On Funding Agencies and the Third Sector

The gruelling applications, tens of pages long and unnecessarily complicated and repetitive, were clearly meant for insiders and I soon realised that this was precisely what was being assessed - how ‘insider’ I was.

When every project has some funding agency’s logo on the footer, this is what is communicated, there is an officialisation of a sector which is, by definition, unofficial, a sector which arose to bridge the gaps of officialism. That’s when I made the ‘NOT in partnership with’ banner.

[When funding is normalized as a kind of approval, the agencies become filters who thwart anything that challenges their preferred narratives, while simultaneously supporting those narratives through their agents.]

People on the inside of these organisations are just ordinary people - some with the strength to see but not the awareness, others with the awareness but not the strength, and fewer with both. Many begin with genuine dreams to change the world, others to be seen in the image of someone who is doing just that.

When are you leaving?

Recently, a phrase I have been saying has been, “One hand cleans the other,” and that’s how I see it in many ways. I need to continue on my Way. I have to get rid of things one way or the other. For me to give them to people who need them, who will use them, who will love them, that’s a huge bonus. It’s like 1+1=3. Like there are cheat codes in the game of life. Helping you find a copy of Snowcrash you’ve been looking for helps me get rid of a book I haven’t finished reading in 8 years. And along the way, joy and gratitude are created from nothing.

There is a place beyond words and beyond understanding; don’t run away from it. When you rest in it, not knowing is knowing. Good is bad. Right is wrong. I am you. The space between objects shrinks to nothing. To grasp it, let go. To control it, surrender. To succeed, fail. To know, don’t.

you can spend half an hour on projects or goals that intimidate you, and progress even if you just observe your discomfort and where it might come from.

Our Crisis of Imagination

We’re trapped in an era of fatalism, unable to envision alternatives to the models of ownership and funding beyond current extractive defaults. We’ve agreed that innovation can touch every aspect of our lives — except the structures that shape them. This isn’t just a failure of imagination — it’s a feature of those very structures.

From Protest to Proposal

Proposals require us to answer difficult questions that protesting alone does not: Who will build it? How will it be funded? How will it compete and self-sustain? What trade-offs are we willing to accept?

psa to please help your friends setup tech alternatives as a social event: switch together so everyone transitions successfully with known contacts on the new platform. lone profiles leave momentum on the table.

like a paywall requires money to access, a nerdwall requires technical knowhow

[Getting near is important for seeing clear. If we avoid those who think differently, our understanding risks to be superficial.]

from observing what you see to observing how you watch

when heading somewhere people ask “have everything you’ll need?” and as a backpacker i respond “i took everything i have”.

when someone uses a different system of understanding than yours, responding with “try my system instead” is not convincing.

Can you use a hammer without injuring yourself? Give Habitat for Humanity a call. Are you a budgeting ninja? Call Boys and Girls Club and offer to teach young men and women to budget. Do your friends tell you that you talk too much? Go to a retirement home and talk with people who have long been forgotten.

there is no language without a listener who can understand what is being said.

[God Speed is three miles per hour. Jesus didn’t take a chariot to get there faster.]

[Can worrying add even a single hour to your life?]

Top five business lessons

[Clients don’t value your effort or service as much as how it makes them feel or the possibilities it opens for them, so charge who’s willing to pay for that.]

mocking your opposition without reducing their power is not a flex.

[Bring some cookies to your neighbour for no reason other than they might need to smile today.]

[I didn’t give her a tip or make her famous, just told her I loved her voice.]

[The point of leaving the flock to go after the lost sheep isn’t to bring them back, but to let them know they’re loved.]

learn to teach so others can learn

254: Language Transfer with Mihalis Eleftheriou

[We tend to teach by showing but that’s not always what’s most effective; dogs and cats do that too. Sometimes it’s better to explain with words what is helpful for the learner.]

[We’re already translating thoughts into language.]

[Xenophobia that occurs naturally as a brain resonse needs help and solutions more than ostracizing, and learning the foreign language can be super helpful there.]

Dynamicland FAQ

A book cannot do something for you. Instead, reading a book can change you into someone who can do something for yourself. The role of a great medium is not to help people get things done, but to help people become deeper people — by providing a context in which they grow their skills and knowledge, broaden their context and perspective, and deepen their awareness and discernment.