Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation

This is a very disturbing report about decreasing level of social communication between people in US for almost two decades which shows that amount of time humans spend there with each other in person decreased almost up to 70% (!) and keeps running down. And this is not even about the COVID years, though it only accelerated this process.

The loneliness and falling out of the social participation very negotively affects health, mental stability, increases the risks of strokes, dementia, unexpected death in old age.

All this only emphasizes what a ruined society mankind has been building for itself throughout these years. The only answer goverments have to this is to create another ministery to do the "patchworking" on top of the broken system (please welcome the "minister of loneliness" from Japan).

This society mastered providing so much shit to consume and advertise to people to think that all of that crap is what they really need and dreamed about, instead of organizing a healthy environment with easy access to the things of basic need, freeing them to care for and to interact with who are really important for Humans: the other Humans. It is time to stop being just the consumers and to learn what is it like to be Humans again and what we really need.

#TradeRuinsEverything #trade-free

I have a new favorite documentary!!! TROM II: A Message to the Aliens 😀

I think @Tio deserves an oscar for this one! 😀 The documentary hasn’t been released yet, but I got to view it last night hehehe 😁. It is 4 parts, about 5 hours long, and I watched it in one go, staying up until about 6AM and I couldn’t get my eyes off the screen.

I think Tio did an absolutely fantastic job and it’s really hard to believe that this doco was a one-man job.
I’ve seen him struggle with this documentary for the past 2-3 years. At first, he started to make a script and put a bunch of footage together, then he scrapped that idea and decided to interview 4 people (Dima, Aaron, Georgi, and me) + himself. Tio came up with all the questions, hoping to present his view of the world through our answers, combining our general knowledge of the world with our life stories.

We spent months filming these interviews (at night with bright lights and a black background- which later made it challenging to edit). After all the filming was done, Tio had dozens of hours of footage, all scattered in different interviews, between 5 different people. Imagine trying to create a story out of that. Little by little he went through the footage and created a story that pins our world and our human society to the backdrop of the universe, combined this cosmic perspective with 5 personal stories, demonstrated how we, humans, are influenced by our environment, and how so much of this environment is permeated by trade. Then he demonstrates some of the immense problems this has caused, and introduces a new idea on how to tackle those problems.

And of course, to make all of this, he used footage from many many documentaries, movies, video clips, etc. Finding the right footage was a huge challenge (he didn’t use any stock footage) + combining all of this with great music + many editing effects, and a lot more. All in all it was a massive challenge and Tio really nailed it. I am so proud of him 😀

Can’t wait for TROM II to be released to the public!!!!

#trom #tromlive

My most awaited project of the year, the TROM II documentary, is now finally close to its release! 😃 So I just want to share a few thoughts as to why its so interesting for me:

👉 The entire #documentary, around 5 hours long and divided into 4 parts, is made by a single person ( @Tio ), using only #FOSS software like @Kdenlive for editing, and on a #linux distro (https://tromjaro.com) as the main OS. This in itself is a very impressive feat! And also a shout-out to the awesome #FreeSoftware / #OpenSource community for how much it has grown. I heard this documentary is the biggest project ever made on #kdenlive so far, and making such a big documentary by a single person is no joke - took years of hard work to complete.

👉 Following a #FediFirst approach, it will be released on #fediverse platforms like @PeerTube first! Free for all to watch without any ads or data collection. I don't know if this will be uploaded to proprietary platforms like #YouTube, tho I'm sure #Peertube will always have top priority 😉

👉 Unlike the first TROM documentary which was released a decade ago, this one features interviews with people like @Sasha, @Aaron, @Dima, @Georgi and Tio himself. They talk about their personal lives, how they grew up in this world and such, their stories are supposed to give us a larger perspective on how our current society works. I can't tell you much more until I get to watch the documentary and see how all of this falls into place 🙂

👉 No stock footage has been used in the documentary! If making a 5 hour documentary doesn't sound hard enough for you then this will do it, lol 😄 So for example if it shows some scientists looking at data in one scene, then its actual scientists looking at actual data that they work on, not some stock footage of actors pointing at screens and faking stuff. Finding real world footage like this is a time consuming task as it'd require going thorugh a lot of documentaries, videos, etc looking for the right clip you need.

