SC Weekly – August 2025 – #2

~ a curated selection of discoveries ~

Mark Danowsky

Aug 10, 2025

::: The Open :::

Dear Reader,

I hope you enjoy this edition of SC Weekly (published on Sundays).

Please consider sharing with a friend who you think may enjoy this newsletter.

Thank you for reading and for your time.

With Gratitude,

~ Mark

::: Personal Notes :::

These have been, dare I say, an unprecedented past two weeks insofar as literary community activities in my life. I was interviewed for two podcast episodes and was a featured reader for a virtual poetry event. Feels good to be involved in community and it’s nice to have the platform to focus a little on my own endeavors as, most are aware, the lion’s share of my attention goes to ONE ART and community-building efforts (of which these activities certainly relate).

I have three haiku in the new issue (Issue 3) of The Haiku Shack. It’s a little difficult to access these. Not my favorite type of lit mag design. Not saying this to be an ungrateful jerk. The lesson is I should have done more homework before submitting work. Taking a moment to acknowledge that we often fail to take our own advice.

::: ONE ART :::

This Week!!

Visibility and Book Sales: Marketing Your Small Press Book

Instructor: John Sibley Williams

Date: Thursday, August 14

Time: 3:30-6:00pm Eastern

>>> Tickets Available <<<

ONE ART’s August 2025 Reading

Sunday, August 17 at 2pm Eastern

Featured Poets: Julia Caroline Knowlton, Michelle Bitting, Heather Kays, Sonia Greenfield

>>> Tickets Available <<<

::: The Literary Community & Beyond :::

Maggie Smith is the new host of The Slowdown and will be making daily poem selections for the foreseeable future. Exciting!

The 2025 Best of the Net Anthology

Sadly, no representation for ONE ART in BotN yet.

‘Fall In Love With The Torture’ (Scott Melker)

Writing advice from a place you may not expect. The world of investing and trading.

::: Podcasts :::

‘It’s time to get weird’
(The Gray Area with Sean Illing)

Wild, fun episode.

Douglas Rushkoff reminds me a lot of Jaron Lanier. Slightly different approaches to related terrain.

Sean does an impressive job trying to keep Douglas on subject and that struggle is certainly part of what makes this an entertaining listen. Feel a little like people trying to rein me in during conversations.

::: Music :::

‘JD Vance’s Leaked Spotify Playlist Is Bafflingly Full of Gay Anthems from Whitney Houston and Tracy Chapman’ (Them)

::: Health & Wellness :::

‘Scientists found a potential key to reversing Alzheimer’s disease.’ (WaPo)

“What is it? Lithium. In a new study, researchers said they were able restore brain function in mice with small amounts of the metal. The finding could lead to new treatments.”

‘5 Injuries ER Doctors See All the Time—and How to Avoid Them’ (SELF)

Not surprised about “avocado hand”. “Bagel hand” is well-known though I was unfamiliar with the phrase. My solution for cutting a bagel at home? First, put the bagel on its side and cut off a small portion of the edge leaving a flat surface. Then, turn it sideways and you can easily cut the bagel in half. An additional benefit is that most bagels have a totally unreasonable amounts of carbs per serving so you’re doing yourself a favor by removing at least some of it.

::: The Trump Regime :::

“The US endorsed laws recently approved in El Salvador that will allow President Nayib Bukele to remain in power indefinitely.” (Semafor / El Pais)

“Higher tariffs will cost the average household $2,400 a year, experts estimate.” (WaPo)

The jobs data is nothing. We haven’t even seen the tip of the iceberg when it comes to AI and automation impact.

Trump doesn’t play his cards well. Consistently.

If he was smart, he would have waited until closer to the 2026 midterm elections to claim job numbers were being manipulated. Still wrong, of course. Just reiterating that this isn’t the same guy we were dealing with in 2016. His cognitive abilities are impacting his ability to be nefarious.

I guess we should count our blessings?

I want to briefly speak to Trump’s misogyny, sexism, generally creepiness about women, and the ongoing conversation about birthrate which, let’s be clear, focuses on the decline of white babies.

What’s in the “One Big Beautiful Bill”? (USAFacts)

Let’s be clear—

“In 2022, when Medicaid had between 92 million and 98 million enrollees, nearly one in four Americans (23.5%) received Medicaid or CHIP assistance.”

These are necessary programs; 1 in 4 Americans require them to survive.

