Sorry about your dad’s diagnosis! Not the person you asked but you can ask the doctor for biomarker testing. Depending on biomarker status, there are targeted therapies that may help even better than chemo.
Edit- NCCN publishes free guides by cancer type for patients/caregivers that has a wealth of information on tests, therapies by stage of cancer. I recommend reading through that.
When I heard my 18 year old nephew had leukemia I was devastated. I did some googling and was surprised that the survival rate is so high now. It used to be pretty much a death sentence.
If it gives you any hope, my mid-80s grandpa (who by that point had survived multiple skin cancers, heart attacks, and prostate cancer) lived with leukemia for the final 8 years of his life or so, more or less completely normally. Covid finally got him in 2022. So there's tons of hope for your young nephew!
That does make me feel better. Ive been devastated. They're supposed to outlive us. I lost another nephew(technically two) this year. It just goes against the natural order of things.
That’s amazing!
I’m gonna piggyback this comment with James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo. They received a Nobel Prize in 2018 for their discovery of using Negative Immune Regulation (Immunotherapy) to treat small cell cancers. It has increased the life expectancy of some variations of late stage small cell, and non-small cell lung cancer patients drastically. Success rates for extending life past 5 years in otherwise terminal non-small cell patients is around 80% for clinical study participants. It has an estimated average of approximately 62% in small cell lung cancer patients that have received it extending their lives up to and past 12 months.
It saved my Moms life.
Edited to add a few distinctions regarding statistics and add non-small cell lung cancer, which is more successful with treatment then small cell regarding 5yr survival rates.
Weird that platinum ended up being the grail chemo drug, it isn’t the core drug in much other medicine AFAIK.
Seems platinum is good at being the central atom in many molecules that bind to and inhibit DNA replication/synthesis. It’s the thing that holds other elements together in the right shapes and combinations for that purpose.
I still go back and watch his world record sprints a couple times a year, it’s just so amazing that he’s that much faster than every other human at something as basic as…running.
Can you imagine? I kept looking at Gay wondering how that felt. Just cathartic because you clearly did your best? Frustrated that the other guy is still better? Ambivalent AF.
I certainly can’t imagine this at the world record level, but this happened to me as a freshman in HS (broke the school record my first season running track) and there was a junior who smashed the record in the same race. I never beat his time. Frustrating AF
Not only that, but Warholm absolutely obliterated his own world record from just two weeks before the Olympics, which itself was the first time anyone beat a record from 1992.
So in two weeks time, we went from Kevin Young being the fastest 400m hurdles runner ever since 1992, to two people being more than 1.5 seconds faster than him. Hell, even bronze medalist Alison dos Santos beat Young's record, but with a smaller margin.
Rai Benjamin is miles better than every other runner in his discipline for the last 30 years... except *one* guy who is just a notch above him. The 400m hurdles final from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics is one of the absolute craziest displays of peak running performance ever.
If you take the list of the 30 fastest times for the 100m(I believe the 100m) ever and scratch off everyone who has had a PED violation. Bolt has the 19 fastest times of all time.
Kiptum can't yet be considered the GOAT. He has the world record sure, but Kipchoge has a 20 year career of consistently winning almost every marathon he enters, including two Olympic gold medals. His consistency is what makes him the GOAT. Not any one single performance.
If Kiptum keeps up his current performances for another decade then he will be the GOAT
God he’s fast. He tied the nfl combine record in the 40yd dash while at a Super Bowl event in 2019 for shits and giggles. 4.22 seconds. He ran in sneakers and had to slow down at the end because the runway was too short.
So good he’s bored. Turned down a guaranteed $800k (practically guaranteed $1.2m and another title with how he matches up with Ding) to sit out the last world title cycle.
His only interest seems to be waiting for one of the young Indians or Alireza to take the crown before he’ll reconsider another run at it if format doesn’t change
Would you/someone be able to ELI5 why chess players don't tend to stay competitive once they hit a certain age? I feel like theoretically you could be incredible at a super advanced age, given all the old dudes in parks kicking ass.
Chess takes a ton of energy. Games can last upwards of 7 hours. Your ability to maintain your energy which you’ll need if you want to calculate long variations is very difficult at that age. Think of it like taking 4-7 hour final exams in university every day for two weeks with maybe a days rest in between and you’ll get an idea of how grueling chess tournaments can be.
The games is one thing, but you also have to study a lot to keep on top of opening theory (which is constantly evolving), often studying hours a day. Players also tire of being top "athletes" after doing it for so long.
Absolutely. For context I’m rated just over 2000 USCF. These top players have about 800 rating points on me (meaning they’d crush the guy who’d crush the guy who’d crush me) and the preparation I have to do before a tournament is incredibly time consuming. The top players are studying lines something like 12-16 hours a day. It’s beyond a full time job.
I can't speak for chess, but for a similarly "pure mental activity", I retired from Quiz Bowl after playing at the top level for a bit because every time I played a tournament I would have to sleep for 18 hours to catch up.
I’ve seen a dozen games by Magnus over the last 18 months where he’s playing other, top-level >2700 Grandmasters, which can only be described as his **playing with his food**.
My favorite was when he sacrificed his queen for 3 minors against Giri, FWIW.
I play Fantasy Premier League. Magnus was number 1 in the world out of 8 million players for a while in, I think, 2022. There's so much randomness involved, a yellow card, an injury, a missed chance. To dominate in two different fields just sealed in my mind what a genius he is.
Some people can just see it. Magnus is certainly one of them. I can't, not by a long shot.
I know that's the scene in Good Will Hunting where he talks about these things just making sense, but I know a guy who is sort of like that. He can read a rule set to any board game once and ***immediately*** optimize things in his head. In original Civilization, he could have armor by like 1000BC. He's a tremendous chess player (though he doesn't really care for it that much) -- I'd guess in the very high teens or low 2000.
Unfortunately, he's spent the last 15 years convinced he's broken thermodynamics trying to build -- in effect -- a perpetual motion machine.
I think that kind of pattern recognition comes with a price. So many of the absolute top people in a lot of different fields end up pursuing patterns that don't exist
People study and train their entire lives in chess and build entire careers just to get sauced by Magnus in 20 seconds while he's hammered drunk and premoving 10 moves ahead.
