Transportation.

In Germany they came up with a plan: pay a monthly fee of about 50 Euros and have access to all of the public transport across Germany. Lately they proposed that if you are to "surrender" your driving license, you can get access to all of that for free. (source).

Now this, if properly managed and made even more accessible for everyone in Germany, can severely cut down the use of cars. Why would anyone want to buy a car, maintain, take care of, repair and so forth, if they have access to an affordable and good transportation system that is efficient? If people are to use a lot less cars, then we need a lot less roads. Thus you can transform the roads and parking spaces into green public spaces. Add bikes to the mix and you can create much better places for people to live.

Think about how much space cars take:

And the fact that the more lanes we make, the more traffic there is:

And the fact that most cars transport only 1-2 people. A massive waste of space...

And of course, how polluting they are:

Did you know that most of the microplastics in the air is due to car tires? It is true.

So of course it makes total sense to ditch this outdated practice. Paris, Barcelona and other places are trying do to similar schemes. Some cities are restricting the access to cars in some areas.

This is one of those massive problems that we can easily fix even within this bullshit trade system. And the solution is simple: make the public transport very cheap (or free), and efficient. Plus restrict car access to many areas. The goal should be to make it trade-free, so that it will become a lot more efficient. No more tickets, no more ads in the buses or any of that crap. Because what many seem to not realize is that advertising is a massive drive of consumerism (of course, that's its only purpose), and that in turn creates the destruction, waste, pollution and all of the crap we see.

Therefore the way forward is to aim for a trade-free transport system in different parts of the world. No currency, no data trading, no ads, no bullshit. And this will create a much better environment for people and nature.

Restoring nature... and a good life....

Doable now. Happening (little by little) now.

Healthcare

In USA the healthcare is private and thus trade-based for its citizens. Therefore USA has the most expensive healthcare systems in the world with a life expectancy of just 76. (source 1, 2) - In short the people in that tribe pay more because companies decide what's the price of this drug, that surgery, and so forth. And their incentive is of course to charge more and more.

In other tribes like Spain where the tribe members do not have to pay anything, the government is the one negotiating the prices with companies, and thus they are able to get a less expensive deal. And overall a much better organized healthcare system. The life expectancy is around 83-84 years, almost 10 years more than in the USA. (source 1, 2).

It is obvious that if you create a healthcare system that's free (or trade-free if you can) then people live longer, healthier, and you spend a lot less resources on that.

Conclusion.

In both cases, the evidence is clear: if we make these services free (and aim to make them trade-free eventually) then we see a lot of positive outcomes. And as you can see it is not only doable, but happening. However we need to push for more of these, in more parts of the world, and inform people about trade as the origin of most problems.

Let's stop dreaming about hyperloops, round cities, futuristic 3D nonsense. These are fantasies. We need to focus on realistic solutions that can have an enormous impact, while keeping an aim in sight: that of making this trade based society obsolete.

#tromlive

Just bashing the billionaires and big corporations, is shortsighted.

People think that Musk, Bezos, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and so on are now the "evil" that we should stand against and defeat. In truth these entities are no different from most humans living on this planet and most companies. It is just that some are bigger players, some are smaller.

When Bezos launched his small business in the early 1990 he was praised for making books available for more people.

But look at where he is now with Amazon.com.

We are all forced to be scammers, liars, fake, corrupted. Do you think there is any difference between Musk and Bezos buying other companies to gain influence or to shut down the competitors, and smaller companies temporarily lowering the prices or bribing the local politicians to gain more of the same? There isn't. The practice is 100% the same.

"Regulating" Facebook, Amazon, Google and the like it's like plastic recycling. You give the false impression that it works, and you continue to do this, while more plastic is being wasted than ever before, and more billionaires and corrupted people are being created than ever before.

Unless we calm down and dedicate some time to understand that these problems (corporations, climate change, corruption, influence, billionaires, etc.) are HUMANS, and human behavior comes from the ENVIRONMENT, and the environment is that of TRADING, unless we understand that, nothing will ever change. Period.

You can chop the heads of Musk and Bezos, you can destroy Google, Amazon and Facebook, and then realize that absolutely nothing has changed. New billionaires and new monopolistic corporations will evolve out of the same trade-environment.

What can we do?

Provide humans with at least their basic needs as trade-free.

Humans NEED to have access to a decent life, without having to trade anything in return for this. We need calm, relaxed, and educated humans, in order to do anything more than that. There are no plants growing out of a soil that has no nutrients, moisture, and such conditions.

We need to make people understand that life is not about consuming more shit, but about enjoying the nature, discover, learn, explore. We need to make companies and billionaires obsolete. Because what Google and the like fear the most is not the competition (because they can buy that), but becoming irrelevant. When people do not see any value in what they "sell", in what they "do".

If only there was a documentary explaining all of these in great detail....

#tromlive

We need 200 people to support TROM forever. And they only have to give us 2 cups of coffee a month. See this - https://www.tromsite.com/donate/

Listen, for more than a decade we have created a lot of materials and tools. On the Donate page you can scroll through a summary of that. There is 1 human working full time for TROM (me, Tio), and we have 2 servers plus some 5TB of online backups. Unfortunately the servers and TIo need money to survive.

The goal is to find only 200 people who can donate 5 Euros a month. This is a very reasonable goal and it will make TROM fully sustainable, forever.

Think about it: everyone will contribute equally and a very small amount. And I also won't get rich. I want to keep TROM humble, real, genuine, and to make sure that those who support it are many and do the least amount of effort.

I have a dream....and my dream, if I were to keep it realistic and down to Earth, is to (for now) achieve the "200 or TROM" goal. Because if I achieve that, then I can continue to create new things for the project, and to reach more people. In time maybe something bigger will spark.

But....if I cannot achieve this, I am going to fade away, little by little, forced to trade myself in this society and TROM will become irrelevant, and in a few years time hard to maintain. I have seen many similar organizations fading away and it is very sad to me.

The truth is that the only reason TROM is alive is because I had the motivation and financial support to continue. But for the past years the financial support has dropped so much that I can barely pay for the servers and I have no means to support myself other than doing some webdesign work for others. And that too is no more than 200 Euros a month.

This new donation approach will be the only one I will try. I am sick and tired of asking for support, so I put all of the eggs into that basket. And I will push this until I either manage to find 200 humans who are willing to give 2 cups of coffee a month to support the so many projects that we are doing, or I will fail while trying.

You know for the past 3 years I worked on the TROM II documentary. A new project basically. So I wonder what new projects I will do in the future. I started to write a book about The Internet and I think it is a unique overview of this complex subject. I then thought what if instead I would start a new video series and pick apart such complex subjects.... I then talked to Roma and Roko and others about it....what if we collaborate and make something cool together? I do not lack ideas or motivation, I lack money. And for that matter, not a lot. I need the bare minimum to have a life and nothing more.

Ok folks, let's see how this goes. 200 people is not a crazy number. There are hundreds, if not thousands who enjoy the TROM content or use our services, daily.

Let's see how many of them can and are willing to help.

#tromlive

By @Tio

I've sent the documentary to those who were part of it. They all watched it and provided a ton of feedback. What was absolutely surprising to me were their reactions overall. I am still unable to compute why they thought so positively about it. You see I have edited this documentary a thousand times so I was unable to understand it anymore. I did not know if it makes sense or not.

So maybe it is good?

I can tell you that their comments range from "Tio deserves and Oscar" haha, to "this documentary is a masterpiece", to "it's a brilliant work" or "the best documentary ever". This seems quite a lot for me to digest but they keep on telling me that. @Georgi watched it first, she could not wait, and digested it in one go sending me tons of feedback while watching it.

She bought a pizza and she said she was so captivated she could not eat much hahah.

