SC Weekly – October 2025 – #4

~ a curated selection of discoveries ~

::: 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

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::: Personal Notes :::

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My poem ‘Our Most Vulnerable‘ appears in Live Nude Poems.

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::: ONE ART :::

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IN A NUTSHELL: An Anthology of Micro-poems, Guest Edited by Julia Caroline Knowlton!

Submissions for this anthology will be made through Subfolio.

Submissions will be open from November 1 to December 15.

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Listed, here, on Duotrope.

Plus, I’m hoping Chill Subs will list this, too, when the anthology opens for submissions.

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ONE ART’s Fall Fundraiser

A quick note. We’re 2/3 of the way to the goal with 39 donations. I’m overjoyed! I’m also learning something. I see why grassroots campaigns ask for small donations. If many more folks who appreciate my efforts through ONE ART and general contributions to the literary community donated a very small sum, we’d easily exceed the goal. In this case, if 300 people donated $10. I know I said I would not nudge in that fashion and so I’m not (this time around). As noted previously, I don’t want anyone to feel compelled to donate beyond their means. I’m not in a position to donate much and that really saddens me. Studies have shown that charitable giving is high among those with less. It shouldn’t be this way but here we are. I don’t mean to go on and on but all this to say we can all agree it would be nice if there were more funding opportunities available to those in the arts.

https://oneartpoetry.com/2025/10/10/one-arts-fall-fundraiser/

Direct link to the GoFundMe:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/one-arts-fall-2025-fundraisera

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I know we’re using Subfolio for the micro-poems anthology but that’s because Chill Subs has not yet dropped their alternative platform (eagerly awaiting!).

I’m a huge fan of the work Chill Subs’ team is doing.

If you have not yet already signed up for their services, you can use this link to get a discount on membership.

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::: ONE ART x Keystone Poetry :::

Date: Sunday, November 2

Time: 2:00pm Eastern

Please Note: This is a virtual event held via Zoom.

>>> Tickets Available <<<

FREE to attend! Bring a friend :)

~ About The Reading ~

During this virtual event (held via Zoom), Featured Readers will share their poem selected for publication in Keystone Poetry: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania (PSU Press). Time permitting, we hope to take a few questions after readers share their poems.

~ Hosts ~

Marjorie Maddox & Jerry Wemple, Co-Editors, Keystone Poetry

Mark Danowsky, Founder/Editor-in-Chief, ONE ART: a journal of poetry

~ Featured Readers ~

Joe Chelius, Grant Clauser, Gerry Connolly, Brian Fanelli, Jan Freeman, Robbie Gamble, Lynn Levin, Marjorie Maddox, Amy Small-McKinney, Ann E. Michael, Jerry Wemple

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::: The Literary Community & Beyond :::

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‘How Long Do Lit Mags Actually Take to Respond?’ (Chill Subs)

The scientific method reinforces some longstanding suspicions and reveals notable findings.

Lit mags tend to respond in 1-3 months. That’s the norm. Unfortunately. And that’s why ONE ART was started on the premise to be writer-friendly by responding much faster.

ONE ART responds in 0-7 days in most instances. More recently, sometimes due to careful publication scheduling considerations, a few acceptances have taken slightly longer than a week. These are outliers.

ONE ART is among the 3-4% of lit mags that generally responds in under a week.

Apparently, about a third of lit mags respond within a month. Under a month is very much within reason.

I want to note that the reason 1-3 months has always been understandable is because many lit mags publish issues and, more specifically, publish issues on a quarterly basis.

ONE ART has the agility to publish more freely as a semi-daily publication. By semi-daily, I mean sometimes ONE ART publishes more than one poet in a given day.

The data reflects that at both ends of the spectrum, fast responses and slow responses are less common. And, notably, a similar percentage.

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The World’s Largest Publishers, 2025 (PW)

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“A UK startup will label books as human-written by providing an “Organic Literature” certification comparable to similar moves in the food industry.” (Semafor)

Music streaming services are likely to follow with something similar when feasible and as bands/music are discovered to be AI-generated (or heavily AI-assisted).

