Yeah I see no problem with this....

If the "authorities" are worried that children watch too much porn and these kids then try to porn-themselves-out for pleasure, causing issues since they don't understand that most porn is fake, then for sure forcing people to verify their age when accessing some porn websites will make these kids think twice before accessing any of the millions of worldwide porn websites....

How about you make the life of kids, and people overall, more relaxing? How about you don't force the kids to go to school and parents to go to work, just to survive? Maybe if people were to be more "free" and have time to learn about the world, to have fun, to establish relationships and not worry about wtf they are going to eat tomorrow, maybe we will have saner individuals, ha?!

When the human being is busy 8 hours a day, or more, 5 days a week, or more, with mandatory tasks (school/job), in a society based on trade (consumption), then the easiest and most familiar way to get some "fun" are shallow, fast things. Fast food, fast fashion, fastly-made and dumbed-down media, fast sexual pleasure (watch some porn), and so forth. No time for anything meaningful.

#porn #spain #privacy #internet #TradeRuinsEverything

I would like to recommend this crazy book we made for TROM in 2016 about Language https://www.tromsite.com/books/#flipbook-language - looking through it I am mind blown how much detail we put into it. And how important this book is.

I don't know if I can outdo my past self in terms of sheer amount of work put into these books...I am scared to look at them and realize how much effort was put into writing, sourcing, proofreading, and designing.

It took us around half a year or more to finish this book. Maybe a year I don't remember...

I have other 3 books in the works for the past 2 or so years and am wondering if I am still able to pull this off....

I wanted to start a video series, and perhaps I still want to do that. But writing books feels more natural to me and the end result is much more important in my view. Like this book about Language is for me lifechanging in regards to this subject, I changed the way I see "language" forever while writing it. And hopefully would have the same impact on those reading it. But if I were to make a video about it....that would be a massive course, not a video. And would require a lot of "performing" and video editing. Presenting, recording, video editing...insanity.

So yah am wondering how to "move forward"....write books? Try making videos?

Currently I am writing about culture. A book/video titled "Culture Cancer". Let's see where it goes....

I did not forget that I have started a book about The Internet and one about Human Behavior.

I feel good going deep into these topics....keeps me sane and more educated. And I like it.

What I don't like, of course, is the fact that I don't find a place for me in this society and I can't really afford to spend many many months, make a great book, then put it for free, and expect to also survive in this bullshit society. That I am struggling with. I've always had. Says all I have to know about how fucked up this society is.

But anyway, I have survived while TROMing for the past 14 or so years, I will probably survive a few more years :).

#language #culture #society

Unfortunately I may not be able to start any new video series for TROM anytime soon, due to the circumstances I am in. I have tried but it is kinda impossible.

Driving school madness.

For one I am too busy with the insane driving school - here in Spain it takes ages to do it and they are so draconian when it comes to these exams. You have to drive so perfect and the vast majority will fail the exam the first time. Funny part is NO ONE drives like that here or anywhere else in the world. And everyone knows that, but these people have jobs so they continue to teach you like this....as usual on this planet. Nothing surprising.

My instructor wants me to do more and more lessons, which means more time and money wasted. If she "thinks I am ready" for the exam, I will do it in July (next month). If not I'll have to wait till September....and based on statistics I am more likely to fail it the first time. So I'll probably have to wait a few more weeks after the first exam to try again.

This is so absurd it is hard to imagine how fucked up it is. If I knew I would have gone to Romania and get the driving license there in less than 2 months. Mind you I have started the driving school in Spain in December last year. Already some 7 months in...nuts!

I will make an article/video about the entire experience because there is a lot to learn from it. In a TROM-sense.

Summer madness

I live in a very small town that is 100% touristic. 3-4 months a year, from June/July to September tens of thousands of people come here and everything is a fucking mess. Noise, everything busy and kinda dirty, insanity. My family is working all day, they are stressed, they come and go, it is a terrible environment to be able to do anything creative. Add into the mix the extreme temperatures that are coming with the tourists, and it is really impossible to do anything like a video series.

For a video series I would have to first be motivated and have the space to "think" and come up with ideas. Write the scripts, fact check, etc.. Then to record - and when can I? I do not have the space/env to do that. And then to edit....Every summer is like that here, and every time I felt quite lethargic because of it.

Even while I write this article I have to put my headphones on with a white noise to be able to focus because I am sick to hear the noise coming from outside or inside the house. Every night I also put my speakers at maximum volume with an artificial thunderstorm, as loud as I can, to "cancel" the noise that comes from everyone getting up in the morning getting ready to work.

