I donated some spindles of burned media and programs to Salvation Army expecting they'd throw 'em out. They're selling 'em for $3.
The Salvation Army is the shit tier of "charities". Not only are they anti-LGBTQ but they have a long history of anti-union action and supporting strikebreakers. Ever wonder why so many US Labor Movement songs are to the tune of hymns? It's not because of their familiar tune. It's because the Salvation Army would send their band to labor actions and play as loud as possible to try to drown out organizers and make attendees uncomfortable.
I try to be more positive on this platform but with these scumbags, I cannot. They're in the company of the Pinkertons and other murderers and thugs for hire.
Thank you for making this effort, by the way. The community on Lemmy versus the other platform we all know about is night and day because of people like you.
Thank you too for that bit of positivity. I found myself being negatively impacted, psychologically and emotionally on corporate social media. Life is just too short to engage in that sort of unhealthy behavior. And I know that I'm not the only one who has experienced such - it's pretty well established in research data.
So, while it certainly makes me feel a bit better, more important to me is the fact that engaging positively with people and encouraging them gives them more opportunities to feel better about themselves (we all need that sometimes, some more than others), grow, and, I hope, be more inclined to spread it about (and make quality shitposts and *nix porn). The world is fucked up enough as it is; lashing out, belittling, and the like only contributes the the problem.
I've been through a lot in life so far and close to those which been through even more and know first-hand how dark the depths of despair can get. If I can manage to put even the idea of a smile into the mind of someone that needs one I've won more than is possible in getting someone to rage-quit a "debate" thread that's 50 comments deep.
Damn it, it's so hard to find reputable good charities. So many of them are are either religious freaks or straight up scams.
Can we share lists of actual good charities?
I usually give to doctors without borders... Fingers crossed somone doesn't reply to me they kill puppies or something....
There's always Charity Navigator, they rate charities based on financial health and accountability, at least. I've not heard any controversy with it, for what it's worth
Another great charity evaluator is https://www.givewell.org/. Their mission is to find charities that save or improve lives the most per dollar spent, and their findings are research-backed and evidence-based. 100% of your donation goes to the charity you support. They also evaluate the lowest cost to save a human life, which is currently about $3k-$5k. Their top rated charities are involved in malaria prevention:
When charities are written in law as a way to get tax discounts, it's no wonder the majority becomes scams. Charities are also a great example of the govt failing to do it's own damn job
Child's Play is my go-to. They provide video games and consoles to hospitalized and often terminally ill children who literally can't go out and play. It was founded by the creators of Penny Arcade back in the early 2000s and so far to my knowledge hasn't had a single controversy or hint of anything nefarious. It's just nerds helping other, young, sick nerds/would-be-nerds get their nerd on.
I mean Doctors Without Borders definitely does more important work on the balance, but giving pediatric terminal cancer patients countless hours of joy isn't a trivial thing either.
That's my go-to, personally. MSF (Doctors Without Borders) could nearly get away with puppy murder and still be "good". The amount of risk that they take on to help those in need is remarkable.
They are also the shit tier of thrift stores. They're over-priced and their stuff isn't as good. If you're in King County, WA, Value Village is king. I've found so many great deals at Value Village. 90% of the stuff in my house is from VV.
Can you back that up ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:The_Salvation_Army#Biased_History
Greenway suggests that the Wobblies stumbled upon this modus operandi as a means of combating the street bands of the Salvation Army and the Volunteers of America, who frequently would drown out Wobbly speakers in a "cacophony of cornets and tamborines." One enterprising IWW organizer, wishing to combat the forces of obscurantist "pie in the sky" theology, "retired long enough to organize a brass band of his own.
Denisoff, R. S. (1970). The Religious Roots of the American Song of Persuasion. Western Folklore, 29(3), 175. doi:10.2307/1498356
Not OP, but I found this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Preacher_and_the_Slave
Of course any article can be biased, but this one has cited sources, at least. It would take further digging to determine if those sources are credible.
https://libcom.org/article/starvation-army-twelve-reasons-reject-salvation-army
In my opinion and based on my past reading on the subject, the simple fact that it’s a religious organization is enough to dissuade me from giving them anything. It is no small statistic that religious organizations are corrupt, hypocritical, expect obedience over tolerance, anti-union, anti-LGBTQ, ultra-conservative, and generally support the notion that people must be submissive to their authority.
I’ll continue to donate to secular organizations that do genuine good.