@Sasha came in the second place but just 1 hour later than Georgi haha. She 'forced' me to re-watch it all in one go :D. She was so amazed and happy she kept on telling that to me, to the point of me being confused and thinking that she exaggerates. I even asked her to please not exaggerate. haha.

Don't be deceived!

Now, please do not let these feedbacks, some of which were public, influence you when you'll watch it. These people took part in the documentary, they agree with these ideas, and we are very close friends. I keep on saying to lower your expectations even now when you see these first reactions. Please! I am 1 guy, with 1 laptop, and this is the first time I had to record for a documentary and do it in this fashion. Put it into that perspective please. Their reactions and feedbacks are valuable (very much) but I do not want to make people have big expectations from this documentary.

Ok. So these guys also had a few criticisms but way less than I expected. Some 6-7 people watched it and 2 said there are a few "boring" moments in the first part of the documentary. Others said that was their favorite part and not boring at all. One said in the last part we repeated a few things, quite a minor offense ;). Lastly @Dima had some good inputs about the colors of the recordings. Most are ok, but they need to be improved and I am doing it now (again....I improved the colors so many times idk what colors are anymore haha).

But that's all the criticism so far.

The PLAN.

On 20th of May we have that special TROM Meeting. We had one in 2019 after I released the book The Origin of Most Problems. It was great to see all of these wonderful brains together.

For TROM II I still have to do a few things: color correct that may take a week or some 10 days; make a trailer - and I want to make a very good one so this can take a week or more; make a poster (easy); do the sources (time consuming); prepare tromsite.com for the release.

With these being said, I should not force myself to do all of those before the May meeting and quickly release just before that. I want to enjoy that meeting and not think about the release. Plus would be fantastic to make an english subtitle that we can then translate in several languages and release TROM II with them. Wouldn't it be better to release TROM II in a few languages? I think so.

Therefore when we meet in May we can also work on some of these things. Let's do this well!

Release.

I think the best would be to release in the beginning of June. With a good trailer, in multiple languages, better color correction, and all that. This is entirely doable. I do not know the exact date, but should be in the first half of June FOR SURE!

I am quite excited about the release :). And I may try to make the trailer in May. Will keep you posted!

#tromlive

Tio

2021-02-22 17:04:16

21. Trom People (short documentary)

The World Health Organization wanted to create a worldwide healthcare system basically, to take care of all humans at no cost. Because healthcare should be a fundamental access for all humans. Many decades later and there is no sign that this will ever be achieved. WHO did a lot of good in this regards when it came to several virus/bacteria outbreaks and poor regions of the world, and worked with many volunteer organizations. But the trade-based society we live in incentivizes people to shift their focus from such goals.

Things like: companies creating trade-based health services and promoting them aggressively, drug companies that need to be paid if anyone wants to access their drugs, entire tribes (cough USA!) who have no incentive for this since their healthcare system is private and a huge trade-machine overall; the fact that most humans are busy with their jobs, with consuming and being consumed by whatever is traded best....

So we are this, as a species:

We would worship football players and other celebrities, or make movies about fantasy superheroes, while ignoring the real superheroes, the ones who volunteer to save lives and who want to create a better world for all of us.

The trade-based society is, again, the creator and instigator of such situations.

#tromlive #TradeRuinsEverything

NOTE: This post contains many images and text formatting, if you do not see this via our Friendica page then please use this link to read it fully https://social.trom.tf/display/dbc8dc44-1464-2853-620a-b69239507976

Back in 2015 I wrote a book for TROM about humans and the machines they have created. It is called the Human Machine and you can read it here.

Back then it was one of the first hypes about A.I. And as you may know by now, AI stands for Artificial Intelligence. Back then Google and Apple started to promote their AIs: Google Now and Siri. You could talk to these bots and they will provide you a lot of answers from many different domains. Ask how many dogs are in the world, ask them to set up an alarm for you, how's the weather, you name it. It would integrate with a lot of apps and devices.

People were asking these bots existential questions like what is the purpose of life:

I remember the Google supercomputers generating these weird images and the news outlets calling them "machines dreaming". Meaning, how machines dream:

And that Pepper robot that you could talk to...

These came after a few years of another hype: the self driving cars that were about to revolutionize transportation. In the book Automated Autonomous World that I wrote for TROM in 2013 , I partially fell for that hype and wrote in a very non-skeptical way about them.

To be fair with my past-self, I was focused entirely on how in a saner society the tech-part of the world could look like. So I presented many prototypes and unproven tech. I talked about how we have to change the infrastructure for these to work, and so forth. However, what I did not realized as deeply, was how misleading the world is. You see I naively thought that the big tech companies may not exaggerate as much about their tech. I sourced their own claims from their own engineers. But 10 years later I could say for sure that the vast majority of the tech I showcased in that book, was BS. For the most part at least. That means, the words that came out of the mouths of these engineers and "specialists" that work for these big companies, were mostly crap. Marketing.

That book may be removed from TROM when we do a cleanup this month in preparation for the upcoming TROM II documentary.

Back to AI.

In 2016 I started to be more and more aware of how the tech world is full of bullshit and bullshitters. For that reason I chose to present tech that was already there, working, and when it was just in testing phases I would present it as such and link to scientific papers about that tech.

When it came to AI I already smelled the bullshit. The stupid fear that AI will take over the world, and all of that crap. But I said let's educate myself. And so I said the best way is to understand a bit how these things work. I took several courses and read a bunch of stuff. I learned how AIs can categorize objects:

How it interprets text and speech:


I learned how facial recognition works:

I looked at how AIs learn to play games, drive cars, do science research.

Of course I only scratched the surface of these since they are complex. But I got a solid understanding I think. I realized that these are Statistical Software. Added with a bunch of filters and rules. They are complex, cool, interesting, but nothing WOW in terms of how they work. I learned that data and computer power is what makes the difference. I realized how non-magical these AI look when you have a clue about how they work. The end result is mesmerizing only for those who have a very dim understanding of these pieces of software.

I then talked about how they compared to humans. And of course the conclusion was that AI is just a complex set of statistical software with filters and rules and a lot of data, and has nothing to do with either artificial or intelligence (whatever that means).

Of course there are some applications for these pieces of software that I touched upon in the book, but mainly it was a grotesque hype.

Anthropomorphizing

That's a new word that I learned while writhing this book. It means "to ascribe human form or attributes to (an animal, plant, material object, etc.).". That's what AI are mostly.

The present.

7 years later and the AI "revolution" has resurfaced again. This time it seems even more mesmerizing, although not so much for me. I fee like I've seen this before...

ChatGPT and the like, Stable Diffusion, DALL·E, now they have different names and do similar things. They are fun to play with. Can create some weird images out of text, something I was showcasing in 2016 in another book about Language.

And the craze is starting again with people thinking these AIs will revolutionize the world, or will take over, and then no more jobs, no more artists, no more life. If you look again at how these work, they seem a lot less mesmerizing. The companies that push them use anthropomorphism to make them sound like they "think" and are like humans: neural nets, learning, hallucinating, and so forth. In fact they are still the same statistical machines that produce probabilities and that results in interesting outcomes.

Without going into specifics I recommend this funny video that explains the entire situation quite well: A.I. is B.S. ->>> https://ytb.trom.tf/watch?v=ro130m-f_yk

Also read through the sources of that video.

When I asked chatgpt about TROM I got this:

Which is not bad.
But when I asked who made TROM I got a very bad and totally wrong answer:

No idea who Catalin and Andrei are, but it is totally wrong. The project did not start as a research project, whatever the hell that means.

You see although it says some true things, it also says some entirely false things. Because this AI only knows how to put words together. Has no clue about anything else. And it will always produce well written sentences that can be totally wrong. Thus, this chatbot is entirely useless for factual information. And if you think it will get better and better, for one let's wait for that and then "hype" it, but second it may never be able to due to how it works (statistical prediction of what words go with what other words).

