I remember in 2013 when I started to work with TVP and we released TVP Magazine. It felt like "we are doing it". That's it. People are paying attention. I got enough financial support to work for a few years and I was on fire. I produced lots of content and was so engaged. Then TVP died for me, and many others. That's because the closer I got to them, the more I realized it had no substance. Unfortunately. The ideas of Fresco were and are still quite important and inspirational. But they are just that, inspirational. And the organization was ran like a company plus they didn't do much anyway.

But well, I feel nostalgic at times because of that feeling of thinking that this is big. Important. Something will happen.

Since I moved away from TVP in 2016 I tried to bring that feeling back to TROM. But not artificially. It just so happened that I discovered that the entire structure of our society is based on trade, and this simple explanation provides us with a fantastic tool to try and change the society. Trade-Free.org was born. A few people got very excited. We met in 2019. We had plans. It died.

But not for me and a handful few. Unlike in the case of TVP, who was a cloud and the closer you got the more you realized it had no shape, our new approach was like a drop of water. From distance you may not see it, but the closer you got to it the more you realized that it had a shape, a structure, a form. TROM has substance and I dare anyone to challenge it :).

My excitement got even higher, but in different ways. I realized the race is long. And it takes time to get the idea behind TROM. TVP looked a lot more attractive but it was deceiving. TROM is the opposite in all regards.

I still love the idea of TVP/Jacque. But as inspirational. And I still feel sad that I do not see excitement in anyone really....but the TROM II documentary has some potential to bring some of that back. And as long as I am alive and have some money/support, I can keep on pushing things. After TROM II will be released I have a lot of plans, I will focus a lot on more content, videos, books, discussions and debates.

It is a long journey folks. And this society is not our friend, quite the opposite. I am trying to keep myself calm and sane. We have a lot to do. And I don't care if I am to do this alone. I probably will, one way or another. But likely there will be others too, pushing this further.

TROM II. Can't wait to release it. Whenever that will be.... #tromlive

Watch this documentary and the making off https://www.videoneat.com/documentaries/22725/out-of-the-cradle/ - to understand two things:

• In today's world human brains are completely wasted. In this case humans are paid to work on nonsense video games - stupid, simplistic, violent, non-creative - instead of using that brain power for doing interesting things.
• If humans could focus that "game" energy into creating fantastic CGI about real stuff, like past societies, past creatures, the natural history, then we would have amazing educational materials and a way for humans to experience and learn about things that were real, but are not anymore.

Such a waste to spend so much time and resources and skills to create stupid video games, enforcing the "video games culture". Enforcing actually a business. That's what happens when we live in a trade-based society. It is all about that trade.

Some humans sell idiotic video games and make money. Then they pay more slaves to work on their nonsense projects because these slaves need money. A way of pooping and eating your own shit for the sake of surviving.

#tromlive

These are the things that, to me, are the example of today's retardation-cool society:



The complete useless notch on phones, just to make it "cool". Makes 0 sense. Cuts off videos, limits the design screen, makes no difference for the scrolling morons anyway. This together with removing the physical and useful buttons and making phones edge-to-edge making it difficult to even use them properly. Just some Apple and other such companies' nonsense.

The tampon earbuds that Apple somehow made popular. Easy to lose, really bad microphone quality, batteries that degrade over time, costly as fuck. Charge them!

And of course, the vertical idiots who film vertically.

If I see someone with an edge-to-edge screen + a notch, having wireless tampons and filming vertically, I'll push them off a cliff. :)

Oh wait, all are like that. I'll just jump myself then. :))

But really, to me these are signals of today's stupidity. Trade made humans come up with all kinds of nonsense and expensive toys.

Ah, one more thing, the idiots that (maybe because of Zoom) enable that blur background or to change the background when they do videocalls, and it looks like shit. Their heads are cut off, and if you combine that with the shitty microphone quality of the tampons, it shows how technology has downgraded. See this, minute 5 on https://www.lx.com/entertainment/is-the-couch-surfing-revolution-still-alive/49918/

'nough said.

These days I kept an eye on the current war, from 4-5 sources. DW (germany), Aljazeera (qatar), BBC (uk), Rt.com (Russia Today), and TASS (tass.com - russian news agency). So 2 are from Europe, 1 from Asia, 2 from Russia.



I was curious to see how they report it and how the information is presented.

What I've seen:

Aljazeera, DW, and BBC (ADB) kinda present the same things, the same story line. BBC seems to be more jumpy with the facts, as in presenting more information that even they say could not be verified. More politicized I felt. Also they add a lot of opinions from their editors. You kinda sense it is "Let's beat Russia now! Fuck them.". But seem to try to also be balanced in regards to "he said that, she said that" sort of thing.

So ADB showcases a lot of the horror in Ukraine and how Russia is doing a lot of bad things. They show footage and photos from the conflict, with the victims, with the refugees, with the people sheltering.

The Russian Media (RM) doesn't even call it a war, and their main pages are quite voided of any photos or videos of the horror of the war. Almost as if those dead people, sheltered, the refugees are not even existent. You can clearly see a bias in this regards. Their websites are full of "diplomatic" photos with the politicians that discuss these events.

Here are the ADB front-pages, in order:




And RM:



Clearly ADB is like "WTF people are dying, Russia is at war, Europe is at war". While RM is like "Russia is doing a special intervention to free up Ukraine. Calm down." Although ADB may exaggerate things and make them too bloody explosive, and they are for sure biased too, RM is clearly biased and being a jerk for not highlighting the human suffering.

