  Building on work of Holy, L\"ucke and Njegomir \cite{MR3913154} on small
embedding characterizations of large cardinals, we use some classical results
of Baumgartner (see \cite{MR0384553} and \cite{MR0540770}), to give
characterizations of several well-known large cardinal ideals, including the
Ramsey ideal, in terms of generic elementary embeddings; we also point out some
seemingly inherent differences between small embedding and generic embedding
characterizations of subtle cardinals. Additionally, we present a simple and
uniform proof which shows that, when $\kappa$ is weakly compact, many large
cardinal ideals on $\kappa$ are nowhere $\kappa$-saturated. Lastly, we survey
some recent consistency results concerning the weakly compact ideal as well as
some recent results on the subtle, ineffable and $\Pi^1_1$-indescribable ideals
on $P_\kappa\lambda$, and we close with a list of open questions.
