So if I understand you correctly, you have enough money to run, enough money to grow, but not enough money to grow even faster, and you call that a need. Is that a fair summary?

Aren't you getting a significant chunk of that Elon Musk money? If not, why not? If so, why do you not mention this?

If you think you have come up with a solid, evidence-based reason that you personally should be furious, self-hating, or miserable, bear in mind that these conditions may make you unusually prone to confirmation bias.

How many barbeques have you actually thrown?

Of the barbeques you have thrown, how many of those have led to mutually beneficial arrangements?

Of those that have led to mutually beneficial arrangments, how many per BBQ?

Now how much time have you put in to arranging those BBQ vs Value gotten from those BBQs?

I don't know about your answer, but for me (substituting BBQ for dinner party) the answers respectively are probably about 10, 3, less than one, and WAYYY TO MUCH (if these types of arrangments were my only justification for throwing dinner parties.)

Now contrast this to how much time I've spent going through the free stuff offered on craigslist, vs the value I've gotten from it. The effort/value ratio is probably inverse. I think a startup that takes the "free services/free stuff" part of craigslist, but solves the unique problems of that segment (similar to what AirBNB has done for housing) could offer significant value.

BBQ would not be allowed in my third floor apartment's balcony as it would stink up the place and it would be dangerous as well and I have no idea where could I store the equipment when not used as we have not much unused space, and my neighbors would be very creeped out if I would just ring on their door and invite them. We live in the same apartment since 2012 and never even talked to neighbors or had a chat. People tend to be very indifferent with each other in this apartment complex and I have no better experience with former ones either. These guys are trying to make a site that acts as an icebreaker - if you really need dog-sitting one day you can try to ask there and if someone helps you out then you have a form of connection and maybe will have a chat after it or something and maybe greet each other and stop for a chat the next time you see each other. The very idea is that the world is urbanizing, due to jobs and all that people who like the more communal village lifestyle are forced into cities where they suffer from the general indifference and impersonality so they try to change it and make cities more village like or suburbia like. They try to counter-act the negative psychological effects of urbanization with a "let's open our doors to each other" theme.

As for selling data, they have the same data as my utility company. They can link a name with an address. Anyone who walks up to our house will see the name on the door anyway. And a photo, so OK that is more. But overally this is not secret data nor very sensitive.

There is an interesting startup that is about trying to turn cities into villages by trying to make neighbors help each other. You need to verify your address via a scanned document, a neighbor or a a code on a postcard they send you. I think the primary reason they find that verification important is that people are allowed to see the full name, picture and address of people in their own neighborhood. And probably they don't want to share that with people who are not actually neighbors. This seems to be key selling point of this startup - this is how it differs from any basic neighboor based Facebook group, that you really get to see each others face, name and address and people outside your hood really don't get to see it so you can be fairly comfortable about sharing it. Besides you can choose a few categories how you can help others e.g. babysitting, petsitting etc. and what kind of common activities you would be interested in.

Here is the bad news: the startup is currently only available in German and only in the city of Vienna, probably due to the postcard thing. They managed to find investors so it is likely they will have an English version and extend it all over the world, in that case they will probably change the name as well, currently the name is fragnebenan.com But I have no idea when will this happen.

Anyway, I was thinking primarily that Rationalists in Berlin may take an interest in this and help them extend fragnebenan.com to Berlin?

"The Ancestor's Tale", also by Dawkins. Might be what you're looking for. It is basically a history of life on Earth, told backwards in time, with in-depth discussion of how and why evolution came up with new branches in the tree of life. I think of it as the applied/illustrative companion volume to the theoretical Selfish Gene. It is longer, but easier reading, and has Dawkins' usual lucid, very well informed, smart and occasionally witty prose.

But for actual actual investigative work you have to be willing to do some actual damage.

Here is an example: How the Red Cross Raised Half a Billion Dollars for Haiti ­and Built Six Homes.

I love EA as a concept, I've proselytized for it, but I've never contributed actual money. I feel vaguely ashamed about that last part but I'm comfortable calling myself not EA because I do have a problem with it.

