Aphex Twin Which Charity Should Get The Proceeds of the Ebay Sale?

[Blir]

There was a scandal recently that involved bigger charities having their donations be used by bankers to buy and sell stocks in weapons and tobacco companies. Big charities aren't always doing exactly the best things with your money.

 

I don't even know what cause is best to donate to. I personally feel strongly about homelessness and poverty. Please let's not give the money to religion. Or children, especially unborn ones, they're awful.

[gmanyo]

lets give our money to the unborn catholic babies fund

[Squee]

 

I know we're not a gaming site or anything, but Child's Play is awesome.

http://www.childsplaycharity.org/

It's a charity organization that donates toys, video games, and what not to children who are in the hospital. Due to the various illnesses that these kids may have they can't play with toys that other children have played with, so Child's Play buys new toys and video for all the kids in these hospitals. As far as I remember, they have to buy new toys and video game consoles for the kids because they can't hand these toys and consoles over to other children in fear that they will get even more sick. If I was a kid and I was in the hospital I would fucking love to play video games all day. I mean, if there's one thing video games is good at it's making you forget the mountain of emotional shit you might be sitting on.

Anyway, I think it's pretty fucking awesome.

 

• Child’s Play works in two ways. With the help of hospital staff, we set up gift wish lists full of video games, toys, books, and other fun stuff for kids. By clicking on a hospital location on our map, you can view that hospital’s wish list and send a gift.
• Child’s Play also receives cash donations throughout the year. With those cash donations, we purchase new consoles, peripherals, games, and more for hospitals and therapy facilities. These donations allow for children to enjoy age-appropriate entertainment, interact with their peers, friends, and family, and can provide vital distraction from an otherwise generally unpleasant experience.
• How will these toys be used?

  Items like the video game systems and games will be given to the hospitals and a child will essentially be able to check it out and have it placed in their room. Obviously the more systems and copies of each game they have the better. Other toys though will be given to individual children as presents. Something they can keep and take with them when they leave. To read about the effect of these donations, check out the testimonials.

• Does Child’s Play charge administrative fees?

  We try our best to have every dollar that comes in go right back to the hospitals, but there is a slight administrative cost that does get paid for with donations (for example, shipping thousands of consoles and games to hospitals worldwide is not free, sadly). Historically, these charges have not exceeded 6%. It’s true that we’re a non-profit, but unlike most non-profits, we’re not in it to create a self-sustainable entity. We do it to give.

   

 

 

Repoooooooost... *rewinds vinyl*

[gmanyo]

Oh, and this is a great website:

http://www.charitynavigator.org/

 

Lets you see the different aspects of different charities. It checks many things, most importantly transparency and financial responsibility. I recommend choosing something in the 4 star range.

[delet...]

Just sayin', charity:water will send us photos and GPS coordinates of the projects that we help.

 

 

They forgot an helpful graphic for, draining the worlds aquifers one well at a time. Allowing residents to temporarily live and multiply in unsustainable regions.

[delet...]

Please let's not give the money to religion. Or children, especially unborn ones, they're all awful.

 

totally. Children live to grab part of our future whilst disrespecting things that we treasure from our childhoods by not having shared that experience. fuck 'em.

 

 

VIVA LAS Lechuzas

 

[gmanyo]

 

Just sayin', charity:water will send us photos and GPS coordinates of the projects that we help.

 

 

They forgot an helpful graphic for, draining the worlds aquifers one well at a time. Allowing residents to temporarily live and multiply in unsustainable regions.

 

I think these communities are usually under 5,000 people, so I highly doubt they'll really even touch the aquifers they tap, not to mention that's not the only method they use. It's about the same as people using wells 500 years ago. I wouldn't be surprised if some of them replenished about as much as the people took. The people draining aquifers are us, with our 1,000,000 people cities and corporate agriculture.

[delet...]

500 years ago population density was way lower. And as these wells drain it concentrates the toxins in the water. And who is to say that these people won't be using the water for large scale agriculture, cash crops for the NY traders that help fund this charity to then trade. The villagers will be labourers on mega farms using the wells, heh. (speculative conceptualizing with dire propositions perhaps, but you know, we know, that's how they roll in NYC).

