From here on out, all GDQ content must be in a state ready to show to an audience before submissions open. Period.
I agree that this is a good idea and was thinking about suggesting something similar. I'm open to trying some resynch work in the future, if necessary.
Reading the comment section of those videos, some people point out there something that I think might have a degree of validity to it. Namely: Watching TASes of romhacks (of existing games) and homebrew games is less interesting than watching TASes of more well-known and popular official mainstream games. The more obscure and less-known the romhack or homebrew game is, the less interesting a TAS of it is.
I think there might be a point to consider here.
Regular speedrunners sometimes do run such romhacks and homebrew games on these marathons, but I think the situation is a bit different. In these cases the interest is in seeing how skillful the runner is. In a TAS, however, there is no real-time skill involved.
The reason why it's more interesting to watch TASes of known games is that most people know these games and have either played them or seen them played and speedrun a lot (especially those that get run a lot in these events), and thus there's a point of comparison: People have experienced or seen how the game works when played "normally", and thus can be more appreciative of what happens when a "perfect superhuman player" plays the game. They can see how much more different a "perfect play" is, compared to normal flawed human play.
With obscure games that nobody has seen before, however, there is no point of comparison. People haven't seen how the game plays normally, and thus they can't compare it with the superhuman play.
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dwangoAC wrote:
I agree with the feedback in this thread and as a result I'm done doing GDQ events if we are not prepared for them.From here on out, all GDQ content must be in a state ready to show to an audience before submissions open. Period.
This is a very wise decision, I love it.
dwangoAC wrote:
I can say, however, that TASVideos forums has clearly not been a place where people have stepped up to help. Dacicus did post in the thread but it really seems like most of TASVideos just sort of ignored this event. Heck, it's clear there's fatigue on the financial side too as I'm still $2,325 short of my funding goals (I haven't added up all expenses to find out exact numbers but my estimate wasn't far off). The point is, TASVideos just isn't as excited at working on this. Compare the activity in the earlier events - we're at the 5 year mark now and interest has waned.
One of the aspects of the earlier events is that they were new to us, so a lot of people were interested in what they are and what happens, so they were excited about being a part of it. Another aspect is how creative we can be as a crowd when it doesn't require too much technicality. Brain Age was a brilliant example of both: it was a novel concept, especially for a speedrunning marathon, and all you have to do is just grabbing a specific pen and drawing funny stuff.
Then there's also a matter of how critically help is needed in people's opinion. It's kinda hard to keep constantly telling people that something cool won't even happen without lots of help, but that seems to be the only way to convince the crowd that their help is needed. Maybe there should be a bullet list with all the tasks, sorted by priority and by how solid the current situation is, so everyone could take a 2-second glance and instantly know what is needed and what they can contribute to? With people involved/assigned/expected, updating the list as someone joins or quits.
Rockman minus infinity "co-op"
Movie done Nach
Script written adelikat
Need one more commentator Aktan
REHEARSAL NOT STARTED!!! Masterjun
Portal "IRL Masterjun%"
Commentator fully ready ThunderAxe31
Movie done up to ACE Dacicus
PAYLOAD NOT DONE!!! HALP Masterjun
EDIT:
Since everyone hates to click links where such a list/table can be hosted in all its glory and formatted easily, I do believe it'd be best to host it right in the thread. Formatting it in the thread is a nightmare, but maybe someone would agree to write a forum table generator? That'd be useful for endless future.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
so everyone could take a 2-second glance and instantly know what is needed and what they can contribute to?
This, exactly with your format please :). I'm pretty sure there are many users in this community who would/could help instead of the generic "not enough time / help" stuffs.
PhD in TASing 🎓 speedrun enthusiast ❤🚷🔥 white hat hacker ▓ black box tester ░ censorships and rules...
Heck, it's clear there's fatigue on the financial side too as I'm still $2,325 short of my funding goals (I haven't added up all expenses to find out exact numbers but my estimate wasn't far off).