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::: Podcasts :::

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How to Be a Better Human: Why is talking about money and class so awkward?! (w/ Jonathan Menjivar)

Thoughtful conversation on a topic I’m very interested in. Also, I think Jonathan Menjivar sounds a bit like me but with slightly less vocal fry.

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Men speak with a vocal fry just as much as women (Pop Sci)

Yeah, and mine is rather extreme and I’m not a fan.

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‘The Indicator from Planet Money: Should we ditch quarterly earnings reports?’ (The Indicator from Planet Money)

The short answer is: probably.

Why? Because it problematically incentivizes myopic thinking.

Long-term growth and innovation strategies are hard to focus on when staff at all levels of a company are focused on quarterly numbers.

The problem: Shareholders and investors like to see these numbers because they want to maintain confidence that a company remains “on track” to perform well. If not, they want to reallocate their investments elsewhere.

There are no easy answers, sadly.

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::: Music :::

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‘Chappell Roan Launches Midwest Princess Project Benefiting LGBTQ+ Communities’ (RS)

There are already a lot of donations pouring in!

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::: Health & Wellness :::

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“Food allergies fell 38% in the US after a 2015 change in guidelines suggested parents should give their children peanuts from a young age. Peanut allergy incidence in particular fell 43%. In much of the West, previous advice was to minimize exposure to allergens such as peanuts to avoid reactions. But epidemiologists noticed that allergies were lower in countries like Israel where peanuts were part of infants’ regular diets and changed the recommendations. The study is observational and cannot prove that the guideline change led to the reduction, but scientists said it was significant, and that it could help “reduce — and perhaps even eventually eradicate — the burden of peanut and other food allergies in children,” one told the Financial Times.” (Semafor/AP/FT)

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“… children are becoming more exposed to digital risks. Teens spend five hours/day on social media — 35% of their waking hours outside school. This pattern looks like it will continue as 29% of U.S. kids ages 8 to 10 years old own a smartphone.” (Prof G / Scott Galloway)

“Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, X, and YouTube earned nearly $11 billion from U.S. users under 18 in 2022.”

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‘4 ways to fix ‘tech neck,’ according to a physical therapist’ (Pop Sci)

Sharing because I’ve learned that stretching sometimes can go wrong.

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Why living apart could be the key to staying together: Couples are consciously uncoupling from cohabitation — but not commitment (Salon)

This has long seemed ideal (for many), but the reality is that most people cannot afford to maintain two separate households.

This isn’t a new idea. See: Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo House-Studio Museum

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::: The Trump Regime :::

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It’s worth taking a moment to acknowledge just how strange Marjorie Taylor Greene’s flip on MAGA has been. We’ll see how her trajectory continues over time…

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‘Americans See Need for Third Party, but Offer Soft Support’ (Gallup)

“62% say a third party is needed, but only 15% would be “very likely” to vote for a third-party candidate”

Is this really true? 15% is based on “very likely” but if you include somewhat likely then the picture really shifts.

As usual, understandably, people worry about “wasting” their vote.

Historically, another problem is that you’re taking votes from the Dems or GOP candidate and that often has hurt those candidates at the polls.

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‘At ‘No Kings’ rallies, West Virginians say they are not antifa militants, Hamas, haters or paid protesters’ (WV Metro News)

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“One of the key goals of authoritarianism is to exhaust the public and leave them in a state of apathy.” – Dave Pell (NextDraft)

It’s true.

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‘Uncharted territory’: Ongoing shutdown threatens food aid for 42 million people (NPR)

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::: Small Explorations & Deep Dives :::

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AI is consuming all the available energy it can find. Yes, this is why our electricity bills are up. Yes, this is expediting climate devastation. Companies aim to scale AI to levels that are truly wild… “OpenAI wants to build out a chip network that would consume 250 gigawatts (GW) of energy by 2033. That is equivalent to a fifth of America’s entire electric generation capacity.” (Prof G / Scott Galloway) Nuclear has been a talking point as to where to find more power— but given the time it takes to build nuclear power plants the timeline predictions for when AI objectives will become a reality do not align. Apparently, solar (+ wind) is the way to scale rapidly in this scenario. Trump’s policies are anti-green energy so, beyond the obvious environmental concerns, this is another obstacle for techno-optimists.