 

I also dislike that it's not a small concern and that ominous illuminati eye above the global map.

[gmanyo]

I'm guessing the population density in many of these places is significantly lower than where we live, although obviously water contamination and such is still an issue. Currently they've funded just over 2000 water projects.

 

I think arguing that they'll eventually become bigger and use more natural resources carries the implication that continuing to let people get water from awful places is okay because it's a form of population control. Not to say that's the intended point of the argument, but the only way this argument makes sense is if the wells spur population growth which puts a strain on the environment, and the alternatives are that the wells don't actually let the population get bigger and so that argument isn't true, or that the population will grow anyway only with more suffering.

 

the eye is pretty fuckin weird tho

[DerWaschbar]

lets give our money to the unborn catholic babies fund

*buys stocks of jamesons.

[beerwolf]

Yeah some of those huge charity's have people on 100,000 grand salaries.

[gmanyo]

Some charities not to choose.

[chim]

Get the fuck out of here with your anti-"big charities" bullshit, at least provide proof that they're distrustful. And don't send the money to a fucking worm shelter in cornwall or whatever hipster pseudo-charity you want to do.

 

My suggestion:

 

1. Medicines Sans Frontieres / Doctors Without Borders

 

 

2. "Medical aid where it is needed most. Independent. Neutral. Impartial."

 

MSF provides emergency medical care, vaccination and water-sanitation projects to millions of people caught in crises in 70 countries around the world. They are secular, non-governmental, and employ more than 30,000 medical personnel all over the world's most troubled regions.

 

3. Their employees and volunteers have to face a ton of dangers and governmental indifference in dangerous places and warzones to get the job done. They won the Nobel peace prize in 1999 for their work. They are funded in part by the french government and humanitarian organisations but depend 87% on private donations - they do not accept donations from corporations or governments with conflicting interests to their cause, and since 2002 stopped recieving US government aid.

 

Of that donation money, a staggering amount goes directly into the medical response, an example is virtually 100% of donations for the Haiti effort went directly into the medical work on-site.

 

Since they are so transparent, this means that we can easily estimate what kind of a difference we make with our contribution:

$100 can provide infection-fighting antibiotics to treat nearly 40 wounded children

$250 can provide a sterilization kit for syringes and needles used in mobile vaccination campaigns

$500 can provide a medical kit containing basic drugs, supplies, equipment, and dressings to treat 1,500 patients for three months

$1000 can provide emergency medical supplies to aid 5,000 disaster victims for an entire month

$5500 can provide an emergency health kit to care for 10,000 displaced people for three months

 

 

Today, they are active in extremely dangerous regions like Syria and Afghanistan, where MSF personnel have been killed before, and deserve WATMM's support.

 

Their projects are really well-documented on their website, and they account for exactly how many people are helped through their various efforts. http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org

 

There's an amazing feature length documentary of their work as well:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcb8tAaGjWw

[NorthernFusion]

Get the fuck out of here with your anti-"big charities" bullshit, at least provide proof that they're distrustful. And don't send the money to a fucking worm shelter in cornwall or whatever hipster pseudo-charity you want to do.

 

My suggestion:

 

1. Medicines Sans Frontieres / Doctors Without Borders

 

 

2. "Medical aid where it is needed most. Independent. Neutral. Impartial."

 

MSF provides emergency medical care, vaccination and water-sanitation projects to millions of people caught in crises in 70 countries around the world. They are secular, non-governmental, and employ more than 30,000 medical personnel all over the world's most troubled regions.

 

3. Their employees and volunteers have to face a ton of dangers and governmental indifference in dangerous places and warzones to get the job done. They won the Nobel peace prize in 1999 for their work. They are funded in part by the french government and humanitarian organisations but depend 87% on private donations - they do not accept donations from corporations or governments with conflicting interests to their cause, and since 2002 stopped recieving US government aid.