I have a strong opinion of this, based on your topic Thread #20668: Help dwangoAC with BBCB 2018, MAGFest 2019, AGDQ 2019 costs about costs for recent GDQs: you should first cover all your expenses before starting to donate to GDQs. The sole presence of TASBot on GDQs raises a lot of donations for the events. I feel that some people subscribing and giving bits to your twitch channel want to specifically support you and the tasbot, and donating that money to GDQs while asking for more money here seems counter-productive. At least I can speak for myself: I donated some money for your GDQ expenses a few years ago, and I would have been pissed if you told me that you donated it to GDQ instead.
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keylie wrote:
...you should first cover all your expenses before starting to donate to GDQs.
This is oddly really, really important to me to respond to. I have for over a decade donated 10% of my income to charity, and that's primarily been my church. I've always donated 10% of what I've received from TASVideos users to the next GDQ. Until November of last year I was also giving 100% of bits and subs to the next GDQ, inspired by how tinahacks donates all her subs and bits revenue to the Extra Life Charity Drive. This explains why I had previously given as much as I did, but there's some more to this.
Warning: The following paragraph contains personal information I have not as of yet shared and do not want to be interpreted incorrectly. Please handle the following information with care.
I covered the last several events out of my own pocket and donated all Twitch revenue until recently because it was possible to do so, but that is no longer feasible due to personal challenges that unfolded starting after AGDQ 2017 and are now having a financial impact. The only way for any of this to make sense is to share an aspect of that, so here goes: After AGDQ 2017 my wife decided without warning to move out leaving me with our two kids and she later moved in with a volunteer ministry leader I was serving under at my church after which she initiated a divorce. (Please treat that with care, I have not shared it in a permanent communication method until now and I have always been careful to not say anything disparaging about those involved.) In the midst of all that the Bitcoin I had acquired when it was worth $17 went to $17,000 and I sold several and bought a Tesla Model X 100D and funded all of my GDQ trips as well.
In order to prevent my kids from losing their bedrooms I had to sacrifice nearly everything, including the remainder of the Bitcoin and including all but an emergency and retirement fund. I am now in a situation where I'm still forwarding 10% of donations here to the next GDQ but I'm keeping all but 10% of subs and bits revenue. My donation at AGDQ 2019 represents some of that non-TASVideos help, but also represents that I have a day job and gave part of the 10% I would normally donate to charity as part of that.
Please understand the complexity of the backdrop I've been working through and know that I in no way wanted to cause anyone to feel hurt about any donations they gave me at any point in years past or now. I used what cushion I had for AGDQ 2019 and I hope to rebuild that coffer through streaming / ad revenue but I may still need to ask for help for future events. I appreciate everyone's understanding of this complex situation and I ask that you handle this as-of-yet never revealed information with care. Thanks.
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dwangoAC, I think what keylie is saying is that we wish that you cover those personal needs first, you deserve to be safe after all you've done for us all and after all you're going through.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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feos wrote:
dwangoAC, I think what keylie is saying is that we wish that you cover those personal needs first, you deserve to be safe after all you've done for us all and after all you're going through.
Absolutely. I'm not going to stop donating 10% of the income I receive regardless of the source as that's a core part of my religious beliefs and I doubt anyone is telling me to change that but at the same time and at the urging of my Discord community I've started using streaming revenue to support GDQ expenses. For AGDQ 2019 I used a credit card to tide me over knowing that there was a cushion coming (I knew ahead of time that my day job was going to divest vacation accruals, i.e. I had a vacation balance and it was paid out when they went to a "flexible" vacation policy, but I digress).
For reasons that can probably be understood by reading between the lines of my previous post I opted to donate considerably less of my 10% last year to my church and considerably more to other charities. I ask for forgiveness and understanding of the situation I was in at the time from all involved but I doubt anyone would call me out on that given the extremely difficult and delicate situation. Imagine what you would have done and how you would have responded given the circumstances I faced... There are few ways to walk that path unscathed.
