Official Richart Ruddie Blog - Internet Entrepreneur

Richart Ruddie Quote of the Day

Sometimes you hear a good quote and you want to jot it down so you don't forget it. Today's quote of the day for Tuesday November 15th, 2022 is:

"Life really teaches you how to live it if you can live it long enough"

Richart Ruddie on the importance of Culture

Culture is great not just for business but for learning the ways of the world. Thats why there is such an important emphasis to diversify your travels. Traveling around the world to new countries, cities, provinces/states, and continents that you only hear about in books or the internet growing up. When you do so you have the opportunity to learn about how other societies operate. 

When you experience a new city it's enlightening to meet people of different cultures, try their food, view their buildings and architecture, see the spirit of the people and this helps to change your perspective from potential subconscious biases you may have had previously. When you return and meet somebody from that culture or place you've visited you now have something to talk about and the ability to relate. Outside of reading books this is a great way to build knowledge, understandings of others, and traveling and eating are a great way to live life to the fullest. 

So if you follow my ZeeMap or Mapster showcasing all the places "Richart Ruddie" has been to know that there are so many more and yet so little time to make it to them all but if there's a will there is a way.

Rich Ruddie AI Future Playbook

AI is going to change the way we make graphic designs for blog posts, create art, nfts, create royalty free music and sound clips. There's so many positive benefits being created with the future of DALLE-2 and the AI revolution thats on the horizon. Here are a couple of cool references to check out and use:

https://app.inferkit.com/demo - This lets you put in subject matter and see how the machine writes a story around it.

Google CoLAb - This is the place to get started for Machine Learning and has a monthly fee.

Robert Bruce Carter covered an AI Jukebox where the Github list of 4,111 artists are compiled and used to make sound clips and music. You can see his story about it here.

For image creation on the fly you can register with OpenAI this is a game changer that is going to destroy the royalty image business overnight. Think about how the iPhone destroyed MP3 players. Who is going to want stock images of a team at work for a fee when they can generate it via AI in seconds and ensure it's unique and is not going to be recreated?

For fun I put in Richart Ruddie to see what images would be created in the OpenAI image generator and here is what it created:

As you can see I don't look like either men on the left or right and I don't have a sculpture or statue in a square but maybe it was focusing on Rich and Art? That could be the reasoning for the ship sailing. To determine if a photo is created via OpenAI look for the colors of the rainbow in the bottom right corner.

Since I'm an art collector and fan I typed in Picasso Painting on the Beach. The initial photos had an easel on the sand. A clear operator error that was adjusted to "a picasso painting of the beach" and this is what it generated:

What Richart Ruddie's 2021 Philanthropy Went Towards

Effective Altruism in practice makes a monumental shift in society. 2021 was the biggest year yet and the report on where donations that I helped contribute towards went and how they changed the lives of those across the globe are remarkable to say the least. With careful consideration a company GiveWell who was featured in the book "The most good you can do" stuck out from the crowd for donors and thus has been one of my main targets for yearly donations in practicing effective altruism.

4th quarter of 2021 donations went to the following initiatives:

 

Against Malaria Foundation

Deworm the World Initiative

Helen Keller International's vitamin A supplementation program

Malaria Consortium's seasonal malaria chemoprevention program

New Incentives

Sightsavers' deworming program

Funds allocated through donations and grants like mine helped to fill the highest priority funding needs when it was time to decide how to allocate the funds. My hope is that these types of gifts that are an integral part of the impact that the grants start to catalyze others to step up and contribute to causes that make the world a better place versus causes that make their instagram look like they are living in a better place.

So what changes did Richart Ruddie's Donation Contribute Towards?

• How about saving  the lives of  8,400 people? Yes, thats eight thousand four hundred people through the distribution of long-lasting antimalarial nets, seasonal chemoprevention to protect against malaria, provision of vitamin A supplements to children, and incentives provided to caregivers for vaccinating their infants
• So how do you top that number? You contribute towards a program that focuses on change and not running a not for profit who also provides close to 17 million children with life-improving treatment for parasitic worm infections

Making donations to places so far away that most people couldn't even fathom heading towards that direction. Most will never go and visit sub sahara Africa and thats okay because you don't need to see those you donate to in order to substantially impact their lives. Here is a map of countries impacted directly a continent away from us here in America.