Off the top of my head, I can only think of primary sources. Would need to dive into some academic tools to find sufficient sources for Wikipedia's requirements. I'll make a note to do so, when I get the time to do so.
The individuals who work with us are amazing ppl, it absolutely sucks that the group as a whole is pisswater
Yeah. It feels like bad actors at the top use the needy as human shields to deflect from their horrible behavior.
Ah the starvation army.
Here in Australian even, tried to donate stuff, and was loading things up, then was told they only accepted clothing that weekend. So had to reload it all back into my car.
Then they said they didn't want my pots and such.
At least here in Australia, they don't care about any donations unless they can sell it (they don't seem to care about actually giving anything less sellable to the poor for free).
They're not even selling the stuff for cheap either (so its bad for the poor too)
Started giving away a lot of it on Facebook for free.. Was extremely painless. And the savers nearby also had no issues accepting a lot of it too.
Never going back there. They suck for donations, for buying they're too expensive too.
Good as that is, I gotta endorse the Utah Philips version. It comes with context and a story, and also he's hilarious.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Why are you donating things you expect to be thrown out? You're just costing a charitable organization money. But fuck the salvation army.
I answered that elsewhere, so lemme just cut/paste:
Fair question: I saw they already had a partial spindle of mixed disks for sale. Just the one though, so I couldn't be sure it wasn't a fluke. Turns out it wasn't.
The spindles weren't the only thing I donated, just so we're clear. I just mixed them in with the rest of boxes of stuff, some of it pretty good. Someone can now snag an OG release copy of Bioshock 2 or Doom 3 for a song. Oh, and the entire Half Life Collection.
Donate, then rat them out to one of those piracy groups that apparently pay you to snitch lmao
Why are you mad at the salvation army?
As a religious organisation, they are allowed to hire based on characteristics that you usually aren't allowed to discriminate with. They've repeatedly supported legislation that would allow them to refuse to hire LGBT people.
Across several countries, they've campaigned against the right for homosexual sex, marriages, inclusion in media.
They refused a $3.5m contract from the San Francisco city gov because it would've included giving the same domestic benefits to same-sex couples.
They said they'd leave New York if they were forced to offer the same domestic benefits to same-sex couples.
They campaigned against UK local councils including gay people in media like leaflets and the like.
High ups in The Salvation Army has said if you support gay rights you shouldn't donate to them.
They're extremely transphobic too, of course.
They did a bunch of child sexual abuse in Australia.
In the UK they own a lot of property that poor people stay in, and the conditions have been so bad that it was unlawful.
For the most part it's just that they're homophobic as fuck.
Probably things like homophobia.
I donated some spindles of burned media and programs to Salvation Army expecting they'd throw 'em out
Good for them for not throwing them away, but if you assumed they would, why "donate" (more like dump) them to charity in the first place? They're not there to provide guilt free disposal for your garbage..
Fair question: I saw they already had a partial spindle of mixed disks for sale. Just the one though, so I couldn't be sure it wasn't a fluke. Turns out it wasn't.
The spindles weren't the only thing I donated, just so we're clear. I just mixed them in with the rest of boxes of stuff, some of it pretty good. Someone can now snag an OG release copy of Bioshock 2 or Doom 3 for a song. Oh, and the entire Half Life Collection.
I know that old media/tech platforms have a use that can be helpful. Where should I donate unused/functional tech that can be more than e-waste that isn't something I want to make money from? If I'm sitting on floppy discs and know they are going to help someone, who do I give them to?
okay correct me if I'm wrong but this is definitely illegal, right?
Maybe not? Libraries can lend out pirated media for reasons. Maybe charities can sell it.
Edit: I'm getting downvoted and I'm not sure why. Maybe it was just my library that did this?
I haven't seen a library with software to lend since I was a kid, I used to go and get a ton of games n random software and rip them all lmao. But there was a lawsuit from software companies (ofc, can't have any fun in this world) at some point in the mid 2000s against a library district and it all got pulled. The lawsuit was based on the fact they had to share non-transferable, non-shareable license keys to make it work, which is why we still have movies and console games at libraries, because there's no license key involved.
wait really. that's cool
I’ve never heard of this.
https://www.ala.org/advocacy/copyright/copyrightarticle/librariescreatures
So if someone buys them, are they pirating? Lol
Pirating is a morally correct action in a world where no company wants you to own anything.
Could salvation army be held liable for selling pirated media? 🤔
Exactly lmao
I said the same thing - donate pirated warez then call one of those piracy snitch lines that pays supposedly pays you. Lmao. Fuck the Salvation Army.
