“Let’s have some fun I’m offering two grants of $5,000 for whatever you want” (opens in new tab)

Interesting. What are the tax implications, if any, for doing something like this? If it's an American giving a grant to another American, would it be treated as a gift (and thus be tax-free), or would it be treated as income?

I wish other people could take this into a recurring proceess. I've experianced that it's very hard to get research funded when you do not have a hard-science goal in the scientific community. For instance, right now I'm attempting to get funding to write software to do hard-science with but that is not fundable from normal sources (NSF) despite being a very good project that will enable researchers to study things that they were previously unable to.

Most grants today are "I want you to study X" not "Do something that's really worth the money" or "Build something that will genuenly help people or improve life for everyone".

I'd love to get a couple of welding simulators and a 3D printer for the crafting folks, but I get the feeling an email from a Tribal community college isn't the point.

I'd love to take a month off. I need to get back to my blog and read through my massive Manning and Amazon backlog...

I have an idea for building tube guitar amps using solid state power supplies to save weight. Have a working prototype!

The "Let's have some fun", part comes across as slightly condescending to me. Perhaps I'm way too cynical, but my first reaction was that this is a fairly novel way to grow Twitter followers and promote an agenda.