Project Palisade

     Charity is an interesting topic. On one hand, its the universal symbol for generosity, good deeds, and selflessness. On the other, its an economically-depriving system that doesn't even really help people.      In Nuseir Yassin's (Nas Daily's) words, "Why would you learn how to fish, if all the fish is free?" He created a 1-minute video on the relationship between charity and dependency, and how damaging of a relationship it is. To solve this, charity needs to be re-imagined. Kids across the globe are developing a dependency. Why work, why develop skills, why improve the infrastructure of your own country and government when you can get it for no cost to you at all?      The modern system of donations by merely giving free food and clothes to families of underdeveloped nations damages incentivized progress and ruins the local economies. Every dollar not spent on local businesses is a dollar lost, due to families rationing foreign donate...

For those who aren't familiar, Ecosia is an alternative search engine browser that plants a tree per every 45 searches through the money collected from ad revenue. It's free for anyone to use and change to their default search engine. Ecosia was launched in Berlin, Germany in 2009, so it took a decade for them to reach this point. But last Thursday, July 9th, they finally hit a remarkable milestone of 100 MILLION trees planted in places like Burkina Faso, Brazil, Morocco, everywhere that deforestation has taken a mighty heavy toll. These milestones put them at the biggest planter of native trees in the world. In their words: "Each tree is also a vote, a protest sign, a message that things can be done differently. Each tree brings us closer to a different future – one we can all look forward to." Their plant shop is also a main source of revenue for the company. For every shirt purchased, 20 trees are planted. This milestone could mean a lot for the future of a lot of...

As someone who has experience in journalism and writing, something that's very concerning to me is the amount of people largely growing disinterest or perhaps even losing trust in news outlets, journalists, and studies. Its understandable. The Cambridge Analytica scandal, the Snowden incident, the "fake news" instigation by U.S. President Donald Trump, the growing division of high-profile media and news outlets, the rising popularity of satire articles, research studies disproving other research studies, at some point the common person will choose to back away, because from the outside-looking-in, it looks like craziness. How are people suppose to think for themselves when they are only told what to think? Much more of it stems from an ideological standpoint. Dividing political views, personal bias, religion, country, all of it plays a factor in what people do and do not regard as the "truth". Are there even any authentic journalists left? Kind of. They...