In one of my many former lives, I was a gamer. Not just a gamer, a game designer. This means I am very familiar with the ideas and concepts behind rules and systems and how all of these things work together. It’s a skill-set that has served me very well here at $0$, and I’d […]

Today I want to introduce a new permanent staff member here at $0$. Anna Almstead has joined us as a communication manager. She will be one of the first points of contact for people who text in and will be handling a lot of our media management. I will still be writing most of the […]

One of the limitations of non-profits is that there will always be more needs than we can fill. At $0$. we are especially aware of that problem since we are just starting out. We have very few resources, and the resources we have are mostly tied up in getting things going. Most of our employees […]

Life is complicated. There are so many things that happen, so many things that affect other things that it can be difficult to foresee the results of any particular decision. Something small turns into something huge, and something that you think is huge turns out to be no big deal. Economists and social scientists even […]

Something I’ve always believed is that education is the way to shape the future. What you teach children when they are young is what sticks with them their whole life. Freud was wrong about a lot of things, but he got the importance of childhood right. Why am I talking about this? Because I recently […]

Abstract (aka TL;DR): On a long enough timeline, altruism and cooperation are almost always better than selfishness. Humans are humans because we help others.

Tonight was the second time $0$ was tested live. A card was given out at a Wal-Mart to a couple looking for gas money. They then texted in to the service for help. After a quick interview, we arranged for someone from $0$ to meet them and fill up their tank. We also included a […]

Living in poverty is hard. There are so many things to worry about. Money, food, housing, the list goes on. Sometimes it can feel like all you do is worry. And when you are not worrying, you are working to get what you need doing whatever it takes. This does not make for a happy […]

Alan and I have never really been like other people. We think differently. Alan made a career out of it. I gained wisdom from it. We both knew our internal processes ran differently than others, and that those differences made us good at what we did, but neither of us could really describe those differences. […]

Alan and I are a couple of privileged dudes, and we know it. Sure, we’ve had our brushes with hardship, but we are cis, straight, white guys of well above average intelligence from relatively affluent families. In the grand scheme of things, our lives have been pretty easy. When it comes to real suffering, we […]