Yeah, I’ve read most of these, and I assure you, this is not the bar you need to clear in order to be able to have a conversation.
Replies
Bare minimum for holding a conversation: @kathryntewson.bsky.social, @sesmith.lol, @petersagal.bsky.social, @kenwhite.bsky.social, @xkcd.com, @pwnallthethings.bsky.social, @greatdismal.bsky.social, @mnemonic.bsky.social, @theauthorguy.bsky.social, @shakespeare.lol, and @hankgreen.bsky.social.
aug 18, 2025, 2:13 am • 5 0 • view
I've read all of them and they've literally never come up, ever.
aug 19, 2025, 10:26 pm • 7 0 • view
You are plainly socializing with all the good people
aug 19, 2025, 11:34 pm • 0 0 • view
I’ve read none of them, but I’ve had Dante come up occasionally. Usually in the context of some other pop culture reference, like Supernatural or a Dan Brown book. Or to make fun of that one kid in SO’s class who didn’t realize Inferno was a poem until 90% of the way through.
aug 20, 2025, 12:45 am • 1 0 • view
I misspeak. I’ve read lots and lots of Shakespeare. Yet I’ve still no more faith in this list than in a stewed prune.
aug 20, 2025, 12:54 am • 1 0 • view
Allegory of the cave in every meeting or GTFO.
aug 19, 2025, 10:31 pm • 1 0 • view
Sure, but no one on the list wrote that.
aug 20, 2025, 12:46 am • 1 0 • view
I couldn’t hold forth on most of that list. Tell me what you’re passionate about and I’ll do the same. That’s the conversation I crave. I’m always more interested in what you know rather than what you think.
aug 18, 2025, 2:25 am • 2 0 • view
I wouldn't want to have a conversation with this person. I would rather stick bamboo under my fingernails.
aug 18, 2025, 1:19 pm • 3 0 • view
I've read these and get teased about how much I know.
aug 18, 2025, 4:01 am • 0 0 • view
Ah, yes - the Courtier’s Prophylactic. If you say he doesn’t know what he’s talking about and you haven’t read what he considers “the relevant material,” he gets to dismiss you entirely. In other words, he’s a snobby, pedantic know-it-all with who will “well ackchyually” anyone. Don’t bother.
aug 18, 2025, 3:50 am • 3 0 • view
He must talk to himself a hell of a lot.
aug 18, 2025, 4:01 am • 0 0 • view
Silly me, frittering away my time with lightweights like Victor Hugo, Alexander Dumas, or Miguel de Cervantes, instead of people who sacrificed for the benefit of others like Machiavelli.
aug 20, 2025, 12:52 am • 0 0 • view
I’ve not read Tacitus, but I’ve spent far too much time* reading references to the works of Callus Tacticus. * not nearly enough time
aug 20, 2025, 12:47 am • 0 0 • view
Bare minimum for where I'd rather go than ever get into a talk with that guy: Judecca, Caina, Ptolemea, Antenora, Des Moines, Boise, Jordan Peterson Live: Only The Hits. Look I too can reference shit and look super smart mein duder!
aug 18, 2025, 2:54 am • 0 0 • view
Monty Python’s Bruces find this guy tiresome.
aug 18, 2025, 4:09 am • 4 0 • view
I find that Murderbot is better than like all of these guys.
aug 18, 2025, 2:58 am • 23 1 • view
Someone who can and will describe their fandom in a way that’s fun is generally a much better conversationalist. You just know that its infodumps are amazing.
aug 18, 2025, 4:00 am • 7 0 • view
The soap operas, sure, but also its complaints about various pieces of kit and how the manufacturer got too fancy vs when they cheaped out.
aug 18, 2025, 4:01 am • 4 0 • view
Turns out that I enjoy hanging with ND people who are passionately sharing their passions. Seriously, I spent an hour watching sneakerhead videos and loving every minute. Not my thing, but worthy nonetheless.
aug 18, 2025, 4:03 am • 7 0 • view
Yeah, I got into them for a while there, and opal cutting videos as well. I got stuck in a training room with a colleague at work and also got to imbibe a whole lot of info about planes and also flight sim stuff from him.
aug 18, 2025, 4:10 am • 5 0 • view
And then I got to help him find a deal on a new monitor for his rig because he’d been upgrading everything else but still had an 8 year old monitor, so then I got to hell too!
aug 18, 2025, 4:11 am • 4 0 • view
*help
aug 18, 2025, 4:12 am • 2 0 • view
“Then I got to hell too” is an excellent way to describe ending up in running gaming campaigns with me
aug 18, 2025, 4:14 am • 3 0 • view
wait wait hang on. Opal cutting videos? There are infodumping videos about cutting opals? WHERE DO I FIND THESE. (I adore opals as a stone they are so fucking pretty)
aug 18, 2025, 6:58 pm • 3 0 • view
YouTube. Search for the obvious.
