getting the ranks of items

I'm probably asking a FAQ, but a few google searches didn't seem
to point me in the right place.

Is there a simple way with PostgreSQL to assign relative ranks to the
result of a query ORDER BY? That is, I want to either have a view
that cheaply assigns the ranks, or be able to update a column with the
current ranks (yes, I know this latter version is more prone to
error).

I'm certain there's probably something I can do to laminate an array
value to a query result. Am I confused? (Yes!)

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