I'm an undoubted pleb when it comes to just about everything artistic (with the exception of music, in which I have impeccable taste). A while back, I suggested I'd be interested in seeing some critique or general discussion of already-known or published poetry, if only so I could get others' opinions on things that usually go over my head. This is an effort to get the ball rolling, with a poem that is one of my favorites.

Also, I'm not sure if this belongs here or in ~arts, please classify as appropriate.

Morning - Frank O'Hara

I've got to tell you
how I love you always
I think of it on grey
mornings with death

in my mouth the tea
is never hot enough
then and the cigarette
dry the maroon robe

chills me I need you
and look out the window
at the noiseless snow

At night on the dock
the buses glow like
clouds and I am lonely
thinking of flutes

I miss you always
when I go to the beach
the sand is wet with
tears that seem mine

although I never weep
and hold you in my
heart with a very real
humor you'd be proud of

the parking lot is
crowded and I stand
rattling my keys the car
is empty as a bicycle

what are you doing now
where did you eat your
lunch and were there
lots of anchovies it

is difficult to think
of you without me in
the sentence you depress
me when you are alone

Last night the stars
were numerous and today
snow is their calling
card I'll not be cordial

there is nothing that
distracts me music is
only a crossword puzzle
do you know how it is

when you are the only
passenger if there is a
place further from me
I beg you do not go

I watched Knives Out last night with my mother and we loved it. We used to love watching Hitchcock films, I’m in the mood for something more recent with a similar vibe. Like a modern Agatha Christie murder mystery. Any suggestions?

Cynicism is the bastard cousin of skepticism. While optimists look for the silver lining, cynics can't fail to see
the fly in the ointment and true skeptics are somewhere in the middle. Cynicism is an overwhelming trend in internet forums. The most upvoted reactions are usually the more pessimistic (regardless of factuality), and seemingly virtuous attitudes are immediately met with assumptions of bad faith.

Cynicism is tiresome and can very well lead to false conclusions.

This may be unlikely, but paradigms can be improved, governments can adopt better policies, corporations can act for the good of society, billionaires can be virtuous philanthropists, assholes can learn to be nice, and bigots can learn to respect diversity. We should be absolutely skeptical of sudden changes of attitude, but indiscriminate cynicism creates an environment that does not reward positive changes, and I don't think that's in the best interest of a community.

EDIT: I feel I need to clarify that cynicism is not equal to skepticism. Skeptics refrain from conviction in face of insufficient evidence, while cynics assume bad faith even without sufficient evidence. I am not advocating for naïveté, but for healthy skepticism.

Back in the day I was a hardcore Google Reader (RIP) user, and following that I continued to use https://feedly.com/ for many years, but eventually I found myself falling behind on all my feeds and stopped checking it.

Recently, I signed for Inoreader and I've started reading more blogs again. It also has the nice feature of letting you subscribe to email newsletters too, which is quite nice since I find them annoying to deal with in my email inbox but convenient in the feed reader.

I'm wondering what blogs and newsletters folks on Tildes subscribe to.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Blogs:

• bellingcat: Independent investigative journalism often based on online "open source intelligence." e.g. The Boogaloo Movement is Not What You Think
• BLDGBLOG: Geoff Manaugh's blog about everything related to the space we inhabit, both built and natural. e.g. Underground Cathedrals of Radiation and Zones of Irreversible Strain
• Flowing Data: Nathan Yau's blog about data visualization. e.g. Racial Divide
• Idle Words: The blog of Maciej Cegłowski, creator of the Pinboard bookmarking service. Covers tech and lots of unrelated topics. e.g. Superintelligence: The Idea that Eats Smart People

Newsletters:

• BIG by Matt Stoller: A newsletter about economics and in particular the economics of monopolies and disruptive startups. e.g. The Slow Death of Hollywood
• Data is Plural: A weekly newsletter of fun/weird datasets.
• Normcore Tech: Vicki Boykis' newsletter about tech and tech-related things. e.g. The Reign of Big Recsys
• Uses This: Brief interviews with all sorts of creators about what tools they use to do what they do.

This is just a slice. I can share my entire list if people are interested. But I'm curious about what feeds others enjoy, on anything from film and furniture to "movie-set" urbanism. What are you reading?

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

This thread is posted daily - please try to post relevant content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Especially significant updates may warrant a separate topic, but most should be posted here.