 

So whats the breakdown of the organizations receiving the funds and what do they specialize in? Glad you asked along with the total allocation

Malaria Consortium

Total allocation: $22.2 million
Where these funds will be used: Burkina Faso, Chad, Nigeria, and Togo
Expected lives saved: 5,200
Intervention: Seasonal malaria chemoprevention to prevent malaria, which disproportionately kills children under five in sub-Saharan Africa.[4]

New Incentives

Total allocation: $9.4 million
Where these funds will be used: Nigeria
Expected lives saved: 2,100
Intervention: Conditional cash transfers to encourage caregivers to immunize their children against potentially deadly but preventable diseases, in a part of the world where vaccination rates are low.[5]

Sightsavers

Total allocation: $7.8 million
Where these funds will be used: Nigeria, Cameroon
Expected treatments delivered: About 9.6 million across both countries
Intervention: Mass deworming treatments for children, which we believe may have a significant effect on their future income and subtler benefits to their overall health.[6]

Deworm the World Initiative

Total allocation: $4.8 million
Where these funds will be used: Kenya, Nigeria, and Pakistan
Expected treatments delivered: About 7 million across all three countries
Intervention: Mass deworming treatments.

Against Malaria Foundation
Total allocation: $3.4 million
Where these funds will be used: Nigeria
Expected lives saved: 570
Intervention: Long-lasting insecticide-treated nets (LLINs) to protect against malaria-carrying mosquitoes.[7]

Helen Keller International
Total allocation: $1.4 million
Where these funds may be used: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea, Kenya, Mali, Niger, and Nigeria
Expected lives saved: 600
Intervention: Vitamin A supplementation (VAS) to prevent stunting, anemia, blindness, and death in young children.[8]

I hope that in 2022 and beyond that you consider pledging more of your income towards causes that significantly impact the bulk of a population. Follow the footsteps of other major donors like Sam Bankman who set an example for philanthropy and the lack of living lavishly so others can live better.

References:

1. See a list of past distributions from the Maximum Impact Fund here. The largest distribution prior to this one was of funds received in Q4 2020, totaling $25.9 million.
2. October through December 2021. 
3. See this spreadsheet, rows labeled "MIF Q4 2021," for a list of all grants made with Q4 2021 Maximum Impact Fund donations and their expected outcomes. Note that these outcome estimates are specific to these grants, and the cost-effectiveness of other grants to these top charities may be higher or lower. More information about the cost-effectiveness of Maximum Impact Fund grants we've made in the past can be found here.
4. "The percentage of total malaria deaths in children aged under 5 years reduced from 87% in 2000 to 77% in 2020.... About 96% of malaria deaths globally were in 29 countries. Six countries – Nigeria (27%), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (12%), Uganda (5%), Mozambique (4%), Angola (3%) and Burkina Faso (3%) – accounted for just over half of all malaria deaths globally in 2020." WHO, World Malaria Report 2021, p. xvi
5. In 2019, 43% of Nigerian infants did not get the full set of DTP, PCV, and HiB vaccines, and 33% did not get the BCG vaccine (see Our World in Data, Global vaccination coverage, Nigeria, 2019). New Incentives' program directly incentivizes all of these vaccines; see our report on New Incentives' program for more.
6. See "What are the benefits of mass deworming?" in our report on combination deworming programs such as those implemented by Sightsavers and Deworm the World.
7. See the "In a nutshell" section of our report on mass distribution of LLINs: "There is strong evidence that when large numbers of people use LLINs to protect themselves while sleeping, the burden of malaria can be reduced, resulting in a reduction in child mortality among other benefits."
8. From our review of Helen Keller International's program: "Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) can cause stunting, anemia, xerophthalmia (dry eyes, which can lead to blindness), increased severity of infections, and death.... Helen Keller supports countries' VAS programs for preschool-aged children by providing technical assistance, engaging in advocacy, and contributing funding to governments for implementing the programs."
9. You can read more about GiveWell’s plans to roll over a portion of 2021 funds into 2022 here.

-Richart Ruddie

Reflecting Back on 9/11 20 years ago from Owings Mills

You always remember where you were when you heard the news about the twin towers. That's the echo of today that I constantly hear when September 11, 2001 comes up. Like other monumental historical moments from my parents generation about the JFK shooting or landing on the moon September 11, 2001 was one of the biggest moments of my pre-adult life that I remember vividly.