When I tell chatgpt that the project was not created by those two dudes, it invents new ones:

And so on it goes:

AI is ASS!

AI is actually Anthropomorphized Statistical Software, or ASS :)

We may find good uses for this ASS, maybe when they only rely on a main source of information like some specific research papers and provide exact quotes and sources. They are fun to play with for a bit tho. They may help us create more creative content or video/photo/audio effects. But "they" are as much as "they" as websites are "they". Depends what websites we are talking about. Same here, these ASS are diverse and made for a diverse set of purposes.

But what it is clear to me is that the HYPE is just that, a HYPE. Pushed by companies who want to make these ASS more appealing and sell them, by the bloggers and youtubers who jump on the hype train for clicks and views, by the media that does the same. Combine that with the fact that we live in a dumbed-down society where humans are just workers who have no time to learn/digest any of these things, and we are faced with an Idiotic society that has no clue about any of these.

Our trade based society is at fault here again, for incentivizing humans to hype these things all the time, in order to trade them. And for the fact that it keeps us all busy idiots for the sake of trading to survive. This has created a Land of Confusion.

Welcome to Earth.

#tromlive

TROM

2023-04-01 15:53:06

AI is ASS

NOTE: This post contains many images and text formatting, if you do not see this via our Friendica page then please use this link to read it fully https://social.trom.tf/display/dbc8dc44-1464-2853-620a-b69239507976

Back in 2015 I wrote a book for TROM about humans and the machines they have created. It is called the Human Machine and you can read it here.

Back then it was one of the first hypes about A.I. And as you may know by now, AI stands for Artificial Intelligence. Back then Google and Apple started to promote their AIs: Google Now and Siri. You could talk to these bots and they will provide you a lot of answers from many different domains. Ask how many dogs are in the world, ask them to set up an alarm for you, how's the weather, you name it. It would integrate with a lot of apps and devices.

People were asking these bots existential questions like what is the purpose of life:

I remember the Google supercomputers generating these weird images and the news outlets calling them "machines dreaming". Meaning, how machines dream:

And that Pepper robot that you could talk to...

These came after a few years of another hype: the self driving cars that were about to revolutionize transportation. In the book Automated Autonomous World that I wrote for TROM in 2013 , I partially fell for that hype and wrote in a very non-skeptical way about them.

To be fair with my past-self, I was focused entirely on how in a saner society the tech-part of the world could look like. So I presented many prototypes and unproven tech. I talked about how we have to change the infrastructure for these to work, and so forth. However, what I did not realized as deeply, was how misleading the world is. You see I naively thought that the big tech companies may not exaggerate as much about their tech. I sourced their own claims from their own engineers. But 10 years later I could say for sure that the vast majority of the tech I showcased in that book, was BS. For the most part at least. That means, the words that came out of the mouths of these engineers and "specialists" that work for these big companies, were mostly crap. Marketing.

That book may be removed from TROM when we do a cleanup this month in preparation for the upcoming TROM II documentary.

Back to AI.

In 2016 I started to be more and more aware of how the tech world is full of bullshit and bullshitters. For that reason I chose to present tech that was already there, working, and when it was just in testing phases I would present it as such and link to scientific papers about that tech.

When it came to AI I already smelled the bullshit. The stupid fear that AI will take over the world, and all of that crap. But I said let's educate myself. And so I said the best way is to understand a bit how these things work. I took several courses and read a bunch of stuff. I learned how AIs can categorize objects:

How it interprets text and speech:


I learned how facial recognition works:

I looked at how AIs learn to play games, drive cars, do science research.

Of course I only scratched the surface of these since they are complex. But I got a solid understanding I think. I realized that these are Statistical Software. Added with a bunch of filters and rules. They are complex, cool, interesting, but nothing WOW in terms of how they work. I learned that data and computer power is what makes the difference. I realized how non-magical these AI look when you have a clue about how they work. The end result is mesmerizing only for those who have a very dim understanding of these pieces of software.

I then talked about how they compared to humans. And of course the conclusion was that AI is just a complex set of statistical software with filters and rules and a lot of data, and has nothing to do with either artificial or intelligence (whatever that means).

Of course there are some applications for these pieces of software that I touched upon in the book, but mainly it was a grotesque hype.

Anthropomorphizing

That's a new word that I learned while writhing this book. It means "to ascribe human form or attributes to (an animal, plant, material object, etc.).". That's what AI are mostly.

The present.

7 years later and the AI "revolution" has resurfaced again. This time it seems even more mesmerizing, although not so much for me. I fee like I've seen this before...

ChatGPT and the like, Stable Diffusion, DALL·E, now they have different names and do similar things. They are fun to play with. Can create some weird images out of text, something I was showcasing in 2016 in another book about Language.

And the craze is starting again with people thinking these AIs will revolutionize the world, or will take over, and then no more jobs, no more artists, no more life. If you look again at how these work, they seem a lot less mesmerizing. The companies that push them use anthropomorphism to make them sound like they "think" and are like humans: neural nets, learning, hallucinating, and so forth. In fact they are still the same statistical machines that produce probabilities and that results in interesting outcomes.

Without going into specifics I recommend this funny video that explains the entire situation quite well: A.I. is B.S. ->>> https://ytb.trom.tf/watch?v=ro130m-f_yk

Also read through the sources of that video.

When I asked chatgpt about TROM I got this:

Which is not bad.
But when I asked who made TROM I got a very bad and totally wrong answer:

No idea who Catalin and Andrei are, but it is totally wrong. The project did not start as a research project, whatever the hell that means.

You see although it says some true things, it also says some entirely false things. Because this AI only knows how to put words together. Has no clue about anything else. And it will always produce well written sentences that can be totally wrong. Thus, this chatbot is entirely useless for factual information. And if you think it will get better and better, for one let's wait for that and then "hype" it, but second it may never be able to due to how it works (statistical prediction of what words go with what other words).

When I tell chatgpt that the project was not created by those two dudes, it invents new ones:

And so on it goes:

AI is ASS!

AI is actually Anthropomorphized Statistical Software, or ASS :)

We may find good uses for this ASS, maybe when they only rely on a main source of information like some specific research papers and provide exact quotes and sources. They are fun to play with for a bit tho. They may help us create more creative content or video/photo/audio effects. But "they" are as much as "they" as websites are "they". Depends what websites we are talking about. Same here, these ASS are diverse and made for a diverse set of purposes.

But what it is clear to me is that the HYPE is just that, a HYPE. Pushed by companies who want to make these ASS more appealing and sell them, by the bloggers and youtubers who jump on the hype train for clicks and views, by the media that does the same. Combine that with the fact that we live in a dumbed-down society where humans are just workers who have no time to learn/digest any of these things, and we are faced with an Idiotic society that has no clue about any of these.

Our trade based society is at fault here again, for incentivizing humans to hype these things all the time, in order to trade them. And for the fact that it keeps us all busy idiots for the sake of trading to survive. This has created a Land of Confusion.

Welcome to Earth.

#tromlive

a.i. is b.s.

School can be seen as an abusive and inefficient system that has little to nothing to do with "education".

Children are forced to wake up at a certain hour, every day, 5 days a week, for 12 years. They are categorized by ages and their "knowledge" level. School creates a competition between the kids, makes then hate science and learning in general, it is a boring and colorless place for these young minds, and overall ends up not teaching children much at all about the world we live in.

In a trade-based society the parents NEED to trade themselves in a job, so these kids need to be "livestocked" somehow. That's what school is, a place where kids can be while their parents trade to survive in this society. More to that, Universities almost exclusively prepare these young creatures to become workers, like their parents.

All in all, kids go to school to compete, memorize, get ready to be workers. NOT to be EDUCATED.

