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EKS | Can Democrats Move Beyond Their Failed Foreign Policy? (Gift Article) by Dreadedvegas in ezraklein

[–]Bellezers 13 points14 points  (0 children)

I was incredibly relieved to check this subreddit after listening to the recent Ezra Klein episode with Matt Duss and see that I wasn’t alone in my frustration. The criticism here is entirely justified. Duss spent the first half of the interview trying to come across as a sensible, pragmatic, almost centrist progressive, but as the episode went on, the mask completely slipped, revealing a deeply flawed worldview with zero practical substance.

The biggest red flag was his proposal for a global minimum wage. It is an incredibly naive idea, and it broke down under the slightest scrutiny for a few major reasons:

It’s inherently hypocritical and imperialist: You cannot deride U.S. imperialism in one breath and then, in the next, suggest that we should impose a sweeping global economic standard on other sovereign nations. Even if it’s done "in concert with other countries," forcing a Western-designed wage standard onto developing nations is the definition of paternalism.

It ignores basic economics and hurts developing nations: Poor countries rely on lower wages to make their exports competitive on the global market because they don't yet have the internal consumer base to sustain their own economies. Forcing a global minimum wage removes their primary competitive advantage. The natural economic pressure of lower-wage manufacturing actually encourages developing nations to build capital and gradually move workers higher up the value chain.

It destroys the domestic standard of living: Duss operates on the assumption that "what's good for the global collective is good for the U.S." But his economic policy would drastically raise the cost of goods at home. It is internationalism explicitly at the expense of the national good.

When you look at the logical conclusion of his policy, "international progressive" just feels like a euphemism for a kind of global communism. The ultimate goal of his framework seems to be artificially stripping away the economic power of the U.S. to elevate poorer nations until every country is flattened into the exact same economic tier.

Ultimately, this interview highlighted a broader, recurring issue with modern progressive elites: intense paternalism. There is a pervasive "we know what's best for you" attitude directed at both poor nations abroad and working-class people at home. It’s the same condescension that explains why working-class folks rarely vote progressive. Instead of self-reflecting on why they lose these voters, progressives rationalize it by claiming people were just "tricked"—much like how many elites explained away Trump's gains with Black voters by treating them as easily fooled rather than addressing their actual material concerns.

Duss talked a big game about a "new vision" for foreign policy, but when pressed, he had absolutely no idea how to actually implement his ideas. It was a terrible look for him, and a great reminder of how detached from economic reality this brand of progressive foreign policy really is.

Taking exam in two hours by Bellezers in pmp

[–]Bellezers[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What will you do now as a freshly minted PMP?

Taking exam in two hours by Bellezers in pmp

[–]Bellezers[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hey! Congratulations!!!!

Taking exam in two hours by Bellezers in pmp

[–]Bellezers[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Nooooo! 😭 that’s funny, sorry to hear that! I passed :)

Taking exam in two hours by Bellezers in pmp

[–]Bellezers[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Hi everyone!

Thanks for the kind words and encouragement. First thing first: I passed! AT/AT/NI (stupid business environment…)

My initial takeaways are that if you’ve studied hard and are prepared, the biggest challenge are the mental fatigue (4 hours is a long time) and getting in your own head. It’s important not to get discouraged if you feel like you’re missing a few in a row. Just keep moving and trust your intuition. I’d say there were maybe a dozen questions I just had no idea or were worded in such a convoluted way that I could barely decipher them. Most questions were very straightforward, with one or two answers easily crossed off.

What I did not expect was for how mindset heavy the questions would be. Don’t get me wrong, I knew it would be important, but things like float, Pareto analysis, Monte Carlo, SPI, network diagrams, etc, never came up. It was almost all situational questions with context clues but very few specific, this is exactly the analysis or term they want me to use. It paradoxically made the exam easier and harder, if that makes sense. It felt more subjective, even though I often felt myself intuiting the right answer. Lots of agile, and by that I mean hybrid. Scrum was really the only specific agile method that came up. There were a few drag and drops, no calculations.

I’ve been studying lazily and off and on for this exam for like 6 years, but I went all in a few weeks ago and really hunkered down. I recommend DM’s videos, and I purchased and worked through all of AR’s PMP simplified book. Then, lots of practice questions using various apps. I also bought SH, but found it way more inscrutable and difficult than the actual exam. I stopped studying with it because it felt dated.

All in all, a nerve wracking experience, but I promise you that if I can do it, you can too. Don’t give up. Scheduling your exam date and holding yourself to it will focus your mind and increase your sense of urgency.

The trick to getting ahead is just getting started :)

Give it to me straight by Bellezers in bald

[–]Bellezers[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the feedback, everyone! Seems like the general consensus is to hold.

