A NICE TIME, DAMMIT

Bravo! Well Done! Now how about actually funding public schools adequately?!

In Today's Modern America of Today, we have a whole bunch of options for crowdfunding neat things like a reboot of Mystery Science Theater 3000, or maybe a dumb documentary about "Gamergate" and poor oppressed "men's rights" morans, or that time when Wonkette readers helped a then-freelancing Doktor Zoom repair his dumb old '73 Chevy, Vlad the Impala (and I never sent anyone the thank-you gifts, because I am TERRIBLE). And of course there are the GoFundMe campaigns for poormisunderstood pizza joints that refuse to cater gay weddings, not that anyone actually wanted pizza at a gay wedding. Crowdfunding has also, unfortunately, had to become a significant means of helping people with medical billsin a country that doesn't have universal healthcare, and for all sorts of things that civilized nations actually pay for publicly, like education. Which is why we're simultaneously very VERY happy that education crowdfunding site "DonorsChoose" got a great big grant from one tech company thatinstantly funded more than 35,000 projects on the site, all at once, but also more than a little bit disgusted that teachers in the Greatest Nation on Earth have to beg for funding for things like basic school supplies in the first place. For the moment, let's focus on the Nice Times part.

Yesterday, DonorsChoose announced it had received a $29 million donation from tech company "Ripple," which does not make fortified wine but is instead behind one of those cryptocurrencies, "XRP," which we guess must be doing pretty well. DonorsChoose founder Charles Best and Ripple senior veep for marketing Monica Long made a little Facebook video to tell the world about it, and what the two organizations do:

We honestly don't give a rip for cryptocurrencies, but funding teacher-requested projects is pretty darn cool. Samples: A 6th-grade classroom that needed $290 for aquariums and supplies to keep some Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches safe, alive, and not all over the school (they're for a Life Studies unit, obviously). A third-grade teacher who wanted a bunch of supplies to set up a garden that will attract bees, plus bee books and stuff. No actual bees needed. And one teacher who has a whole bunch of kids in her classroom who came to the Northeast from Puerto Rico, and just needed basic school supplies. As of yesterday, every single one of the more than 35,000 active project requests on the site were funded in one fell swoop with that big donation. It's impressive!

Now of course here's where we wish this kind of thing weren't necessary, or that, at the very least, sites like DonorsChoose were only raising money for stuff that's well beyond the basic necessities of the school day. No teacher should be begging for dry-erase markers, notebooks, or three-ring binders. And the idea that $29 million -- a big donation, to be sure, but a drop in the bucket for the federal government -- was able to go so far is both amazing -- hooray for the teachers and the kids! -- and infuriating. $29 million, for instance, would cover the cost of  half the Tomahawk cruise missiles Trump fired at that Russian airbase in Syria last year. But gosh, that was an exciting after-dinner show at Mar-a-Lago.

We shouldn't need sites like DonorsChoose to fund our schools. We should be throwing money like crazy at our kids' education. But until we get there, we're glad there's a crowdfunding site that's not trying to pay for "sovereign citizens" to hide out from mean liberals.

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[ DonorsChoose blog via Anil Dash on Twitter / Buzzfeed ]