If humans could have a decent life without trading in this society, they could have the time to engage with their kids, discover, learn, enjoy. And schools could be places where kids of all ages can go because they want to. A place where experts can teach them about the world and how to do something productive.

EXAMPLES:

Tell kids: See this red dot? This is the farthest thing we can take a photo off. They call it a "star". And you show them a real photo taken by the WEBB telescope. From there on you and your class of kids will investigate what this red dot is, and in the process you'll teach kids about light, physics, maths, distances, stars, the universe.

Or show kids a real dinosaur bone and tell them: Our mission is to understand how old it is and what creature this is. And thus you can go into a journey of discovering what geology is, paleontology, rocks and fossils, and so forth.

Or tell them that our mission is to build a robot. And they will learn mechanics, programming and so forth.

We could create real schools where kids can become curious and learn so much about our world. So that they can become the next Einsteins, the next Teslas, the next ones who can discover new things.

That's the world we should have had by now....

And we wont be able to have it unless we change the trade-based society into a tradeless society. Where humans are not forced to trade in order to survive. Where humans like "teachers" can engage and develop such schools as explained above, to have time for that, not to go to school because that's their job since they have to pay their rent so they are forced to do it.

A few years ago we made a video: Rethinking Education https://videos.trom.tf/w/2y5RSgvREzT6mZnwonqKMN - where we go in depth abotút this.

#TradeRuinsEverything #tromlive

Tio

2021-02-19 02:45:30

05. Rethinking Education

We create documentaries out of our eBooks. These documentaries are entirely based on the books themselves but they may differ here and there in terms of the script and overall presentation, but in general they are the same as the books. All sources for all of our videos are greatly detailed/sourced in the books they are based upon. These videos are also available without the narration voice so anyone can dub them into any language.

This video is based on this book https://www.tromsite.com/books/#flipbook-df_6654/1/

Books

DETAILS TROM ebooks are available in multiple formats: online reading, PDF, Plain Text, audio format, and video.

^TROM

We Live In The Age of The Bullshitter is an interesting and truthful article about the biggest bullshitters of our time. Musk, Peterson, Steven Pinker, Trump, Dr. Oz and the like.

The author rightly points out how these people do not know much about the world, but their confidence coupled with the clickbaity world we live in and their celebrity status, makes them superstar-influencers.

Elon Musk is the richest man on planet Earth. He is also a complete bullshitter. He makes false claims about the cars he makes. He constantly promises that he is going to accomplish things that he never, in fact, accomplishes. In March 2020, he made the confident COVID-19 prediction that “based on current trends, probably close to zero new cases in US too by end of April.” After convincing cities around the country that his “Boring Company” was going to build tunnels that would alleviate traffic congestion for low, low prices, Musk’s company simply went silent after municipal governments asked it to follow through on its commitments. 

They talk about a recently famous guy named Sam Bankman-Fried who "had committed himself to the “Effective Altruism” movement, which aims to achieve maximal moral goodness through benevolent acts and philanthropy". He was a crypto-rich-man. Basically the same Musk but instead of playing the money game he was playing the cryptocurrency game. He got caught stealing and lying. He was living like a rich man. You know, all of that.

There are many naive minds out there thinking that you can create honest businesses, you can trade fairly and do good through trading. This is almost never the case as these examples, and millions of others, prove.

Jordan Peterson sells books and makes money out of being so "radical" and yet unscientific. Pinker does the same. But real scientists are the ones you never heard of, the ones that do the work and not sell books and become viral online. To trust these figures is as naive as trusting Dr. Oz.

One of the problems is that for-profit media has a very bad set of incentives. For instance, every time Elon Musk makes some confident prediction about how he is going to implant chips in human brains or build a Mars colony or tunnel under Miami or whatever, tech websites are faced with a choice. They can print a story with the headline “MUSK SAYS BRAIN CHIPS COMING IN SIX MONTHS” or they can ignore Musk’s bluster until he offers proof that he has actually invented one of the things he keeps promising to invent. To ignore Musk is to sacrifice the precious clicks that a new Musk prediction will inevitably garner. Thus a for-profit tech journalism website faces a conflict between its financial self-interest and its integrity. In a time when it’s tough for media outlets to survive, it’s hard to turn down the clicks.

The author tries the waters but does not go for a swim. This is unfortunate because the cause of these issues is in plain sight: our trade based society.

Here's how it works as an example:

Musk is a trader and does everything he can to maximize his advantage being pushed by this competitive environment of trade. When he buys and sells, and he is also entangled with investors and clients from all sides, he (the man) cannot be unbiased. Thus, he is biased. He will exaggerate the claims about his businesses, lie, deceive, and all of that, to keep himself afloat and to swim in that sea of trades.

The people who follow Musk in his quest, from employees to his Twitter followers, are either forced to follow what he says and do like he does (his employees who have no other choice since they have to trade to survive), or the busy idiots who trade in other ways, keeping themselves busy all the time, not able to digest any information very well or much at all. So they can follow the HE, the man, whatever he says.

So far we have the rich man (the celebrity) and the idiots (the consumed ones). All created by the same trade-based society that keeps us busy and idiots, specialized on one thing (most of the time useless and mindless), and wants us to compete all the time and get better traders.

Lastly we have the media.

Guess what media wants? Same as Elon Musk or his fanboys: more for themselves. More clicks means more views, means more attention trading, means you can transform that into a currency and then stuff. The media is rich and wants to get richer, so it is very well incentivized to publish whatever crap sells. And thus they sell these bullshitters to the consuming idiots. Simple.

The rich-celebrity + the consumer idiots + the for-profit-media = a dumb down society.

Voila. Mystery solved!

All of us are victims of the same system of trade. And as long as we live in the same system, nothing will change.

Oh look "leaders" are still meeting to talk about climate change - https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/11/1130832 how cute!

They are talking about how this global trade based society pushes us all, from individuals to companies, to pollute, mostly care about profits, destroy the nature, enslave others, coerce. And are taking direct steps to overcome this by providing humans with their basic needs trade-free (as a first step), so that we help humans have a good life, and not pollute and waste as much, and get involved more to reverse the effects of pollution and destruction.

They have also started to ban all advertising because they rightly say that this is only going to create more needless consumption. I am so happy about that. Online or offline, ads are illegal.

They are working with all governments around the world to make a global transportation system that is trade-free, so that we phase out cars entirely. Universal healthcare is also on the agenda together with trade-free education. Two meals a day for everyone, trade-free access to the Internet, investing a lot of resources in non-meat food alternatives, and kick-starting a massive sharing platform (online/offline) so that we can all share the vast amounts of wasted and unused stuff that we have around. Even sharing a room/place to stay. How amazing! This, they hope, will incentivize people to re-use, rather than buy useless shit all the time.

Lastly, they realize that laws and rules do not work, so their overall approach is to create a better society from within the current one. One that does not rely on trade but on share. This way we can make companies and profiteers obsolete, with time. The focus will be on how to protect us and the nature, using renewable energies, less polluting practices, and so forth, since there is no incentive to do otherwise. All, while decoupling ourselves from the need for trade. Have a lot more free time, get more educated, get involved.

GO UNITED NATIONS! Let's do it folks! #tromlive

There is this massive myth on a global scale, almost like a huge conspiracy, that humans are predisposed to being like this or like that. Predisposed to becoming depressed, ADHD is an illness, sexual orientation is inborn, violence can be detected in one's brain, and so forth.

This notion that humans have a certain biology and their behavior is based on that.

False.

From sexuality to mental disorders, violence or anything else. There are no genes, no chemicals, nothing biological that can predict any such behaviors. None.