👉 If you've ever read any of the TROM e-books or seen their videos before then you'll know how it goes - looking at the world from a scientific perspective, encouraging people to be curious about the world we live in and the universe that surrounds us, and perhaps most important of all, to cut through all of the social constructs we've been accustomed to and see the world for what it really is, because only if we truly understand our world can we solve the many problems that are plaguing our planet right now. To get a little taste of what TROM is about you can try watching these short videos they've released in the past:

https://videos.trom.tf/w/jrLmgWLj9nWsdXc4j438cU

https://videos.trom.tf/w/tVV1uZFkYPYJGV37NTPvAE

https://videos.trom.tf/w/uZNAYArrAAa7VgThJ8tFsq

#science #educational #documentaries #activism #capitalism #environment #sustainability #NonProfit #volunteer

So I watched @Derek's video about #Linux becoming too complicated & limiting, and also saw @Brodie Robertson's response to that video. And this is what I have to say:

If you ask me, what I feel like Linux is kinda getting worse at is not #customizability, but its the consistency of that #customization, I'll explain what that means. At first this was not something I've payed much attention to before, but then I started helping out with this Linux distro called #Tromjaro and a lot of my work was done for fixing #consistency in theming. So what's the issue? By default in most Linux distros if you change the system theme to your liking then that theme will only be applied to around 50% of the apps, depending on your distro it could be either #GTK apps or #QT apps. So if you want to have consistent #theming across all apps then you'll have to install a new program (like qt5ct) and enable the same (or similar) theme there as well. Having to change your theme in multiple programs is bad #UX, and to make things worse most new users don't even know what QT or GTK is, so when half of their apps don't respect their chosen theme they'll think its an issue with the program itself and that its unsolvable, I know this because I've been there. Now I don't understand why most Linux distros don't try to fix this issue, because this isn't just about "customization" but its important for #accessibility too, people may enable a dark-theme because its easier on their eyes, or use a different font so they can read better. Anyway, the only mainstream distro I'm aware of that do try to sync themes between GTK & QT apps is Linux mint, they still don't sync the font or icon set but its still better than nothing. So coming back to TROMjaro, we wanted to properly fix this issue, and in the end we were able to sync GTK & QT #themes, system font, icon set (this one is important because if you use a dark-looking icon set on top of a dark theme then you can't see it properly), and we even fixed the theming for #flatpaks (the ones that do support external theming). So after all this I can say that libadwaita apps were one of the hardest to theme, these apps refuse to use the system #theme and instead show a light theme which sticks out like a sore thumb. Now there is an AUR package called libadwaita-without-adwaita-git which can be used to force the system theme on libadwaita apps, and this is what we currently use for TROMjaro. But this feels like more complicated than it should be, and as #libadwaita keeps evolving I don't know how long this AUR package will keep working.

Also there's one other thing I wanted to mention in response to your videos - customizability and user-friendliness don't have to be mutually exclusive. So despite doing all of these things to apply consistent theming across apps, we also added a custom theme-switcher app to TROMjaro that is easier to use for new users, it simply lets the user choose between a light and dark theme with various accent colors. Remember the issue with using dark-looking icon set on top of a dark theme? Well it appears like most people are not aware of the fact that they should also change their icon set when switching to a dark/light theme, so we made the theme-switcher handle this automatically for them. So if a user wants to have the ultimate customization power and apply some crazy looking themes then they can do so via XFCE's regular settings (and TROMjaro syncs the theme between GTK & QT), but for those who want a simpler user-friendly interface they can use the theme-switcher we made. Similarly we've made a layout-switcher app for showcasing different presets for XFCE that users can choose from, but if someone wants to make more customization on top of it then they can do so via regular XFCE options. So in some ways its possible to be user-friendly and customizable at the same time, at least to some extend.

I know I talked a lot about TROMjaro but honestly I'd be happy to see more Linux distros doing similar things, consistent theming for example would be a great UX for any #GUI distros in my opinion.

When I am trying to speak with people about how the trade based world inevitably turns any initially good idea to utter shit and nonsense, I usually use the music streaming services as an example.

Being a big fan of different kind of music and having it as a huge part in my life I remember how I always tried to find a better way to collect my favorite music together. It was a different challenge each time. I had all kinds of music players throughout the years. When I had a cassete player, I recorded my favorite tracks from different cassetes to make personal mixes and to have them in the order as I want them to be, took me hours. Then I have got my first MP3 player, it was on 128mb of memory and it allowed only 15-20 tracks to be uploaded (with better quality of course, with more compression it might be even more tracks), but it was such a blast. No more rewinding back and forth, tracks switching is instant, you can shuffle them, it was amazing. Obviously I had a bunch of folders with different track to reupload each time when needed.