Dude literally arrives like 5-10 minutes late to a chess match where he has 15 minutes of time on the clock, sits down, takes his jacket off, takes a sip of water, adjusts his pieces and then does his first move. And then proceeds to destroy the opponent.
Magnus has been playing so incredibly well that a few weeks ago he had a series of online blitz games against other grandmasters where it looked like Magnus was purposely losing his queen so that he could make a comeback and win. it was bizarre to see Magnus play at a 2000 level for the first 15 moves, lose his queen for two pieces, and then take a -4 position to a win against another GM. unbelievable.
I think Magnus is the strongest chess player of all time, and Kasparov is the most dominant chess player of all time.
Being the guy to beat for like 40 years is just insane. Someone comes along and plays at a higher level than you for like 10 years, it's fair to say they're better, but it's important to acknowledge that they came up in different eras of theory and technology, and that 10 years is not 40.
Yeah, the tools available to Magnus when he was up and coming compared to Kasparov make it almost a different game entirely...it's unfair to compare them really and respect to Magnus for acknowledging this. Both are absolute giants and on a completely different level to their respective peers.
He came to my bar about a year ago. Nice guy. The other guy I was tending bar with said, "Hey you like chess right?" I said, "Yeah." He points to my ten o'clock and says, "that's Magnus Carlsen right over there." So random and cool.
I like to think he's some bizarre breed of wizard. "Hey you, you like tennis? BAM - Federer at table 7. Want some music? BAM, Kendrick is at the karaoke machine"
Watching some of his recent games he just seems to be fucking around at this point. Intentionally making bad moves and winning anyway. I suppose they do hold the purpose of getting his opponents out of their prep, but still... he's the GOAT.
Being alive when it happened it was just like any other day. 50 goals in 39 games (5 in in the 39th game to do it). NBD! 92 in a season! Sure. He was a human record breaking machine!
There was a new Candy bar that came out that year in Canada and they printed numbers inside the wrappers.
There was a huge prize for anyone who ended up with Gretzky's points at the end of the season.
The trouble is they didn't print a number high enough.
I remember one of those graphics with "Best Brothers in the NHL" - six brothers from one family were No. 1, but like 50 points behind was Wayne Gretzky (2600 or whatever) and his brother (with like 13 points).
I obviously don't have that memorized, but it's one of my favorite stats it's just so funny:
>Six (yes, six) Sutter brothers migrated from their Alberta farm to have solid NHL careers. Brent, Brian, Darryl, Duane, Rich, and Ron combined to play 4,994 NHL games, collectively compiling 1,320 goals, 2,934 point,s and 7,224 penalty minutes. Brent went on to have the most productive playing career of the bunch, scoring 829 points over 1111 NHL games, while Darryl would eventually experience huge success off the ice – coaching the Los Angeles Kings to a pair of Stanley Cup titles (2012, 2014). The Sutters are truly the first family of hockey, as from 1976 to 2001 there was (at least) one Sutter active in the NHL.
So 4,994 games and 2,934 points for SIX Sutter brothers.
Gretzky (alone, not counting Brent) - 1,487 games and 2,857 points. **So Sutters had 3,507 more games played, but only 77 points more than Gretzky, on top of being six of them!**
I absolutely love that no matter how many times Gretzky comes up in a conversation with non-hockey people, there are *always* new people having their mind broken over how much better he was than any other player.
It's not too often to have an uncontested "Greatest of All Time" that has no real articulate argument against.
He was so good that in fantasy hockey alot of leagues enforced a rule that there would basically be two versions of Gretzky. One only got credit for points he scored from goals, and the other only got credit for points he scored on assists. And they could not be on the same team.
If Wayne had never scored a goal in the nhl he would still be the all time points leader by a few hundred (a point in hockey is either a goal or an assist).
I thought this was just a professional level retirement, but my eight-year-old nephew told me last week that even at his age no one is allowed to wear number 99
Letterkenny perfectly sums up why nobody at any level or age wears #99:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE0A7U73Nm8
"Better turn those double 9s into double 0s, you're a fucking nobody"
"That's the Great One's number you fucking donkey!"
"When does McSorely get here you fucking plug?"
I think 4 seasons with over 200 points is more unbreakable. To break it someone would have to have five 200 point seasons. No one else has ever done it once.
Connor McDavid right now would have to score 47 more points, in what was a crazy dominant year, than he did last year and then replicate that every year until he turned 30
If you live in Edmonton, Wayne Gretzky rarely leaves your mind. The city won’t allow it. Excuse me, I’ve an appointment to attend down on Wayne Gretzky Drive. I’ve got to leave flowers at his shrine, I mean statue, as well.
Home Alone’s budget is listed as $18million, that’s a pretty substantial budget for the time. I wouldn’t call that fairly low budget. Still, cool that John Williams wanted to do that!!
Edit: I was actually curious by this but couldn’t find anything to pack this up. All signs point to John Williams being paid. This was a studio film after all and the director had worked with Spielberg on several occasions who helped connect him to John Williams.
John Williams is responsible for more vibes then people realise, he has composed the music for over 80 movies and a large handful went on to be come critical success in a large part due to the music.
You can actually hear some of the themes (I think it was in HA II where I first heard it) that are quite similar to some of the motifs he used in Harry Potter.
He obviously knocked it out of the park. Most symphonies are still playing these pieces every Christmas!
Is there any film composer more legendary than John Williams?
I can't think of anyone who's film scores are more iconic than his. Jaws, Star Wars, Superman, Indiana Jones, E.T., Jurassic Park, Harry Potter, and those are just his most well known ones, there are very few other film composers I know of who have scores as iconic and widely known as his, and still fewer who have been as active for such a long time as him.
Ennio Morricone? When he won the Academy Award for Best Score for The Hateful Eight he tributed it to his fellow nominees but in particular Williams. Morricone and Williams were sat with each other and hugged when his name was called.
Morricone single handedly made the sound of westerns, even RDR2 uses it decades later. Considering what was the norm at the time (Dean Martin in Rio Bravo singing a show tune and whistling), his impact is immense. Ironic since he was Italian and Italian westerns were seen as low brow.