So keylie, please know that your donation in years past absolutely helped me get to GDQ and was not misspent. My windfall last year that allowed me to cover my own GDQ expenses and also give so much to charity was a wonderful blessing but came crashing to a close late last year as a result of decisions made by others in my life and I'm now starting afresh.
From here on out I'll be trying to fund future GDQ's through my "own" community via subscriptions, bits, ad revenue, and other related forms of income, although I won't turn down donations from the TASVideos community. I will be sure to let everyone know if at some point in the future it becomes impossible for me to cover my expenses and I need to either stand down from participating in GDQ events or otherwise need to allow someone else in the community to become the keeper of TASBot (although I've been voluntold I'm now in BDFL territory whether I want it or not but I'm not willing to be abusive with that).
Thoughts? Remaining questions? I'm willing to answer them as should be plain to see. Even if you disagree with me, that's fine, I just want to make sure I'm not leaving anyone hanging.
I'm sorry about the tone of my previous message. Feos rephrased it in a much better way. I'm concerned about your situation. I respect that you wish to donate money to different organizations. But, specifically about GDQs, for all the work you are doing, I think it is legitimate that you have all your expenses covered.
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Habreno wrote:
BDFL territory?
Benevolent Dictator For Life - a term from projects with a founder that the community keeps around for reasons no one seems to remember. Or something.
keylie wrote:
I'm sorry about the tone of my previous message. Feos rephrased it in a much better way. I'm concerned about your situation. I respect that you wish to donate money to different organizations. But, specifically about GDQs, for all the work you are doing, I think it is legitimate that you have all your expenses covered.
No worries, I'm obviously somewhat of an outlier in tithing but at the same time if I don't even have that much margin in life I'm probably cutting things too close to be traveling to GDQ events. I really do appreciate all of your support, especially around libTAS. Thanks for all you do.
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dwangoAC wrote:
I really do appreciate all of your support, especially around libTAS. Thanks for all you do.
Oh man, it was impossible not to chip in here. keylie you're a true hero of the scene, your tool is revolutionary, thanks a ton for it and best of luck with it and future projects!
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
I can say, however, that TASVideos forums has clearly not been a place where people have stepped up to help. Dacicus did post in the thread but it really seems like most of TASVideos just sort of ignored this event. Heck, it's clear there's fatigue on the financial side too as I'm still $2,325 short of my funding goals (I haven't added up all expenses to find out exact numbers but my estimate wasn't far off). The point is, TASVideos just isn't as excited at working on this.
This got me thinking about how different the TASbot block at GDQ is compared to the vast majority of the rest of the event. A difference that I would even consider unfair, in a sense.
In the vast majority of cases, when speedrunners go to GDQ to run a game, there aren't any expectations of novelty or improvement. While there are often never-before-seen games being run at the event, year after year there are also the same old games being run as well. How many times have we seen all the classical speedrunning games, like Half-Life, Doom, Megaman, Donkey Kong, SMB, Final Fantasy, Pokemon and so on and so forth, again and again, year after year? And there's never any sort of expectation that the runner has to break previous records or do something new and exciting.
In general, GDQ isn't about breaking speedrunning records and constantly showing something new. Running the same game year after year, perhaps at most with some variety in goals (such as any% one year and 100% another) is completely ok. The point is not really about breaking records and showing something new. The point is showing speedrunning skill, and the banter. The audience is entertained by these things even if the game is the same, and no records are being broken. Speedrunners can go to the even year after year to run the same games, and that's just fine. There are no expectations of improvement or novelty imposed onto them. (Of course there are also new games and new goals for some games almost every year, but that doesn't mean that the same games with the same goals cannot be used.)
Contrast this with the TASbot block: It would be unthinkable for us to show the same TAS of the same game twice. Even if the same game is ever used, the TAS should somehow have novelty and be better, or have some kind of more interesting goal. Moreover, almost every year it's expected (although this might be more of a self-imposed demand) that if there's some kind of glitch exploit demonstration, it has to be better than previously, to show something completely new and unseen.