After even more time when the Internet was developed enough in my country, the music streaming started to emerge. Just think about it: you have an access to millions of tracks, you can listen to them almost instanly, you can try some of them and add into favorites if you want, you can listen all sorts of recommendations to discover new music you may like, mix your own radio stations or playlists and share it with your friends. Just awesome. On the other side of things: the musicians themselves have a convinient platform to release their songs quickly and having a huge audience to be probably interested in listening to. This is what is the Internet for, this is the way it should be..

And then there is always the trade base world to interfere. Your carefully crafted music collection is actually not your own. Do you want to open your music player one day and realize that some of your songs are miraculously disappear because of the licensing problems? You got it! Do you want your player to remove all your downloaded music because you have not payed the subscription in time? You have it! Do you want your player not to be able to switch tracks, listen to some ads in between songs or other amazing "freemium" features? Be my guest. And of course there are the musicians which can be underpayed easily, because nobody has any idea how the musician can calculate his/her wage in this total mess of the license owning companies which are selling each other rights on the music and do not give a shit about any of it, except making more profit. At the end we have the annoyed music lovers who does not own any real access to the music they love and the utterly confused musicians who do not control their music anymore. What a waste!

Just listen to Benn who is an experienced musician and who, I think, provided a pretty damn good analysis of Spotify and similar services from the both sides of things: https://ytb.trom.tf/watch?v=gDfNRWsMRsU.

We need more trade-free goods and services, including the music share services. People who like making music should be connected with those who like listen to it, that is it, it is that simple. Just imagine if the musicians would not need to trade their asses to simply survive, but to easily share it with all others in the world with no cost, finding more people who can relate to their thoughts and feelings, instead of relying only on those who can afford to buy it. To make even more really honest art without being pushed to produce more and more to sell..

#trade-free #trom #music #streaming #spotify #applemusic

And yet another thing about capitalism.. I discovered it recently (but the news dates the beginning of this year), but I swear this is so fucked up I want to speal some water on it anyway. So here you go. Together with the very "futuristic" and "innovative" news that Bmw is going to sell you heating for your ass with a subscription, now Intel thought why tf we are the last in this race and let's sell some extra Ghz for your processor as microstransactions or possible a subscription plan in futher. What are the fucking clever lads.

This madness is possible because of the urge for profit is endless really. Just wait a bit while a few generations of humans will be changed and everyone totally forget that it was actually usual to buy things once back in the days, without a need to pay for it monthly afterwards to unlock some functions when you already payed for it. This is totally artificial constraints and absolute waist of resources. Just imagine an entire pack of engineers to design such a low level system for the sake of sucking more money from you. Unbelievable. Bet they patented this miraculous "innovation"..

Most disturbing here is that since Linux kernel major contributers are actually the big hardware vendors and one day (as usually happens with every good idea when trade is involved) they may overtake the community achievements to their profits with incorporating such invasive things into the kernel. This is why, in general I think, the FOSS is not possible in the union with monetisation, corporate approaches, the last eventually win and we should be aware of that.

Adam spittin' the truth! I really think he's on point here.

This is what have been really bugging me for a long time actually.. I always heard how those 0,000..01% humans are the best of all, how genius and hardworking they are and how everybody should dream about being them.. But more I looked at this, more it appeared as just a modern myth to me. Most of them were lucky enough to become super rich from a certain event + the PR whitewashing, a ton of it.. and Voila! The modern mythical heros have just been born: so modest, so genius.. Then media and politicians keep speading this thought about having business men and big businesses actually make the lives of all in a society better. Yeah, say that to those people who got fired recently or lost their money believing in bullshit crypto or NFT scam.

To make human lives better we have at least to try to start fulfilling the vital human needs in a trade-free way: shelter, food, water, medicine, transport, etc. and for EVERYONE around the world. Otherwise, all we do is allowing to have great, unbelievable lives only to a lucky few.

#trom #trade-free

https://ytb.trom.tf/watch?v=oVj4kZF-Fgk

Our Planet is one hell of a prison.