Thrift stores are getting in on the piracy game I guess. Can't say I'm disappointed.
Look, I might have better copies now, but if someone wants to spend $3 and get the first 150+ episodes of Bleach and Naruto burned to KDVD I'd say they're gonna walk away happy with the deal they got.
This is hilarious. If I had some spare cash (and a lot of spare time), I'd absolutely love to do something like this. I'd love to do some modern blockbuster movies.
My man.
The thought of burning some BD5s filled with a bunch of new series and/or movies fills me with a joy that's hard to describe. Getting stuff for myself is one thing. Making it easily accessible for others is just a different level entirely. I'd love to know that I've given someone down on their luck countless hours of entertainment for a $3 investment.
If you are donating stacks of discs to a thrift store, make sure there's nothing on them you don't want to give away first. I bought a pack of CDs from a thrift store a while ago. I checked a couple at the top of the stack before I bought them and they were blank. I used about half of them without issue and when I put the next one in the drive, it mounted and opened. Someone gave away a whole bunch of banking info and tax records. I used them for target practice, but someone certainly could have used that info for identity theft if they chose to.
I went through every single disc before I donated them, yeah. Actually I did some organization so one spindle was all Anime, another was all SciFi, so on.
...found a fair bit of porn. I kept the porn. TV series are ephemeral. Porn is eternal.
You might have shot somebody's last wishes, you Ponce
What is there last wish identinity theft?
Press X to Doubt.
"X"
Copy/pasting information/matter infinitely for the benefit of everybody? Where have I seen that before?
TIL the one dollar crap pile is now worth 3 bucks
Classic crapflation
I bet the bit-rot on them is high enough to affect usability.
I didn't check literally every one, but I did a few spot checks and none of them had problems.
Do you have any advice for burning media to discs? I've plenty of media, and have Linux based media servers it sits on. Servers even have disc drives. Not sure if burn capable but just looking for general advice and best practices here
The slower the burn speed, the better. Less chances of error. Aside from that discs are kind of pointless in 2024 when you can have much cheaper, smaller and easier to use flash storage.
Unless maybe you're archiving something on special, heavy duty DVDs, otherwise why bother?
Burning DVDs I'm not sure I get, CDs though? There's still people driving cars that lack Bluetooth, and some people like listening to a whole album uninterrupted by phone distractions and there's something nice about physical media - it makes sense for most of the reasons vinyl makes sense, it doesn't, but it's fun anyway.
I love how this thread turned into hate for religion.
They're a religious organization that supports causes that hurt marginalized groups of people. Awareness should be spread about it.
I'd rather rally around the real enemy of this group. Greedy mega corps that have been screwing over people for decades with media.
Oh no, won't someone please think about the religious LGBT-hate organisation 😭😭
When religion is shitty it deserves the hate.
Dude never donate to SA. They're profit driven religious wackadoos who have no idea how to run anything. The charity angle is just another religious scam.
For religious people they're sure eager to sell used "personal massagers" for $10.
Also, frankly, here in the Reno area it's basically impossible to find a thrift store that's not run by incredibly religious wackadoos. Best you can do is Goodwill, which is far from irreligious. Salvation Army is one of the few that isn't blasting Jesus Rock on the speakers when you're in there.
Makes sense. Nevada's got a certain reputation because of Vegas, but folks forget about how it's also next to/inside the Mormon belt.
Lol, my friend is always on the lookout for "pro-life" thrift stores, apparently they have the best deals. (BC)
You guys don't have Value Village/Savers?
I love how when Christians aren't charitable they are called hypocrites and when they are people complain that they are "religious wackadoos", lol.
SA is anti-LGBTQ. They will deny them services.
Give them disks of gay and trans porn, got it.
This is false and dangerous misinformation to spread. The Salvation Army will absolutely not deny services to LGBTQ people. They even run initiatives to help rescue trans people from sex trafficking, and run a trans dorm in Nevada.
The problematic part of the SA is that they lobby against gay rights in politics. So you should vote with your wallet and not support them. But if you are homeless and need help, they WILL help you.
This they actually fund against Queer peoples rights
Is that the deseret industries thing?
Nah Deseret anything is usually a Mormon thing. The Salvation Army was a different weirdo sex cult.
Goodwill isn't much better. They're a non-profit that acts like a for profit.
I wonder if there are any thrift shops that are actually good.
Theyre the only people to help during actual disasters though. Good luck getting the fucking Red Cross out short of anything but a federally declared disaster.