TROM II: A Message to the Aliens Year: 2023 / Duration: 4 parts, 5 hours We live in a world where everyone is busy, everyone is consumed, everyone seems confused. Money, social credits, ads, data collection, prices and billionaires.
We have changed the way we deal with the 200 FOR TROM campaign in terms of donations. Let me explain.
Ideally we wanted to have a simple donation campaign where people can only contribute 5 Euros a month - no more, no less. However pretty much no Wordpress plugin is designed for this, since they are all geared towards selling products or creating campaigns where people can donate any amount. But I wanted to try something new by limiting the amount of money that people can donate monthly. I want to distribute the burden we put on individuals, but also to limit the growth of TROM, as a project, to a manageable "height".
The plugin we were using was not reliable at all and I even had to pay for it (which is ironic since we do not get enough financial support from the campaign itself). Because it is important to accept a wide variety of payment options, and "cards plus Paypal" are the most used worldwide, this plugin tried to combine Stripe (cards) with Paypal
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Hey people,
We have changed the way we deal with the 200 FOR TROM campaign in terms of donations. Let me explain.
Ideally we wanted to have a simple donation campaign where people can only contribute 5 Euros a month - no more, no less. However pretty much no Wordpress plugin is designed for this, since they are all geared towards selling products or creating campaigns where people can donate any amount. But I wanted to try something new by limiting the amount of money that people can donate monthly. I want to distribute the burden we put on individuals, but also to limit the growth of TROM, as a project, to a manageable "height".
The plugin we were using was not reliable at all and I even had to pay for it (which is ironic since we do not get enough financial support from the campaign itself). Because it is important to accept a wide variety of payment options, and "cards plus Paypal" are the most used worldwide, this plugin tried to combine Stripe (cards) with Paypal into one single campaign. But the plugin stopped working with Paypal and then could not communicate with Stripe anymore, so when a donation was canceled the plugin had no idea.
In short, we could not count how many people are still actively subscribed to the campaign via this plugin, so I ended up having to check in TROM's Stripe and Paypal accounts to see how many are subscribed...and then manually add that number to our donation page. On top of that I cannot pay for the plugin's subscription and therefore I cannot receive updates - and having an outdated plugin that deals with payments is not a good idea.
OK.
These being said it is time to give up on this plugin and rely directly on Stripe and Paypal. If anyone wants to support us they will be redirected to any of these websites where they can complete the payment and manage their subscriptions via them. It is the safest, easiest, and direct way of doing this. If the Stripe integration with Paypal will be enabled in the following days then perhaps we will only use Stripe which can process pretty much any kind of payment, including Paypal.
I hate dealing with these things, trust me.
What will happen to your current subscription?
If you want to cancel it, please contact us or reply to this email. If you want to change the payment method then it is better to ask us to cancel your subscription and then you can do it again. After that you can manage it via Stripe/Paypal. It is simple.
What about the wall of donors?
I would really love to have a "wall of donors", a list of people who are actively supporting this campaign...maybe this is a nice way of thanking them publicly. But right now I do not know how to do that since we use both Stripe and Paypal, and some people do not want their names to be displayed publicly. If Stripe enables Paypal as a payment option then maybe I can do something about this. Sorry! But also...this is not a fashion show and we all understand that. We need some financial support to maintain our projects that are about serious global problems and ways to think differently about "fixing" them. TROM is not a project that tries to blend into this system and find financial support to be "sustainable" in that sense - it is a way to scream and harness the anger towards something positive/educational/informative and helpful. And for that we simply need some financial help.
Lastly.
A big thank you to Marcel who became the 80st donor for our campaign while I was writing this message. And I appreciate all of you very much! We are almost half way there, and that gives me some hope. We have a lot of plans for TROM, so let's see how things will evolve. We will keep you posted.
Movies/Music/Books are not just that. Often times they are a marketing tool and many people may be clueless about the fact that they insert product placements everywhere.
TROM II: A Message to the Aliens Year: 2023 / Duration: 4 parts, 5 hours We live in a world where everyone is busy, everyone is consumed, everyone seems confused. Money, social credits, ads, data collection, prices and billionaires.
TROM II: A Message to the Aliens Year: 2023 / Duration: 4 parts, 5 hours We live in a world where everyone is busy, everyone is consumed, everyone seems confused. Money, social credits, ads, data collection, prices and billionaires.
When @Georgi shared a video from our documentary on Facebook and wanted to tag @Be Brave To Act Facebook page, she had no option but had it appeared as if this was a "paid partnership" with @Dima 's page. haha. Because as I said before, Facebook is not a "social network" it is an ad platform, so they naturally see these "taggings" between pages as partnerships.