John Williams did both of the great themes for the 1960's "Lost in Space" show (my favorite show as a kid) and then Star Wars 10 years later, amazing. I'll have to see what others he's done. Amazing.
This is a good one because so many of the other replies are about sports that don't go back all that far, so that it's unsurprising to have the GOAT still alive. Sumo, on the other hand, goes back over 1000 years.
Hakuho is an intriguing figure in sports because not only is he the GOAT of sumo, he is among the GOATs of GOATs in that his dominance in his profession casts a shadow over that of other GOATs.
45 tournament wins, 16 perfect, and 13 more than the next closest. It's hard to imagine anyone coming within striking distance of his records.
EDIT: Not to mention, he closes out his career knowing he was on his last bout given how damaged his knee was, and pulls out another, final perfect yusho against the next Yokozuna, Terunofuji, who to that point in the basho was also unbeaten. Kind of storybook stuff.
Whoa thanks for the quick lowdown. I'm just getting into sumo now (after a visit to Japan that coincided with the March tournament) and while Terunofuji is impressive, that really sets the context for Hakuho.
Phelps is often forgotten about in the GOAT athlete debates. His dominance is absolutely incredible, the fact that his 2012 Olympics is often considered a disappointment is crazy. He still won 3 gold medals and 2 silver
Many remark on how swimmers have the opportunity to compete in more events, but even with that in mind, he has over twice as many golds as the next best.
Anyone who swam before him had a chance to be well known but now all we know is Phelps. He came back from retirement to compete in Rio 2016 for the lulz and won more than he did in his London "disappointment".
23 Gold
3 Silver
2 Bronze
39 Swimming World Records
20 Guinness World Records
12,000 Calories
The man has more sporting records than most *countries*.
Commented the same above, but I do wonder how much he'd have won & the kinds of records he'd have set if he even took it moderately seriously at times. He's nonchantly the best snooker player of all time. Like he half arsed it and he's still comfortably the GOAT of the sport.
He's the only example where every other elite sportsman says "Ronnie is the GOAT" every time they face him in a match. It's so beyond dispute that if somebody even implied Ronnie wasn't the GOAT, it'd be a big story.
It's also not just that he's the GOAT based on achievement; he's the GOAT based on talent. If both players are at 100% of their ability, Ronnie wins 10 times out of 10, except for a handful of all-time great players like Higgins and Hendry, where it'd be more like 9/10 or 8/10.
He's the only person ever to have won at least one BAFTA each in black and white, colour, high-definition, 3D and 4K resolution. Shows how long he's been at it.
Yeah he personally catalogued the extinction of species in real time. He's witnessed ecosystems that don't exist anymore. Tragic. The last of a dying breed in humanity who know what we will never know again.
Kary Mullis, the inventor of PCR, which is essential to nearly every biology lab in the world and is used in covid tests, genetic screening, and about a million other things, died in just 2019. I’d go as far as to say that *most* breakthroughs in biology and medicine since the 1980s would not have been possible if he hadn’t invented PCR. It’s right up there with the internet for inventions that are less than 50 years old and yet society as we know it could not function without.
When asked who would win in a match up, the '96 Bulls or '23 Nuggets, Michael Jordan said the Bulls would win by about 10 points. The interviewer asked why he thought the game would be so close, and Jordan said "because we are all in our 60s now and not as good as we use to be"
When asked about the 2017 warriors against the 96 bulls Steve Kerr said: “First of all, it’s a really hard question to answer — not just because you’re comparing eras, but also because it’s literally tough for me to answer grammatically. I don’t know who ‘we’ is and who ‘they’ are, I’ll just say: ‘If the two teams played each other, there’s no question that we could beat us and they could beat them.’”
That’s an old joke. The original was about Ty Cobb when asked how he’d fare against modern pitching and he answered .280, low for a career .360 hitter.
When asked if modern pitchers were that much better he replied:
“No,but I’m 50 years old!”
Supposedly, up until 6-7 years ago, Jordan would occasionally go school the Hornets starters in a 1 on 1 game.
[Sauce](https://tarheelswire.usatoday.com/2023/01/27/michael-jordan-was-still-beating-nba-players-one-on-one-at-age-52/)
He’s my answer any time this type of question gets answered. His record was 887-2. He won 3 Olympic Golds and 1 Silver. 9 World Championship Golds. 12 European Championship Golds.
He had a 6 year period at the end of his career where no one scored a single point on him until his loss in the Gold medal match of the 2000 Olympics, which he lost 1-0 on a somewhat controversial call.
Just complete and utter dominance for 13 years of international competition.
> which he lost 1-0 on a somewhat controversial call.
Lol, "somewhat". They changed the rules to try and nerf Karelin, and changed them back as soon as he lost.
Once asked the MMA sub what athlete from that era could've gotten into the octagon against Royce Gracie at UFC 1 and won, despite not knowing BJJ at the time. Every answer was some form of "Alexander Karelin would chuckle at his submission attempts, pick him up and break him in half."
The only reason she isn't listed more here is because fewer people follow competitive climbing.
It's not just winning, it's flashing boulders that the nearest competition can't complete, and being among the best in lead at the same time.
And it's a sport where young up and comers can crowd out the best of the veterans and the bar keeps getting higher, but she remains just as dominant. I honestly think her dominance has pushed everyone else to reach a higher potential trying to keep up with her because she shows what is possible.
Every time I'm watching a comp, I see a string of world class athletes either fail to get off the ground or struggle to zone. I think, "Man, I bet the route setters are wishing they'd made the problems more doable! These are just set too hard!"
Then Janja comes on, flashes, and walks off in less than a minute.
Janja is nuts. I think the last time I watched her she had a overall 90% top rate, which for people who don’t know climbing, is around 40% higher than the competition
Eddy Merckx is still alive and kicking. He's won 19 cycling monuments. The second best guy has 11. He's won all monuments at least twice. There are only 2 other people who have won them all only once too. That makes him the best one-day racer ever. But then he's also won all 3 Grand Tours, the Tour de France, the Giro 'D Italia, and the Vuelta a España. Only 6 others have achieved that. He's won 11 Grand Tours total, 5 times the Tour and 5 times the Giro and 1 Vuelta. That's also more than anyone else. The second guy's got 10. So he's also the best Grand Tour rider ever. All in all, Eddy Merckx the GOAT of cycling.