aug 18, 2025, 7:23 pm • 1 0 • view
Start with “Black Opal Direct’s” account. That’ll prime your algo.
aug 18, 2025, 7:34 pm • 1 0 • view
Plus he’s got such a soothing voice!
aug 18, 2025, 10:11 pm • 1 0 • view
Everything is on YouTube Literally everything.
aug 18, 2025, 7:31 pm • 1 0 • view
“Yo just try showing an interest in her life” “No, I Kant”
aug 18, 2025, 4:10 am • 5 0 • view
This guy sounds like a pretentious clown.
aug 18, 2025, 2:02 am • 1 0 • view
But did you read Cellini TWICE?
aug 18, 2025, 1:52 am • 16 0 • view
She must have: if you only read him once, he's Cellino.
aug 18, 2025, 2:51 am • 21 0 • view
Lmfao well done
aug 18, 2025, 2:53 am • 5 0 • view
This is the kind of person who would describe himself as an "intellectual." Which I'm pretty sure is a red flag big enough to roll out as a carpet at the Oscars.
aug 18, 2025, 1:51 am • 21 0 • view
Intellectual and polymath lol
aug 18, 2025, 3:03 am • 9 0 • view
If he wants to come off as an intellectual, maybe he should remove the word 'pervert' from his @...
aug 18, 2025, 3:06 am • 1 0 • view
I meaaaaan, those things are not orthogonal And if you're talking about someone who would describe *themselves* as an intellectual? Venn diagram is a circle, in my experience lol
aug 18, 2025, 3:38 am • 7 0 • view
It's very much like the person someone else found who called themselves a 'bodhisattva' in their bio...
aug 18, 2025, 5:02 am • 2 0 • view
That was me! I found the bodhisattva! It turns out the first step toward enlightenment is showing zero compassion for a woman who just suffered a 20wk miscarriage. Who knew!?
aug 19, 2025, 3:51 pm • 3 0 • view
Thankfully I’m only trying to hold a beer.
aug 18, 2025, 1:55 am • 1 0 • view
I would in fact argue my over familiarity with Shakespeare makes me less able to carry out a conversation
aug 18, 2025, 1:51 am • 12 0 • view
Thou hast no more brain than I have in mine elbows.
aug 18, 2025, 2:51 am • 7 0 • view
I mean … knowing that phrase exists keeps me out of so many conversations.
aug 18, 2025, 2:53 am • 4 0 • view
You mean your conversations aren't just comedic lines in iambic pentameter tossed back and forth?
aug 18, 2025, 2:53 am • 1 0 • view
Rather more that my fun facts about the battle of agincourt are not appreciated
aug 18, 2025, 3:20 am • 2 0 • view
I've never been more thrilled to be underqualified.
aug 18, 2025, 2:06 am • 1 0 • view
I am already exhausted by him. Bare minimum to hold a conversation: Consider that you aren’t the world’s thoughtiest thought man, whose thoughts are much thoughtier than everyone else’s. Bonus round: For one dollar, name a woman. Bonus round 2: For one dollar, name someone who is not white.
aug 18, 2025, 2:22 am • 30 0 • view
Ah, the true classics.
aug 18, 2025, 3:05 am • 2 0 • view
This guy reads Goethe, but does he even know left shark?!!
aug 18, 2025, 3:07 am • 1 0 • view
Alexander Pushkin, who is on the list, was mixed race, but I'm pretty sure that the Sufi Pervert only included him either because he doesn't *know* that Pushkin was mixed race or because he included him as the one token person of color to deflect allegations of racism. 1/
aug 18, 2025, 3:17 am • 2 0 • view
In either case, it's still a pretty damning condemnation if the only author of color that the Sufi Pervert can name is a mostly white-passing member of the imperial Russian nobility. 2/
aug 18, 2025, 3:19 am • 2 0 • view
A long time ago I joined a community on FB that had an application and one of the questions was “name your favorite female scientist” just to weed people out lol (My answer was @drlucyjones.bsky.social )
aug 18, 2025, 6:03 pm • 3 0 • view
It's just...there is no way he's read all these. And like I've read a bunch, though not all of them, and if someone just starts randomly going off about Thucydides in conversation I'm gonna go "w...what the hell?"
aug 18, 2025, 2:34 am • 21 0 • view
And the fact that Aristotle is on the list means he has no idea what he’s talking about.