 

Of that donation money, a staggering amount goes directly into the medical response, an example is virtually 100% of donations for the Haiti effort went directly into the medical work on-site.

 

Since they are so transparent, this means that we can easily estimate what kind of a difference we make with our contribution:

$100 can provide infection-fighting antibiotics to treat nearly 40 wounded children

$250 can provide a sterilization kit for syringes and needles used in mobile vaccination campaigns

$500 can provide a medical kit containing basic drugs, supplies, equipment, and dressings to treat 1,500 patients for three months

$1000 can provide emergency medical supplies to aid 5,000 disaster victims for an entire month

$5500 can provide an emergency health kit to care for 10,000 displaced people for three months

 

 

Today, they are active in extremely dangerous regions like Syria and Afghanistan, where MSF personnel have been killed before, and deserve WATMM's support.

 

Their projects are really well-documented on their website, and they account for exactly how many people are helped through their various efforts. http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org

 

There's an amazing feature length documentary of their work as well:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcb8tAaGjWw

+1 (if allowed, considering I already have +1'd another suggestion)

[Schlitze]

Animal charity

[awepittance]

 

My vote is for the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS).

 

Their mission (from the site):

 

Founded in 1986, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) is a 501©(3) non-profit research and educational organization that develops medical, legal, and cultural contexts for people to benefit from the careful uses of psychedelics and marijuana.

 

MAPS furthers its mission by:

• Developing psychedelics and marijuana into prescription medicines
• Training therapists and working to establish a network of treatment centers
• Supporting scientific research into spirituality, creativity, and neuroscience
• Educating the public honestly about the risks and benefits of psychedelics and marijuana.

MAPS has been supporting studies on a variety psychoactive substances, looking into their potential for use as medicine. Studies on psychedelics and other substances have shown strong indications that many psychoactive drugs have the power to cure or alleviate mental illnesses like addiction, PTSD, anxiety, depression and others when used in medical settings. MAPS has big ambitions--e.g., they intend to push research and legislation on MDMA through a $18.5 million dollar project to make it a legal prescription medicine by 2021. As current studies supported by MAPS have shown that MDMA is highly successful in curing PTSD (yes, curing--patients show that benefits of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy persist over time), this has the potential to improve the lives of millions of people. With more funding for research, MAPS could develop a deeper understanding on the potential for medicinal use of psychedelics. There are so many anecdotes about people improving their lives after a trip--quitting smoking or drinking, taking up running, feeling new impulses of creativity or destroying old, destructive habits just through the power of self-reflection. Imagine if scientists understood how and why this occurred in the brain. We could then use psychedelics therapeutically to help improve peoples' quality of life!

 

Pretty exciting stuff. Now, I know it's not alleviating poverty directly like some other charities, but considering that 25% of the homeless population in the United States has some form of mental illness, I think discovering more effective care for them (where now most of them have exactly zero care) would be a great cause to fight for. To drive that point home: Mental illness isn't a first world problem and supporting research on psychedelics is not a joke. Mental illness destroys lives constantly--for example, about 3000 people commit suicide every day--while potential cures remain illegal and the United States refuses to allow research on them. MAPS is an organization dedicated to fighting against these out-dated ways of thinking that are barring the path to medicines that can alleviate much suffering in the world.

 

second this one

[Adieu]

My vote is for this.

 

http://www.ethnobotanicalcouncil.org/

 

ESC Activities

The Ethnobotanical Stewardship Council is a young organization that depends on your donations. With your support, we are:

• DEVELOPING SCOPING STUDIES to better understand the reality around the sustainability and safety of various ethnobotanicals.
• WORKING WITH CONSTRUCTIVE STAKEHOLDERS to lead safety and sustainability dialogues on individual ethnobotanicals that will develop broad consensus to create publicly-available principles, standards, and criteria.
• DESIGNATING CREDIBLE ASSURANCE MECHANISMS (such as certification, verification, or other forms of assurance) to guarantee good practices that are in conformity with the criteria ESC develops through individual ethnobotanical dialogues.
• COMMUNICATING ADHERENCE TO ESC NORMS through chain of custody certification, on-product labeling, and site-level ratings.
• ESTABLISHING A STAKEHOLDER COUNCIL of prominent experts to help build awareness of the ESC's mission and accomplishments.
• ESTABLISHING A BOARD OF DIRECTORS to oversee the ESC as an accountable and sustainable nonprofit entity and for the time being we are being overseen by our fiscal sponsor MAPS and incubation partner ICEERS

 

 

I would also be down with voting for a cannabis research foundation, but I'm not aware of any good ones.