With regular speedrunning it doesn't really matter if a speedrun is objectively worse (slower, sloppier, more mistakes...) than in previous years, because it's not really about improving on past events. Watching regular speedrunning at these events is a bit like watching a football match: Even if you have seen the games from the same team in the past, there's no requirement that this time they will get a bigger score. But showing a "sloppier" TAS of the same game the next year would be unthinkable and unacceptable.
On that note, I think that the couch commentary requirements are also much higher. It's not rare to see 2-hour speedruns on the stream of some rather obscure game, played in the middle of the night (local time) with an almost empty audience, where the speedrunner provides very little commentary. And this commentary oftentimes isn't even very technical. Because, oftentimes, it doesn't even need to be. Even when there is couch commentary, it's rarely highly rehearsed.
But contrast that with the (perhaps mostly self-imposed) requirements for highly-technical commentary on TASes. It's a ton of work. In fact, the whole TASbot block is a boatload of work. This is not to disparage the work and skill that regular speedrunners need to do to become good at speedrunning a game, but they seldom need to do particular work for a specific GDQ event, especially not technical work that's done specifically for that particular presentation.
It doesn't exactly help that the work that has to be done for GDQ is quite separate than what's actually going on at tasvideos.org. It's not enough to just make a tool-assisted speedrun using an emulator, and submitting it and encoding it. There's a boatload more than has to be done. It's like its own separate category entirely, that's pretty much unrelated to what most people do here.
During the first years most people here were excited about the GDQ TASbot events, and were willing to participate and contribute. However, as the novelty has worn out, and the technical requirements and amount of work have increased year after year, it's no wonder that people are losing interest and getting tired of it.
One has to wonder if this is really something worth doing forever. The amount of pressure, expectations, work, and even monetary cost, is getting out of hand, and people here are getting tired and disinterested.
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It sounds to me like we've jumped the shark a bit with the TASBot segment. I really like Dwango's point to have everything ready before submissions. This has been a personal goal of mine for the Pokemon related TASes and the Hyper Princess Pitch TAS where that wasn't very ready before submission (really couldn't be ready until the day of) went much worse.
During the first years most people here were excited about the GDQ TASbot events, and were willing to participate and contribute. However, as the novelty has worn out, and the technical requirements and amount of work have increased year after year, it's no wonder that people are losing interest and getting tired of it.
One has to wonder if this is really something worth doing forever. The amount of pressure, expectations, work, and even monetary cost, is getting out of hand, and people here are getting tired and disinterested.
While certainly contributing factors, fatigue and disinterest aren't the primary reasons preventing much of our community from interacting with GDQ planning/events in my opinion.
I feel that the larger factors in the lack of participation lie in availability (time) and the technical aspects of what we're presenting (which Warp briefly touched on above).
-Even if they'd be interested and otherwise capable, some of our members simply don't have the available time to get involved with helping create/present for GDQ events. This may be due to the amount of work that needs done for the event and/or due to the fact that the member has other priorities in their life that prevent them from having time to help.
-While the majority of our community may be able to TAS inputs for any given game well enough to beat the game, there is a significantly smaller percentage of members that have the requisite knowledge for things like ACE and/or custom payload creation...and those are just on the software side of the equation. When the GDQ event planning for a TASBlock desires/requires specialized hardware modification/creation, the percentage of our members with the requisite knowledge to help decreases even further.
Speaking for myself (though this is likely a shared perspective with other members), I don't often feel able to contribute much (if anything) to the GDQ presentations because I usually don't understand what's going on well enough myself to:
A) contribute to the creation of said presentation
B) offer commentary on what's happening in that presentation
Though I have no proof on this, I believe that a large part of the hesitation from members of our community on getting involved with GDQ events revolves around this perspective that they have nothing to offer to the project.
