The Final Busdown
Desert Bus for Hope is an annual charity streaming event by friends of mine in Victoria, BC. It runs for a week and this year they raised more than $1,250,000 for charity.
The ostensible goal of the stream is to play a game called 'Desert Bus' which was part of a set of games called "Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors" and it has been called the worst game of all time. Which makes it beautifully poetic that it is the underpinning of this amazing charity event each year.
Today was it's finale and this is how they end the stream. It's just my favorite thing.
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Desert Bus for Hope!
On the off chance that the winner of the Powerball this week reads my blog... I feel I should mention tomorrow my favorite annual charity event of the year kicks off. A group of friends, largely in the Victoria BC area, run a gaming stream for roughly a week as they raise money for the Child's Play charity.
The tentpole of the stream is ostensibly "Desert Bus" an anti videogame by Penn Jillette created during the height of video game mania in politics. It is a video game where you drive a bus, which pulls constantly to the right, from Reno to Vegas, and back. That's it. Just keep the bus moving on the road.
But the stream is about much more. The group play improv games and do all sorts of absurd things to earn donations and raise money. As of writing this, over the past 15 runs (this will be their 16th) they have raised $8.3 Million dollars, with last year's total run ending at over $1.2 Million dollars.
I am friends with a number of participants of the stream and have worked with them as part of what I do for Wizards of the Coast. Wizards donates products to the charity for auction and fundraising, but we're just a footnote in what they do.
If you find yourself looking for something to do, plan to watch the stream! It starts at 1pm Pacific tomorrow and will run for, likely, at least a week!
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"Patagonia Founder Gifts Entire Company to Fight Climate Change"
Yvon Chouinard, the founder of apparel brand Patagonia, is handing over his company, valued at $3 billion, over to trusts and non-profit organizations focused on fighting climate change. The unprecedented move makes his family some of the most charitable business owners in the U.S.
"Hopefully this will influence a new form of capitalism that doesn't end up with a few rich people and a bunch of poor people," Chouinard told The New York Times. "We are going to give away the maximum amount of money to people who are actively working on saving this planet."
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