Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

Thank you for making this effort, by the way. The community on Lemmy versus the other platform we all know about is night and day because of people like you.

Thank you too for that bit of positivity. I found myself being negatively impacted, psychologically and emotionally on corporate social media. Life is just too short to engage in that sort of unhealthy behavior. And I know that I'm not the only one who has experienced such - it's pretty well established in research data.

So, while it certainly makes me feel a bit better, more important to me is the fact that engaging positively with people and encouraging them gives them more opportunities to feel better about themselves (we all need that sometimes, some more than others), grow, and, I hope, be more inclined to spread it about (and make quality shitposts and *nix porn). The world is fucked up enough as it is; lashing out, belittling, and the like only contributes the the problem.

I've been through a lot in life so far and close to those which been through even more and know first-hand how dark the depths of despair can get. If I can manage to put even the idea of a smile into the mind of someone that needs one I've won more than is possible in getting someone to rage-quit a "debate" thread that's 50 comments deep.

There's always Charity Navigator, they rate charities based on financial health and accountability, at least. I've not heard any controversy with it, for what it's worth

Another great charity evaluator is https://www.givewell.org/. Their mission is to find charities that save or improve lives the most per dollar spent, and their findings are research-backed and evidence-based. 100% of your donation goes to the charity you support. They also evaluate the lowest cost to save a human life, which is currently about $3k-$5k. Their top rated charities are involved in malaria prevention:

1. Malaria Consortium
2. Against Malaria Foundation
3. Helen Keller International
4. New Incentives

When charities are written in law as a way to get tax discounts, it's no wonder the majority becomes scams. Charities are also a great example of the govt failing to do it's own damn job

Child's Play is my go-to. They provide video games and consoles to hospitalized and often terminally ill children who literally can't go out and play. It was founded by the creators of Penny Arcade back in the early 2000s and so far to my knowledge hasn't had a single controversy or hint of anything nefarious. It's just nerds helping other, young, sick nerds/would-be-nerds get their nerd on.

I mean Doctors Without Borders definitely does more important work on the balance, but giving pediatric terminal cancer patients countless hours of joy isn't a trivial thing either.

That's my go-to, personally. MSF (Doctors Without Borders) could nearly get away with puppy murder and still be "good". The amount of risk that they take on to help those in need is remarkable.

I miss Value Village. I got so many things there for super cheap when I was a kid.

Value village is Walmart.

They don't come any shittier than that company wise.

Greenway suggests that the Wobblies stumbled upon this modus operandi as a means of combating the street bands of the Salvation Army and the Volunteers of America, who frequently would drown out Wobbly speakers in a "cacophony of cornets and tamborines." One enterprising IWW organizer, wishing to combat the forces of obscurantist "pie in the sky" theology, "retired long enough to organize a brass band of his own.

Denisoff, R. S. (1970). The Religious Roots of the American Song of Persuasion. Western Folklore, 29(3), 175. doi:10.2307/1498356

Not OP, but I found this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Preacher_and_the_Slave

Of course any article can be biased, but this one has cited sources, at least. It would take further digging to determine if those sources are credible.

https://libcom.org/article/starvation-army-twelve-reasons-reject-salvation-army

In my opinion and based on my past reading on the subject, the simple fact that it’s a religious organization is enough to dissuade me from giving them anything. It is no small statistic that religious organizations are corrupt, hypocritical, expect obedience over tolerance, anti-union, anti-LGBTQ, ultra-conservative, and generally support the notion that people must be submissive to their authority.

I’ll continue to donate to secular organizations that do genuine good.

Off the top of my head, I can only think of primary sources. Would need to dive into some academic tools to find sufficient sources for Wikipedia's requirements. I'll make a note to do so, when I get the time to do so.

Yeah. It feels like bad actors at the top use the needy as human shields to deflect from their horrible behavior.

Are you familiar with that old tune?

Oh the starvation army they pray / they sing and they clap and they play/'till they get all your coin on the drum / then they'll tell you that you're on the bum.

Good as that is, I gotta endorse the Utah Philips version. It comes with context and a story, and also he's hilarious.

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

Oh the starvation army they pray / they sing and they clap and they play/'till they get all your coin on the drum / then they'll tell you that you're on the bum.

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.