aug 18, 2025, 2:37 am • 14 0 • view
Area intellectual unsure how many teeth humans generally have
aug 18, 2025, 2:52 am • 1 0 • view
You didn’t enjoy reading Aristotle’s lecture notes? They’re such great conversation starters!
aug 18, 2025, 2:40 am • 2 0 • view
I only remember the hot mess that are Aristotle’s Rules.
aug 18, 2025, 2:42 am • 2 0 • view
Cellini is on their twice. And Tacitus but no Josephus? Cassius Dio?
aug 18, 2025, 2:39 am • 12 0 • view
Josephus was Jewish.
aug 18, 2025, 2:42 am • 6 0 • view
True which would cause this dipshit to discount him Even though he's usually in the same conversation as Tacitus in years of 1st Century stuff.
aug 18, 2025, 2:44 am • 6 0 • view
I'll admit, I haven't read a lot of Tacitus, but I can't think of any conversation where I've ever gone "Damn I need to slip some Tacitus up in here."
aug 18, 2025, 4:46 am • 5 0 • view
You don’t feel the need to wax eloquent about the campaigns of Germanicus when on a date?
aug 18, 2025, 2:17 pm • 4 0 • view
I thought Germans always made sure to wax *before* the date, not on it--
aug 18, 2025, 2:28 pm • 1 0 • view
But Germanicus fought against the German barbarians.
aug 18, 2025, 2:33 pm • 0 0 • view
OP is definitely going to bring up Ayn Rand before the appetizer arrives.
aug 18, 2025, 2:32 pm • 3 0 • view
Jackrabbit! Jackrabbit! (For this joke to work, you must understand that jackrabbit was the word my unit used to mean “break contact.” This is all explained in the 4000-page manual you are required to read before I deign to speak to you.)
aug 18, 2025, 2:42 pm • 2 0 • view
I guess I’m an enormous nerd, but I maintain that there are ways to bring any of these guys up while still being cool and normal. One of the things I like about my partner is that our conversations can drift from a news article to a Netflix show to obscure papal encyclicals to, sure. Tacitus.
aug 18, 2025, 2:26 pm • 1 0 • view
The day we met, we ended up just talking until 4am. But there’s a difference between organic conversation with someone who cares to hear what you think, and “Oh you own a volume of Tacitus? Name three of their albums.” No one has to do years of homework to talk to you. Jesus Christ. What a tool.
aug 18, 2025, 2:29 pm • 1 0 • view
You dared to talk about things not covered by his list of great men?
aug 18, 2025, 2:31 pm • 1 0 • view
Get this: sometimes we even discuss great women.
aug 18, 2025, 2:43 pm • 1 0 • view
My greatest pickup line ever was “You were in Almaty? I’m trying to figure out how to get to Bishkek and I read the best option is rail from Almaty.” Married 18 years this upcoming Monday.
aug 18, 2025, 2:35 pm • 2 0 • view
I think my father's still a little cranky about (and possibly sore from) the bus/truck ride from Almaty to Kyzylorda when he was working there.
aug 18, 2025, 2:39 pm • 2 0 • view
Funnily enough I have a friend who absolutely loved studying Thucydides, and she does occasionally bring it up randomly. But like. We got it like that. I enjoy those conversations, because they’re a mutual exchange and not a prick trying to condescend to me with their definitely superior brainmeats.
aug 18, 2025, 2:40 am • 5 0 • view
Also we talk about other normal shit. Not every conversation is all dense tomes by dead Greeks.
aug 18, 2025, 2:44 am • 5 0 • view
If I ever met this person I'd just be all "So you say you know Dante but I'll bet you've only read Inferno and know nothing of Paradiso"
aug 18, 2025, 2:41 am • 8 0 • view
Omg throw it right back. Quiz him. You say you’re a Dante fan. What happens to the souls in the third terrace of purgatory?
aug 18, 2025, 2:48 am • 6 0 • view
Sorry for all the deletes and reposts. Man, I am really struggling to type shit out correctly today. Probably because I never read Cellini. Like some kind of filthy casual.
aug 18, 2025, 2:50 am • 4 0 • view
Cellini! I love cellini, but it really depends on the preparation! And you have to have only the freshest cellini! Oh, for god's sake don't overcook it! But a good cellini alla puttanesca! Now that is good eating!
aug 18, 2025, 3:56 am • 2 0 • view
1. What kind of conversations does this guy have? 2. Is it just reading something from them or like do you have to have read the complete works of Shakespeare for that to count?
aug 18, 2025, 2:48 am • 3 0 • view
this reads like a dumb persons idea of what a smart person would sound like
aug 18, 2025, 2:06 am • 12 0 • view
OMG I MISSED ONE OF THE CELLINIS!
