🫶 Donation Station
These are all individuals and organizations that I have some kind of recurring donation to. I added and maintain this section of the site because it's important to show that there's more ways to support creators directly than paying subscriptions to big companies like Spotify and YouTube. If you like someone's work, and you have the means, support them directly!
You can also consider these as recommendations.
NTS
NTS is by far the best internet radio I've come across, and possibly the best source of music on the internet today. There are two separate stations which run 24 hours a day, and host a huge variety of different DJs and producers from around the world, all for free without ads. These are not algorithmically generated stations, these are real people putting together curated sets. 50% of supporter donations go directly to hosts and artists, with the rest going towards upkeep of the site (and a bit of marketing).
NTS also archives and categorizes most (all?) past shows, so you can almost always find something for whatever mood you're in. I start pretty much every work day looking through the "Latest" section to see if any names pop out to me, since by now I have some favorites. Names I keep an eye out for include:
- Scary Things - A weekly show centered around the UK drill/rap scene, but the hosts frequently bring in an artist to play a little gameshow with. High energy music, fun commentary, always a good time.
- OK Williams - Incredible DJ with a big range and a fun presence on the mic. A lot of my favorite sets on NTS are from her.
- Martelo - Another great DJ that I only noticed recently (it's easy to just hit "play" on NTS and not notice what's being played). Lots of high-energy club mixes, not much talking, great to work to.
- The Gaza Strip - A semi-regular show centered around arabic drill and trap. The hosts can be a bit... forward with politics, which can be fun, but really I tune in because there's something about the arabic language which really lends itself to the rhythm of drill and it just sounds great.
- Rhythm Connection - Great combination of excellent music choices and fun hosts. Tune in for "bouncy bangers" and hilarious banter.
Signal
It's always surprising to me when people haven't heard of Signal, since it's the de-facto messenger that's used amongst my friends. Put succinctly: Signal is WhatsApp, but more private and not owned by Facebook. It works like WhatsApp in that you can connect your account to any kind of device (phone, computer, tablet, etc...) and all your communication is encrypted, and it's more private in that Facebook isn't sitting on top mining whatever metadata they can get ahold of.
Signal is developed and run by the Signal Technology Foundation, which is a non-profit. The overhead of running Signal is actually quite low, since they don't keep any messages on their servers which aren't in-transit, so being run on donations is fairly feasible. I drop them a few bucks a month and in return I get a badge on my profile.
Subvert.fm
In the wake of Bandcamp being sold to Epic Games, and then 18 months later to Songtradr, there's some anxiety in that corner of the internet as to its future. The safe assumption is that it will succumb to the same fate is as all VC-backed startups: it will get squeezed for every last drop of money, at full expense of the users and artists that rely on it. And if some Bandcamp successor comes along, how can it possibly avoid the same fate?
Subvert is trying to answer this. The idea is experimental, there isn't yet anything to show for it, but all the same I could feel the passion behind the project, and for 100 bucks it seemed worth the gamble of supporting it. Maybe it Subvert washes out like all the rest, but what if not? What if it succeeds, and demonstrates a new model by which we can build tech companies that isn't based on rug-pulling users so slowly they don't notice? That would truly be something.
Individuals
I say that I'm a huge fan of competitive Super Smash Bros Melee, but really I'm just a Mang0 fan. A lot of streamers come across as clowns a bit, but Mang0 keeps it down to earth no matter what he's playing.
This site is a mirror of my gemini capsule. The equivalent gemini page can be found here, and you can learn more about gemini at my 🚀 What is Gemini? page.
Hi! I'm available for remote contract work. You can learn more about me and my skillset by browsing around this site, head over to my resume to find my actual work history, and shoot me an email when you're ready to get in touch.