> the greatest motor race in the world: 24 hours of Le Mans
The entire southern half of the U.S. begs to differ. Personally, I'd go with the Monaco Grand Prix if we're talking cars. If we're talking about "motor races" in general, it'd definitely be the Isle of Man TT. Hell, any one of the 18 yearly Moto GP races is probably better than Le Mans.
Whatever you think of DHH, there is an important point in this article, and thanks to the people who upvoted this comment, the people talking about it are relegated to the bottom of the thread.
Maybe making younger low scored/recently upvoted comments sink even slower could fix that?
In the meantime I use Chrome extension to fold those.
if a comment is truly so mean or dumb that the moderators choose to kill it, allow them the option of applying a karma penalty to anyone who upvoted it (which should come with an automated warning message so people know why their karma suddenly dropped). It's, in a sense, a way of voting on votes.
People might still upvote such comments, but at least then they'll know they're taking a risk by violating HN standards.
The fact that you fail to understand why so many people agreed with that comment is equally mortifying. Is your blind sympathy for "rich guy problems" overpowering your ability to read between the lines?
Do you really think that he thought "I'm going to brag, I just need an angle!"? Or, should he simply avoid writing because his situation is more privileged than most people?
The reality is that DHH's material success has little to do with whether setting overly ambitious goals sets people up for psychologically painful failures. If anything, it accentuates his point; you'd think that having DHH's resources would cushion the blow of not winning the 24 Hours Of Le Mans.
If you think Le Mans is not one of the most competitive and prestigious races in the world you are sorely mistaken. To say it is any more or less prestigious than winning Monaco is a purely subjective manner. The idea that the opinion of motorsport fans in the southern US has any weight is laughable. They are generally the most ignorant of other forms of motorsport and least well informed motorsport fans.
It is worth pointing out however that DHH does not compete at the highest level in Le Mans. He is one class below.
Of course it's subjective, and anyone who would declare a particular race "the greatest in the world" is obviously full of it. Someone just couldn't resist stroking his own ego a little more. I know DHH has a reputation for being arrogant and opinionated, but this post was over the top.
> The idea that the opinion of motorsport fans in the southern US has any weight is laughable. They are generally the most ignorant of other forms of motorsport and least well informed motorsport fans.
I bet you couldn't walk 10 feet at a NASCAR event without tripping over someone who could fix your car. I'd be amazed if you could find a single person like that sitting in the stands of a Formula 1 Grand Prix event.
Do people not have personal favourites that they might, even with self-realising bias, call "the greatest in the world"? And if you were then talking, or writing, about this awesome experience, wouldn't you easily use those words to describe your feelings, rather than to statistically analyse race rankings?
But then, that's just my opinion as someone who races a modern, fuel injected, naturally aspirated, RWD vehicle. A vehicle which has a pushrod V8.
Likewise, you are off base both on whether Le Mans is one of the greatest motorsport races, and in focusing in on that seriously non-central part of the article.
Haha, that's exactly what I was thinking.
It's the humble brag.
He talks about ambition like everyone thinks it's great.
I don't know him personally, but if all of his projects get in the way of being a decent father, then it ain't worth it, in my opinion.
You wrap the bragging around a larger point which acts like the red herring to distract from the bragging. So you get to mention your "fastest and most reliable car, the best-prepared team, and two of the fastest team mates in the business" appearing almost sheepish and incidental.
Or here is another of the same, saying something like this while making a point about anything:
"This experience has been a painful realization of everything that Alfie Kohn wrote about in Punished by Rewards and a reminder of the wisdom of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow."
I have no clue who that is. But it sounds impressive which most things you have never heard of tend to do.
The entire southern half of the U.S. also begs to differ with the rest of the world on when the Earth was formed, whether homosexuals deserve marriage rights, and other things. Hint: they're usually wrong.
Judging the entire region by the loudmouths just gives them an even louder voice than they had. There are plenty of great people in the south, maybe if you'd shut up with your generalizations and stereotypes they'd engage the rest of the world and drown out the bigots.