I am one of the few who have contributed in the past to GDQ events, but that contribution was only providing sound effects that someone else was required to insert into a custom payload. Other than this contribution (which was neither a typical nor intuitively expected need for GDQ events), I don't feel that I have the requisite abilities to be a productive member of GDQ planning. Looking back over the past few years of GDQ events, there is very little that has been presented in the TAS block that I feel I could have helped with even given my current knowledge of TASing. In past years, my knowledge was even less, and thus I would have been even less capable.
Finally, to address the financial side of things: This is where I feel interest/disinterest may be playing the greater role. I expect this and a few other reasons for why our members don't contribute financial help specifically to the logistics of the TASBlock at GDQ events.
1) Disinterest - This is absolutely a factor here. Some of our members simply don't care enough about GDQ events and/or the TASBlock at those events to want to contribute financially to them. It may be members have lost interest, or never were interested to begin with.
2) Complete Financial Inability - Another key factor. Some of our members simply don't have available funds to contribute. As much as I would like to be able to offer financial help for these events, this is my personal situation. I simply don't have money available to offer.
3) Limited Financial Ablility - Somewhat tied to the previous reason. Some members may only have limited monies available and choose to donate to the GDQ charities via the event instead donating toward the logistics of making the TASBlock happen.
4) Some people are simply stingy with their money (and they have the right to be if they so choose )- Some with the means never give their money to anything they don't personally get something back from. For them, they don't personally get anything back from GDQ events or from getting the TAS presentations there; thus they will never contribute financially to either of those things. It's just their choice.
What does all this mean?
For DwangoAC (or future keepers of TASBot/organizers of TASBlock): DON'T stop asking for help! Those who would be willing/able to help financially may not offer money if they don't realize you need the help. Similarly, those who have the knowledge/abilities to help on the presentations may not offer help if they don't realize it's needed. Many people are willing to help when asked, but not the type of person to otherwise volunteer.
For the rest of the community: Please proactively offer to contribute financially if you're able and so inclined. Also, if you'd be interested in helping with a GDQ presentation/idea (even if you don't feel you have the requisite knowledge), please let the TASBlock organizer know you're available. There may still be something you can do that doesn't seem obvious.
after reading dwango's story i begin to understand what goes wrong there :
we are trying to cover too much events with not enough hands on deck :
while seeing our comunity growing because of exposure is genuinly good, the last event showed that we had tried to be everywhere at the same time, the result became that we ended with a rushed sub "usual" quality segment.
maybe just aiming for "big" events like SGDQ / AGDQ or simply letting a "event cooldown period" between representations to focus on "extremly high quality" instead of "presence saturation" would be better. also i'm usualy not checking GDQ preps as i want to be surprised live but it genuinly chocked me to hear that we are not ready at submision time....
also dwango, here's my personal input on your situation :
your personal life takes priority over those events; if you're getting into a hard personnal situation, it's ok to "pass" the handling of the event to someone else until you solve your personal problems, you did a awesome job every time, and you always gave your best, but it's also important for us that YOU do well too.
so don't take things there too personnaly, remember that you also need to have fun doing those event, and remember that we are all gratefull for all your efforts.
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Thanks for the feedback, keep it coming. A couple of points - I don't think that TAS content at GDQ's has "jumped the shark" in the classic sense as we're not so desperate for views that we're trying anything and everything to retain them. Having said that, we're possibly in a midlife crisis. We're 5 years in to something that I anticipate will be a 50 year journey so perhaps that's not apt either, more like we're having growing pains, but you get the idea. And yes, I plan to be doing this for 50 years. Maybe not the same form, maybe not the same "traditional" consoles that we use now that will be archaic in 50 years when I'm in my 80's, but a continuing, evolving concept of using physical hardware and tools to create art.
And really, that's what I see TASBot as - nothing more and nothing less than a mascot for making art out of something physical combined with something in software. We have vast untapped platforms and more arriving every day thanks to ever faster computational power and ever more advanced tools. I can only dream about what the future will hold.
