The people are being consumed by the so called "free" entertainment.
But it is not "free". It is dumb and trade-based. TikTok, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and so forth mandate that you give them your data and attention (watch ads) in order to use their platforms. In return they give you access to a ton of dumbed down content.
Trading stupidity is much easier than trading well made content. Therefore stupidity evolves faster in a trade-based society.
To make a good researched video can take months, to make a dumbed down one can take minutes. To write a good book about real and important things, and research for it, takes months or years. To write bullshit fictional stories takes a lot less. Music, movies, articles, they are all under the influence of trade, allowing simplistic content to thrive while good one to barely breath.
It is this trade based society to be blamed for the vast majority of the destruction, suffering and idiocy we see worldwide.
A Trade-Free operating system based on Manjaro Linux Designed for your brain, but you can install it on a computer.No more ads and trackers consuming you, no โfreeโ trials, noContinue readingHOME
A Trade-Free operating system based on Manjaro Linux Designed for your brain, but you can install it on a computer.No more ads and trackers consuming you, no โfreeโ trials, no โฆ
Our TROM Social first page (login) is not anymore just an empty page with a simple login, it provides you a peek into the fediverse:
Now you can see what's going on on the network, maybe to convince you to join :). It took a lot of CSS and HMTL gymnastics to achieve this. From my tests on desktop with mobile emulators all looks good on mobile, but for some reason when I check it on my phone it does not look as it should....I shall investigate.
Implemented some dark toggles for some of our services, where it was doable, such as Call
Search
Speed
And made our TROM Call, Jitsi Meet, more reliable.
Lastly we spent many days trying to figure out how to make our Peertube Live work better. Hours of tests, lots of logs. Hopefully we can make it more reliable.
After many months we are bringing back our TROM.tf Search! search.trom.tf/ thanks to Danny!
But with a twist. Instead of hosting a SearX instance we are using a script that checks the best and most reliable instances and uses them randomly for every search. It is a meta-search engine. This way we make sure it is reliable and our IP will never get blocked by google and the rest.
For those who do not know, SearX is itself a sort of meta-search engine, pulling results from google, DDG, yahoo and more, removing the ads and trackers, and basically allowing you to search without those viruses.
So, we are finally back!
To add it to Firefox simply right click the URL after the page loads, and then add the TROM Search as a search engine. From Firefox's settings make sure you select it to be as default for your browser.
People have transformed politics into a football game. Who wins? Who loses? Let's fight with each other! Be angry, shout, become fanatic!
So everyone loses track of what this is supposed to be about: to organize our species so that we can have a saner society, one that allows us to thrive, feel safe, create, discover.
So fuck the left and right and everything in between. How about the focus is on what we want to do, and make that scientific. Like what makes people less violent? What makes them smarter and calmer? More helpful? Less destructive? Well there are many experts and organizations who can answer these questions, no need for politicians. So bring them forward, let them present their theories and facts. Let's test.
Focus on projects and approaches, instead of individuals and parties.
Like let's make sure people are housed, have access to food and all of their necessitie
... show more
People have transformed politics into a football game. Who wins? Who loses? Let's fight with each other! Be angry, shout, become fanatic!
So everyone loses track of what this is supposed to be about: to organize our species so that we can have a saner society, one that allows us to thrive, feel safe, create, discover.
So fuck the left and right and everything in between. How about the focus is on what we want to do, and make that scientific. Like what makes people less violent? What makes them smarter and calmer? More helpful? Less destructive? Well there are many experts and organizations who can answer these questions, no need for politicians. So bring them forward, let them present their theories and facts. Let's test.
Focus on projects and approaches, instead of individuals and parties.
Like let's make sure people are housed, have access to food and all of their necessities, and then provide them opportunities to do more: become doctors, engineers, smart and good humans. Isn't that going to benefit us all?
Let's make sure people not only have access to relevant and free education, but time to digest it and use it.
This SHOULD BE SIMPLE! We have what we need to create a paradise on Earth.
But the drug of trade that gave birth to companies, interests, businesses, profit, competition, mindless media, and so forth, have completely blinded the humans. No one has a scientific plan for humans, the species. They all focus on short term gains for their own little tribe/group. That brings them more power, more money, more stuff, more opportunities.
A new service was added to our trade-free services at TROM.tf - TROM Draw draw.trom.tf/
A tiny and useful online drawing board providing basic tools for the job. You can also create multi-user drawing boards where your friends can join you and draw together. The drawings can also be saved locally.
Our: The Big Farts (TBF) mega infographic and search engine is no longer. It is time to say goodbye to that.
This was a tool designed in 2018 for our book The Origin of Most Problems meant to showcase how s few companies own pretty much anything in this society: food, drinks, electronics, software, medicine, you name it....
It was a great summary of this fuckedup monopolized society. We even had a search engine that was searching through hundreds of thousands of brands so you can see who owns what.
