This is not a real human, it is an "AI Model". Meaning, a computer generated image/persona. And this "model" has over 120.000 follows on Instagram. The creators of "it" are making thousands of euros a month from advertising products via the "model". Basically generating new images with the same creature, but wearing different brands and so forth. (source)

Many people are aware of this, and yet still "follow" these "AI models". Probably humans are already used to live in a fake online world where even the humans are so filtered you can rarely depict any reality from their online lives.

This insanity can be easily understood and predicted if we understand this trade-based society where everyone is forced and incentivized to trade. Every piece of technology will be used for trade purposes. In the process a lot of waste and idiots are being created. Unfortunately.

It is all about trading this for that. This gives rise to consumption, to privacy invasive devices, to pollution and slavery, to what many call as capitalism. But the word "capitalism" gives too much credit to this primitive society where the main practice is that of trade. This is why we avoid to use that term in our TROM materials. It is deceptive and loaded with preconceptions.

#tromlive

This November Facebook is rolling out a subscription model for EU. Their options: pay 10 Euros a month and you will not see ads on Facebook, or as they say it:

People can refuse to pay a subscription and continue to use Facebook for FREE while seeing ads.

Let's quickly unpack this shitshow.

For the past 10.000 years humans have used a practice to move stuff around the globe: trade. You take care of my sheep, I give you cheese. In time it evolved into specialized work, the notion of debt (trade for it later) and the invention of "currency". A worthless resource that humans imagine to have value. Such as gold, shells, coins, etc..

You do not have to build houses for others in return for some clothes and food, you will get a currency in return for your work. In time humans started to lose track of what is really happening in this society of trade and then believed that they work for the currency itself. Like you work for money. Despite the fact that not a single human works for money, they work for what money gets them (food, comfort, access, power, etc..).

Therefore, from economists to regular workers, journalists or historians, everyone got tricked and confused by the ways the trade practice mutated over the past thousands of years.

Nowadays it is even more confusing because one can trade their attention (watch ads) in return for accessing some digital content. Or agree to let their data being mined in return for other services. Therefore a currency is often not needed, but the practice of trade is the same as it was 10.000 years ago.

So today humans somehow think that if something does not cost money (or other currencies) that something is FREE. This is almost like saying that someone is not dead unless it has a death certificate.

If we were to understand this simple fact of life, we could cut through a lot of the crap that is raining down in today's society. We could easily ask the question: What Am I Trading? Like: what do I have to give in return for using Facebook?

And the answer is simple: you need to give them your attention (watch ads), your data, and your currency to either pay to reach your followers and so forth, or pay for a monthly ads-free experiencing.

As you can see in no scenario Facebook is free. NONE.

This is what TROM is trying so hard to make visible: the invisible part of our society. The fact that TRADE is at the core of how this society works, and how this force of trade is making us all complete jerks, charlatans, and abusers. We need to understand what the problem is, in order to come up with any solution.

Understand first!

#tromlive

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

TROM Search (searxng), and Translate (lingva) are trade-free (TF) interfaces for trade-based services. And they may or may not work. Now we make sure people understand that:

We have removed TROM Bird (nitter - a Twitter TF interface) because for one it rarely worked since the billionaire introduced new rules, and second we do not see it relevant. We have the Fediverse where anyone can join for free.

Bibliogram (TF for Instagram), Teddit (TF interface for Reddit), and Invidious (TF for Youtube) were also removed in the past, because they either didn't work at all, or it was nearly impossible to keep them functional.

All of these TF interfaces are either a pain to develop, deploy and maintain, or they do not work anymore. Our server IP is getting limited or blocked by these big companies, so it is not a good idea to try and host them. Simply put these companies want for people to use their platforms to see ads and collect their data, or sell shit to them. If you still use them, then you should considering ditching them!

In the end these are not alternatives to trade-based services, they are interfaces for these services. So for example we rely on Friendica instead of Facebook, because Friendica is a true alternative. A different social network! Same when we rely on Peertube instead of Youtube. Or Nextcloud instead of Google Drive, and so forth. These and more, are the true services that we provide via https://trom.tf/ !

Yes, most videos are on Youtube and it will take a long time until we could match that on Peertube, so for now keep calm and use FreeTube (local TF interface for Youtube), and keep on posting on Peertube!

Yes Reddit has a lot of interesting content. So use an ad and tracker blocker! And give Lemmy a try!

In the near future we will replace the TROM Translate with a proper Translation engine that we run on our server. As for a search engine it is damn tricky....we do not know what alternative there is.

And please consider supporting us here https://www.tromsite.com/donate/ so that we keep on providing real Trade Free alternatives to what has become a cancer of the Internet world: Google, Facebook, Twitter and the like.

#tromlive

Hey people,

On the 26th of August, in less than 2 weeks, I (Tio) will go to Prague for the last ZDay event. ZDay, or Zeitgeist Day, is a global yearly event organized by the Zeitgeist Movement (TZM). It is meant to invite people from all around the world to present similar ideas to those that Zeitgeist stands behind. TROM started soon after the Zeitgeist Movement sparked into existence as the activism arm of The Venus Project. Our views are very similar and we are heading towards the same direction.

TZM will stop organizing these ZDay events because it tries to decentralize itself. So this will be the last ZDay, therefore I thought it would be a shame to never have participated in this event, so I contacted the organizers and asked if I can come. They were very familiar with TROM and happy to have me there. We've just released a new documentary so this is a perfect timing for such a presentation.

The event will be in Prague at the Spojka Karlín Events on 26th this month. It will start on 12:00 and end at 18:00. There will be 6 speakers in total. 4 will do their presentations in Czech and 2 in English (one of them is me). This is the official website for the event https://www.zeitgeistmovement.cz/2023/07/14/zeitgeist-day/

All of the presentations will be translated live via personal headphones that the audience can wear. The event can host up to 120 people and over 50 seats are already booked. In order to participate you have to book here https://cloud.tzm.community/apps/forms/s/o78djCtWPHY2YjnMjZrikRD2

It does not cost money to participate.

My talk will be called "How to Grow a Saner Society. A Lifetime Adventure." and I will try to keep it more positive. I will talk about our trade-free approach, the TROM.tf project, and a lot more. But I will try to put it all in a new unique perspective. The talk will be 30-40 minutes long and it will be recorded. We will upload it to our Peertube whenever it will be available.

This is a first for me, so let's see how it goes. If you want to meet up, please come to the Prague event if you can! 5 of us from TROM will be there including Roma, Aaron, Vicky and Rafa.

#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