The Miami Vice AJ1. An MTO handcrafted with white and pink crocodile leather as well as turquoise and black python. Lined with Japanese plonge leather liner.  Inspired by the vibrancy of Miami.

@levis x @jumpman23 IV . I’ll be dropping these somewhere in Paris . You find em you keep em . Stay tuned ✌🏽

We live in a high culture of customization—our diets, hair color, movie recommendations, travel experiences.

Customize this

Condensed

Ask about an activist, and sometimes all you’ll hear is they’re too mainstream, too liberal, too vocal, too aggressive, just another feminist, just another phase. It’s said with an inflection that seems to undermine the history, personal stories, emotions, struggles and successes accompanying the word.

Activism as Identity

The disarming case to act right now on climate change | Greta Thunberg

There are no gray areas when it comes to survival.

In an effort to be a bit more well-versed in the ideas floating around and the concise communicating people tended to depict while speaking about them, I’d signed up to receive weekly TED Talks three weeks ago.

Did you let Valentine’s creep up on you? Were you bummed with the lack of creativity in this year’s crop of cards?

Valentine’s Printables

We are firm believers in the power of tiny habits – those small, daily, recurring actions that build up over time into something far greater than one single grand gesture.

The Mighty Power in Your Tiny Actions

How Being a Geophysicist Made Me a Better Communicator

I was working as a reporter for my hometown’s paper this past summer and a super 80’s Canadian rock band was coming to town, and I was tasked with interviewing the lead singer (when I say ‘super 80’s’ I mean I remember listening to them on cassette tape with my dad).

The fear of not belonging is a pretty freaky-strong psychological phenomena for us humans. In days gone by, social isolation could mean the difference between literal life and death.

Stuck in the middle with you

A few months ago, I felt the need to join the rest of the modern yuppie world and find a podcast to listen to on my commute to and from work

How a podcast made me feel less alone

I eat a lot of soup for lunch when I’m at work. (Let’s face it; I’m not responsible enough for weekly meal prep.) And I’m known for eating soup.

Art, Soup and Third-Party Credibility

I eat a lot of soup for lunch when I’m at work. (Let’s face it; I’m not responsible enough for weekly meal prep.) And I’m known for eating soup. Even in the summer. From a giant soup mug that Adam warns everyone about.

You just gotta rum with it.

I’ve been reading ‘And a Bottle of Rum, A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails.’

Jan Švankmajer - BREAKFAST (FOOD 1992)

Jan Švankmajer - Lunch (Food 1992).

A look into the Grotesque with Jan Svankmajer

Czech filmmaker Jan Svankmajer has been a major influence among young animators for his strange and often grotesque short films and unusual animation and editing style.

Find what matters in your life and how to take action to be the social-impact-driven human you want to be.

Distil your personal purpose for creating positive change

The Value of Knowing Your Personal Values

Embrace incrementalism to make huge change through tiny habits and daily action

The mighty power of tiny actions and incrementalism

In trying to define activism, we constantly use the phrase “bringing about positive change or progress in a community.”

The 10 Suggestions

Activism is changing and here’s what we know

We activate people around things that matter. It’s our bottom line. It’s who we are. We’re activators, or more colloquially, activists. And here’s the thing—activism is changing. We don’t know what the future holds; all we know is that we’re gonna be here for it. As part of that, Black Sheep is embarking on a year-long campaign that will dive into the uncharted depths of our work, shake us loose from what we think we know and open a realm of possibilities that we’ll share with you, our clients and just about anyone who is willing to listen.

We activate people around things that matter.

Regular

1969. Activist was defined as “a person who does things with decision and energy.”

Activist. What’s in a name?

A view from the inbox of Aimee Woodall: Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Bless This Mess: Fixing Giving Tuesday

We’re hiring for an Administrative Concierge/Jack of All Trades/Task Master/Office Mom/General Getter of Things Done. And, hey, you can even help us pick your title.

Are you the match we’re missing?

Beautiful new words to describe obscure emotions | John Koenig

Need to express an obscure feeling? Use your words.

Juliet Capulet isn’t the only one asking “what’s in a name?” As it turns out, the Shakespearean leading lady might have been onto
something 400 years ago.

Juliet Capulet isn’t the only one asking “what’s in a name?” As it turns out, the Shakespearean leading lady might have been onto

20 Bob Ross quotes from Joy of painting - "How to be happy by Bob Ross"

If I could have a penny for every time I’ve felt overwhelmed. Work’s crazy. Life’s crazy. There’re bills and deadlines to deal with every day. Adulting is hard.