TROM II: A Message to the Aliens Year: 2023 / Duration: 4 parts, 5 hours We live in a world where everyone is busy, everyone is consumed, everyone seems confused. Money, social credits, ads, data collection, prices and billionaires.
I will delay with the video series I wanted to make for TROM. I am working for a WebApe project/website, so it is what it is. If I had the minimum support that I need (see here tromsite.com/donate/ ) then I would focus 100% on TROM.
But the video series will come.... ;). That I know for sure!
A revealing and moving portrait of lives compromised by war, filmed exclusively by Ukrainian soldiers with extraordinary access to a tightly controlled front line.
A reminder that our tromsite.com domain is blocked by Google and thus we cannot send any emails form our tromsite.com domain to any Gmail accounts... We have tried to fix this but so far no luck.
Google is an ad company so better not use Gmail in the first place.
Finally Sasha got her residency approved here in Spain after 4-5 years of us trying, spending money, being stressed. After being rejected once because we did not have enough money as a family - imagine that! That was the actual reason.
But now that I had a "job" they made us wait 7 months from the moment we applied, and 2 complaints later from the lawyer about why they do not approve it, it finally got approved. And the reason was ONLY because I was a "trader" in this bullshit trade society.
How terrible that we treat people like tools. The value is in what and how much you can trade. Does not matter if you are a good human being. Smart? Doesn't matter. Calm and helpful? Nope. Scientifically minded? Nah.
I spent my life doing free things for others, never made a profit, but this has 0 value in this society.
Anyway, fuck you to those who support a world where we are divided into tribes and languages, and treating people like sole traders/marketers and not humans. We have global problems but so many still want to have their own "separate" tribe and care only
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Finally Sasha got her residency approved here in Spain after 4-5 years of us trying, spending money, being stressed. After being rejected once because we did not have enough money as a family - imagine that! That was the actual reason.
But now that I had a "job" they made us wait 7 months from the moment we applied, and 2 complaints later from the lawyer about why they do not approve it, it finally got approved. And the reason was ONLY because I was a "trader" in this bullshit trade society.
How terrible that we treat people like tools. The value is in what and how much you can trade. Does not matter if you are a good human being. Smart? Doesn't matter. Calm and helpful? Nope. Scientifically minded? Nah.
I spent my life doing free things for others, never made a profit, but this has 0 value in this society.
Anyway, fuck you to those who support a world where we are divided into tribes and languages, and treating people like sole traders/marketers and not humans. We have global problems but so many still want to have their own "separate" tribe and care only about that. Fuck your flag, your language, your culture. Fuck nationalism. A primitive disease.
We are all humans with a 4 billion years long history, a mindblowing one. Single cells becoming what we are today. The way we are connected to each other, scientifically, dwarfs any bullshit man-made story about their own tribe. We have lego-brick-like structures we call the DNA that encode all of what we are. And all of what other creatures are, and how we are all connected.
We live on a giant sphere with a thin layer of atmosphere protecting us from the infinite universe out there.
So fuck you if you think your nationalism is so important, and your borders and stupid nonsensical laws.
I had to let this out because it is outrageous how primitive this society is.
Yea, it's fucking nonsense that they treated you both like that and I agree 100% about "nation" phenomena and I would even add how actually trade plays a major role in forming those tribes and nationalism in order to protect the historical, territorial and location advantages for milking the benefits and profits out of the things in possession and participating in global trading. If you think about it, even some of those entire tribes are nothing for the world, because from that perspective they have no "value", like we see by all what happens in Gaza nowadays. Imagine that. It's crazy how outdated and delusional our civilization's perspectives on what is Humanity real history and advantages..
In any way, as someone who has to pass through the same process every two years, even though I'm a way more "decent trader" from their perspective and it was way easier for me to get those papers, I congrats you both @Sasha @Tio. I hope it will really make your life at least a bit easier from now on 🙏
@Tio and @Roma you make such good points, I love you both and am so happy to know you guys, real humans- smart ones 🙂 It is unbelievable really, that you can't be together with your "wife" if you're just a good human and you do things to help others without asking for anything in return. Fucking insane. And true that borders and nationalism just benefit a few powerful players at the top, and the rest are their pawns without even knowing it..
Indeed @Sasha ! Agree about the power-players at the top and that no people should be treated like you were, especially such wondeful and caring Humans like you both are ☺️ Much love back! ❤️
Yes 100% @Roma ! Also politicians using this "nationalism" to et more votes, bcs that makes them more money if elected, and so forth.... ways important to understand where these issues arise from.
Oh, that's so true @Tio ! That's all politics are about - money.. Even the fact that you have no access to the election process and thus to the decision making without a huge amount of money, says it all about the systems we have.. it's a game for big daddies 😑
I love how you mention the actual scientific history of human beings! Countries and borders are man-made fiction/ideas that we choose to believe in, and they keep changing from time to time - there is a stark difference between that and the actual scientific reality of our world. Science is often a very humbling experience I feel like, think of the famous pale blue dot image and how carl sagan described it......
