O3 Consulting Inc

Resources

aka interesting stuff

Some resources I like or use to stay informed. It’s a work in progress. Some old links are at the bottom that need to be cleaned up.

Causes | YouTube | Truthfulness | Tech | Websites (useful stuff)

Elaine Gambiani of Three Hive Design

Causes

Social justice, environment, biodiversity, organizational leadership and development, etc.

  • Homegrown National Park: catalyzing a collective effort of individual homeowners, property owners, land managers, farmers, and anyone with some soil to plant in…to start a new habitat by planting native plants and removing most invasive plants.
  • xChange Approach: “a scientifically based approach for unlocking potential in groups through the art of facilitation.”
  • Stand With Ukraine: “Nova Ukraine is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing humanitarian aid to the people of Ukraine and raising awareness about Ukraine in the United States and throughout the world.”
  • ALUUC.org
  • Springfield YMCA: programs that build healthy spirit, mind and body for all.
  • EnosParkGardens.org: where fresh produce and community spirit interact to produce abundance. We want to increase access to fresh produce, teach others valuable skills, and create a context where people can become neighbors.
  • Illinois Native Plant Society: Dedicated to the study, appreciation, and conservation of the native flora and natural communities of Illinois
  • Phoenix Center: Central Illinois’ LGBTQ Center offering various groups, public health services, training, social & educational events and transitional housing
  • Springfield PrideFest: street fair embracing diversity and celebrating the Central IL LGBTQ community.
  • Springfield Civic Garden Club of Illinois: helping to make Springfield a more beautiful city; they offer knowledge about gardening, floral design, landscaping, and horticulture — and fund grants for beautification.
  • Capital Canine Training Center: promotes cooperation and good sportsmanship among its members in the training and exhibition of dogs.

YouTube

Some of my fav YT channels

  • Bernadette Banner: “Costume analysis & fashion history. Sometimes educational.” Creative, quirky and highly entertaining and yet so soothing. Ahh… craftsmanship and hand stitching.
  • Suburban Homestead: delightful forays into cottage garden design, plant comparisons, practical and frugal plant advice, and just beautifully done.
  • Not Useless Yet: another soothing pandemic find turned favorite fixer-upper. Specifically, fixing up a villa. In Italy. By a Brit living in Austria.
  • Beau of the Fifth Column: this one started with a query to my son, “should I buy a gun?” Beau to the rescue. Again and again.
  • Rusty Judgement: a look inside DIY-focused rural entrepreneurship – by the husband of Dawn, YouTube’s “Minimal Mom”. I haven’t seen them have to call an ambulance… yet.
  • Warwick Schiller: gentle patient Aussie horse trainer goes “woo-woo” – because it works. (I started down this path with a bird-trainer YT channel during the pandemic, but this one just makes so much sense.) And: horses. Useful insights for anyone with pets or livestock.

“Truthfulness”

  • The Factual: unbiased – or, rather, bias-rated – news.
  • Wait Buy Why: “A popular long-form, stick-figure-illustrated blog about almost everything.” Tim Urban’s unique and sometimes mind-blowing take on the world.
  • Tim’s new (2023) book: What’s Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies:
    • A footnote about social media amplifying and shaping political junk food, ‘ “The spread of true and false news online,” a 2018 study that analyzed 126,000 stories tweeted by three million people, found that “falsehood diffused significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth in all categories of information, and the effects were more pronounced for false political news than for false news about terrorism, natural disasters, science, urban legends, or financial information.” ‘
      DOI: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aap9559
    • ‘ “When you go to a [Wikipedia] page, you’re seeing the same thing as other people. So it’s one of the few things online that we at least hold in common. Now, just imagine for a second that Wikipedia said, “We’re gonna give each person a different customized definition, and we’re gonna be paid by people for that.” So, Wikipedia would be spying on you. Wikipedia would calculate, “What’s the thing I can do to get this person to change a little bit on behalf of some commercial interest?” Right? And that it would change the entry. Can you imagine that? Well, you should be able to, ’cause that’s exactly what’s happening on Facebook. It’s exactly what’s happening in your YouTube feed. ‘
      from the 2020 documentary The Social Dilemma, as quoted in What’s Our Problem.
  • Ryan Holiday’s The Daily Stoic: “For those of us who live our lives in the real world, there is one branch of philosophy created just for us: Stoicism. It’s a philosophy designed to make us more resilient, happier, more virtuous and more wise–and as a result, better people, better parents and better professionals.”

Tech

Usability, responsible use of tech

Websites and such – updated June 2023

Accessibility
Attribution and Licensing: THOU SHALT NOT STEAL
Content and Writing
Personal Safety and Disaster Recovery
SEO: search engine optimization: FIRST OFF, TELL THE TRUTH
Web Tech Stuff
WordPress and Content Management Systems (CMS)