Else I could not sleep. I've been doing this for years now. Luckily it works. But this is not an environment that can allow me to do anything creative at all. I managed to do it somehow over the years but am too tired now....something needs to change, and it will!

Make money, buy a motorhome.

We will buy a small motorhome somewhere at the end of this year or beginning of the next. We want to live in it full time. One like the one in the photo.

But this puts a pressure on us to make more money now. Sasha is working a lot as a divemaster and I honestly do not do much. That makes me quite frustrated and depressed. I want to help in that regards but I was always terrible at making money. I can write books, make documentaries, and a lot of projects, but I am unable to make money.

I have tried with Webape.site but I cannot get any new "customer" who wants a website....

Unfortunately the donations I get from TROM are not enough at all to support my work. You know if the 200 for TROM campaign was successful and I knew we have enough money to survive, I could find a way to start a new video series for TROM and do more.

Unfortunately we are barely 40% funded. This is a constant struggle and a motivation killer for me after so many years of doing what am doing.

Motivation.

Speaking of getting support, it has become more and more difficult for me to keep myself motivated in this situation especially when you see that you can't even get 200 people to support all of our projects with the bare minimum of contribution. It means whatever I do for TROM does not reach that many people. And that is true. So without a proper support how can I push it forward? Projects like TROM are quite impossible to survive in this society....

I've been active since 2007, that's some 17 years. It is tough. But I am not giving up.

The best anyone can do now to help the project is to subscribe to our 200 for TROM campaign. 5 Euros a month, 200 people, make it sustainable. Unfortunately we need money else idk how I can work full time for TROM and keep this project relevant and alive.

Future?

I've said for months now that this year will be a bit insane for us. We need to move and do a lot of changes to our lives, make money, put up with a lot of stress and so forth.

The plan is this: suffer for the next few months and make money as much as we can. I have started to also sell some of our stuff that we do not need. And after the driving bullshit is done probably I'll work some days in cleaning. I will also try to get myself motivated enough to perhaps write some articles for TROM since that can be easier than making videos. I just have to find some quiet place/time (say from 00:00 to 06:00 in the night when everyone is asleep) and write/do research. Maybe later I can transform them into videos.

I will also try to film some stuff with the tourism here and other things "incognito" to then later on make some videos about.

In October we have to plan and see what money we have. We will have to bring my parents to Romania in November, so we will drive their car from here with their stuff since they move back for good. They will retire. We will stay a little bit in Romania to try and solve some more paperwork bullshit if we can - imagine this: Sasha has a driving license from USA, but she is only allowed to drive in Spain for 6 months with it. After that she needs to change it into a Spanish driving license. Easy? NO! She would have to go through the same bullshit driving school and exam like I am now....imagine that shit! She already knows how to drive but she will be forced to do again the theoretical and practical exam and take "driving lessons".

This world is such a load of nonsense it is not even funny anymore.

So we may try to see if we can exchange her driving license into a Romanian one, then exchange it for a Spanish one without doing the exam.

Hey Spain are you fucking mental?!

Anyway. We hope the madness will be over at the end of November. We will spend no more than a month in Romania (I hope). Then come back to Spain to buy a motorhome. Move into the motorhome and go fuckin away from the stupid parts of the world as much as we can.

We won't have enough money to buy the motorhome + pay the monthly expenses.....so we will also make a campaign if anyone can help out considering all I am doing for TROM is free and the motorhome is a house for me as well, of course, so that's a help for TROM basically. We will make the campaign towards the end of the year. We have the vast majority of the money we need to buy the motorhome already, but what do we do after we buy it when the only monthly support i get now is around 3-400 Euros?!

So it is going to be a bit rough for us to do the move.

The motorhome life.

Hopefully at the beginning of the next year we will be in our motorhome (TROMhome) and start a completely new life. We will make videos about our "adventures" and how it is to live in such a tiny mobile space with limited resources. Perhaps it is interesting for some. I want to put a big TROMhome logo on the motorhome, and to eventually go meet with interesting communities or projects and make videos about them.

In parallel I will keep our projects alive and relevant and I still hope to start a new video series whenever I can.

Ideally we would be able to travel and meet interesting projects and people and make videos about all of it, and also keep TROM relevant and alive and create new content. Meet our TROM friends, take them for a week or so with us, and try to live a very minimalistic life, enjoy it, and see where it goes.

Final thoughts.

I am terribly eager to make new content for TROM. I have a ton of ideas and notes. I feel quite depressed and frustrated to not be able to do that. But it is what it is. If it wasn't such a struggle to live in this society, perhaps I'd be wrong about this society when I describe the awfulness of it through our TROM materials. That's the paradox.