Another issue is that AI is increasingly looking like something that people are using as a personal assistant but not necessarily for workplace solutions.

A notable take by Ed Olson is that we actually do not have energy abundance—we have energy scarcity and AI is consuming a vast amount of a scarce resource.

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It Kind of Seems Like Peter Thiel Is Losing It (Futurism)

Lands on the right note.

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“Wikipedia reports human pageviews are down 8% year over year, largely attributed to AI summaries appearing at the top of Google search results” (Tech Crunch)

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‘Bears have attacked over 100 people in Japan since March’ (Pop Sci)

Misleading. This is like America’s “deer problem” which is because we decided to build in their territory. We forget we are part of nature... and we overstepped our place in the ecosystem a long time ago.

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‘Ants ‘social distance’ during a pandemic’ (Pop Sci)

Presumably the ants manage to do so without falling prey to partisan squabbling and conspiracy theories.

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‘How the Collapse of Local Journalism Led to the Erosion of Community Trust’ (Lit Hub)

“Local news once served as democracy’s immune system.”

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‘Ranked: The World’s Most Educated Populations, Across 45 Countries’ (Visual Capitalist)

I like reading fairly regular reminders that the U.S. is not #1.

The U.S. has needed to be humbled away from American Exceptionalism for a long time.

The U.S. might be great for certain folks to achieve a particular version of the so-called “American Dream” but it’s not the greatest place on Earth by default. It bothers me that this feels like a hot take and, as an American, deep down, this somehow feels like a taboo statement. A reminder that there’s danger in aligning your identity too much with “your people” which easily leads to an “Us vs. Them” mentality and framework for moralizing.

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Visualizing Global Wealth Inequality in 2025

Notice how America is losing to… most countries.

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‘Best College Towns in America (2025)’ (WalletHub)

If you’re sending your kid to college soon, then maybe this will be a helpful reference.

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‘The 1 Thing You Should Never Write In a College Essay, From an Admissions Expert’ (Today)

Actually, it’s more than one thing… and they make that clear.

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Perfectly Balanced: exploring the most gender-neutral names

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“Britain’s King Charles III and Pope Leo XIV have prayed in public together in a historic moment, marking the first time in 500 years that leaders of both the Church of England and the Catholic Church have taken part in a joint service.” (euro news)

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‘South Korea to count same-sex couples as spouses in census for first time’ (Straits Times)

I know, the news source (The Straits Times) makes this sound unserious.

Sharing a few pieces in this edition of the newsletter that remind me there are small wins going on elsewhere in the world.

This seems like a good time, historically, to be looking outside the U.S. for positive news and signs of hope elsewhere.

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Unfortunately, it’s not just the American Dream that’s been flagging.

“The Canadian Dream is broken,” she says. “Haven’t you acted out when you’ve felt betrayed?” (Maclean’s)

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Clickbait.

‘Charmin’s new toilet paper roll lasts a full month — and stretches as tall as the Washington Monument’ (QZ)

The “forever” roll.

Cool.

Seriously though, this thing would get grimy and dusty by week three.

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~ Mark’s Consulting, Coaching/Mentoring, Editing Services ~

Information about my services.

Reach out directly to discuss.

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~ Ways to Support ~

If you’d like to support my work, there are ways to do so other than subscribing to this substack.

>> Consider buying a copy of my new poetry collection, Take Care. Copies are available from Moon Tide Press and Amazon and, of course, I’ll be happy to sign a copy and send you one myself.

>> Consider making a donation to ONE ART: a journal of poetry.

>> ONE ART’s Fall Fundraiser

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