This one is a note, not an essay. It is for the people who know me, and it has links so you can see everything for yourself.
The one idea
Everything I have built this year comes down to one trick, and it is worth saying plainly because it is the part people do not expect. A lesson on fractions is the same lesson whether it is played in a football stadium, a kitchen, or the back of a jeepney. What changes is the skin: the recipe builds the page through whatever the particular learner already loves. Newton’s laws for a kid who lives for hockey are Newton’s laws with pucks; for a kid who lives for theme parks they are Newton’s laws with a sled. Same lesson, any skin, built for one person. Once that works for a child at a kitchen table, it works for a new hire’s first week and for a first-year university unit, because the recipe does not care what the subject is.
What exists, right now, free
Meta DAX is that recipe, in the open. You can open any of these this minute: a fractions parcours in a 3D stadium built for one eleven-year-old; a first week at a bakery for new staff; a first-year biology lesson on how a cell makes energy; a tutor’s week, from rough notes to a parent-ready report; and a whole Grade 6 science year. Every one came out of the same recipe. If you homeschool, tutor, teach, or train people at work, there is a door for you, it is free, and a stranger can use it in ten minutes.
Maddie, at formaddie.com, is the other thing: you talk, she listens, and your stories become a book. She is in free beta while I keep testing her myself.
And underneath both is how I work now: I work through my cognitive companion, and everything the two of us make goes into the open with the failures left in. How I publish explains it.
What it has cost
I have been at this since I was twenty-three. The idea has only ever been one thing: the right information, to the right person, at the right time. This year is the first time it has existed as something a stranger can open and use. It has come entirely out of my own pocket, and it still does. Everything above runs on paid compute: the subscription my companion runs on, the servers behind the pages, the voice and speech behind Maddie. It costs a great deal every month, and it is the one thing I cannot let lapse: when it runs out, the building stops. There is no salary in this picture and no office. There is a laptop, a kitchen table, and that bill.
Where you come in
Any one of these is enough, and none of them is expected.
A coffee, once or monthly, at ko-fi.com/jeyanandan. It goes to me personally and straight into that bill. If you would rather send an e-Transfer, message me and I will give you the address.
Sponsor a package. On github.com/sponsors/ObsidianDelta you can put your name on something real: one learning package rooted in your community, your language, your trade or your subject, built, read by a person before it goes out, and published free with “built with support from” and your name on it. There are monthly tiers there too, for anyone who just wants to keep the lights on.
An introduction. If you know someone who tutors, homeschools, teaches, or trains new staff, send them one of the links above and tell them it is free. The people I most need to reach are the ones I have not met.
What you get back
Everything stays in the open, including what fails. Everyone who helps gets a short note from me once a month with what the money built. And if you ever want a package built for your own kid, your own student or your own new hire, you only have to say so.
Thank you for reading this far. If anything here raises a question, I would rather you asked me than wondered.
— Jason