BTW, I'm glad to hear @bigworldsmallsasha is finally free to stay there in Spain, that must've been a huge relief after having to go through this much trouble.
"It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known." C.S.
Here's @Dima story of how he was influenced by this society of trade. How instead of him focusing on his music, he had to start and focus on getting more views, to trade those views for money/stuff.
Thank you Nikhil for becoming the 79th supporter for our 200 for TROM campaign! tromsite.com/donate/ - we need 120 more people to donate 5 euros a month to support TROM forever :). #tromlive
One little notice: it was quite a puzzle for me to find a PDF version to get into. I didn't think that the picture is actually a clickable e-book! :D Probably there should be an additional button like "Read PDF book" as the last one in the buttons row.
It was puzzling because some people are offering their books for a donation/free fee, like you can enter "0" on a platform and get access to a book - so I thought that a BuyMeACoffee had that option... xD Confusing a bit.
DLed on my reader, will share my review after a read, if will still be alive xD
The Truth vs. Alex Jones is a 2024 American documentary film, directed and produced by Dan Reed. It follows families of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, taking radio show host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to court for spreading lies about the shooting.
The Truth vs. Alex Jones is a 2024 American documentary film, directed and produced by Dan Reed. It follows families of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, taking radio show host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to court for sprea…
Such a shame the total solar eclipse was not visible in Europe...but well you can see some super amazing photos on tromnews.com/photos/ :) - here is my favorite:
I love our TROMnews website...I visit it every single day.
Executive director of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) USA Avril Benoit joined "Face the Nation" on Sunday, April 7, 2024, to discuss the impact of the war in Gaza on civilians and aid workers.
One is a billionaire who is selling all of his books, the other one is a quite-broke human who has the courage and decency to provide her book online for free. Trade-Free. No ads, no data collection, no subscribe-here-to-read bullshit.
That's the world in which we live. The ones who make a fortune are trained and incentivized to not even share their "must read" books for free, despite having so much wealth.
Oh look, Bill Gates released a book about "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster"! It must be important.... so it is worth 18$ to read.
Grab @Sasha 's book from here bigworldsmallsasha.com/book/ - she also talks a lot about Climate Change, solutions, and a new kind of worldview.
Presumably the bit on "the breakthroughs we need" take a detailed look at removing the inherent injustice of capitalism, and removing the power, excess and wealth of billionaires?
Information coming from someone who is working to get it to you, is very different information than that coming from someone who limits supply in order to maintain the market for it. This is why our community radio station does not purchase programming, if it can avoid doing so. We like to get our information from non-commercial sources. The world of commercial interest has brought us to global crisis. The interests of humanity must lead us out of it. kpip-lp.org/weekly_schedule.ht…
Indeed....Gates really needs to feed his family from the sales of that book....
As for those who depend on book sales, at least they should be honest and admit that it is unfortunate they have to sell their books in a world where digital copies come at almost 0 cost in terms of resources. At least Sasha is also putting it for free online.
You can pay for the paperback copy but it's optional, or support her via a donation if you want. Putting it online for free allows people from poor parts of the world to access the book's contents without having to pay for it.
> For every physical book that I sell for $18, I’ll get a cut of about $3 to $4 (sometimes less), so if you don’t care to have a physical copy but you would still like to support me, even a $3 donation is very much appreciated.
You can go to bigworldsmallsasha.com/book to get the book. Clicking on the book's image will open up the free online version, but you can also pay for the physical copy if you want.
She won't like most authors, musicians, and artists won't. It is a messed-up society and that's where we should look if we are to blame anything. It should not be that we are all like rats in a cage competing for survival, in a society where we have mountains of waste and an abundance of stuff.
We should provide for all with at least the basic needs, this way when one writes a book they can simply share it online at very little cost in terms of resources/energy and not worry about surviving in this trade society,
The thing is that even if I created a barrier and prevented those who couldn't buy a book from reading it, I'm sure that I still would barely make any money. Unfortunately that's the case for most writers, they may work on a book for years and years, but the only ones who will profit from it are publishing companies and distributors. Writers only get a small percentage 😔 At least now I can feel good about sharing my book. I believe that if you think something is important, you should want to share it, not only sell it.
See also: all the "real" journalist publications having all their content hidden behind paywalls, so only the privileged few can financially afford to stay informed by reputable sources while the rest of us have to get by on headlines cherry picked and placed on Facebook memes 🙃
Dima
in reply to Tio • • •Tio
in reply to Dima • •like this
Rokosun and Roma like this.