We should start to abolish this mentality. This approach is succulently pushed by companies who sell the "miracle" drugs, and everyone is hypnotized by the cattle-society practice: treat humans like they are on a conveyor belt. Feel angry, sad, and all that? Well probably you have a "disease". Take this pill! Bye!

Anyway. Here is a recent publication by Joanna Moncrieff that debunks the myth of the "chemical imbalance" of depression. And here a more general overview of how depression cannot be linked to any bio-chemical marker.

Some very important quotes from this group of proper scientists that have the dignity and courage to remain scientists:

I have shown that family, twin, adoption, and molecular genetic studies have failed to provide scientifically valid evidence that genes play a role in causing depression. Combined with the recent findings by Moncrieff and colleagues that serotonin is not associated with depression, the idea of MD as a medical condition is in serious trouble.

To understand the true causes of depression, we must focus on family (including abuse and trauma), social, and political environments, including racial, gender, class, and other types of oppression/discrimination. We must address people’s increasing social isolation and disconnection from each other, lack of meaning and purpose, consumerism, and fears of present or future calamities such as pandemics, climate change, and nuclear war. The idea of depression as a medical/genetic condition must be reevaluated, and non-medical prevention and intervention strategies should be promoted.

And

“suffering as being rooted in individual rather than social causes, leading individuals to think that it is them rather than the economic and social system in which they live that is at fault and in need of reform.

It is this trade-based society that makes humans sad, depressed, angry, demotivated and so forth. FIX SOCIETY!

#tromlive
#TradeRuinsEverything

Here's another example of how people are entirely confused about what is free and what is not, and why our trade-free approach makes so much sense.

We have added this peer to peer file sharing app to TROMjaro's Library: SoulSeek. This app is great. It allows you to connect with others directly, and share files with them. No server involved. We wanted to share our VideoNeat library on the network. However if you look closely they limit your experience. And if you donate currency to them you get this:

While they call themselves entirely free:

So, it is free, but you have to pay to unlock certain features....makes so much sense indeed!

Actually they call those trades, donations. And the word and concept of "donation" got ruined alongside that of "free". Donations should be voluntary and not used for the purpose of trade. If you "donate" currency to me in return for some features, then that is a trade. You are buying from me. As simple as that.

Therefore our concept of trade free is so simple and destroys all of these nonsensicalities: What Am I Trading? Ask that. And if you do, then you realize that you need to trade currency for Soulseek to give you more features. Therefore this app is not trade-free.

The reason it was added to our TROMjaro library is that either we could not detect this trade since they are charlatan enough to hide them well, or it was not present when the app was added. Needless to say it was immediately removed.

We need more than ever this "trade as the original of most problems" approach and the "trade-free" antidote. Without them we are going into a deep and ugly confusion. A black hole of that! #tromlive

This is the first image released by the James Webb Telescope:

If you take a grain of salt, put it on the tip of your finger, and stretch your arm...that is the area of the sky that this represents.

Imagine how small we are, yet how big our eyes have become. Imagine how further we can see from one dim pebble. All of those ellipses of light and little dots, are galaxies. Billions of stars each, trillions of planets. Not enough grains of sand on Earth to match the number of planets in our Universe.

Such revelations should shake our species; our values should be reevaluated. Our priorities re-organized.

And yet, such astonishing truths, are a mere excitement for a select few; such images will become one of the trillions of images in the digital universe. On par with any other. Our society will fail to be moved in any direction; our values seem set in stone; our priorities will follow the same mindless and insignificant profits.

To say this is sad, is unjust. It is unbearable for anyone who understands all of this.

We have created a society of idiots. But we should know the cause by now. It is because humans ended up with a society that is based on trade. Trade this, trade that. You cannot survive if you cannot trade. And so, all of the humans are trapped in a nightmare. We can only wake them up, if we take care of them. Feed them, treat them, give them a shelter, a life. Only then we can hope to see them being curious about themselves and the world they live in. To focus on significant endeavors; to discover the universe, to understand their connection with nature, to protect what needs to be protected, to explore what is unexplored. To become a human species that has grandiose goals, and saner wants.

This is the only path forward. We have to march on the streets, we have to scream online, to provide humans with access to their needs, as trade-free. To decouple them from this hamster wheel, this nightmare. To give them back their brains. No change in politics or policies will do anything if all humans are consumed on a daily basis, for mindless trades.

Provide humans with their needs, as trade-free. Do it!

TROM is marching for this for at least a decade now. What are you doing? Where are you? We need you! #tromlive

Imagine for a moment that there was this group of people in the world, screaming that the ice is melting and the sea levels are rising. They scream and scream how coastlines will be under water in 100 years time. "We need to stop the ice melting!" their slogans say. "We need more political will to stop the melting!" they are screaming.

But then some weirdo comes and tells them...."You know that the ice melting and its impacts, are because of climate change...". He is quickly dismissed. The Ice Melting Cult marches forward, too blind to see that ice melting is just a symptom of a greater problem.

Well, this is what we are confronting nowadays via projects like TROM. The world is screaming "climate change", others say "the soil is being destroyed", some say "corruption is the problem". Plastic, waste, slavery, inequality. A LOT. But what they fail to see is that all of these are symptoms. Symptoms of trade.

Take climate change. The reason humans pollute so much and can't seem to change and move to renewables, is that...well...they have to trade. The fossil fuel industry is so huge in this trade game, that they can influence politics. Politics is a bunch of people who get a lot of money from being in those places. The other humans are too busy trading their life away to get access even to their basic needs, so what can they do. Everyone is in a race to trade, and in the process they are either destroyers of the environment (think big corporations), or numb zombies who can't even grasp these issues or do anything about them (think most workers).

So we are impotent to fix climate change simply because this trade based society does not allow it. It incentivizes humans to profit more, be mindless, consumers, etc.. Even if we switched to renewable energies tomorrow, these incentives will make humans create more and more waste, pollution, suffering, destroy the environment, and so forth. Pointless.

And so, to all of those who do not see this trade based society as the originators of most of today's problems, I am calling you out because you are in the Ice Melting Cult. And you have to wake up. Else we are all fucked. Thank you!

#tromlive

Many people believe a fat myth of today's world, that capitalism (this trade-based system) is creating diversity. Look at how many chocolates there are, cars, gadgets, software, etc.. But this is a myth. The diversity is in the package/wrapper and not the product itself. Most phones are the same, nothing new for "new releases". Cars brought almost no advantage to transportation overall for the past decades. Products in the supermarket taste quite the same between brands, and clothes are recycled fashion trends. Movies and books are remakes or copy cats of whatever sells best. And so on.

Anyway, here is a search engine we made to showcase how 175 companies own pretty much everything in this world https://www.tromsite.com/tbf/

But I want to focus on 1 particular domain: software.

Youtube, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, VK, and maybe 3-4 more, are the ones that are the most used in the world. They do not communicate with each other and are very limited in terms of functionality. It means you choose one or another, or a bunch of them and manage them separately. They are trade-based platforms (you trade your data, currency, attention to them). Full of ads, full of censorship, full of crap overall.

On the other hand the Fediverse is a network of such platforms: Friendica, Mastodon, Peertube, Pixelfed, Funkwhale, and so forth. Look at the diversity here https://fediverse.party/en/miscellaneous/ - these are made by different organizations and enabled by different people. A ton of diversity in terms of options.

These are video platforms, blog platforms, photo sharing platforms, platforms for musicians, live streaming, events, you name it. And all communicate with each other. If some organization has an account with Peertube (video platform) I can follow and interact with them from my social platform Friendica. How amazing! If I have a Peertube account and a Friendica one, I can easily setup so that when I post on Peertube a video, it goes on my Friendica too, as a post. The options are very diverse.

This "fediverse" is created not to be traded but to be shared. You will not find ads on these platforms (at least not on the vast majority of them), or data collection or any of that crap.