My vision may be "bigger" or longer duration than what you, reader, are comfortable with. That's fine. I only ask that you not abandon me while things are still relatable and while there's still content to be shown that you're used to and would like to see highlighted. No matter what amount of polish we put in we're always going to end up with content that some people don't like and that's fine. I just want to focus on doing less, better. We'll inevitably see people come and go, with some losses more painful than others, but as long as there is art to be made I am well content to continue.
Hello, dwango. While I understand your personal and religious motivations to charitable contributions, the feedback I wish to give you is the following:
1) Your life comes first. No matter what your goals with TASbot are, it's safe to say that if you get steamrolled by debt you certainly won't be able to accomplish them. Do not be afraid to cut down costs, even if it results in a sub-optimal experience, if your life is requiring you to do it. The community will understand.
2) I have to agree with keylie that you are putting yourself in an unnecessary bind by stating that you'll place 10% at a charity. The problem is that not everyone trusts charitable organizations. Most are tax exempt and some receive millions in government contracts, there are many expenses in employees and fundraising activities which have little to do with their stated purpose, and many have endowment funds where they actually can invest the money you give to them in a random company before finally spending it on their real activities. The more detailed you are with the destination of the donations, the more likely you are to receive the money. So, use the money to fund your expenses. If people want to give it to GDQ, encourage them to donate during the event.
3) Consider seeking sponsorships or asking GDQ to fund your costs. You are, after all, working for them. Maybe this is related to what I said in (2), but GDQ being a charitable event does not mean that there are a lot of people there making money. Twitch is sponsoring hoping to get publicity, the organizers and the hotel hosting are also charging fees. It's simply fair that your costs get compensated by someone, since you are providing content to them.
4) Finally, if your vision is more long-term (50+ years), and you are willing to keep doing this, maybe it's a good idea to make a foundation yourself to ask for donations? I have the feeling that once you formalize in an institution everything you told us here, it will be easier to get people to contribute and join, especially if more issues happen to you and you need to enlist other people to help.
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p4wn3r wrote:
...No matter what your goals with TASbot are, it's safe to say that if you get steamrolled by debt you certainly won't be able to accomplish them.
I will never, ever go into debt to finance a GDQ. Even here for AGDQ 2019 I had sufficient emergency funds in case something went wrong with my charge shifting (i.e. knowing that I was putting things like hotel charges against my credit card which I *always* pay off every month but that introduces inherent lag sufficient to allow the aforementioned anticipated vacation payout). Money I spend is money I have, period. The only debt I have is my mortgage which I consider an investment and it's been that way for well more than a decade. Don't take this as me being defensive, it's actually me being somewhat proud to be honest. Living debt free is a wonderful thing.
p4wn3r wrote:
2) I have to agree with keylie that you are putting yourself in an unnecessary bind by stating that you'll place 10% at a charity.
That sounds like talk coming from a place of never having tithed but before I talk about that I should comment on donating to charities in general. As I've made clear here and elsewhere I'm very selective of which charities I'll donate to and you won't see me donating to [CENSORED] (lest I offend someone due to the rather long list of places I won't donate to that I feel mismanage money, but I digress). I generally investigate the charities I donate to prior to making a donation and I'm fortunate in that I've had an opportunity to speak with key leaders for both of the GDQ charities, The Prevent Cancer Foundation and Doctors Without Borders, in person. I am satisfied that the money is at the very least not being misspent.
As I've stated in the past, while 10% of my income usually goes to the church I attend I never send money from donations I receive that is earmarked for GDQ expenses to my church. Again, I tithe on *all* income I receive, even gifts I've received outside of GDQ. This is a religious belief I don't expect everyone to understand but on the other hand I do ask that others respect my religious based decision. Having said that, I'm not unreasonable; if someone does not want me to donate 10% of money they give me for expenses and they say so in their donation I will honor their request (or likewise if it was the opposite which has only happened I think once, but I digress). I can absolutely handle attending GDQ events on the 90% or I wouldn't do it so there's no harm to anyone.
p4wn3r wrote:
3) Consider seeking sponsorships or asking GDQ to fund your costs.