 

Personally, donating to lifestyle diseases such as diabetes (not the hereditary type) seems like a less interesting use of the money. Really great cancer research is being done currently in regards to cannabis therapy as well as it's myriad other application for health, for instance, treating Alzheimer's.

 

It would be the most logical catch-all for curing diseases if we donate to a good cannabis research foundation in my opinion.

 

I don't know if y'all noticed what this one is actually about, but it's geared towards protecting the plant life that is required to prepare ayahuasca. They also focus on providing ayahuasca experiences for people.

 

My vote is for the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS).

 

Their mission (from the site):

 

Founded in 1986, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) is a 501©(3) non-profit research and educational organization that develops medical, legal, and cultural contexts for people to benefit from the careful uses of psychedelics and marijuana.

 

MAPS furthers its mission by:

• Developing psychedelics and marijuana into prescription medicines
• Training therapists and working to establish a network of treatment centers
• Supporting scientific research into spirituality, creativity, and neuroscience
• Educating the public honestly about the risks and benefits of psychedelics and marijuana.

MAPS has been supporting studies on a variety psychoactive substances, looking into their potential for use as medicine. Studies on psychedelics and other substances have shown strong indications that many psychoactive drugs have the power to cure or alleviate mental illnesses like addiction, PTSD, anxiety, depression and others when used in medical settings. MAPS has big ambitions--e.g., they intend to push research and legislation on MDMA through a $18.5 million dollar project to make it a legal prescription medicine by 2021. As current studies supported by MAPS have shown that MDMA is highly successful in curing PTSD (yes, curing--patients show that benefits of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy persist over time), this has the potential to improve the lives of millions of people. With more funding for research, MAPS could develop a deeper understanding on the potential for medicinal use of psychedelics. There are so many anecdotes about people improving their lives after a trip--quitting smoking or drinking, taking up running, feeling new impulses of creativity or destroying old, destructive habits just through the power of self-reflection. Imagine if scientists understood how and why this occurred in the brain. We could then use psychedelics therapeutically to help improve peoples' quality of life!

 

Pretty exciting stuff. Now, I know it's not alleviating poverty directly like some other charities, but considering that 25% of the homeless population in the United States has some form of mental illness, I think discovering more effective care for them (where now most of them have exactly zero care) would be a great cause to fight for. To drive that point home: Mental illness isn't a first world problem and supporting research on psychedelics is not a joke. Mental illness destroys lives constantly--for example, about 3000 people commit suicide every day--while potential cures remain illegal and the United States refuses to allow research on them. MAPS is an organization dedicated to fighting against these out-dated ways of thinking that are barring the path to medicines that can alleviate much suffering in the world.

 

I could support this.

 

This one hasn't been mentioned yet, but I'd encourage you guys to check it out.

 

1. charity:water (charitywater.org)

 

2. They try to provide water through wells and shit to places in need

 

3. These guys are a really well run charity. They focus on building wells and training locals. If you do independent campaigns, they will actually send you information about the project your money helped, including pictures and GPS links.

 

Here's one of my favorite videos of theirs from many years back, featuring Beck's Time Bomb (not sure where the original is for it, pretty sure it had more than 2000 views):

 

Their current campaign has to do with training people to fix complex problems with the wells they built using an automated system:

 

They had a cool thing awhile back where they had ads of Americans (I think in New York) walking miles to dirty bodies of water and getting drinking water from it and giving the murky shit to their kids to drink. They paired this with some interesting displays where they set up tanks with dirty water in them.