The MacOS and Windows vs Linux is yet another example of how diversity is actually achieved when humans do not sell their stuff and themselves, when you have a community of people who share their work and ideas. Linux comes in so many flavors for so many needs and wants. Look at this:

So if you look at software overall, the "capitalism" world, which is the trade-based world in which people make software to trade it (for data, attention, currency, etc.) is like a handful of options. But when the software is created for the sake of creating it and is shared and anyone can copy these, modify, redistribute, as trade-free, then real diversity is created and a better environment emerges overall.

We should take the software example and try to provide other goods/services in the same manner. But to do that we have to decouple humans from the trade-based society. At least when it comes to their basic needs. Else no one can have the time to engage in such things. Software is easy to create and maintain from the comfort of your home and in your space time, but is difficult when it comes to food or other goods and services. In any case there is still and abundance of such trade-free goods/services out there as we showcase here https://www.directory.trade-free.org/. But this is not enough.

So. If we want to create a wonderful society, we first have to decouple humans from this trade-based society by at least providing them with their basic needs as trade-free. That creates a good soil for the emergence of lots of trade-free goods/services, in a positive feedback loop. Imagine how much good we can create in this world. Imagine how much real diversity. Imagine how wonderful this could be.

#tromlive

We have the tools to save the planet from climate change. Politics is getting in the way, new IPCC report says https://link.trom.tf/nA_xADrt

Yeah well....climate change, a problem created by? Trade of course. The fact that humans are forced and incentivized to trade at all costs. Else they can die in this system. This awful incentive creates huge consumption needs. Thus making humans create new phones every week, same ones, but different styles. Millions of cars each year - same cars, different colors. All kinds of useless shit for the sake of trading this for that.

Now to make all of this shit humans need to use energy. And a cheap way is to grab the dead biological matter from the earth's crust, and burn it. And they are pretty good at that. And that puts lots of unwanted gasses (molecules) into the atmosphere. Not to mention the forests that are cut, the biodiversity loss, the waste that is created for the sake of making more shit to be able to trade it.

Of course humans now have the means to use renewable energies instead of dead animals and plants, so they won't put those bad molecules into the air. But for one big companies (clusters of humans) depend on trading the dead biomass and they are quite powerful. You can't simply push them aside. Same is for the jobs that are created because of this industry and so forth. Second, even if we are to do it right now, there will be a huge issue in terms of other sorts of pollution (hello batteries!) that come as a cost for our insane consuming society, due to its trade nature.

Now...this is never going to be solved even if it is solved. The immense plastic pollution, nukes and the possibility of a WW3, the biodiversity loss, the threat of an asteroid hitting Earth and humans not being even remotely prepared for that; the forever chemicals and so much pollution and waste....these are growing issues that will dwarf the climate change problem in the future.

Wake up humans! You need to realize that it is the structure of your society that's at fault. The fact that you, humans, still think that everyone on your planet has to trade even for being allowed to live on this planet. You have transformed your own kind into reckless and mindless monsters that all they want is to trade this for that.

And no renewable energies will change the nature of this game. To think that renewable energies are going to fix these massive and global issues, is like asking a rapist to use condoms next time he rapes someone. #tromlive

By Tio.

Yesterday my family got 2.200 Euros withdrew from their bank account. By some "name". Search online, go to the bank, and find out it is the government. Or at least a gov institution. The bank sends you home because they can't tell you why that is. You are home, confused. What to do? Ask around....or ask a lawyer. Ok, fine, ask a lawyer. They charge you. They say the money was withdrew because of a fine that likely you didn't pay in time.

What?!

Go to another gov institution where the lawyer sends you. They say: "Yeah, you got 2 speed tickets last year and you did not pay in time!". But my family did not receive any notification....

Go to the police, dig deeper by yourself. Find out that when we bought our car, years ago, they failed to add an address to the car. By "they" I mean the authorities in charge of that. So when the police caught us "breaking" the law, via automated radars a year ago, they looked for the plate number then they found out the name of the owner of the car (my father), and associated that name with the address my father had on its Spanish identity card (he is a resident here in Spain). Documents that were made 15 years ago. So they sent the notifications to that old address....We live in a tourist town where it is almost impossible to rent a place, so we had to move 4 or so times for all sorts of reasons. For the past 10 years we have the same address tho. Same address that we had when we bought the car...

Also, taxes and all that for the car, come to our current address. But not the fine it seems....Weird and infuriating.

So yeah, the system failed to let us known that we need to pay a fine, and since we "delayed" a year with the payment, they decided to directly charge my father's bank account. With over 2.200 Euros. On top of the fines, they fined him for not having an address associated with the car....that was the reason why we did not get any notification about the fine in the first place, and is something that the institution doing the papers when we bought the car was responsible for.

In all, us as human beings, were fined 2.200 Euros, more than we could save in months and months, for the simple fact that the system made an error and could not notify us of a fine we got a year ago.

And that's representative of this society we live in. The fault is always on the individuals. Put the blame on them! And this way the system seems like it is working, because every system's failure, is in fact seen as the individual's failure.

And to do justice for yourself.... how can you do it? Well...hire another human called a "lawyer". And good luck if you are poor because you won't be able to hire anyone. "Justice" comes at a price in this trade system. A human life comes at a cost. Everything has a price, but no value.

Alien: But why did they punish (fine) you in the first place?
Human: Probably because they want to make me drive more carefully....keep the roads safer!?
Alien: So they hope that punishing you will stop you from speeding up?
Human: Probably...although I am sure I will forget about this in the future + when I am stressed and not paying attention....I do not think this can work in the long run....
Alien: Hold on! If they want to make transportation safer why not create a safe public transport system? Allowing everyone to have and drive a car, and buy more and more every year, to pollute, to consume, to drive for hours and hours, to waste....this is insanity squared.

.....

And it is....it is insane. We will never ever change anything in this society if we do not see where the problems come from. To beat and punish people for the "bad" behaviors that they exhibit, when these behaviors come from the environment, is as pointless as trying to stop the clouds from raining. The success is almost nonexistent.

If we want less problems, we need to fix the society. Not to punish anyone. To the contrary, we have to help people. Take the above situation, none of us wanted to do anything bad. And yet we are slapped very hard by the society. What is the outcome of that? If you take 2k Euros form my bank account, especially when it was not my fault for such a sum of money, then you make me poor and prone to steal and cheat. Can't you see that!?

I struggle to push saner thoughts via TROM, but the society is at war with me. And with anyone else that refuses to, or cannot trade. Because trade is the blood of this society keeping it alive and insane.

If you want to support TROM and the tens of projects that we have, and help me keep a voice in this madness, please see https://www.tromsite.com/donate/

I need to remind myself quite often that this trade based society is the enemy. Trade is the enemy. Not people. I am at war with this society, not by choice, but by not having one. #tromlive

Some may argue that trade is a great tool for deescalating big conflicts like it is the case in Ukraine. Lots of tribes are imposing trading sanctions to Russia in order to make Russia stop the aggression towards Ukraine and end the war. So far it has not stopped the aggression but hopefully it will.

So, is trade, in the end, a good tool to keep war at bay?

Well, one has to wonder why has Russia been able to be aggressive with Ukraine in the first place. They have a huge army, but Europe also depends on them trade-wise. Quite a lot in terms on energy supply. So one can definitely argue that Russia used trade as a way to grow its aggression because it knew that Europe fears to intervene since they will lose in the game of trade if they did. Russia may as well have used (and they did use) trade as a way to gain aggression towards Ukraine for the past 8 or so years. Europe only intervened when it got threatened.

