Are there any awards that are without controversies (or at least, little controversy)? I am sure there are unknown people quietly doing great work in this world who deserve the recognition, I suppose the tricky part is finding them. In any case, it is not an easy task to pick a person that most (if not all) people would agree on.

Your calculation is right (there were some loans that were refunded, so it is a bit higher than 2720). You could ask ChatGPT (or use Excel) for a quick calculation. $25 a month is such a small amount in the west, if anyone wants to do it (I did it inconsistently, some months $0 some months $200).

All this to show - a dollar goes a LONG way in parts of Asia, Africa etc.

Her entire 18-month master's program (tuition, registration, fees, books, supplies) comes to 3,060,000 TSh, about $1,161.

$1,161 - that is a shockingly small amount for a 18 month master's program!

Another org I admire is https://watsi.org/ Costs listed there is so small (compared to the west) that every dollar can help

https://www.kiva.org/about/how

I also tried a couple of other Microfinance orgs (can't remember the names now), but kept going back to Kiva. Been doing it for 15 years, so it slowly adds up, even though I wasn't consistent.

I've been funding Microfinance loans, $25 at a time, for a while now. Just checked the numbers - I have spent only about 5K in total, made almost 68K for ~2900 loans (keep recycling the money when repayments come in).

Lost motivation for a few years in between, after Covid. Used to think it is just $25, what difference can it make? I was totally wrong. $25 won't even get a good pizza these days in most American cities, it is not a lot in the west. But it can have amazing purchasing power in Africa, parts of Asia etc.

What I am trying to say is - even if we have just $10, it is okay, it can be of immense help to someone. There is Watsi, there is Kiva, Doctors without Borders and many more great projects, like Tanzania Education Project.

Here is a very simplistic (and optimistic) calculation by ChatGPT - simply loaning $25 month consistently can help more than a 1000 people in 20 years

https://chatgpt.com/share/6ac80150-feb8-83e8-a6b0-4b162c056a...

I used to think I need lots of capital to help, this shows how wrong that line of thinking is.

As a user, probably the best thing to do is get a library card and read books published prior to 1980 or thereabouts. Much of the movies/shows produced these days is not that good anyways, and anything that is good gets canceled after a season or two

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49817416

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

From a purely economic standpoint, this would make sense. Not sure what to feel about the ethics of it though - at least part of the Russian war bill was footed by the money India paid for Russian oil. One can argue the Ukraine's problems are not India's problems. One could also argue it would be nice to not fund shitty wars, even a little, even indirectly.

Geopolitics is a complex subject I suppose, for a layman like me.

Another egregious thing these subscriptions do is all kinds of dark patterns. Making it super easy to subscribe but super hard to cancel, not informing before charging (how hard can it be to send an email "upcoming charge next week"), showing ads in supposedly "ad-free" services etc. All this just add to the frustration which leads users to cancel.

But, all that we learned in those 4 hours - is it really that useful? Some of it might be, lets say an hour of it. What about the other three? That could have been spent on something healthier - having fun with friends, play sports, or even just sleeping!

I understand the irony of typing this, but I too am in the same boat - consuming things voraciously, most of which is just useless knowledge, at the cost of relationships, health etc.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49439283

Points: 9

# Comments: 0

Never pay a human again

Every time I see stuff like this (along with other more serious shenanigans like wage theft, union busting etc) I only ask myself the same question again and again - what is the end game here? If much of the population is too poor to buy anything, too sick to consume much etc - who is left to buy anything at all? If all their power comes from their wealth and if that wealth is threatened because consumers are too poor to buy, then what happens? Someone has to buy for the system to work, no?

If they ever cared enough about bad PR, they have much bigger items to think about, like the proposed data center. Rare books probably wouldn't even make it their top 5 bad-press list

I am just like you, but my guess is most people are not in this category. I also like empty space - no matter how big my living space is (not that it is big), I hate to fill it with things I don't need. Perfectly happy with just keeping only those things I need and leave the rest of the space empty. In this too, I have noticed, I am in the minority.

Not saying one is better than the other. If people like sound/noise, it is their choice. That said, people who like silence are at a disadvantage, as silence is becoming rarer and rarer, whereas noise is everywhere. At minimum, it would be nice if people put their headphones on and not bother others...