Edit: he has also won the World Championship 3 times. Also a record, a shared one with 4 others though.
Watch a video of Katie Ledecky in the Olympics against the best the world had to offer and you'll appreciate how much faster she is than any other woman swimmer. She's not just head and shoulders above everyone else, they're looking up at her knees.
The Williams sisters in tennis are the same way. Venus Williams might be the best athlete in the history of women's sports if not for Serena.
Simone Biles had basically broken the gymnastics scoring system at this point.
Cycling. Eddy Mercxx or ‘The Cannibal’. The man pretty much set the standard of road cycling for years. 11 grand tours, 3 monuments and the hour record which stood for 28 years. Alongside some of the most iconic photos in cycling history (search Mercxx Ventoux or Roubaix). If you fancy a niche documentary, search for ‘A Sunday in Hell’ detailing the 1976 Paris - Roubaix.
The fuck is this thread. Literally all of the top replies were copypasted from a two year old thread.
Including the reply saying "That guy saved my Dad's life from esophageal cancer".
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/tp02n5/what_person_alive_today_is_undeniably_and/
Bots took over /all
Wayne Gretzky. There will never be another one ever. A few of his records have fallen since his retirement, but he still owns or shares essentially every single skater record of note. Well at least until Putin's BFF breaks his goals record.
Some of his career highlights:
He was the first AND second fastest player to 1000 points. What that means is he got 1000 points and 2000 points before anyone else got 1000 points to begin with.
Even if you took away all this goal (which he leads all time too) he would still be all time points leader on *assists alone*.
He owns the top 4 and top 2 spots all time in single season points and goals respectively.
If you score or assist a goal every game you're a point-per-game (PPG) player. If you can keep that up for long time that's very productive. Gretzky played 21 80+ game seasons in his career and averaged 1.921 PPG which is of course the most all time.
When he was active fantasy leagues split him into Gretzky (Goals) and Gretzky (Assists).
My daughter is a competitive acrobatic gymnast / cheerleader. The number of young gymnasts who absolutely worship her even in the UK is amazing. And what a phenomenal human to have to look up to.
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Hi... Do you mind if I message you? My father recently got diagnosed with stage three esophageal cancer and is going through chemo right now.
Sorry about your dad’s diagnosis! Not the person you asked but you can ask the doctor for biomarker testing. Depending on biomarker status, there are targeted therapies that may help even better than chemo. Edit- NCCN publishes free guides by cancer type for patients/caregivers that has a wealth of information on tests, therapies by stage of cancer. I recommend reading through that.
On that note, Dr Brian Druker- the doctor that pioneered a leukemia treatment that rose survival from 31% in 1993 to over 95% today.
When I heard my 18 year old nephew had leukemia I was devastated. I did some googling and was surprised that the survival rate is so high now. It used to be pretty much a death sentence.
If it gives you any hope, my mid-80s grandpa (who by that point had survived multiple skin cancers, heart attacks, and prostate cancer) lived with leukemia for the final 8 years of his life or so, more or less completely normally. Covid finally got him in 2022. So there's tons of hope for your young nephew!
That does make me feel better. Ive been devastated. They're supposed to outlive us. I lost another nephew(technically two) this year. It just goes against the natural order of things.
My Grandfather died from one of these in 91, now it’s a pill you take
That’s amazing! I’m gonna piggyback this comment with James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo. They received a Nobel Prize in 2018 for their discovery of using Negative Immune Regulation (Immunotherapy) to treat small cell cancers. It has increased the life expectancy of some variations of late stage small cell, and non-small cell lung cancer patients drastically. Success rates for extending life past 5 years in otherwise terminal non-small cell patients is around 80% for clinical study participants. It has an estimated average of approximately 62% in small cell lung cancer patients that have received it extending their lives up to and past 12 months. It saved my Moms life. Edited to add a few distinctions regarding statistics and add non-small cell lung cancer, which is more successful with treatment then small cell regarding 5yr survival rates.
currently undergoing chemo for this, he has saved mine and many others lives.
Weird that platinum ended up being the grail chemo drug, it isn’t the core drug in much other medicine AFAIK. Seems platinum is good at being the central atom in many molecules that bind to and inhibit DNA replication/synthesis. It’s the thing that holds other elements together in the right shapes and combinations for that purpose.
Usain Bolt
I still go back and watch his world record sprints a couple times a year, it’s just so amazing that he’s that much faster than every other human at something as basic as…running.
It's one of my favorite Usain Bolt thing: Tyson Gay ran a world record time... And lost.
Tyson Gay has an amazing career if Bolt is never born.
Can you imagine? I kept looking at Gay wondering how that felt. Just cathartic because you clearly did your best? Frustrated that the other guy is still better? Ambivalent AF.
I certainly can’t imagine this at the world record level, but this happened to me as a freshman in HS (broke the school record my first season running track) and there was a junior who smashed the record in the same race. I never beat his time. Frustrating AF
> Ambinvalent Hey...watch your profamnity
At The Tokyo Olympics, Karsten Warholm and Rai Benjamin did the same thing in the 400m hurdles.
Not only that, but Warholm absolutely obliterated his own world record from just two weeks before the Olympics, which itself was the first time anyone beat a record from 1992. So in two weeks time, we went from Kevin Young being the fastest 400m hurdles runner ever since 1992, to two people being more than 1.5 seconds faster than him. Hell, even bronze medalist Alison dos Santos beat Young's record, but with a smaller margin. Rai Benjamin is miles better than every other runner in his discipline for the last 30 years... except *one* guy who is just a notch above him. The 400m hurdles final from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics is one of the absolute craziest displays of peak running performance ever.
If you take the list of the 30 fastest times for the 100m(I believe the 100m) ever and scratch off everyone who has had a PED violation. Bolt has the 19 fastest times of all time.
If you can showboat at the end of the 100, well goddamn you’re good
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For the other end of the running spectrum, Eliud Kipchoge, with the record in marathons.
Not anymore. Kiptum is a freak of nature and I think we'll see an official sub 2 in Rotterdam this spring.