But over time this has become obsolete since the "farts" are called farts for a reason. They come and go. Companies acquire other companies, brands change, some go bankrupt, et
... show more
Our: The Big Farts (TBF) mega infographic and search engine is no longer. It is time to say goodbye to that.
This was a tool designed in 2018 for our book The Origin of Most Problems meant to showcase how s few companies own pretty much anything in this society: food, drinks, electronics, software, medicine, you name it....
It was a great summary of this fuckedup monopolized society. We even had a search engine that was searching through hundreds of thousands of brands so you can see who owns what.
But over time this has become obsolete since the "farts" are called farts for a reason. They come and go. Companies acquire other companies, brands change, some go bankrupt, etc.. We do not have the resources to keep this updated, so it is time to let it go after 6 years.
In the book we still give a shocking overview of the monopolization of our society, therefore the point remains solid and valid.
It was so much effort to make this TBF page but we knew it is going to be a temporary tool.
Goodbye! We hope that some people got to use it and it opened their minds about the state of our society.
We created TROM.tf 3 years ago and the aim was to provide trade-free services for everyone. A social network, a video platform with unlimited uploads, a file sharing platform with 10GB of storage and 20GB on request, a chat, and more. There are between 2 and 3 thousand users across these platforms and that's fantastic!
However to keep these platforms alive and up to date, plus add more, we need some financial help. And the kind we need is quite unique.
Listen,
We need 200 people to donate 5 Euros a month in order to support this project forever. That's all. Here - tromsite.com/donate/
Distributed power via small donations to make it sustainable. There are currently 80 people who are our backers, so we are 40% funded. If a small fraction (120 people) of t
... show more
Dear wonderful people, we need help.
We created TROM.tf 3 years ago and the aim was to provide trade-free services for everyone. A social network, a video platform with unlimited uploads, a file sharing platform with 10GB of storage and 20GB on request, a chat, and more. There are between 2 and 3 thousand users across these platforms and that's fantastic!
However to keep these platforms alive and up to date, plus add more, we need some financial help. And the kind we need is quite unique.
Listen,
We need 200 people to donate 5 Euros a month in order to support this project forever. That's all. Here - tromsite.com/donate/
Distributed power via small donations to make it sustainable. There are currently 80 people who are our backers, so we are 40% funded. If a small fraction (120 people) of the ones that get this email would support us, then we could make this sustainable.
But please don't ignore this message thinking that others will donate so why should you? The bystander effect is a real issue with these "call to action" approaches. Since there are others who are receiving this email, you may think that they will do something about it and that makes you, and me, and everyone else, less likely to act. And so, many people will not act, unfortunately.
We store over 2-3 TB of data, most of which are your files. We keep a server running 24/7 and make sure everything works well and it is secure. We need to pay for the servers, backups, and some food and basic necessities for at least 1 human in order to keep all of this alive.
You won't only support TROM.tf but the entire TROM Project and an upcoming video series.
You have received this email because you are one of the TROM.tf users. Hopefully this is the first and only email you will receive from us, but we desperately need some help now.
Do not forget that the internet, youtube, netflix, cars and supermarkets, lightbulbs and modern medicine, do not make our society "civilized". These are a result of often enslaved humans producing "stuff" in a trade-based society. Technologically we, as a society, are quite advanced, but morally we are primitive.
Despite all of this technological progress humans are still forcing ALL of their billions of members to trade in order to survive, despite being able to feed, house, and take care of everyone on Earth. This means we are still primitive and have no greater goals such as exploration, the advancement of technology and science, understanding where we came from and where we are heading... All that humans do is trade, day in, day out.
Slaves and slave owners. Simple minds. Robots.
... show more
Do not forget that the internet, youtube, netflix, cars and supermarkets, lightbulbs and modern medicine, do not make our society "civilized". These are a result of often enslaved humans producing "stuff" in a trade-based society. Technologically we, as a society, are quite advanced, but morally we are primitive.
Despite all of this technological progress humans are still forcing ALL of their billions of members to trade in order to survive, despite being able to feed, house, and take care of everyone on Earth. This means we are still primitive and have no greater goals such as exploration, the advancement of technology and science, understanding where we came from and where we are heading... All that humans do is trade, day in, day out.
Slaves and slave owners. Simple minds. Robots.
If you take away the electrification, internet, the gadgets, the hot water and the mass produced products - stuff - you are left with the "naked" humans who all they want is to acquire more, get "married", work, have kids, drink, and cheer up for their tribe.
It is the environment who creates these behaviors so if we do not change the "mental" environment, nothing will happen. We do not need new tech, new science, new materials. We need new lives for the individuals of this species. Lives that are relaxed and taken care of. Scientific, globally oriented, and to live in a non competitive environment.