I'm not yet big enough to go seeking sponsorships although that could happen in the future. I've spoken to staff at length and I am well aware that their financial situation is not nearly as flush with cash as rumors make it out to be. They are taking on a significantly increased risk this coming year by moving to a more complex to schedule and costly venue. I have a good relationship with GDQ but I am not on staff with them at this time and I do not currently anticipate an offer from them unless I take on additional on-site entertainment planning and oversight work that I cannot currently commit to. Yes, I've had discussions with them about this in the past but I won't go into specifics here.
p4wn3r wrote:
4) Finally, if your vision is more long-term (50+ years), and you are willing to keep doing this, maybe it's a good idea to make a foundation yourself to ask for donations?
I would not feel comfortable being a non-profit to take revenue for myself. Stay tuned on alternatives I am pursuing along this line.
I really, really do appreciate your thoughts. I know you put a lot of time into what you said. It means a lot.
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Guys I have an insane idea.
Arcades.
PJ plays Battletoads using an arcade board, so it should work the same, and maybe even some of the current setups will be compatible. The problem is obviously... lack of arcade boards available for this, but we have quite some TASes, yet it's not known how accurate they are.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
The problem is that not everyone trusts charitable organizations.
Some people, including some speedrunners, have presented criticism of the PCF in particular. But perhaps this is not the place to discuss that...
I have taken a look at it in the past and, for what it's worth, I have seen nothing concrete to conclude PCF does not do what it states. Their finances look typical for a charity that works with research, which usually has large employee expenses.
The issue I have is that oncology is perhaps the wealthiest sector in the research industry, and also one that does not have a good reputation. If you look at RetractionWatch, for example, you'll see that every two months a prominent oncologist gets exposed for falsifying research. Remember that dude that got arrested some time ago, Martin Shkreli? He made millions of dollars in the stock market betting that new drug companies would fail, because it's common practice to hype up the research and the company not getting a viable product and failing three years after being launched.
So, yeah, I'm 99% sure that PCF does exactly what it states in its website. If you have a good reason to donate to them, well, that's up to the person. Like any grant, though, their foundation will retain the right to the inventions if the researchers do their job correctly, and they just get university professors to evaluate proposals. By simply donating to a university, you'd get the same thing while skipping their board of directors. And by investing on a company, for example, you at least have a chance of getting the money back.
Now, please don't take from this that I dislike non-profits. Disclosure: I am actually developing an app for one, and I am charging less than I would for a for-profit company, and I think it's a very nice project. But during the meetings, everything I do is very similar to a typical company, these foundations have many positions that are all about money, and people should take all of this into account when supporting a non-profit.
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I'd note that MSF/Doctors Without Borders is also a controversial charity. Their rescue operations in the Mediterranean have routinely assisted human trafficking and they take a pretty extreme stance with respect to US politics on family planning services as essential medicine.
I'd add a super, duper important thing: Knowledge of that a financial situation exists.
I *love* the tasbot block, and plan to get more involved, but I had no clue that money was an issue.
Honestly? A tasbot patreon might be a good thing? Might also be a really good way to keep things updated and keep positive? I know it might feel off, but I feel like that's a way at least I would look positively on contributing?
(Or, hey, is there something like that already? I am out of the loop).
Your health is, by far, the biggest priority. Pace yourself, and just.. communicate even more? You opening up is really, really good. Keep at it. And if you wind up needing to take a break, ask someone to be a standin for communicating? Might work well?
I'd note that MSF/Doctors Without Borders is also a controversial charity. Their rescue operations in the Mediterranean have routinely assisted human trafficking and they take a pretty extreme stance with respect to US politics on family planning services as essential medicine.
Also, they are supposed to be a completely apolitical neutral humanitarian organization that takes no sides, yet they have expressed, at least in the recent past, quite heavily political stances against Israel in particular.