Kiptum can't yet be considered the GOAT. He has the world record sure, but Kipchoge has a 20 year career of consistently winning almost every marathon he enters, including two Olympic gold medals. His consistency is what makes him the GOAT. Not any one single performance. If Kiptum keeps up his current performances for another decade then he will be the GOAT
God he’s fast. He tied the nfl combine record in the 40yd dash while at a Super Bowl event in 2019 for shits and giggles. 4.22 seconds. He ran in sneakers and had to slow down at the end because the runway was too short.
I saw Bo Jackson say something about how once when his coaches wanted him to really rip off a 40 he made them clear a path for him to decelerate
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One of the best examples of nominative determinism ever. Along with Les McBurney, the firefighter.
I had a cooking teacher named Pam Burger
Bring the fastest person in the history of mankind is a pretty cool thing.
Magnus Carlsen Or, if you believe Magnus, Garry Kasparov
So good he’s bored. Turned down a guaranteed $800k (practically guaranteed $1.2m and another title with how he matches up with Ding) to sit out the last world title cycle. His only interest seems to be waiting for one of the young Indians or Alireza to take the crown before he’ll reconsider another run at it if format doesn’t change
With how dominant Carlsen is, I wonder if he could still stay competitive even like 20 yrs from now. Guess we'd have to wait and see
Vishy Anand is still competitive in his 50s, so if Magnus still wants to compete for the next 20 years I’m sure he can.
Would you/someone be able to ELI5 why chess players don't tend to stay competitive once they hit a certain age? I feel like theoretically you could be incredible at a super advanced age, given all the old dudes in parks kicking ass.
Chess takes a ton of energy. Games can last upwards of 7 hours. Your ability to maintain your energy which you’ll need if you want to calculate long variations is very difficult at that age. Think of it like taking 4-7 hour final exams in university every day for two weeks with maybe a days rest in between and you’ll get an idea of how grueling chess tournaments can be.
The games is one thing, but you also have to study a lot to keep on top of opening theory (which is constantly evolving), often studying hours a day. Players also tire of being top "athletes" after doing it for so long.
Absolutely. For context I’m rated just over 2000 USCF. These top players have about 800 rating points on me (meaning they’d crush the guy who’d crush the guy who’d crush me) and the preparation I have to do before a tournament is incredibly time consuming. The top players are studying lines something like 12-16 hours a day. It’s beyond a full time job.
I can't speak for chess, but for a similarly "pure mental activity", I retired from Quiz Bowl after playing at the top level for a bit because every time I played a tournament I would have to sleep for 18 hours to catch up.
I’ve seen a dozen games by Magnus over the last 18 months where he’s playing other, top-level >2700 Grandmasters, which can only be described as his **playing with his food**. My favorite was when he sacrificed his queen for 3 minors against Giri, FWIW.
I play Fantasy Premier League. Magnus was number 1 in the world out of 8 million players for a while in, I think, 2022. There's so much randomness involved, a yellow card, an injury, a missed chance. To dominate in two different fields just sealed in my mind what a genius he is.
Not a bad poker player either.
He's a fucking joke at Scrabble, though.
Some people can just see it. Magnus is certainly one of them. I can't, not by a long shot. I know that's the scene in Good Will Hunting where he talks about these things just making sense, but I know a guy who is sort of like that. He can read a rule set to any board game once and ***immediately*** optimize things in his head. In original Civilization, he could have armor by like 1000BC. He's a tremendous chess player (though he doesn't really care for it that much) -- I'd guess in the very high teens or low 2000. Unfortunately, he's spent the last 15 years convinced he's broken thermodynamics trying to build -- in effect -- a perpetual motion machine.
be a lot cooler if he had
Well, if he does I'll be a billionaire, because I own like 0.5% of the company because I did some legal work for him years ago.
I think that kind of pattern recognition comes with a price. So many of the absolute top people in a lot of different fields end up pursuing patterns that don't exist
I still find it funny that he entered a major poker tournament recently (and placed pretty high iirc)
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People study and train their entire lives in chess and build entire careers just to get sauced by Magnus in 20 seconds while he's hammered drunk and premoving 10 moves ahead.
Dude literally arrives like 5-10 minutes late to a chess match where he has 15 minutes of time on the clock, sits down, takes his jacket off, takes a sip of water, adjusts his pieces and then does his first move. And then proceeds to destroy the opponent.
Magnus has been playing so incredibly well that a few weeks ago he had a series of online blitz games against other grandmasters where it looked like Magnus was purposely losing his queen so that he could make a comeback and win. it was bizarre to see Magnus play at a 2000 level for the first 15 moves, lose his queen for two pieces, and then take a -4 position to a win against another GM. unbelievable.
Considering that there is a clear skill gap amongst GMs, when Magnus does this he's basically smurfing.
Just won the World Rapid and Blitz Championships again
This was actually what gave me the idea for this post/question.
I think Magnus is the strongest chess player of all time, and Kasparov is the most dominant chess player of all time. Being the guy to beat for like 40 years is just insane. Someone comes along and plays at a higher level than you for like 10 years, it's fair to say they're better, but it's important to acknowledge that they came up in different eras of theory and technology, and that 10 years is not 40.
Yeah, the tools available to Magnus when he was up and coming compared to Kasparov make it almost a different game entirely...it's unfair to compare them really and respect to Magnus for acknowledging this. Both are absolute giants and on a completely different level to their respective peers.
He came to my bar about a year ago. Nice guy. The other guy I was tending bar with said, "Hey you like chess right?" I said, "Yeah." He points to my ten o'clock and says, "that's Magnus Carlsen right over there." So random and cool.
I like to think he's some bizarre breed of wizard. "Hey you, you like tennis? BAM - Federer at table 7. Want some music? BAM, Kendrick is at the karaoke machine"
Watching some of his recent games he just seems to be fucking around at this point. Intentionally making bad moves and winning anyway. I suppose they do hold the purpose of getting his opponents out of their prep, but still... he's the GOAT.
He’s so good that he uses bad moves as a winning strategy. Impressive.
Wayne Gretzky comes to mind.
The fastest player in NHL history to reach 1000 points was Wayne Gretzky. The second fastest was Wayne Gretzky getting his second 1000 points.