aug 18, 2025, 2:31 am • 1 0 • view
also, like, imagine having Schopenhauer and Nietzsche on this list but not Hegel
aug 18, 2025, 3:46 am • 111 0 • view
Yes Socrates himself is particularly missed A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed
aug 18, 2025, 4:00 am • 3 0 • view
I thought this list was pretty stupid at a glance, then I ACTUALLY looked through the list and was way more amused. I can also make quite a lot of inferences, and STILL feel he's missed some ones he'd consider important! But mostly this feels like 'As far as you know I didn't have to look up these'
aug 18, 2025, 5:26 am • 1 0 • view
If you're curious- if you're gonna go for an insufferable White Always Right guy, how the HELL you miss Thomas Aquinas is 100% beyond me. I'm guessing skipping Plato and Da Vinci because 'eww gays' (I mean, longer conversation fork on that), but Mills? Locke, Galelio? 'Too well known?'
aug 18, 2025, 5:58 am • 1 0 • view
Also he doesn’t even say which of the 5 Rimbaud movies you’re supposed to have watched.
aug 18, 2025, 7:08 am • 0 0 • view
So we know he's both a boring-ass conversationalist AND thinks dialectics are something L Ron Hubbard invented.
aug 18, 2025, 4:12 am • 1 0 • view
Also, what about Kant? Hume? Rawls?And how do you fully understand Aristotle without Plato‽ 🤔
aug 18, 2025, 3:53 am • 7 0 • view
I mean, kant sucks ass. So that I understand
aug 18, 2025, 4:01 am • 4 0 • view
Well, yeah - he was known for being extremely precise, pedantic, and punctual, and he usually came off as an idealistic fusspot. He also tended to be either extremely verbose and detailed or terse and vague. In other words, he’s the autist’s philosopher. 🤪
aug 18, 2025, 4:06 am • 4 0 • view
I mostly hate his moral idealism. Like, things were always moral, or always immoral. Context doesn't matter. And that's exactly the kind of childish philosophy you'd get from a dude that never stepped foot out of his backwater village.
aug 18, 2025, 4:09 am • 5 0 • view
Yeah, that kind of thinking shows up in autistic people fairly often. He was known for being *extremely* inflexible about nearly everything. However, his maxims are useful as a first step to moral reasoning and understanding more complex ideas like the Principle of Dual Effect.
aug 18, 2025, 4:15 am • 1 0 • view
Also needs Dostoevsky just in case there isn't enough depressing shit to talk about.
aug 18, 2025, 3:49 am • 6 0 • view
Tfw you have the PERFECT reaction gif in mind to respond to but, if course, it doesn't exist because it's a line from an obscure 1989 Kirk Cameron movie
aug 18, 2025, 5:29 pm • 3 0 • view
What, and leave out Chekov?
aug 18, 2025, 1:40 pm • 4 0 • view
You know what? You deserved a hot take from me! Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita" is one of the few pieces of Russian literature i actually enjoyed.
aug 18, 2025, 4:00 pm • 4 0 • view
I'll be honest and say that I wasn't planning to read enough Russian literature to find out. Between the two Chekhov short stories I remember doing and "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", I may be tapped out.
aug 18, 2025, 5:14 pm • 4 0 • view
I had to read a lot of it because it was in my school program. A lot of it boils down to either "Here's some memes from our social circle" or "Hey kid, i'm wanna get some moral lessons AND depression?".
aug 18, 2025, 5:32 pm • 2 0 • view
I remember a classmate in high school who had moved from Russia doing a presentation on Russian film and holy fuck.
aug 18, 2025, 5:40 pm • 1 0 • view
Now i wonder what was in it! Comedies everyone in Russia with a TV watches at least once a year? The so-called social realism genre stuff? The few disaster movies the soviets made?
aug 18, 2025, 5:43 pm • 1 0 • view
They showed clips from a couple of movies but the one that stands out for me was a guy rolling under a tank to plant a grenade (I think), getting killed in the resulting explosion and lauded as a soviet hero. Somewhere between the late sixties and early eighties?
aug 18, 2025, 5:49 pm • 2 0 • view
War movies! There were so many of them! And i never really watched a single one properly, only bits and pieces. But yes, self-sacrifice is a thing the soviet movies and media in general promoted, often a lot of these stories were outright lies.
aug 18, 2025, 5:59 pm • 2 0 • view
About the only thing that links these thinkers together is the enormity of their egos (note the lack of, say, Socrates or Augustine). So I’m forced to conclude that the thing they have in common with the original poster is that he has an unbelievably massive ego.