Maybe a miracle will happen and I would somehow start the video series soon, but I can't see that to be very likely. It is a terrible situation to want for the time to pass by faster, considering that our life is so short, but that's how I feel now: I want for these next months to be over! I want to see Sasha free and focusing on real important stuff not be trapped working 10-11 hours a day. I want us to not live in the same place anymore and be on our own. I want to start a video series that I can keep producing for the many years to come. I want us to keep on fighting but also have a relaxing life. And it is very doable!

This is a cake my family bought for my "birthday" recently haha. Me and Sasha, and TROMhome :). We will make this happen ;)

That's all for now :)

This month a bunch of "trom" people visited us and we had such a wonderful time together.

We had an Amber party looking through the microscopes at 40 million years old creatures...

Something most people in this world probably consider as boring and "lame". But if you understand the mind-blowing reality we live in, then you would understand why an amber party is a super fun and wonderful party :).

We also looked at the Moon through the telescope...

And we enjoyed the nature around, we had interesting discussions and a lot of fun.

I always hated to meet with "friends" because that usually meant lets get drunk or talk about boring shit, or brag about the stuff you have and all that. Or just eat and do nothing. Hated it. But now with these people I LOVE it. It feels natural and sane, and so much fun. And relaxing!

These are wonderful people who care about this world and have very interesting minds. And there are so many more like them. And I want to "harness" them all haha. We will organize a yearly event for sure and do more than just have a fun meetup. We will have fun but also do some important things for TROM and in general for pushing ahead with TROM-like ideas.

I am so happy that I have these creatures as my friends :)

This is the coolest thing on Earth! -- https://videos.trom.tf/w/oQ9amzYkm8FgT6Jzum9yWA (recorded by me 10 minutes ago)

Amber! Or stuff that the trees leak, then insects get trapped inside, then somehow it becomes super hard and survives for millions of years. It becomes transparent (lots of it) and we can look inside and see these creatures that lived millions of years ago and they look the exact same as they did when they got trapped.... Can't believe this "thing" exists on Earth!

My friend Agata game me a BAG full of amber. Her father was a scientist and amber was one of his main focus. He passed away and Agata gave a lot of his collection to museums but kept some.

Now it was the best time to buy a microscope! I spent only 50 euros on this one and it was well worth the money:

I spent ours tonight looking at every one of them and I can't stop it haha.

I HAVE to start the video series that I keep on talking about! We need not only to inform people about our global issues (cough trade!) but also inspire people to look at the important stuff. To know that the natural world is billions of times more fascinating and complex than any bullshit they are mesmerized to buy due to the aggressive marketing campaigns that happen everywhere.

We need to make this consumption craze obsolete. And reality (science/nature) is by far the best substitute. Often free, mindblowing, and more importantly real!

I wish i would start to make the video series now! But mentally can't. I need to adjust my enthusiasm and think about money/trade, at least partially. I will do it tho!

Anyway, amber deserves a video. Amber is fabulous. So precious, but not in terms of money, in terms of real value: to see how the past was. To learn about the tiny creatures and other things. To, in the end, know more about who we are.

#amber nature #microscope #insects

This is @Sasha and her most valuable project to date:

A book. But a book is not simply a lot of words or a pile of paper. It is memories, emotions, worldviews, and a lot of work to put them all together. Her book is a story that spans over 15 years. But these years are hardly what most people experience on this planet.

She was born in Russia but at age 8 had to move to the United States and deal with a new world. New language, new culture, new people; her mom, her bother, and some pets. Her father went back to Russia, and that affected her a lot.

A mountain of changes to absorb as a kid which led her to a world of drugs and anger.

She details these struggles which at times feel like hard to believe stories - a 17 year old girl selling drugs in New York, crazy mushroom trips and adventurous thefts.

But she managed to pull herself together and change her life for the better. She was not impressed by the imaginary borders humans create and call countries, so she went on flying like a free bird :). From Canada to Mexico, Australia to Europe, Russia to Thailand. 15 years of adventures with almost no money. Because money won't stop Small Sasha :).

A way to discover the world and yourself.

When you get to experience so many cultures and places, you can understand much better what humans are, and what makes them who they are.

The places she saw and the people she met are extraordinarily described in the book, in a way that you feel like you are there. No photos needed. You'll laugh, wonder, or feel uncomfortable reading some of her uncensored experiences.