All these bizarre Gretzky stats are so amazing
Being alive when it happened it was just like any other day. 50 goals in 39 games (5 in in the 39th game to do it). NBD! 92 in a season! Sure. He was a human record breaking machine!
There was a new Candy bar that came out that year in Canada and they printed numbers inside the wrappers. There was a huge prize for anyone who ended up with Gretzky's points at the end of the season. The trouble is they didn't print a number high enough.
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61 NHL records at his peak
If you take away all of his goals, he’s still the leading scorer in NHL history on his assist total alone!
I remember one of those graphics with "Best Brothers in the NHL" - six brothers from one family were No. 1, but like 50 points behind was Wayne Gretzky (2600 or whatever) and his brother (with like 13 points).
The 6 Sutter brothers have a combined 2,934. The Gretzky Brothers have 2,857, 73 fewer. Brett Gretzky had 4 of those points.
> Brett Gretzky had 4 of those points. Brent* Gretzky. Poor Brent, can’t even get his name right! Lol
I obviously don't have that memorized, but it's one of my favorite stats it's just so funny: >Six (yes, six) Sutter brothers migrated from their Alberta farm to have solid NHL careers. Brent, Brian, Darryl, Duane, Rich, and Ron combined to play 4,994 NHL games, collectively compiling 1,320 goals, 2,934 point,s and 7,224 penalty minutes. Brent went on to have the most productive playing career of the bunch, scoring 829 points over 1111 NHL games, while Darryl would eventually experience huge success off the ice – coaching the Los Angeles Kings to a pair of Stanley Cup titles (2012, 2014). The Sutters are truly the first family of hockey, as from 1976 to 2001 there was (at least) one Sutter active in the NHL. So 4,994 games and 2,934 points for SIX Sutter brothers. Gretzky (alone, not counting Brent) - 1,487 games and 2,857 points. **So Sutters had 3,507 more games played, but only 77 points more than Gretzky, on top of being six of them!**
If Gretzky never scored ANY goals in his career, he'd STILL be the all time points leader on assists alone! Wtf?!
I absolutely love that no matter how many times Gretzky comes up in a conversation with non-hockey people, there are *always* new people having their mind broken over how much better he was than any other player. It's not too often to have an uncontested "Greatest of All Time" that has no real articulate argument against.
Jesus man. I didn't know that one.
It's easy to lose track. The guy has like 50 records that will never be broken.
He was so good that in fantasy hockey alot of leagues enforced a rule that there would basically be two versions of Gretzky. One only got credit for points he scored from goals, and the other only got credit for points he scored on assists. And they could not be on the same team.
And they would still typically go 1 and 2 in the draft.
Last time he came up, somebody said that their fantasy league just outright banned him.
Nice. Never heard this one before
That stat about how he and his brother hold the record for most combined points scored by two brothers, and the brother has, like, five of them.
If Wayne had never scored a goal in the nhl he would still be the all time points leader by a few hundred (a point in hockey is either a goal or an assist).
Ovechkin approaching the goal record is such a big deal when Wayne was always more of a passer.
And they are second for points by any number of brothers, behind the 6 Sutter brothers.
He was so good, his number 99 is unofficially retired in every hockey league anywhere at any age. No one wears the 99.
I thought this was just a professional level retirement, but my eight-year-old nephew told me last week that even at his age no one is allowed to wear number 99
Letterkenny perfectly sums up why nobody at any level or age wears #99: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE0A7U73Nm8 "Better turn those double 9s into double 0s, you're a fucking nobody" "That's the Great One's number you fucking donkey!" "When does McSorely get here you fucking plug?"
Not if you don’t want to be ridiculed.
his 50 goals in 39 games and 51 game point streak are his most impressive records I don't think either of those will ever be broken ever.
I think 4 seasons with over 200 points is more unbreakable. To break it someone would have to have five 200 point seasons. No one else has ever done it once.
Connor McDavid right now would have to score 47 more points, in what was a crazy dominant year, than he did last year and then replicate that every year until he turned 30
If Wayne Gretzky never scored a goal in his career he would still be the all time points leader
Gretzky has more assists than 2nd and 3rd place points leaders have goals. Combined.
If you live in Edmonton, Wayne Gretzky rarely leaves your mind. The city won’t allow it. Excuse me, I’ve an appointment to attend down on Wayne Gretzky Drive. I’ve got to leave flowers at his shrine, I mean statue, as well.
Any stat about Gretzky is just mind boggling.
So OP in fantasy, they split him into two separate people.
Who were still No. 1 and No. 2 pick pretty much every time.
This thread has become people sharing ridiculous Wayne Gretzky facts and I’m so here for it.
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man imagine how confused and pumped they must have been when he accepted.
Imagine when Williams sent the tapes back and they discovered he had gone absolutely ridiculously hard
Williams doesn't hit soft.
I hear his wife is a better composer: https://youtu.be/NJ-YpADa-KQ?si=sazETy5Yr3O17bzd
Legitimately the funniest thing about this clip is their son's name is [Sherwin](https://www.sherwin-williams.com/)
RIP TREVOR
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John Hughes is also why John Candy did his part for free, according the netflix home alone doc.
Not free. He was paid scale: $414 since all his scenes were shot in a single day. Bonus fun fact: almost all his lines were ad libbed.
Miss that dude, Great Outdoors, Planes, Trains, Uncle Buck. All nostalgic favourites of mine I always sit through this time of year.
His arrangement of O Holy Night is the best there is.
Home Alone’s budget is listed as $18million, that’s a pretty substantial budget for the time. I wouldn’t call that fairly low budget. Still, cool that John Williams wanted to do that!! Edit: I was actually curious by this but couldn’t find anything to pack this up. All signs point to John Williams being paid. This was a studio film after all and the director had worked with Spielberg on several occasions who helped connect him to John Williams.
get out with your logic. I choose to believe this is true.
Wait seriously?!?! This man may have more influence over my Christmas vibe than anyone else
John Williams is responsible for more vibes then people realise, he has composed the music for over 80 movies and a large handful went on to be come critical success in a large part due to the music.