The other big global change that I remember is the handoff of Hong Kong from the British back to China where my 7th grade middle score teacher Mrs. Sanacore said this is a pivotal moment that will have great impact in the future. Today that makes more sense to me than it did than as all I remember seeing was the fireworks display over the Bay in Hong Kong.

Thinking about it on the 20th anniversary I was trying to figure out if it was in my 10th grade or 11th grade mathematics class. On September 10th, 2001 Brian & Jon two friends that sat next to me chatted about Brians uncle and how he owned a ton of stock in this company XM Radio that was the future of radio. I had just turned 16 less than a month earlier and believe that I had one of the classic Nokia phones through Cingular Wireless which was my first cell phone. 

The next day sitting in Math class we had the prototypical standard geeky middle aged male math teacher who was going through the lesson plans for that day when Jon who was a troubled student at the time came in late and the teacher asked if he had a note. He said they are about to make an announcement about the planes that hit the buildings in New York. That didn't sink in then and when the intercom came on they asked for all students to report back to their home room for an announcement.

Ms. McCall I believe was her name was my home room and 1st period teacher. She rolled in one of those televisions on a cart that we used back in the earlier 2000's and we watched as the World Trade Centers burned and had no idea of the impact at the time. My friend Ryan and I were in the room watching in disbelief wondering if this was real life or a cartoon as it just looked then and as I watched replays yesterday unreal....

What followed was the teacher saying that this is very serious and you will remember this for the rest of your life. This is one of the biggest moments in American history. As the 2nd tower to get hit but the 1st to fall fell over we asked why it collapsed like that versus falling over like a tree timbering over in the woods? They mentioned the attacks in Washington D.C. as well and one of the students who's father worked in Washington D.C. was pale and worried that her family could have been in danger with so many unknowns in the world at that given moment especially for high school students who didn't have smart phones or connectivity like there is today.

School was evacuated as I believe was the case across the country. No planes were in the sky and we headed to Burger King on Reisterstown Road in Owings Mills, Maryland. I didn't have a car yet and don't believe I had my drivers license quite yet but my long time friend Nick took me home and I spoke to my mom about what was going on and that things were scary. A neighbor named Brian and I picked up our lacrosse sticks and he said Richart I'm going to explain to you whats going on and what happened today.

That was the 1st time I had ever heard the name Osama Bin Laden. Learned about terrorist in the middle east and other global issues that hadn't penetrated my teenager mind. Ruddie there are a lot of bad people out there but this guy funds terrorism and comes from a well known family and he's been plotting something for a while. We tossed the lacrosse ball till it got dark and myself along with the rest of the world tuned in to watch George Bush's speech that night.

The next day I was worried and went to school late with a note, not sure what the next days events would bring. We were all on high alert and canceled our future vacation plans and flights.

As we fast forward 20 years later and reflect back it's insurmontable what happened that day. Watching documentaries and reading in depth articles about loved ones who disappeared that day and vanished never to be seen again. We face new attacks every day whether it's covid-19 or domestic terrorism. If you look at WWII we lost over 20,000,000 humans over the course of 6 years. That averages out over 2,190 days 9,132 humans dying every day. We lost 80,000 from drug overdoses last year and this also tears aparts families and communities.. There are so many landmines and attacks we have to avoid each day of our lives. If you wake up then you are already ahead of millions who perished before you. Whether you're waking up in Palm Beach, Florida or in a jail cell waking up is a big win that you should appreciate if you look back at history.

Days like that make you appreciate life and that we shall never forget.

-Richart Ruddie

Richard Ruddie Press Coverage

Press coverage naming Richard Ruddie and some of his accomplishments:

Tech Bullion Covering a project to develop software in China pre-covid: https://techbullion.com/interview-with-richart-ruddie-internet-entrepreneur-building-a-billion-dollar-business-in-china/

Everipedia Listing also mentioning philanthropy and donations: https://everipedia.org/wiki/lang_en/richart-ruddie

Daily Advent: https://www.dailyadvent.com/tag/richard-ruddie

Social Media Explorer: https://socialmediaexplorer.com/content-sections/news-and-noise/ministry-of-foreign-affairs-look-to-richart-ruddie-for-help-restoring-online-image/

If you're wondering why it's spelled Richard and not Richart on this post that's because these are places where there are mispellings or rankings for the name spelled with a "D" and not the "T'.