Dumb and Stupid Quotes Thread: Idiotic Source and Context are Key.

[Hrothbern]

Just in case you do not get the stupid:

Spoiler Baltic Democracy :

according to the 2019 [Freedom House] Freedom in the World report, Estonia ranks at 94/100 – a better score than both the U.S. and the U.K. [Latvia was ranked 87 out of 100 and Lithuania 91 out of 100, with 100 meaning most free].

The German-based Bertelsmann Stiftung Foundation’s Transformation Index (BTI), which analyzes and evaluates successes and setbacks on the path toward a democracy based on the rule of law and a socially responsible market economy, found all three Baltic states to be democracies in consolidation.
The BTI ranked Latvia eighth out of 129 countries analyzed for its quality of democracy, market economy and political management, noting that the Baltic country has “free and fair parliamentary and local elections.”
The BTI ranked Lithuania in fourth place, saying it has “no constraints on free and fair elections,” while Estonia took the top spot.

In terms of the media environment, the press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ranked Estonia 11th its 2019 World Press Freedom Index, while Latvia came in 24th and Lithuania placed 30th. RSF’s annual reports cover 180 countries.
Estonia has a freer press than the U.K. and Germany, according to RSF.
Source

I am still looking for a reliable solid country benchmark for the amount of red tape per country.
There is one for the amount of red tape for starting up a company, for the amount of time a director-CEO needs to spend on the interface with authorities, etc... but not one that shows the overall burdening effect.

From what I saw the same countries that have a high score in World Press Freedom Index (your post) have mostly also a high score in having less red tape !
(from better homework, consistency, transparancy, accountability ? from less local nepotism potential intentionally build in ?)

If you look at the map in your link... it also correlates well with happiness...

Here that map (and do note New Zealand at the edge of the map ! and Costa Rica)

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Just in case you do not get the stupid:

Sorry, but you're showcasing much more stupid than you intended.
Yes, the Russian Foreign Ministry is a garbage dispenser and the Baltic states are functioning democracies (I think), but don't quote trash sources like Freedom House (obvious right-leaning CIA front) and Bertelsmann Stiftung (hyparpartisan conservative hack think tank).

 

[Kyriakos]

Just in case you do not get the stupid:

Spoiler Baltic Democracy :

according to the 2019 [Freedom House] Freedom in the World report, Estonia ranks at 94/100 – a better score than both the U.S. and the U.K. [Latvia was ranked 87 out of 100 and Lithuania 91 out of 100, with 100 meaning most free].

The German-based Bertelsmann Stiftung Foundation’s Transformation Index (BTI), which analyzes and evaluates successes and setbacks on the path toward a democracy based on the rule of law and a socially responsible market economy, found all three Baltic states to be democracies in consolidation.
The BTI ranked Latvia eighth out of 129 countries analyzed for its quality of democracy, market economy and political management, noting that the Baltic country has “free and fair parliamentary and local elections.”
The BTI ranked Lithuania in fourth place, saying it has “no constraints on free and fair elections,” while Estonia took the top spot.

In terms of the media environment, the press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ranked Estonia 11th its 2019 World Press Freedom Index, while Latvia came in 24th and Lithuania placed 30th. RSF’s annual reports cover 180 countries.
Estonia has a freer press than the U.K. and Germany, according to RSF.
Source

So they are in the first places in that, and near 100th place due to their handling of the large russian minorities? ^_^

 

[Mouthwash]

Very important work going on in modern journalism:

 

[Arakhor]

Could you post that any bigger? I need more screen scrolling in my life.

 

[Mouthwash]

I don't know how to shrink a directly linked image. I just now downloaded it and uploaded to imgur, which made it smaller.

 

[Lexicus]

Very important work going on in modern journalism:

I'm literally shaking right now this is so offensive to dead people

 

[Farm Boy]

Random trolls are journalists?

Sometimes, I guess. Seems generous every now and then, but then again, it used to pay.

 

[Kyriakos]

I'm literally shaking right now this is so offensive to dead people

"Blind spot", after all, is a rather direct analogy to the eye. The camera metaphorically as an eye is rather heavily used...

 

[Ferocitus]

Ableist is too English, and far too length-challenged.
You all know what word I'm going to replace it with, but I'll tell you anyway: Behindertenfeindlichkeit.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

To hell with you Schumpeter, you freaking hack. The audacity of using statistical language for something not proven statistically. This isn't quite the same level as praxeology, but it's very close.
"More precisely, the modal individual in the bourgeois class is superior as to intellectual and volitional aptitudes to the modal individual in any other of the classes of industrial society. This has never been established statistically, and hardly ever can be, but it follows from an analysis of that process of social selection in capitalist society."
-Joseph Schumpeter, footnote 3, "The Human Element", Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (Harper Perennial Thought Edition 2008)

 

[Kyriakos]

To hell with you Schumpeter, you freaking hack. The audacity of using statistical language for something not proven statistically. This isn't quite the same level as praxeology, but it's very close.
"More precisely, the modal individual in the bourgeois class is superior as to intellectual and volitional aptitudes to the modal individual in any other of the classes of industrial society. This has never been established statistically, and hardly ever can be, but it follows from an analysis of that process of social selection in capitalist society."
-Joseph Schumpeter, footnote 3, "The Human Element", Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (Harper Perennial Thought Edition 2008)

So by member of the bourgeois class would he mean something like the very modal of a modern major-general?