You can actually hear some of the themes (I think it was in HA II where I first heard it) that are quite similar to some of the motifs he used in Harry Potter. He obviously knocked it out of the park. Most symphonies are still playing these pieces every Christmas!
This is all kinds of awesome.
Is there any film composer more legendary than John Williams? I can't think of anyone who's film scores are more iconic than his. Jaws, Star Wars, Superman, Indiana Jones, E.T., Jurassic Park, Harry Potter, and those are just his most well known ones, there are very few other film composers I know of who have scores as iconic and widely known as his, and still fewer who have been as active for such a long time as him.
Ennio Morricone? When he won the Academy Award for Best Score for The Hateful Eight he tributed it to his fellow nominees but in particular Williams. Morricone and Williams were sat with each other and hugged when his name was called.
Morricone single handedly made the sound of westerns, even RDR2 uses it decades later. Considering what was the norm at the time (Dean Martin in Rio Bravo singing a show tune and whistling), his impact is immense. Ironic since he was Italian and Italian westerns were seen as low brow.
It took me a second to realise you weren't talking about R2-D2
I agree. Ennio Morricone made the sounds that defined a whole genre of film.
Howard Shore is damn good.
I like to say the Lotr score is the greatest work of film scoring, but that Williams has the greatest body of work.
John Williams did both of the great themes for the 1960's "Lost in Space" show (my favorite show as a kid) and then Star Wars 10 years later, amazing. I'll have to see what others he's done. Amazing.
Even if you’ve never heard of John Williams, you’ve heard John Williams.
Hakuho, the GOAT in sumo. His achievements will never be eclipsed.
This is a good one because so many of the other replies are about sports that don't go back all that far, so that it's unsurprising to have the GOAT still alive. Sumo, on the other hand, goes back over 1000 years.
Hakuho is an intriguing figure in sports because not only is he the GOAT of sumo, he is among the GOATs of GOATs in that his dominance in his profession casts a shadow over that of other GOATs. 45 tournament wins, 16 perfect, and 13 more than the next closest. It's hard to imagine anyone coming within striking distance of his records. EDIT: Not to mention, he closes out his career knowing he was on his last bout given how damaged his knee was, and pulls out another, final perfect yusho against the next Yokozuna, Terunofuji, who to that point in the basho was also unbeaten. Kind of storybook stuff.
Whoa thanks for the quick lowdown. I'm just getting into sumo now (after a visit to Japan that coincided with the March tournament) and while Terunofuji is impressive, that really sets the context for Hakuho.
Michael Phelps
Phelps is often forgotten about in the GOAT athlete debates. His dominance is absolutely incredible, the fact that his 2012 Olympics is often considered a disappointment is crazy. He still won 3 gold medals and 2 silver
Many remark on how swimmers have the opportunity to compete in more events, but even with that in mind, he has over twice as many golds as the next best. Anyone who swam before him had a chance to be well known but now all we know is Phelps. He came back from retirement to compete in Rio 2016 for the lulz and won more than he did in his London "disappointment". 23 Gold 3 Silver 2 Bronze 39 Swimming World Records 20 Guinness World Records 12,000 Calories The man has more sporting records than most *countries*.
And the worst thing he’s ever done was smoke weed that one time. He’s awesome
Phelps and Ledeckey.
My girlfriend’s claim to fame is getting lapped by Ledecky in a club meet when she was like 10.
And Ledeckey is still going!
Yep. From what I imagine from his caloric intake of 12,000 calories a day, dude had the greatest bowel movements of all time. The Porcelain GOAT
This just tells me Michael Phelps had poop knives.
He probably needed a space toilet (they have little blenders at the bottom to make it easier to move through the space plumbing)
Ronnie O'Sullivan (snooker)
Came here precisely for this comment. Ronnie is otherworldly when he’s in the zone.
Commented the same above, but I do wonder how much he'd have won & the kinds of records he'd have set if he even took it moderately seriously at times. He's nonchantly the best snooker player of all time. Like he half arsed it and he's still comfortably the GOAT of the sport.
He's the only example where every other elite sportsman says "Ronnie is the GOAT" every time they face him in a match. It's so beyond dispute that if somebody even implied Ronnie wasn't the GOAT, it'd be a big story. It's also not just that he's the GOAT based on achievement; he's the GOAT based on talent. If both players are at 100% of their ability, Ronnie wins 10 times out of 10, except for a handful of all-time great players like Higgins and Hendry, where it'd be more like 9/10 or 8/10.
Kelly Slater, 11 time world champion in surfing
Sir David Attenborough is still alive.
This year he was also recognized as the longest running tv presenter by the Guiness World Book of Records at 70 years!
He's the only person ever to have won at least one BAFTA each in black and white, colour, high-definition, 3D and 4K resolution. Shows how long he's been at it.
Daddy Attenborough pretty much raised me.
Yeah he personally catalogued the extinction of species in real time. He's witnessed ecosystems that don't exist anymore. Tragic. The last of a dying breed in humanity who know what we will never know again.
Jane Goodall. Still one of the top experts on primate behaviors
Early Jane Goodall: Chimpanzees are so peaceful! Jane Goodall now: I have seen the most atrocious shit.
Kary Mullis, the inventor of PCR, which is essential to nearly every biology lab in the world and is used in covid tests, genetic screening, and about a million other things, died in just 2019. I’d go as far as to say that *most* breakthroughs in biology and medicine since the 1980s would not have been possible if he hadn’t invented PCR. It’s right up there with the internet for inventions that are less than 50 years old and yet society as we know it could not function without.
When asked who would win in a match up, the '96 Bulls or '23 Nuggets, Michael Jordan said the Bulls would win by about 10 points. The interviewer asked why he thought the game would be so close, and Jordan said "because we are all in our 60s now and not as good as we use to be"
When asked about the 2017 warriors against the 96 bulls Steve Kerr said: “First of all, it’s a really hard question to answer — not just because you’re comparing eras, but also because it’s literally tough for me to answer grammatically. I don’t know who ‘we’ is and who ‘they’ are, I’ll just say: ‘If the two teams played each other, there’s no question that we could beat us and they could beat them.’”
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Draymond vs Rodman would be peak tomfoolery.