If anything trade allows for dictators to raise to power and maintain it. To abuse others and to enslave their own. And yes, at times trade can be used to minimize or stop the conflict, but the conflict may have been caused by trade itself. Like India seems to be very quiet and reluctant to accuse Russia's actions. They also import some 50% of their total armament from Russia for the past 4 or so years (source). So it is likely that trade makes a massive tribe like India do what Europe did in the beginning of the conflict: abstain. And since the conflict doesn't pose a threat to India, they keep on abstaining.

One can also argue that USA also has a lot to gain from going against Russia with the sanctions, since USA can take over the energy market in Europe if Russia gets kicked out.

Imagine this: if Europe had no trade agreements with Russia, then why would Europe let this situation escalate so much before taking some measures? They would probably have helped Ukraine much sooner with all kinds of assistance, military or humanitarian.

So keep these in mind, because the situation is never as black and white as it appears in the media.

If the Russian soldiers were not forced to trade their freedom (go to the army then to war, else you go to jail) then who would have wanted to join the army and go kill others? A lot less for sure. Maybe no one would.

If Russians (and not only) had their basic needs met as trade-free, so food, shelter, healthcare, freedom and so forth, then they could have had a choice and not join the military. But then you threaten them to get their food, shelter and freedom away if they do not join, so they have little to no choice.

But the bottom line is that trade is the origin of MOST problems, not all problems. So even if trade played no negative role in the current conflict, and can be used to avoid a WW3, then it still does not chnage the fact that trade pushes people to enslave, pollute, destroy, and so forth. On a global scale.

Also, what if instead of Europe and USA and others pumping weapons of mass destruction into Ukraine and into defending themselves, attacked the situation with solutions and built more homes, created more food, better energy sources, and so forth, so that they lure in people from Russia to join them, rather than kill them. To come and have a good life, without trading anything in return. To focus on informing people that we are all one species and we are taking care of each other. But perhaps those who trade weapons have a great incentive to lure in politicians into spending more on weapons and sending them to the conflict zone....

So, you want to end this war? Give all Russians free EU membership/access and trade-free access to accommodation, healthcare, food and their basic needs, and perhaps they will drop their weapons because why would they want to fight anymore?

It is true that all sorts of distorted values come into mix when such conflicts are happening, but they usually are a mere layer of sugar on top of a big cake, and the cake is the trade based system we live in. And whatever is on top of it, it is affected by it. That we should not brush aside.

#tromlive

In 2003 the USA with a few friends like UK, Australia and Poland decided to invade Iraq. Their reason for the invasion was that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. It was not true and they kinda knew that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_the_Iraq_War

Some 1 million people have died in that war. And USA&Friends committed so called "war crimes" too https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_post-invasion_Iraq - although war should be the crime itself.

The USA and its friends were not punished. No sanctions, nothing. Today Russia seems to engage in exactly the same manner. They are severely punished.

The history is full of such crimes conducted by tribes.

This goes to show the "double-standard" of our world. On top of this, we shall not forget that crimes and atrocities do not only happen in wars, but everywhere else. Slavery and coercion, draconian laws, the utter destruction of the biodiversity on Earth, the forever-chemicals, the plastic, the pollution. The hunger and starvation, the inability to access medical care unless you have some imaginary papers. All of that.

Where is the world united against these atrocities?

For sure, we need to act quickly to immediate threads like it is the case with Russia. But we need a reminder about how this world truly is.

This is a recent photo from the current war in Ukraine. This is what Russia is doing. This is the brutality and reality of war. Take a deep look. Everyone should be exposed to these events via such direct means, not just numbers and statistics. But the reality of it:

If the world thinks that severely punishing Russia for these atrocities is a necessary, good and united act, then we should do the same for any such acts, performed by any other tribe. And we should do the same for the other atrocities too. Else this is hypocrisy.

So let's see when they are going after the billionaires, the companies that create so much suffering, the profit motive itself; hell, go after trade and eliminate the need for it. Let's see...

#tromlive

Putin is not a "psychopath". It is the result of his environment. And to solely blame him, is the old "beheading the king" approach.

Blaming people, corporations, or governments, is a dead end. We will never understand what makes those humans, or human groups, do whatever they do. Protection from them, in case of aggression, could be necessary. But stopping at that is foolish.

How about we start to inform the world that we are one species? No Ukrainians, no Russians, no Americans, no Europeans and so forth. Then how about we provide a basic life for all humans? Give them their basic needs as trade free. This way you create a good and fertile soil for calm, relaxed, and educated minds that can take better decisions and not be coerced so easily.

Imagine all of these soldiers, going out there feeding the world, building houses for those in need, provide medical care. Then why would anyone want to go to war? And with whom?

We are one species, one planet, one human race. We face the same problems, we have the same challenges. We need to tell these to everyone. Wake them the fuck up! Let's help each other....

Else we are fucked. There will be more Hitlers, more Putins, more dictators and kings. And these are just one kind. USA, EU, and the rest, with their leaders, are also destructive, aggressive, and abusive. A bad soil is what we have, and weeds are growing instead of flowers.

Change the soil.

#tromlive

Do not forget that there is no democracy out there. No matter if it is USA, EU, Russia, they are all as far from democracy as Andromeda galaxy is from us. Humans "elect" a few others, in questionable ways, and then the few others take whatever decisions they want.

Have Russian creatures voted for this war? Was it a democratic decision? How about the American creatures, did they vote to go to Iraq or Vietnam and massacre those people? None voted.

Democracy is a myth, a ridiculous idea that has nothing to do with how anything is organized on this planet, or should be organized perhaps. Profit, birthed by trade, is a lot more of an influencer than anything else.

And so, if you get angry at Russia, do not forget that are not the Russians attacking anyone, but a handful of powerful people. Also do not forget that USA, EU, and the rest of the world, share the same bloody hands, but yet again it is not the people, but a handful few.

We cannot resolve conflict with conflict in the long run. Sure, it may be necessary to act aggressively if you are attacked, in order to protect yourself, but if there is no plan, no understanding, no approach at how to prevent such situations, your solution is momentary at best.

We need weapons of mass-helping rather than mass-killing. So that we create a global society of humans, who have free time to educate themselves, think, learn, create relationships, research, be creative, help each other. The only way out, long term, is to attack the world with solutions. To move beyond this mass-trading society. To free men from trade. To free the world from its effects.

War is not about who is right, but about who is left.

#tromlive

Never forget this image:

We are tiny and fragile. And we are all on the same spaceship. Fighting with each other, polluting, destroying ourselves and the spaceship with its ecosystems, is a sign of a primitive species.

Technologically we are advanced. Morally, primitive still. We look for signs of intelligent life out there, but there seem to be none in here.

We have created a system of "politics" that is a mere fashion show. We do not know what is true anymore, nor that we ever knew. Science is here to help, but the incentive to trade made us merchants and consumers, so the value is in how much we acquire. Science is thus, mainly a tool to help us sell more. Build taller buildings for richer humans, make thinner smart-phones for stupid-consumers; better tanks and rockets to destroy the others: more plastic, more livestock, more of the same products wrapped in different wrappers, all on the backs of our capable technology.

Science tells us that we are all one, connected through evolution, entangled with the universe. Atoms, cells, planets. But who has the time to embrace this reality when we are all rats in a trade-race!?

Conquerors, emperors, politicians, are self delusional. Even their victories are momentary. We should, by now, go at war with cancer, pollution, biodiversity loss, homelessness, other diseases, asteroids....not with each other.

Your tanks and missiles won't bring peace.
Your lies and fake news don't exist.
Your words are swords, that only cut
A world of wars, online or not.

And even those who use no sword,
Their words are empty, their actions fold.

#tromlive

This may be overwhelming but take it easy. Step by step. Get used to it. You'll see the benefits for sure!

You see, people think that we should dream about a Resource Based Economy, follow TVP or the like. Let's build a new society, a city, a community...