So the UN or other institutions, if they ever want to solve any global issues, they need to first propose that we should take care of people and create a decent life for them. All of them, not just the very poor. We are all trapped in this trade-prison. You can't expect for a different society to emerge when all humans do is to slave away and compete with each other. Dog eats dog world.
Happy 1st of May to all of the slaves who got a day off. What a disgrace of a society.
We have changed the way we deal with the 200 FOR TROM campaign in terms of donations. Let me explain.
Ideally we wanted to have a simple donation campaign where people can only contribute 5 Euros a month - no more, no less. However pretty much no Wordpress plugin is designed for this, since they are all geared towards selling products or creating campaigns where people can donate any amount. But I wanted to try something new by limiting the amount of money that people can donate monthly. I want to distribute the burden we put on individuals, but also to limit the growth of TROM, as a project, to a manageable "height".
The plugin we were using was not reliable at all and I even had to pay for it (which is ironic since we do not get enough financial support from the campaign itself). Because it is important to accept a wide variety of payment options, and "cards plus Paypal" are the most used worldwide, this plugin tried to combine Stripe (cards) with Paypal
... show more
Hey people,
We have changed the way we deal with the 200 FOR TROM campaign in terms of donations. Let me explain.
Ideally we wanted to have a simple donation campaign where people can only contribute 5 Euros a month - no more, no less. However pretty much no Wordpress plugin is designed for this, since they are all geared towards selling products or creating campaigns where people can donate any amount. But I wanted to try something new by limiting the amount of money that people can donate monthly. I want to distribute the burden we put on individuals, but also to limit the growth of TROM, as a project, to a manageable "height".
The plugin we were using was not reliable at all and I even had to pay for it (which is ironic since we do not get enough financial support from the campaign itself). Because it is important to accept a wide variety of payment options, and "cards plus Paypal" are the most used worldwide, this plugin tried to combine Stripe (cards) with Paypal into one single campaign. But the plugin stopped working with Paypal and then could not communicate with Stripe anymore, so when a donation was canceled the plugin had no idea.
In short, we could not count how many people are still actively subscribed to the campaign via this plugin, so I ended up having to check in TROM's Stripe and Paypal accounts to see how many are subscribed...and then manually add that number to our donation page. On top of that I cannot pay for the plugin's subscription and therefore I cannot receive updates - and having an outdated plugin that deals with payments is not a good idea.
OK.
These being said it is time to give up on this plugin and rely directly on Stripe and Paypal. If anyone wants to support us they will be redirected to any of these websites where they can complete the payment and manage their subscriptions via them. It is the safest, easiest, and direct way of doing this. If the Stripe integration with Paypal will be enabled in the following days then perhaps we will only use Stripe which can process pretty much any kind of payment, including Paypal.
I hate dealing with these things, trust me.
What will happen to your current subscription?
If you want to cancel it, please contact us or reply to this email. If you want to change the payment method then it is better to ask us to cancel your subscription and then you can do it again. After that you can manage it via Stripe/Paypal. It is simple.
What about the wall of donors?
I would really love to have a "wall of donors", a list of people who are actively supporting this campaign...maybe this is a nice way of thanking them publicly. But right now I do not know how to do that since we use both Stripe and Paypal, and some people do not want their names to be displayed publicly. If Stripe enables Paypal as a payment option then maybe I can do something about this. Sorry! But also...this is not a fashion show and we all understand that. We need some financial support to maintain our projects that are about serious global problems and ways to think differently about "fixing" them. TROM is not a project that tries to blend into this system and find financial support to be "sustainable" in that sense - it is a way to scream and harness the anger towards something positive/educational/informative and helpful. And for that we simply need some financial help.
Lastly.
A big thank you to Marcel who became the 80st donor for our campaign while I was writing this message. And I appreciate all of you very much! We are almost half way there, and that gives me some hope. We have a lot of plans for TROM, so let's see how things will evolve. We will keep you posted.
One is a billionaire who is selling all of his books, the other one is a quite-broke human who has the courage and decency to provide her book online for free. Trade-Free. No ads, no data collection, no subscribe-here-to-read bullshit.
That's the world in which we live. The ones who make a fortune are trained and incentivized to not even share their "must read" books for free, despite having so much wealth.
Oh look, Bill Gates released a book about "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster"! It must be important.... so it is worth 18$ to read.
Grab @Sasha 's book from here bigworldsmallsasha.com/book/ - she also talks a lot about Climate Change, solutions, and a new kind of worldview.
@Sasha has released a big big book: Big World Small Sasha. Available here as trade-free bigworldsmallsasha.com/book/ - or you can buy the paperback version from the same link (there is no other way to provide it for free in that format).
Why is this book important and how is it related to TROM?
It is a wonderfully written book about her experience on this planet, and how she grew a mind to understand what's this society made of, what is our role in it, and how much we depend on the natural world. It is about the destruction we are causing, but also the so many wonderful people that exist out there, who care and do something about it.