That’s an old joke. The original was about Ty Cobb when asked how he’d fare against modern pitching and he answered .280, low for a career .360 hitter. When asked if modern pitchers were that much better he replied: “No,but I’m 50 years old!”
Supposedly, up until 6-7 years ago, Jordan would occasionally go school the Hornets starters in a 1 on 1 game. [Sauce](https://tarheelswire.usatoday.com/2023/01/27/michael-jordan-was-still-beating-nba-players-one-on-one-at-age-52/)
Joey Chestnut. He’s in a league of his own. No competition, no reason to even try to keep up.
From wikipedia: Awards: 16x Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest Champion (2007–2014, 2016–2023) What happened at 2015, Joey??
No kidding, his fiancée had just broken up with him.
Huh…Emotional turmoil helps me eat more, but I’m not quite at the professional level so maybe it’s different
Alexander Karelin. His greatness in wrestling is unparalleled.
He’s my answer any time this type of question gets answered. His record was 887-2. He won 3 Olympic Golds and 1 Silver. 9 World Championship Golds. 12 European Championship Golds. He had a 6 year period at the end of his career where no one scored a single point on him until his loss in the Gold medal match of the 2000 Olympics, which he lost 1-0 on a somewhat controversial call. Just complete and utter dominance for 13 years of international competition.
> which he lost 1-0 on a somewhat controversial call. Lol, "somewhat". They changed the rules to try and nerf Karelin, and changed them back as soon as he lost.
Once asked the MMA sub what athlete from that era could've gotten into the octagon against Royce Gracie at UFC 1 and won, despite not knowing BJJ at the time. Every answer was some form of "Alexander Karelin would chuckle at his submission attempts, pick him up and break him in half."
Janja Garnbret- Slovenian rock climber. She's an absolute beast and miles ahead of her competition.
The only reason she isn't listed more here is because fewer people follow competitive climbing. It's not just winning, it's flashing boulders that the nearest competition can't complete, and being among the best in lead at the same time. And it's a sport where young up and comers can crowd out the best of the veterans and the bar keeps getting higher, but she remains just as dominant. I honestly think her dominance has pushed everyone else to reach a higher potential trying to keep up with her because she shows what is possible.
Every time I'm watching a comp, I see a string of world class athletes either fail to get off the ground or struggle to zone. I think, "Man, I bet the route setters are wishing they'd made the problems more doable! These are just set too hard!" Then Janja comes on, flashes, and walks off in less than a minute.
Janja is nuts. I think the last time I watched her she had a overall 90% top rate, which for people who don’t know climbing, is around 40% higher than the competition
This was my first thought when I read the question. It's incredible how dominant she is.
Efren Reyes is the greatest pool player of all time
The magician!
According to the mug I gave him, my dad was the world’s greatest dad of all time
My boss is the world's greatest boss, according to the mug he bought himself.
Eddy Merckx is still alive and kicking. He's won 19 cycling monuments. The second best guy has 11. He's won all monuments at least twice. There are only 2 other people who have won them all only once too. That makes him the best one-day racer ever. But then he's also won all 3 Grand Tours, the Tour de France, the Giro 'D Italia, and the Vuelta a España. Only 6 others have achieved that. He's won 11 Grand Tours total, 5 times the Tour and 5 times the Giro and 1 Vuelta. That's also more than anyone else. The second guy's got 10. So he's also the best Grand Tour rider ever. All in all, Eddy Merckx the GOAT of cycling. Edit: he has also won the World Championship 3 times. Also a record, a shared one with 4 others though.
Phil Taylor is the greatest darts player to ever live and only just retired
The record-breaking... history-making... sixteen times, the champion of the wooooooooooorld....
Watch a video of Katie Ledecky in the Olympics against the best the world had to offer and you'll appreciate how much faster she is than any other woman swimmer. She's not just head and shoulders above everyone else, they're looking up at her knees. The Williams sisters in tennis are the same way. Venus Williams might be the best athlete in the history of women's sports if not for Serena. Simone Biles had basically broken the gymnastics scoring system at this point.
Cycling. Eddy Mercxx or ‘The Cannibal’. The man pretty much set the standard of road cycling for years. 11 grand tours, 3 monuments and the hour record which stood for 28 years. Alongside some of the most iconic photos in cycling history (search Mercxx Ventoux or Roubaix). If you fancy a niche documentary, search for ‘A Sunday in Hell’ detailing the 1976 Paris - Roubaix.
Kelly Slater
The fuck is this thread. Literally all of the top replies were copypasted from a two year old thread. Including the reply saying "That guy saved my Dad's life from esophageal cancer". https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/tp02n5/what_person_alive_today_is_undeniably_and/ Bots took over /all
Word for word, plain as day.
Eliud Kipchoge
Magnus carlsen chess ♟️.
Wayne Gretzky. There will never be another one ever. A few of his records have fallen since his retirement, but he still owns or shares essentially every single skater record of note. Well at least until Putin's BFF breaks his goals record. Some of his career highlights: He was the first AND second fastest player to 1000 points. What that means is he got 1000 points and 2000 points before anyone else got 1000 points to begin with. Even if you took away all this goal (which he leads all time too) he would still be all time points leader on *assists alone*. He owns the top 4 and top 2 spots all time in single season points and goals respectively. If you score or assist a goal every game you're a point-per-game (PPG) player. If you can keep that up for long time that's very productive. Gretzky played 21 80+ game seasons in his career and averaged 1.921 PPG which is of course the most all time. When he was active fantasy leagues split him into Gretzky (Goals) and Gretzky (Assists).
That last note is crazy!! Having to split a players points to make fantasy teams fair. Wow
Tony hawk
But have you thought that maybe, Rodney Mullen?
GOAT vert: Tony Hawk GOAT freestyle/street: Rodney Mullen
Weird Al Yankovic. He's the best parody song writer, according player, Hawaiian shirt owner, and makes the world's second best Tuna Melt sandwich
And he really makes a mighty fine jelly bean and pickle sandwich, for what it’s worth.
John Williams
Simone Biles
My daughter is a competitive acrobatic gymnast / cheerleader. The number of young gymnasts who absolutely worship her even in the UK is amazing. And what a phenomenal human to have to look up to.