This is a delight!
This site is a great reminder that almost everyone visiting Hacker News has a set of skills which can be put to beneficial use for causes you care about - this is a small, simple, cheap site (and I mean that in a good way!) that attracts attention, awareness, and donations to something the author cares about. It’s easy for us, but it’s magic for most people. Don’t let your tech industry imposter syndrome fool you - we can do valuable things to forward causes we care about.
Also, it’s adorable!
I've stopped using the word "cheap" to describe situations like this as the word has too many negative connotations. I tend towards "inexpensive", "cost-effective", or "low-cost". I find it better describes my intent to describe something as not costing much but not speaking to poor quality which I feel like the word "cheap" has come to imply.
Theres a phrase in the UK that is "Cheap and cheerful" which I think is perfectly apt for this
I think "cheap" sounds worse in American.
I would say "low-cost, high-impact" when that makes more sense.
In this case it's more like low-cost high-delight which does sound a bit better than "cheap thrills" ;)
The owls do seem to convey a sense of communal grumpiness, expressed individually :)
Not unlike HN at tines . . .
This is a beautiful demonstration of how technology can be simple and powerful for amplifying a message at the same time -- no matter the silliness or seriousness of the message. Very "Old Web" vibes.
Anyone who's worked on random enterprise CRUD REST apps earlier in their career (myself included) knows the pain of wishing that you were doing something a little more helpful or positive for humanity.
Dovetails nicely with the Superb Owl enthusiasts.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22superb+owl%22&ia=images&iax=ima...
Yup, all it takes is a single typo seen by somebody who is not very familiar with American football, and wants to find out more about the teams playing in that year's Superb owl . . .
> cheap site (and I mean that in a good way!)
I guess English needs different words for the German "Günstig" and "Billig". They both translate to cheap, but "Günstig" means something like cost-effective/affordable (but I guess not quite?), and is positive, while "Billig" is strictly negative.
English already has a lot of words for both meanings. It's more that American culture has designated anything low cost as being of poorer quality.
Has that changed over time? Nearly fifty years ago, when self-serve gasoline pumping at gas stations was first coming into widespread use, I (native English speaker) was in Germany and remember a slogan I saw at gas stations to promote it: "selbst tanken ist billiger tanken" (sorry if I misspelled/mis-capitalized). So it seems Billig did not have such a negative connotation then.