Ok, go about doing those, although they seem quite unachievable. Society doesn't change like that, it evolves, and emerges. We have to focus on what the problem is, not what the solution is, because solutions follow problems. And they are multiple.

In any case, if we do not take care of people's brains then we go nowhere. If most people spend their time on facebook, twitter, youtube, netflix, and the like, consuming like consumers, trading their attention and overall brain for nonsense content, then we cannot build anything. We cannot even start a discussion about creating a different society.

So here's where TROM comes in and helps. Since the human brains are mostly exposed to the online world, we are building a different online world for these brains.

Listen! Here's how you can take care of your brain and your friends' brain.

1. Start with your device. If you use a mobile phone then we can't help you for now, but maybe in the near future. For now you can replace your computer operating system with TROMjaro. https://www.tromjaro.com/ . This operating system is fast, easy to use, customizable, stable, and removes all of the bullshit. No more ads, trackers, no more trades. It comes with a plethora of useful tools and features out of the box. It is the basis of your digital world, the foundation.

Use our library of trade-free apps if you are searching for a particular app https://www.tromjaro.com/apps/. Click install. That's all!

2. Read our books. They are well sourced and a direct attack to and a dissection of this society. https://www.tromsite.com/books/ . Click and read. You can also download them in PDF.

3. Watch our videos. We put a ton of effort into these and are on the same par with our books. https://www.tromsite.com/videos/ . Click any and play.

4. Stay informed with sane news. https://tromnews.com/ - we put a lot of effort into this one to bring you nonstop news from all around the world. No political bullshit. There are several sections there so you can also watch a ton of curated educational videos, amazing photos of our world, and more. Use TROMnews as your daily brain food.

5. Give up movies and switch to documentaries. If you think this is irrelevant, stupid, or boring, then you do not understand how important it is to fill your brain with real and awesome information. Documentaries are not boring if you watch the right ones. Reality is unbelievable. And important. Via https://www.videoneat.com/ we make thousands of such materials available as trade-free. We have documentaries and courses. Give them a try. We hand curate them.

We even have a Smart TV that takes these materials and streams them nonstop. See https://www.videoneat.com/tv/

6. Give up these ad-platforms that call themselves as "social networks" like facebook, twitter, youtube, and the like. If you want to create posts and share with friends, keep in touch with them and all that, use our social platform https://social.trom.tf/ . No ads no bullshit. You are in control. Learn more about it here https://trom.tf/social/. And if you want to upload your science/technology/activism videos use our video platform https://videos.trom.tf/ . Again, no ads no bullshit. No trades. The more you spend your time on those ad-networks, the more mush your brain becomes, thirsty for consumerism, lacking awareness, not understanding what is happening in the world, and wanting more nonsense content. Don't let that happen! This move can seem hard, but do it! Else you'll become like the rest.

7. Give up the basic internet tools you are using that are consuming yourself. Slack, Google services, search engines, etc. See our https://trom.tf/ where we have a ton of such alternatives that work great. Also see our Trade-Free Directory https://www.directory.trade-free.org/ where you can search for more such tools. From messengers to search engines, you name it!

You TZM, TVP, and the like people, use the TROM decentralized chat https://chat.trom.tf/ instead of the BS Discord, use our Files https://files.trom.tf/ for your documents and collaborations, use our Send to send files https://send.trom.tf/, and so forth. We built these tools for you and everyone else.

Ok.

We do a massive amount of work to create a different world for the brain. One that's realistic, honest, smart, sharp, alert, and one that can see the world for its amazingness, and the society for its awfulness.

If you do not get why this is important, then you don't get it. We run this entire alternative digital universe with some 200 Euros a month...so if you can help us keep it, please also consider a donation - https://www.tromsite.com/donate/

We work on a new big documentary and more tools.

Help yourself! #tromlive

First they blamed the gods, then they blamed the kings. Then they blamed the politicians and the rich, and at times the others, or even themselves. And now they blame social media and algorithms.

But it was none's fault.

Gods do not exist. Kings want more for themselves because of an inherited practice of winning the game of trade, on the backs of enslaved humans. Their values were distorted, their power was immense, their means of acquiring were primitive, relying on human labor.

The politicians are just talking heads for the richest of the game of trade. They are the "elected kings" of today. All they say is emptiness, all they do is nothingness. All they want is to keep the game of trade alive by any means, because that's all they know, because that's what helps their own cause.

The rich are the best players of today. They managed to win the game of trade, and the game itself makes them addicted to it. They will always want more and more, with little regard for the others or the planet. Their values are as distorted as those of kings.

To blame others or yourself for the misery of today, it is as true as blaming the gods in the past. You and others exist, but your behavior does not, unless there is an environment that creates it. And if you do not see trade as that environment, then you might as well blame the gods again.

The latest blame-game of today is to blame the social media and the algorithms. The modern gods who know everything we do and influence us on a daily basis. But the same way that gods are a man made creation, social networks are a man made creation, and they are created in their own image. In the same way that god is jealous when you pray to other gods, and wants to punish people for bad behaviors, social media and algorithms are a reflection or today's trade-based society: they want to trade with you and win at this game. They want more of your currency, time, data, attention. And they are created by humans. As simple as that.

The kings, the rich, the politicians, algorithms and social media....the you and the others....are not to blame. All are a product of this trade-based environment that forces us to trade trade trade, and thus consume more, grab more for ourselves, lie, deceive, corrupt or be corrupted. Care little about anything but trading this for that. Accumulate and waste.

Unless this environment changes, nothing will change.

#tromimg #tromlive

If you don't read this post on Friendica (why!?) then make sure you read it in full here. So you see the images, links, and all that.

This is a chart with COVID vaccines vs mortality due to COVID per million people. Left side is how much of the population is fully vaccinated. Right side the mortality rate.

(source)

It is quite clear that the more people are vaccinated, the less are dying of COVID. Now there is a new variant of concern - read the WHO statement about it https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/11/1106622

Of course, it comes from Africa where the vaccination rate is very low. What are the tribes of the world thinking? This was very predictable. Delta came from India from the same reasons, and now Omicron is thought to be even more dangerous. If we have global problems but we only act locally, this is going to always happen.

When people doubt the institutions and companies, and in many cases for good reasons, then trust is eroded. The trade game that we play creates this situation, since companies and governments seek profits that are induced by the game of trade itself, so they cut corners, lie, are corrupted, and overall care more about profiting than they do about humans and the planet.

So the trust is eroded, and people are skeptical about the vaccines, and thus the vaccination rate will be lower even when there are vaccines available. This is why, even the new variant, is discovered mostly among unvaccinated people (source). Also the mortality rate that is seen in the world, due to COVID, is mostly among those who are not vaccinated. Therefore, even where the vaccine is available, people's mistrust in this society, couple with the bullshit of social (ad) platforms like facebook, twitter, youtube and the like that spread any nonsense that gets clicks, creates a disastrous situation.

SECOND.
Poor tribes do not get access to vaccines, so they become a breeding ground for new mutations of the virus. The vaccines should be open source and free for all. There are 0 excuses for this!

The moral of the story is that we are a global society that has global problems, from crime to climate change, from pandemics to starvation or waste and pollution. And yet humans act as if the imaginary borders they built, are going to protect them from such global threats.

Unless we wake up, and also give up to this primitive idea of trade that creates so many barriers, nothing will ever ever change.

Such a situation would be so different in a sane society:
- most people would have at least their basic needs met as trade-free, so they will have time to be more informed, relaxed, and cooperative in case of such an emergency
- more people could focus on solving the issue (doctors, researchers, citizen scientists)
- once a solution is found, will be distributed to those in most need, not in most rich tribes, thus preventing deaths and future mutations of such a virus

We act like retarded children. But this behavior comes from the environment that we are exposed to. Never forger that.

#tromimg #tromlive