Author: Reid

Building a New Conservative Party

About the time Trump won the 2016 election, I suggested that principled and patriotic Republicans leave the GOP to start a new conservative party. I saw a tweet that made me think of this topic again, and I wanted to write about the benefits and drawbacks for doing this, and what this new conservative party could look like. But first here’s the thread:

Continue reading “Building a New Conservative Party”

Listening to Albums on a Saturday/Sunday Morning (2020-2021)

I’ve been picking great albums and listening to them in their entirety for the past several Saturdays. I don’t know why, but Saturday mornings seems like an ideal time for this, and since this feels like it’s becoming a routine, I’m going to start a thread to journal about these albums. Right now, I’m listening to Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On?, which I picked because Rolling Stone chose it as the #1 album out of the top 500. I’ll write some thoughts in the first comment section.

(Note: I changed the title, expanding the thread to discuss albums that may not be considered great.)

Music of the 80s

Last night I was listening to Genesis’s 80’s stuff and Phil Collins, which I basically lump into the same category, similar to Steely Dan and Donald Fagen. Just looking over the number of songs that made it to top 40 radio or more rock oriented radio (e.g., 98 Rock), I think you could make a case for band/musician of the 80s. It’s not just the number of songs, but also that the songs are fairly representative of the 80s–i.e., they have an 80’s sound.

I liked a lot of what I heard, particularly with the horns. I like the bass parts as well, although I must mention a caveat–namely, that I listened to this on good headphones. When that happens, a lot of music sounds way, way better. I think this is partly because it allows me to hear all the instruments. So maybe I wouldn’t think as highly of the music on listening to them via another device.

We should do a top 10 list of the best Genesis/Phil Collins songs from the 80s? For me, “No Reply at All” and “I Missed Again” would be on there. I really like those songs.

Other questions:

Who would you chose as the band or musician of the decade?

What are the best songs of the decade, particularly in terms of making a case that the 80s were better than the 70s?

International Money Laundering Deserves More Attention

In the past, when I heard money laundering, I’d think of organized criminals taking elicit money and finding ways to secure it and make it usable. But money laundering on the international level, involving authoritarian regimes, and the oligarchs and organized criminals within those regimes finding people in liberal democratic countries to help them launder their money has a national security component as well–at least if my understanding is accurate. The people in Western countries helping these people are doing something wrong, if not illegal. This can be used as leverage against them to not only continue the money laundering, but maybe do other things to help the authoritarian regimes. This is obvious if the people assisting with money laundering have political positions, but if they have any position of influence in the society–e.g., legal, media, academic, business, technology, etc.–bad actors can use the leverage with these people to harm national security and national interests. At least that’s what it seems like to me. Anyway, I started to this thread because I couldn’t find the other threads or posts that discussed this, and I wanted to post an article on this topic. The article is from Just Security and it’s called, Global Kleptocracy as an American Problem

Movie Scenes That Brought the House Down

Edgar Wright tweeted a request for examples of situations where the audience reacted strongly, and collectively to a movie scene. He mentioned the scene in A Fatal Attraction, when Anne Archer’s character tells the Glenn Close character, “If you come near my family again, I’ll kill you.” He said the audience applauded. I know I have experienced this a few times, but none come to mind right now. I must say that for much of the last twenty years, I have don’t often see movies with a large audience. I think it’s been so long that I can’t remember these moments, which is kinda sad, man.

You can see some suggestions in the thread here:

One Possible Way of Solving the Information Crisis

Those who are really interested in politics can have very different views about basic facts–and if those numbers are large enough, that can be a big threat to our democracy. I saw the tweet below and I thought of this topic, as well as one way we could solve this. It’s something I’ve talked about before, but I feel compelled to talk about it again, as I think it would be effective. At the same time, a part of me feels like my proposal is flawed in some significant way–or at least someone would have done it already. But I can’t see what the flaw(s) is. If anyone knows the reason my idea won’t work, I really would like to hear it. After the quote, I’ll explain my idea.