 

[Ferocitus]

To hell with you Schumpeter, you freaking hack. The audacity of using statistical language for something not proven statistically. This isn't quite the same level as praxeology, but it's very close.

Don't worry. Most people have the same knee-jerk reaction to abuses of statistics.

 

[Phrossack]

“The suggestion that the pike should be revived in our day as an arm for the Volunteers has had a mixed reception. The most frequent objection is that it is not a modern weapon, and that it is no substitute for the magazine rifle and bayonet. On the other hand, it is fairly well agreed by all that, for man-to-man fighting, the pike would be superior on the grounds of lightness, handiness and length to its shorter, heavier, and clumsier rival. Many who admit this advantage are afraid of the ridicule its appearance in the 20th century would surely elicit from the adorers of modernism. The only substantial objection seems to be that pikemen as such could be easily slaughtered from a distance by an enemy armed with the rifle, it being impossible for a man to use a modern rifle and a pike at the same time.

“Superiority in fighting is extremely valuable in view of the large proportion of recent battles where the issue has been decided with cold steel. There is no reason why this superiority should not be at once gained by the Irish Volunteers without any corresponding disadvantage when in the Mauser automatic pistol we have a first class weapon of fire, sighted to 1,000 yards, with which our pikemen could be equipped and thereby rendered equally formidable at a distance….One hundred pikemen armed with Mauser auto pistols could be attached to every battalion and would be the most modern and efficient arm in Europe when properly trained.

“These two weapons are eminently suited to the Irish temperament and the topography of the country. The thousands of trained hurlers through the country would be magnificent material for pikemen, trained in a body, foot and eye, for their work. The broken nature of the surface in Ireland would make a range of more than 1,000 yards rare for engagements. We would thus have combined in the pike corps all that is most efficient in steel and bullet. A point or two not to be forgotten may be mentioned. Pikes can be made at once locally and for a few shillings…The fact that 100 men in a battalion carried pikes would not prevent the remaining 900 from carrying bayonets; in other words, the pike would not replace the bayonet; it would supplement it. Let those light-brained people who believe that to conform sheepishly in everything to the accepted notions of the day is to be most progressive and efficient enjoy their laugh to their heart’s content at the expense of the pikemen. If ten or twenty thousand Volunteers can be armed in a few weeks with the most perfect in-fighting weapon known, their strength as an army will be immensely increased (pending a fuller supply of rifles.) If in addition these men carry the most deadly of modern firearms, we will then be in the very vanguard of military progress.

“SEAMAS O’HAODHA.”

– Irish Volunteer, August 8, 1914

 

[Cutlass]

I'd really like to see a study done on how many people can get a hit on a target with a pistol at 1000 yards....

 

[Phrossack]

I'd really like to see a study done on how many people can get a hit on a target with a pistol at 1000 yards....

Probably even lower than the number of people willing to charge rifles and machine guns while bearing a pike! O'Haodha was being such an armchair general. Some of his points on pikes are sound but overall the idea is as full of holes as the bodies of anyone who tried this would have been.

I have to wonder why the pistol sights were graduated out to that distance. Was there some hope that a bunch of pistoliers would fire in volleys like an idiot's version of artillery?

 

[Cutlass]

Probably even lower than the number of people willing to charge rifles and machine guns while bearing a pike! O'Haodha was being such an armchair general. Some of his points on pikes are sound but overall the idea is as full of holes as the bodies of anyone who tried this would have been.

I have to wonder why the pistol sights were graduated out to that distance. Was there some hope that a bunch of pistoliers would fire in volleys like an idiot's version of artillery?

Probably. Even if someone could shoot that far, the bullet wouldn't have much of any remaining force. And I really don't think pikes are as easy to use as this person seemed to think they are.

 

[r16]

1914 . Nobody has seen machine gun fire up close , as in when they fire at you . They are more likely remembering 1814 , and lances are still a thing in cavalry , which still a thing in 1914 . And lrish spirits ?

and there is this Villers Perosa thing . ltalian double barreled machine pistol or sub machine gun if l remember it correctly , to have a shield and wheelbarrows carrying ammunition . Might not reach that far out but volume of fire might have impressed .

 

[Samson]

It is not to be supposed that the death of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand will have any immediate or salient effect on the politics of Europe.

- Guardian editorial, 1914

 

[Arakhor]

That is what's known as being impressively wrong.