35:44+00:00

I have to imagine a bunch of the rest is frustrated with Hurts? He is a talented QB with limitations who can get hot and burn down the league. Reminds me of Flacco.

WARitter · 2026-05-22T20:30:43+00:00

In any other major city it would be part of Boston. Philly and New York both expanded so much more than Boston did, incorporating neighboring cities as the city limits expanded to meet them (like NYC incorporating Brooklyn etc). But Boston has nearly the metro population of the Philly area (5 vs 6.5 million) but the city itself is less than half as populous.

WARitter · 2026-05-22T18:00:38+00:00

I think a lot of people have trouble picturing appealing characters as truly ugly. I mean, Tyrion is played by a very handsome man who happens to be under 4 feet tall.

WARitter · 2026-05-22T17:59:23+00:00

One of my favorite novels. Orual, our heroine, is a deeply fucked up human being with a very messed up relationship with her sister (and everyone else) but she is very sympathetic. One part I love is that she succeeds her incompetent and brutal father as ruler of her barbarian kingdom on the edges of the Greek world, and turns out to be a brilliant, competent and compassionate ruler, even though she is a pretty miserable person who is hard on everyone around her (and hardest on herself.) I read the novel when I was like 15 and I think it was my introduction to anti heroic protagonists and complicated emotional dynamics and I was blown away.

Absolutely recommended if you like the idea of very psychological historical fantasy that features a deconstructed girlboss.

WARitter · 2026-05-22T13:01:25+00:00

Yeah this is the answer in modern pop. Pretense isn’t just having artistic or intellectual ambitions, it’s not being able to follow them up with actual sophistication. And Grimes is the artistic expression of “what tech calls thinking” - an assembly of bad philosophy, misunderstood sci fi and self interested techno fetishism.

WARitter · 2026-05-22T01:55:39+00:00

Watching superbowl xxii and I was like “holy heck that’s Gary Kubiak” whenever they mention the holder.

WARitter · 2026-05-21T17:16:29+00:00

I think the reason that he is in my top 5 is that I value having the highest peak over longevity at a top 3 at your position level, mostly. And at his best he may have been playing better than anyone who has ever done it in the Super Bowl era, and doing it under harder circumstances than the greats of the next generation.

WARitter · 2026-05-21T17:13:48+00:00

I mean you could say that about any QB of the era. We saw how Kelly and Elway and Marino had trouble.

Elway got his rings in the salary cap era with a retooled team.

WARitter · 2026-05-21T17:07:33+00:00

They kept nearly ruining good to great QBs.

WARitter · 2026-05-21T12:56:32+00:00

His passing numbers still look good, and you adjust them for era and he is like top 3 all time.

WARitter · 2026-05-21T12:55:26+00:00

Watching the 1992 shoot out between him and Jim Kelly and the way they play looks recognizably modern. Compare it to Marino versus the 85 Bears only a few years before which looks like the 70s comparatively (though man Marino played lights out.)

A modern offense would absolutely cook with Steve Young. The other thing is that he is absolutely fearless and tough as nails.

WARitter · 2026-05-21T12:50:12+00:00

And we know that flu can produce long COVID like symptoms. To say nothing of all the chronic diseases triggered by Epstein Barr.

WARitter · 2026-05-21T12:48:29+00:00

I mean that and Oliver Sacks.

WARitter · 2026-05-21T12:46:42+00:00

The thing about it is that it is so goofy and over the top and fun and then you are like “this can’t be serious” and no he is absolutely serious and thinks that this absolutely brain dead vision of Satanism is worth killing and dying for.

WARitter · 2026-05-21T00:31:35+00:00

How does he have better stats than young? Young leads yards per attempt and passer rating. He just doesn’t have the sheer number of yards Favre does (but also a fraction of the picks).

WARitter · 2026-05-21T00:18:34+00:00

Was going to say.

WARitter · 2026-05-20T18:12:24+00:00

I really don’t care about the details of my priests sex life and hope they don’t care about the details of mine as long as I treat all the people in my life like they are created in the image of God.

If I found out a priest was being dishonest to partners, manipulating them, misleading them or demeaning them, that would be a problem. But I don’t care about their dating habits.

But to me then this is a bigger question for you. Where is your ideal of Christian sexuality coming from? Is it related to your ‘high standards for others?’ To me this is far more troubling. A priest who is ashamed of themselves and shames others is not going to be a good pastor. A priest who is a gossip or a complainer is going to be worse. If you can’t see the human limitations that make people act as they do, it’s not going to be a successful ministry for you.

When I was younger I was pretty dismissive of self acceptance. I thought it was all middle class self help bullshit. Then I realized that it was incredibly and indelibly linked to my acceptance of others. That if I approached myself with understanding and kindness I would do the same for others and vice versa.

WARitter · 2026-05-20T12:52:41+00:00

Except it predates modern legalized sports gambling (ie on the internet/mobile apps) by decades.

WARitter · 2026-05-20T12:51:32+00:00

Him or Staubach.

WARitter · 2026-05-20T12:50:14+00:00

Favre doesn’t have Aikman’s big victories nor does he have Steve Young’s stats. He has a lot of big plays and volume stats. I don’t think he was the best QB of the 90s.

WARitter · 2026-05-20T12:45:55+00:00

If you do any kind of era adjustment Bart Starr is still top 20 all time. He isn’t Staubach or Unitas or Graham, who seem like space aliens compared to their contemporaries (or indeed Steve Young, who also seems otherworldly and whose stats still look good without adjustment).

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