 

I could also support this.

[Adieu]

lol randy sicko was not happy about this thread is seems.

[PhylumZunami]

i say we go with a hipster pseudo charity dedicated to treating students with worms. Please no large charities!

[Adieu]

 

 

I know we're not a gaming site or anything, but Child's Play is awesome.

http://www.childsplaycharity.org/

It's a charity organization that donates toys, video games, and what not to children who are in the hospital. Due to the various illnesses that these kids may have they can't play with toys that other children have played with, so Child's Play buys new toys and video for all the kids in these hospitals. As far as I remember, they have to buy new toys and video game consoles for the kids because they can't hand these toys and consoles over to other children in fear that they will get even more sick. If I was a kid and I was in the hospital I would fucking love to play video games all day. I mean, if there's one thing video games is good at it's making you forget the mountain of emotional shit you might be sitting on.

Anyway, I think it's pretty fucking awesome.

 

• Child’s Play works in two ways. With the help of hospital staff, we set up gift wish lists full of video games, toys, books, and other fun stuff for kids. By clicking on a hospital location on our map, you can view that hospital’s wish list and send a gift.
• Child’s Play also receives cash donations throughout the year. With those cash donations, we purchase new consoles, peripherals, games, and more for hospitals and therapy facilities. These donations allow for children to enjoy age-appropriate entertainment, interact with their peers, friends, and family, and can provide vital distraction from an otherwise generally unpleasant experience.
• How will these toys be used?

  Items like the video game systems and games will be given to the hospitals and a child will essentially be able to check it out and have it placed in their room. Obviously the more systems and copies of each game they have the better. Other toys though will be given to individual children as presents. Something they can keep and take with them when they leave. To read about the effect of these donations, check out the testimonials.

• Does Child’s Play charge administrative fees?

  We try our best to have every dollar that comes in go right back to the hospitals, but there is a slight administrative cost that does get paid for with donations (for example, shipping thousands of consoles and games to hospitals worldwide is not free, sadly). Historically, these charges have not exceeded 6%. It’s true that we’re a non-profit, but unlike most non-profits, we’re not in it to create a self-sustainable entity. We do it to give.

   

 

 

Repoooooooost... *rewinds vinyl*

 

 

Also cool. Let's get a bunch of terminal kids calling people fags on COD. That is a worthwhile cause.

[disquiet]

Just putting my two cents in. When I was researching my book on Selected Ambient Works Volume II, one thing I was struck by was that two different feature-length films that got permission to employ music from that album had similar settings, in that both movies were about troubled teens.

One, a documentary, The Devil's Playground, a 2002 film directed by Lucy Walker, is about Amish teens in the midst of rumspringa, the period around the age of 16 when Amish kids are sent out of the community to deal with the modern world. To say that the kids have trouble adjusting is an understatement. It's a pretty dark period for all involved.

The other, a drama, Manic, a 2001 film directed by Jordan Melamed, is the story of teenagers in a psychiatric ward, a mental institution.

Given that Richard D. James approved both these licensings of his music, it seems like the subject may be one he has some interest in, concern regarding, or sympathy for. Since the Caustic Window album dates from the same period as Selected Ambient Works Volume II, perhaps a charity that has troubled teens as its focus might be appropriate.

And in any case, just major thanks again to all of you, especially Joyrex, for having made this whole Kickstarter project happen.

[Guest Frankie5fingers]

Personally, i like Heifer. They're all about self-reliance in impoverished communities. instead of just giving a handout they actually provide these communities with the resources they need to thrive by giving them cattle and other farm animals.

 

A few years back I got my class together to donate enough money to buy a cow for a village in Africa.

[baph]

I like WWF personally, but given how many worthy charities are out there, maybe it should be something sort of close to RDJ's/rephlex's hearts? If they have a preference, I mean?

 

Maybe we can spay some cornwall cats or help feed some locals or sommat?

[NI64]

+1 for WWF

[gmanyo]

I would personally like to see the money go to a charity for humans as opposed to wildlife, but that's just me.