GOP official proudly shares invitation to church that called for killing LGBTQ+ people (LGBTQ Nation)

Favorable and unfavorable “newsmakers” (Gallup)

::: Small Explorations & Deep Dives :::

‘How Social Media Shortens Your Life’

(Gurwinder)

Real. Depressing. Real depressing.

And then light.

Ways to improve your life.

Choose the right paths.

Not easy.

This essay offers sage advice.

“Now, a sinister thing about social media is that it speeds up your time both in the moment and in retrospect. It does this by simultaneously impairing your awareness of the present and your memory of the past.”

“Ultimately, social media doesn’t just threaten the quantity of your time, but also the quality. And it doesn’t just accelerate your experienced life, but potentially also your actual, biological life.”

“Without reminding ourselves of our own impermanence, we’re liable to live as if we’d never die, and hence, die as if we’d never lived.”

“People with chronic pain seem to be hyper-vigilant of negative outcomes in the same way. Their brains react more strongly to punishments, which might explain why chronic pain can make us avoid seemingly harmless activities or become overly cautious.” (Hidden Brain via Brain)

‘Black student dragged from his car and punched by Florida officers says he was scared and confused’ (AP News)

Keeping in mind this is the sort of thing that still happens regularly to Black men in America.

Sadly, maybe we should all have car dash cams for emergencies. Terrible to think about… but in a world of surveillance it seems wise to have counter-surveillance methods in place.

‘63 million adults are moonlighting as caregivers, with little support’ (yahoo)

1 in 4 American adults is in a caregiving role.

We don’t pay people for this. Instead, we expect them to also juggle any number of other forms of labor on top of what already often amounts to a full-time job.

Mark AI

No, I don’t’ have an AI avatar… not yet. Sounds pretty creepy, right? Plus… I don’t trust that guy… who knows what he might say while I’m not around.

‘MP creates an AI version of himself and encourages his constituents to ‘embrace’ it’ (The Independent)

‘Denmark zoo asks people to donate their small pets as food for captive predators’ (AP News)

Interesting. Culturally, this just feels impossible in the U.S.

Am I wrong?

Also, I hear PETA is loving this. (Obviously the opposite.)

‘At 17, Hannah Cairo Solved a Major Math Mystery’ (Quanta Magazine)

“The Mizohata-Takeuchi conjecture is a problem in harmonic analysis, a field that studies how functions are assembled from wavelike components.”

“Over the decades, mathematicians made limited progress on a few special cases of the Mizohata-Takeuchi conjecture. But the general problem remained wide open. None of the standard methods seemed able to touch it. That imperviousness made some mathematicians suspect that the conjecture was false; others felt that its elegance made it more likely to be true.”

“Cairo completed the problem set and took Zhang up on the invitation to keep thinking. To her, it seemed natural to follow the thread of an idea as far as it would go. “Why would I stop?” she said.”

‘Compounding luck’ (Seth Godin)

“We don’t do either one as much as we could or should.”

Agreed.

‘Pilgrim's Jake Adler Secures $4.3 Million by Demoing Biotech Product With a Bold Video’ (Business Insider)

Uhh. Hmm.

This might fall into the "Men will do XYZ (literally anything) before going to therapy" category of memes.

Sonia Sotomayor | Just Shine! | The Free Library of Philadelphia Foundation

Not looking for Left infighting. I also don’t feel like I’m “rage-baiting”.

I'm a little surprised a member of SCOTUS has time for a book tour even during the off-season. In any case, neat opportunity to meet a person who broke a lot of glass ceilings and has worked hard enough to even have interdisciplinary talents.

‘Wild New Robot Dog Is So Strong You Can Ride It Like a Four-Legged Skateboard’ (Futurism)

Cool... Unfortunately, many of us watched Black Mirror.

‘Doctors Horrified After Google's Healthcare AI Makes Up a Body Part That Does Not Exist in Humans’ (Futurism)

"In the meantime, it will be up to humans to continuously monitor the outputs of hallucinating AIs, which could counteractively lead to inefficiencies."

‘List of rodents by population’

This Wikipedia page is “missing”.

Think about why that might be.

Try a google search. For example, “Population of rats in the United States”

Yeah, that’s right.

Fun Wikipedia searches:

Largest organisms

List of longest-living organisms

The world's 100 most threatened species (less fun, more sad)

Lists of organisms by population

Flora of the United States

Fauna of the United States