It does seed the mental exploration of what a privacy cult would actually be and do.

Sorry you found it unsubstantial. I mean to express distaste for people who tend to loosely throw the terms "privacy" and "security" around, especially when recommending laundry lists of configuration options, patches, extensions, etc. There is often little to no regard for threat modeling and pragmatism. Take "gHacks/pyllyukko base is kept up to date" for example - these batch tweaks and their effects are hard to understand and apply for the average user, and unfortunately tend to break the mainstream web.

I view projects like these as temporary bandages that pacify users (those technical enough to even be able to use them) in the now to ignore the larger and more fundamental issues at hand. Upstream should adopt reasonably sane defaults, because whack-a-mole with complex software simply isn't sustainable and the projects in question will become less effective over time as maintainership wanes. With regards to further hardening options, there really needs to be better upstream documentation, education, and accessibility. When that is realized in the free/libre browsers with the majority market share, then I am optimistic that the mainstream web will heal in accomodation.

Icecat has issues with so many sites because it wants you to block no free JavaScript. If you use it as intended, the internet isn't the same and is it even more private since there are fewer extensions?

I like how brave bakes in the settings by default

what privacy is for, if not freedom