Making the World Suck Less

Rebuilding Sudan

I learned of Homes For Sudan a few years ago through a friend of mine, Paul Graham. It's an exciting nonprofit that another pal, Kate Courteau, is a part of. The architectural innovation is cheap, sustainable, and durable; the plan is to spread this knowledge everywhere, empowering Sudanese people to rebuild their homes and their lives. I'm still coordinating a trip there, but in the meantime, their founder Marie has been sending along some great updates via email, that she's allowed me to share with you. Read more on their blog.

My SMBC Theater cameo

If you haven't watched any SMBC Theater shorts yet, you have my sympathies. I've been begging Zach (doodles a little comic you might know called Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal) to be in one of these episodes for a while now. And with my imminent departure to Armenia for my 3 month kiva fellowship, there wasn't any time to waste. I can't tell you much about the skit, other than it involves D&D, time-travel, and a middle-part in my hair. I'll post when it goes up!

Photos from my visit to DirectRelief

These are some of the awesome people who are turning the generous contributions of redditors into real relief for Haitians. Join in the Ask DirectRelief Anything interview on reddit!

Mister Splashy Pants doesn't translate well

The TED volunteer translation project is a remarkable endeavor. And along with getting to see beautiful Arabic subtitles on my TED Talk, two super volunteers, Wolf Ruschke and Jens Heyer, did the German translation. Admittedly, Mister Splashy Pants is a bit hard to translate, but what they came up with is rather amusing: Mister Splashy Pants ( = wet/splashy/dirty underpants)

For treats only

Sometimes I wish I had this written on a t-shirt with a big arrow pointing up at my mouth. Thanks again to the SF SPCA for taking breadpig on another thorough walkthrough. This time with extra puppies!

Avast! Pirate pup wants yer cuddles

Breadpig made another visit to the SF SPCA to plan how we'll spend our latest donation and couldn't resist stopping in to see some puppies. Here's the one who stole our heart. His name is Sage and he arrived with some severe trauma to his right eye and had to lose it. But he doesn't show any sign of it affecting him and was a fountain of kisses. At the time of this post, he's still available for adoption. And if I weren't leaving the country for three months, I think I might be taking him, as my new dog, for a walk right now.

Breadpig foe, the breadgator, spotted!

It was in the Mission. They looked delicious. What would've happened if they'd been paired with these breadpigs? We'll never know...

Your donations at work, en route to Haiti

This plane went out last night from LAX. Filled with more reddit-funded aid supplies for Haiti. The total is now $112,846.41 raised by reddit (and growing). I'm running out of adjectives to describe how awesome this is.

From pixels to packages

Something like 12 hours after we started our reddit fundraiser, these were being loaded at LAX.

At the time of this posting, we're just shy of $80,000 raised! Stupendous!

Because we ought to do more than just change the reddit logo...

via blog.reddit.com

The response from reddit has been nothing short of awesome. We blew away the original goal of $31,415 in five hours. And now we're not far away from our second goal of twice that ($62,830). All of the donations -- every penny -- are going toward helping Haitians thanks to a partnership with Direct Relief.