It is a galaxy of stories that she had to put together using notes from the past, photos, and her own memories stored in the mushy pile of cells we call the brain.

She managed to compile this massive story in a way that it is super fun to follow, but also to get a feeling of how she grew a mind in all of these years.

That mental growth and her experiences, made her realize how fucked up this society is and how much we are destroying this environment and the creatures in it.

She started to volunteer for some organizations over the years, eventually getting closer to the project I made, TROM. And so here we are, a book later, spending our lives together.

I cannot describe how wonderful this book is, how emotional and funny. So much fun, but also a lot of reality check for many people who are going to have their values challenged.

She crafted this book so much, that at times you feel like Carl Sagan, David Attenborough and George Carlin contributed to the book :).

A wonderful read! A massive CONGRATULATIONS to Sasha for the immense work she put into this. I know too well how for the past 4 years she worked so much on this book that it almost put our relationship under a big question mark. I never saw anyone putting so much effort into anything. It was too intense!

But now it is OVER. Finally! I thought I will never see this happen. Wow!

After so many years of work, and almost no money, she is putting the book for free on her website https://www.bigworldsmallsasha.com/ in digital format, despite us not having much money to make a life for ourselves on this planet. But of course, if you want to support her (us) you can buy the physical copy too. Or donate if you can.

I helped design the entire cover and I am quite proud of it :).

Go read it! I know I will read it again. This time the physical copy, in a hammock somewhere in nature.

Sasha you fucking did ti!

PS: The book was made with trade-free software. LibreOffice, Krita, Inkscape.

#nature #traveling #society #capitalism #trade #book #bookrelease #foss

Our Friendica was never as fast and awesome as it is now :D - the introduction of Channels may be overwhelming at first, but can be super awesome.

Listen.

Go to Settings - Display and then open Timelines:

Now you can enable different channels and make them available under the top bar.

For example I have enabled:

Latest Posts (so to see in chronological order the posts from the people I follow).
Personal for the posts I am part of - either commented or posted these.
Starred - those that I added to my favorites.
Followers - since at times I want to see what the people following me post, in case I want to follow back some that I have not. I am thinking if some are following me, maybe we have common interests.
Images/Videos - as an easy way to only sort out the posts that contain either.
Lastly Global - to see what's happening in the fediverse.

I can switch between these with ease and it is so fast. I love it!

And in Settings - Channels you can even create your own channel with your own rules.

Friendica is awesome!

I do think that they need to declutter it a bit and I opened an issue about that https://github.com/friendica/friendica/issues/14031

Lastly, our Friendica now looks wesome on mobile too. You can easily make an webapp out of it and use it on mobile.

Happy!

#foss #friendica #fediverse #fedi opensource #tromstuff

Here's an example of what I said about the American way of motorhoming.

At times I search for videos about motorhomes, since we want to move into one, because I want to know about how much solar we may need, how to do some stuff, maintain, etc.. And I search in English despite being in Europe, since that's the relevant language I know despite almost no EU country officially speaking English. Anyway, so I want to see info about motorhomes in Europe. But searching in English it will find mostly videos from USA about motorhomes....and that's a different world...

This video I saw recently - Full-Time Freedom in a MINI Class A RV – A/C AND HEAT with 2000W of SOLAR! https://youtu.be/8YSqwLK8fsY

This is a MINI motorhome hahaha. Mini in American terms means 8 meters long. We were looking at buying a medium size motorhome in EU no longer than 6 meters. 8 meters is HUGE. And this one even has "expandable" walls, or whatever you call those:

On top of this it has 2000W of solar panels....my lord! I was thinking we may need a max of 400W for 2 people, and this woman has 2000 for 1 person. And she has around 6000Wh of battery storage, that's some 20 times more than what we probably would need...

She was even like "it is a baby motorhome...you can even park it in normal parking spots"....I guess so in America...

And at the end of the video she's like "oh yeah and I'm also towing a 4x4 pickup truck"...

hahahaha

My god...if that's living "small", then....

She even has a HUGE tent that she puts up while camping haha.

If you put that setup, a 8m motorhome plus towing that huge car in Europe, on any road, you'll probably get stuck. Americans live the big life. Big cars, big motorhomes, big fridges and homes. Big people. Statistically it's true.

Even if I had a ton of money I would never go for this lifestyle. We love a small motorhome, a few things, and the ability to feel free-er.

The consumerism world creates wasteful people who are too attached to their stuff. Consume too much, waste too much. Enjoy too little I feel like...

Look at this monstrosity https://youtu.be/8YSqwLK8fsY - and I'll leave you with this...insane...