Have a Happy Little Day

But you need a breather. I need a breather. We all need a breather. A breather that’ll give us back a slice of peace and positivity in a world full of problems and pessimism, remind us that shit’s going to be just fine.

For years, the advice to every nonprofit was some version of "be more like a brand." Post more. Sound more polished. Chase the same tricks beverage and mattress companies use to win attention. But that advice is going out of date fast. 

Here's the good news buried in the shift: being human, being rooted in a real community, telling the truth about the work you do - these used to just be things nonprofits talked about. Now they're becoming part of how the algorithm decides who gets seen.

Let’s be real, the social media feed you're posting into isn't the feed you learned on. There are three changes to pay attention to here:

You are no longer broadcasting to your followers. You're being matched to people by interest, whether they follow you or not. According to Meta, only 17% of time on Facebook and 7% on Instagram goes to content from friends and family. The rest is strangers' content, served by an algorithm reading for interest, not relationship. This means that follower count matters less than it used to; what your organization is actually about matters way more.

For a decade, the game was capturing eyeballs at any cost, but that game is almost out of runway. This new reality rewards the meaning people seek out, instead of the noise people scroll past. A nonprofit was never going to out-shout a beverage brand for attention, and it doesn't have to start now.

Bots now account for more than half of all web traffic, the first time automated activity has outpaced human activity online. Add the flood of low-effort AI content built to trigger a reaction, and feeds get louder, faker, and angrier by the month. Outrage travels, so platforms keep rewarding it, regardless of whether it's true.

Platforms are starting to notice the same AI slop we are, and they're building against it. As feeds fill with machine-made content, audiences and the platforms chasing those audiences are turning toward visible effort, texture and even imperfection. 

Authenticity is starting to get measured less as a brand value and more as "proof of process": can people actually see the work behind the thing? Instagram has begun actively suppressing reposted and aggregated content for exactly this reason. Original, human, made-for-the-platform work is now structurally advantaged, not just ethically preferable.

The appetite for this is showing up in surprising places too. Myspace's owners are reportedly plotting a relaunch, betting that algorithm fatigue is real enough that people will pay attention to a platform explicitly selling itself as an escape from optimized feeds.

Brands without a real story are feeling the squeeze from the other direction. Even insurance companies and mattress brands, categories built on being interchangeable, are now scrambling to act like media companies just to stay visible, hiring writers and building personalities where there used to be none. But your nonprofit isn't scrambling for any of that. The real stories, real people and real process you already have aren't a compliance requirement anymore. They're the raw material every faceless brand is spending real money trying to fake.

You're the expert. Make sure AI knows it.

The same shift is happening in search. More than half of Google queries now return an AI-generated answer before a person ever clicks a website. Being the credible, well-documented source those answers get built from is starting to matter as much as being the thing someone finds by scrolling. Same principle, different doorway: substance and legitimacy are becoming the input, not just the output.

No one knows your mission, your people, and your work better than you do. When someone asks an AI assistant how to get involved in your cause, that answer should be built from what you've actually published, not a stranger's guess or a five-year-old blog post. Making sure your own documentation is the source AI pulls from isn't just a search tactic. It's how you keep your story accurate and keep your work moving forward, instead of watching it get flattened into someone else's summary.

What this actually means for your nonprofit online

Here's the part that should feel like relief: none of this asks you to get louder, weirder or more "on brand." It asks you to do less pretending and more proving. Show the work. Show the people. Let the algorithm find you doing the thing you're actually good at, instead of trying to out-shout accounts that were never your competition to begin with or hoping to be stumbled upon via hashtag soup.

The real question is whether what you post could hold up to a stranger asking, "how do I know this is real?" That's a content question, a design question and a strategy question all at once, and it's the kind of work that's easy to know you need and hard to carve out time for.

That's the work we do at Black Sheep Agency. We help mission-driven organizations turn what's already true about them- the real stories, the real people, the real process- into content and strategy built for a moment when that's exactly what gets rewarded.

Why Nonprofits Might Finally Win the Algorithm

The algorithm now rewards real stories and community over polish and AI content. See why nonprofits are positioned to win the shift and what to do next.

The algorithm stopped rewarding polish and started rewarding (human) proof

The algorithm now rewards real stories and community over polish and AI content. See why nonprofits are positioned to win the shift, and what to do next.

The Black Sheep blog is turning up the volume on community engagement, social media strategy, Houston happenings and what it means to lead a purpose-driven life.

The Black Sheep Agency | Social impact and nonprofit blog

We like to type as much as we like to listen.

We're not shy.