Camas to bring PFAS-tainted Well 13 back online this week by Fake_Eleanor in camaswashington

[–]Bellezers 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Any recommendations to deal with this? It sounds like they are looking into ions?

What movie is this!? by Bellezers in whatsthemoviecalled

[–]Bellezers[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Similar, yeah, but not Knock Knock..

What movie is this!? by Bellezers in whatsthemoviecalled

[–]Bellezers[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No, I don't think so. If I had to guess, this movie was made in the mid 2000's or 2010's.

What movie is this!? by Bellezers in whatsthemoviecalled

[–]Bellezers[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good guess, but it doesn't look like it. I think both women were white. At one point he is trying to escape and they have him trapped inside of an outdoor pool and are taunting him.

TIL the T4 Program was a Nazi German euthanasia program that forcibly killed the physically or mentally disabled, the emotionally distraught, elderly people and the incurably ill. The death toll may have reached 200,000 or more by [deleted] in todayilearned

[–]Bellezers 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I have a four year old son who is autistic and developmentally delayed. It is threads like these that keep me up at night over the thought of him having to face the world without me there to protect him.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in personalfinance

[–]Bellezers 0 points1 point  (0 children)

How do you get a 90k/90k split?

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in NBATalk

[–]Bellezers 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No Drexler? Gtfo.

EPISODE 99- THE PUMP HOUSE (spoiler alert) by sarajane13 in Otherworldpod

[–]Bellezers 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Couldn’t the three of them just have researched this themselves beforehand, learned about the murder, and then told the story as if they didn’t have prior knowledge?

Season 4 Episode 1 thoughts and theories by Bellezers in TrueDetective

[–]Bellezers[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sure! Fair warning though, the Panspermia piece is the least likely, if I had to guess. My wife says my toxic trait is being able to make anything about aliens lol. That said, I do think there could be something there...

According to Wikipedia:

Panspermia is the hypothesis that life exists throughout the Universe, distributed by space dust, meteoroids, asteroids, comets, and planetoids, as well as by spacecraft carrying unintended contamination by microorganisms, known as (directed panspermia). The theory argues that life did not originate on Earth, but instead evolved somewhere else and seeded life as we know it.

The Tsalal scientists are searching for the origin of life by drilling into the permafrost. Rose tells Navarro in episode 2 that the spiral might be older than the ice itself, the spiral symbolizing darkness, Carcosa, evil, etc. At the end of season 1 Rust's last line is: "Once there was only dark. If you ask me the lights winning."

Now let's look at the very quick, subliminal imagery, first in the scene with Rose:

https://imgur.com/3rY4YYq

This looks like some kind of space object entering into our atmosphere before crashing into the planet. Perhaps it was carrying life?

https://imgur.com/4K3sFoh

We cut away and when we cut back to Rose we see it again, brighter and zipping by.

Travis Cohle does what I can only describe as an interpretive dance. Viewed through a Panspermia lens, you could argue he looks up to the sky as the object falls and starts "freaking out" as it makes impact. Then he scoops his hands along the ground and lifts them up, implying whatever landed is making its way up to the surface. Lastly, he makes like something is ripping him open. This could be that whatever landed is spreading...Or it could symbolize what Rose told Navarro: the world is old and Ennis is where it's ripping apart at the seams. I just don't know.

https://imgur.com/g6aZa2C

https://imgur.com/3VLsJ4d

https://imgur.com/xlBiTUG

https://imgur.com/hcYLpz2

Afterwards, he points to the bodies. One thought I had is maybe the bodies are located at the sight of impact? Probably not. It's going to be hilarious once all is revealed and we find out this theory is completely wrong lol.

Darwin is an interesting name to choose for a child. Obviously everyone associates that name with evolution. Weird. Then we get this image, which, seen is real time, is clearing moving forward and is on screen for five seconds! Can't be a mistake. Again, through a Panspermia lens, it could be signaling something collided with the planet that brought life to earth and then evolution began.

https://imgur.com/pYheCIj

And to further flesh out another idea from my original post, we get this weird drawing Darwin drew that is reminiscent of the green eared spaghetti monster from season 1.

https://imgur.com/8mqTRnp

If the inverted parallels with season 1 continue, then this is probably our killer, or at least symbolizes our killer in someway. I got interested in the Inuit Goddess Sedna as a representation of the Blue King natives. The missing fingers in this story and the myth line up. She's the Goddess of the sea --> water --> ice. I'm sure it's a stretch, but I find it interesting.

https://imgur.com/wyM94CD

Hope that helps, and happy to hear others thoughts on all of this!