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 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 github.com/friendica/friendica…

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! 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 youtu.be/8YSqwLK8fsY - and I'll leave you with this...insane...

Am excited about the motorhome life :D - I was dreaming about it since forever and now there are some chances we may be able to do this by the end of this year. To basically move into a motorhome full time.

It excites me because there are 2 things that I love to do: 1. to work on these online projects like TROM and overall the computer world. I love it, it is my universe :). And 2. I love to see new places. Nature specifically. It feels like you live longer if you do that I think.

So if I can combine the two....I would be the happiest. For that a motorhome would be perfect. Go with your home, slowly, see new places and relax, but also have the home with you to work on your stuff.

Am so excited I could not sleep these past weeks very well, because I have too many thoughts about it.

This is one that I like:

Small, 5 to 5.5m long. Consumes less fuel, and yeah is oldish but we cannot afford new one and I try to not buy new stuff anyway. The bed on top is huge, for 2 people, as big as the one we have now. And with the bed on top you have more space inside. So I can work on TROM ;). Make a little office.

I was surprised to calculate how much would cost us to live (per month) in a motorhome, since that would be less than what we pay now in a shared house with my parents. But anyway, I am researching more and try to tame my enthusiasm. When we will do this I'd like to make videos for my personal Peertube channel to share our experience, expenses, and all that. You can subscribe/follow here videos.trom.tf/c/tiotrom/video… tiotrom@videos.trom.tf

But yah....I hope this dream of mine will become reality and we will have our TROMhome that we will also use to meet with people, do TROM screenings, events, and more. :)

This year is going to be interesting for me :). But first I need to take that damn driving exam.