As for what they are saying, ADB tells us that Putin is a lunatic and has no reason to invade Ukraine or fear NATO. Putin may start a WW3. They do not tell me why he fears NATO or how we came to this point very much. They tell me that what Ukrainians say is probably true and that Ukrainians are heroes defending their land. It feels like a clear fight between the good (ukraine and the world) and the evil (putin and russia).



ADB tells me that Russia is full of lies and Putin is a dictator basically. They say RM is full of propaganda.



RM tells me that this is not a war, but a "special intervention" and that Russia only attacks the Ukrainian military and not civilians. RM tells me that there are Nazis in Ukraine, but ADB seem to not talk much about it. Is it true and to what extent? Who knows for sure, but RM sounds like some 1930s Germany Nazi propaganda in my head - the irony...

So overall RM tells me that Russia had no choice, it got scared of NATO and NATO broke its promises + NATO is a bad bad guy. Tells me the USA is a monster and a snake. Does not seem to at all criticize Putin and Russia's actions. They do however present criticism (as quotes) coming from some politicians and such. But not criticism from their editors. They say that the other media is full of propaganda and lies.

So that's what it is...a bunch of things.

ADB: NATO good, USA good, EU good, sanctions good. Russia and Putin bad. Putin crazy, a criminal. Russia needs to be destroyed via sanctions.

RM: NATO bad, USA bad, EU a puppet of those, sanctions don't matter much. Putin has reasonable motives to do the "special operation" and all is going to plan.

My thoughts?

Very likely RM is full of shit. They may post some truths about NATO and the USA, but to not report much on the war itself and not even call it a war? The dead? The refugees? The crisis? Unacceptable. Where are the horror photos of the injured and destruction? So fuck off RM. You are a prostitute.

ADB should also be a lot more balanced and less emotional. Aljazeera seems to be doing better. But they seem to not address much the reasons why the invasion has happened and make it seem like Ukraine and the people there are saints and heroes and woke up one day with Putin and his army in their country.



Overall it can become a confusing mess if you want to stay up to date with the current situation.

What I am sure of is that:

• Currently millions of people are suffering because of Russia's invasion. Some dead, some scared, some have no home, or food, and so forth. That's awful
• Media is biased but the level of it makes the big difference; picking your sides should be a variety of a few from different parts of the world. I still think RM is a lot more biased to the point of fully propaganda. But they do point towards some things that the others do not talk much about and are true: how USA invaded other countries under a false pretext and killed and destroyed a lot without being sanctioned and such; but I feel they use these as distractions from whatever Russia is doing.
• Speaking of that, Russia is doing awful things, but is nothing that unique; USA and EU tribes, and others, have done atrocities too in the past and all are snakes and charlatans.
• Ukraine is not a saint.
• Ukraine does not deserve to be destroyed.
• It is all politicized and tribes + politicians take advantage of this. USA is like "OMG Russia is doing war crimes!". Fuck off USA, you are still doing these and more. And Russia pointing to that....Fuck off Russia, don't divert the attention from the crimes you are doing!
• Lots of money are made by arms dealers nowadays.
• Ordinary people who did not start this or fuel this, are going to suffer more than the ones who started and fuel this conflict.

What else? I don't know...but these are my thoughts for now.



We are thinking to do a TROMcast and invite some people from Russia and Ukraine to discuss the situation. Will see....

#tromlive

What are you doin' gnome!?

So one super cool thing about Linux is that you can make your system look like one thing. Have your favorite theme applied to the entire system. Ofc this should be a normal thing, not a Linux specific thing. It is an awesome way to make an operating system fun, but also functional.

Look at our new TROMjaro that we will release soon with a different theme that is more modern:



These are all different kinds of apps, and yet they all look the same. You know where the window buttons are and what they are (minimize, maximize, close). It is beautiful. I can change it to a light theme with two clicks:



We made sure that TROMjaro looks great and uniform with most apps.

And now here's the white sheep:



It does not respect the theme at all. It only has 1 button (close) and on the right side. If my theme has buttons on the left side, the white sheep don't care. This is the Touche app we use to setup the touchpad and touchscreen gestures, and recently they moved to the libadwaita library. This is something pushed by Gnome that says it will make the app developers' life easier in terms of creating apps for gnome. But that means app developers are enforcing 2 themes for all such apps. Light and Dark. And messing with the entire Linux ecosystem of theming and usability.

Here's a video about it https://ytb.trom.tf/watch?v=Pdx_MwcMtnM

Problem is it seems we can't do anything about it and more and more Gnome apps will implement it. We use a bunch of gnome apps for TROMjaro and we may be forced to replace them.

Gnome stop transforming Linux into MacOS or Windows. The beauty of Linux is the many distros, the variations, the themes, the user experience, the fact that you feel that OS is yours....

Such a sad and stupid move.

Let me say it again: the apps should respect the system. If my system says "I want this theme" then the apps should respect that. If my system says "I want 3 window buttons on the left side" then the apps should respect that. Else we end up with a zoo of different apps looking and behaving in different ways. Gnome already broke the global menus and the top bar of apps. Instead of us having uniformity and usability, we get MacOS or Windows- And for what!?

Now I understand it more when people complain about Gnome. Took me a while to get it...I am happy we moved TROMjaro from Gnome to XFCE. #tromlive