My problem with EA is that it lacks aggression towards its competitors. I think this is a very serious issue, for the following reasons.

The largest altruistic organisations, especially in political developmental aid, seriously suck. Much like religions, they enjoy some immunity from criticism and benefit from lots of goodwill from volunteer workers. That has made them complacent, and they do not seriously compete with each other. They're intransparent, tribal and too badly managed to be effective. In many cases, they spend more money in the First World than in the Third. They're typical places for semi-retired politicians and their relatives to get employment, which I'm sure often isn't technically a sinecure but still doesn't help the job market at those places. Their financial streams are the opposite of an open market, spread across many nations, and directed by so few deciders that "I'll make sure you lose funding" can be a credible threat. And fundamentally, what they're consuming is altruistic impulses that would do more good elsewhere - a grossly unethical business model. That's my own assessment, but lots of people, especially among those employed there, agree with most or all of these points.

Basically, I just get furious when I see large Amnesty International ads that promise people they can save Raif Badawi with a letter. Because that's not only almost certainly a conscious lie - what they're doing with that ad is cleverly solicit donations, much of which will be spent on the next ad campaign. And we know people keep different mental accounts: Whatever Amnesty International leeches out of the people's altruistic accounts will not be available for much more effective organizations like Deworm the World, which means Amnesty International effectively kills people.

But almost nobody can do something about it. The people inside these organizations benefit from their comparatively cushy jobs and want to keep them - unlike in industry, staying at one of those places for life is not an unrealistic prospect. Towards the outside, they're very well defended by their intransparency, their relative immunity from criticism ("at least they're doing something") and their excellent connections to lots of people in the political and media establishment. Criticisms of specific policies (such as UNICEFs work against international adoption ) or specific programmes (such as the Red Cross work on Haiti disaster relief ) are occasionally made, but these don't endanger the swampy ecosystem that is large humanitarian organisations. Obviously there is little to be gained by attacking that.

Except for EA! EA is uniquely positioned to do something about it. It talks about Altruism, and why it should be Effective, anyway - it implicitly already condemns ineffective altruism, and doing so explicitly would be a small step. It is independently funded by its members and can't be threatened with losing funding. It isn't afraid people will suddenly stop being altruistic if, say, EuropeAid was rocked by scandal or if Oxfam suffered a collapse of donations after it got wikileaked. In 2011, Holden from GiveWell wrote a blog post on "Mega-Charities" that was quite critical, but still nowhere near hostile enough.

I'm confident a mere 10% increase in effectiveness of the "Mega-Charities" would move more dollars the right way than a doubling of the EA population. And it wouldn't be hard to do; some investigative reporting can go a long way. But for actual actual investigative work you have to be willing to do some actual damage.

Everybody else has an excuse why they don't do that. EA doesn't. And that makes me think they just lack the aggression. Maybe Scott Alexander is right about EA people being super scupulous. Scrupulosity isn't a fighting stance.

EDIT: Here's an example video incorporating a few of the ideas you suggested.

Pretty things: A fairly static visualisation, basically a four pointed blue star that very slowly rotates, could be used as a standard replacement for every video. Would you suggest that, a similar option, or one of the following: an image of nature that may not fit the theme of the video, crudely drawn images of one thing that do not change, crudely drawn images of characters that change infrequently if at all?

Music: Do you suggest inserting background music into the audio files? If so, should the music be opposite the tone of the file (e.g. happy-go-lucky music to the Documentary), or match the tone?

Thank you.

What video do you mean by, 'first'? Father, or Donerly?

Banner: Is this better? Or is the font the main issue? If the latter, what attribute would you recommend in a better font - more rounded letters, blockier letters, more Gothic letters, more elongated letters?

One-liner: This sounds a very good idea. Will it work without showing a face?

Relatable subjects: See the comment to Christian for descriptions of the audio files. Would including those descriptions in the in static image, and/or the description box below, keep you listening?

Apologies for the onslaught of questions; you are in no way obligated to answer any of them, and thank you for the above feedback.