aug 18, 2025, 11:56 am • 1 0 • view
And yes, Thucydides did have an enormous ego. The man was a semi-successful politician in Athens. That was not a job for the humble.
aug 18, 2025, 11:58 am • 1 0 • view
Hegel is concomitantly way more difficult than Schopes or Incel Patient Zero.
aug 18, 2025, 3:48 am • 12 0 • view
I like the double helping of Cellini, though!
aug 18, 2025, 8:39 am • 1 0 • view
Hobbes is my go to. Only bc if it doesn't land, a quick joke about the comic strip can hide a topic change well
aug 18, 2025, 7:39 am • 0 0 • view
Any bets that this guy is secretly more of a fan of Nietzsche’s sister than Nietzsche himself?
aug 18, 2025, 3:50 am • 30 0 • view
So secretly he doesn't even realize
aug 18, 2025, 3:52 am • 10 0 • view
The only way to stop a bad guy with a philosophy degree is a good guy with a philosophy degree
aug 18, 2025, 3:56 am • 11 1 • view
sucker bet
aug 18, 2025, 3:53 am • 15 0 • view
I will never not like this. His face in the second panel is *chef’s kiss*.
aug 18, 2025, 3:57 am • 12 0 • view
Made up for it by having Cellini twice. I always ask if they’ve read, say, Vergil or Aristotle or Tacitus in the original language, because the answer is nearly always no, and then I, a Classics major, can sniff and go, oh, I thought you were educated. My mistake.
aug 18, 2025, 5:00 am • 2 0 • view
And if they say yes, then I ask their opinion about the cinematic masterpiece Troy with a completely straight face and that usually takes care of it.
aug 18, 2025, 5:04 am • 3 0 • view
No Philip K Dick or Ursula K LeGuin, no sale
aug 18, 2025, 5:53 am • 2 0 • view
I’m familiar with few of their works and have still been told one needs a dictionary to speak with me. (I’m verbose out of fear of miscommunication) But dude holy shit. Have you tried asking about how her week went?
aug 18, 2025, 3:53 am • 3 0 • view
As I've said elsewhere. Thucydides is tedious as fuck. The Inferno is a lot of fun .... feel free to skip the rest of the trilogy.
aug 18, 2025, 1:53 am • 5 0 • view
I have not even heard of half of them. I have conversations with people just fine (notwithstanding anxiety). The person in the screenshot is the type of dude who posts daily on LinkedIn.
aug 18, 2025, 1:54 am • 1 0 • view
maybe if you wanna have a conversation about any of these guys (and ofc its guys, not Sappho, Woolstonecraft, Luxemburg, Shelley, wolf, Hypatia, Lovelace, Shijo, cavendish etc I'm sure theres more in other languages)
aug 18, 2025, 4:27 am • 3 0 • view
its always only men and white ones (and hey Im not excluded in that btw)
aug 20, 2025, 3:14 am • 0 0 • view
New lyrics to "we didn't start the fire" look shit.
aug 18, 2025, 5:59 pm • 1 0 • view
Most of these guys at least throw in Sun Tzu to try to pretend it's not a race thing....
aug 18, 2025, 10:43 am • 3 0 • view
Is it bad that I had an idea of where this guy was going with this just by him using the avatar of dude in black shirt smoking a pipe?
aug 18, 2025, 4:50 pm • 0 0 • view
(That isn't a particular faux-intellectual-dude-with-pipe in that image that I should recognize, is it?)
aug 18, 2025, 4:51 pm • 0 0 • view
He doesn’t actually define the bare minimum *what* must be present. It could be reading but is it their entire library or only some? Is a summary enough? A general understanding of their work or their most well known writings? Wants to set conversational standards but can’t complete a sentence 🙄
aug 18, 2025, 3:11 pm • 0 0 • view
Honestly this sounds like the reading list of an insufferable bore.
aug 18, 2025, 1:59 am • 8 0 • view
Not even a reading list. This guy likely just outlined his AI summarized playlist that he listened to over a single weekend
aug 18, 2025, 2:08 am • 10 0 • view
"I've almost finished the puzzle, I put in most of the pieces." See, until you have READ THEM ALL then you don't know what you talking about. There is an undercurrent to the messages that only come together after you finish their complete works. /s
aug 18, 2025, 5:58 pm • 0 0 • view
All it requires is to have something interesting to talk about Be willing to listen And actually give a crap what the other person is saying
aug 18, 2025, 3:22 am • 1 0 • view
P for Pushkin, but no Plato or Proust or Peckinpaugh?
aug 18, 2025, 2:48 am • 1 0 • view