All of that is perfectly layered wi
... show more
@Sasha has released a big big book: Big World Small Sasha. Available here as trade-free bigworldsmallsasha.com/book/ - or you can buy the paperback version from the same link (there is no other way to provide it for free in that format).
Why is this book important and how is it related to TROM?
It is a wonderfully written book about her experience on this planet, and how she grew a mind to understand what's this society made of, what is our role in it, and how much we depend on the natural world. It is about the destruction we are causing, but also the so many wonderful people that exist out there, who care and do something about it.
All of that is perfectly layered with her adventurous adventures, some of which are hard to believe, others are so funny and fun. You can see her grow in this book, to become who she is today.
Sasha talks about this trade based society quite a bit, about the notion of trade-free, and also about TROM.
But, If you think the book is about Sasha, you are wrong. If you think the book is about hitchhiking and traveling, you are wrong. If you think the book is about this trade-based society, you are also wrong. It is about all of these, and more. Dialogues, funny stories, a wonderful way of painting with words, Sasha did a fantastic job!
And after some 5 years of intense work, emotional roller-coasters, and being quite broke, she is brave enough to put the book for free online. No ads, no data collection, no subscribe here to read. No bullshit. If you appreciate that please support her.
So this is not just a book, it is an experience of living in this society and a unique way at looking at this society. A more real overview. It is also a neat and engaging way to introduce people to projects like TROM, and overall to make people question the status-quo.
Sasha is part of our small TROM team and she took part in our TROM II documentary as a lioness roaring facts and truths :D ! tromsite.com/documentaries/troโฆ
Go read her book, and enjoy her wonderful stories!
YouTube will cut parts from your video now. Imagine that. In this case it is from a TROM II snippet that @Alexio shared on our "legacy" YouTube channel. Mind you the documentary is free for everyone and also educational, so in a sane world it should be fair use for whatever media we've used.
We are so thankful that @PeerTube exists! We can post all of our videos on our Peertube channel videos.trom.tf/c/trom/videos without being afraid that anything will be banned or cut out.
And to no surprise Facebook does the same:
... show more
This is why we gave up Youtube officially:
YouTube will cut parts from your video now. Imagine that. In this case it is from a TROM II snippet that @Alexio shared on our "legacy" YouTube channel. Mind you the documentary is free for everyone and also educational, so in a sane world it should be fair use for whatever media we've used.
We are so thankful that @PeerTube exists! We can post all of our videos on our Peertube channel videos.trom.tf/c/trom/videos without being afraid that anything will be banned or cut out.
And to no surprise Facebook does the same:
Banned the same video in several countries....
Basically we are not using YouTube or Facebook anymore since 2 years ago. Only @Alexio and @Georgi post there from time to time, mirroring our Friendica or Peertube. We do that since there are still many people following TROM on those platforms unfortunately. We are always trying to bring them to the fediverse and to these sane platforms, but change is hard...
So for now at least if some of our content can be mirrored to these trade-platforms while encouraging those following us there to change their online habits and use these other trade-free alternative platforms, then so be it.
But it is another reminder of the stupidity of our world, emerged from the practice of trade where even the reproducible at no cost digital content is "owned" and traded, so that ideas like copyright are invented to protect them. Terrible.
Te digital is abundant so we should not even put restrictions in place. But you can't do that in a trade society since so many would take advantage of that for their own gain.
This project argues that trade is the origin of most problems: from climate change to slavery, waste and pollution, corruption, crime, you name it. And if we understand the cause, we have a chance ...
Our Friendica instance got updated to the latest stable and all of our custom themes were updated and we added 2 more: Brown and Grey.
Go to Settings - Display to test them out.
They will be shared with the Friendica's developers if they want to include them in the default Friendica's themes or get some ideas about future changes.
Big thanks to these people who create Friendica for being so awesome and for keeping Friendica so useful and feature-rich!
Every year we have to pay for a 4TB backup plan. This means, everything we have (from our documentaries and videos, to our books, or our websites) are all backed-up in a safe and encrypted place. This also includes our TROM.tf services, some 2TB of files, most of which are yours, the ones using TROM.tf. Your Nextcloud files, your Peertube videos, your encrypted Matrix conversations and so forth.
Thus, I ask you, to please consider helping us pay for this, since we are so low on money.
It only costs 300 Euros and we have to pay it in 2 weeks.
For the first time ever we are able to run our own newsletter system. In the beginning we've used MailChimp or other trade-based services, to then move to a Wordpress plugi
... show more
Hello dear people,
Let's keep it very brief.
Please help us pay for our yearly backups.
Every year we have to pay for a 4TB backup plan. This means, everything we have (from our documentaries and videos, to our books, or our websites) are all backed-up in a safe and encrypted place. This also includes our TROM.tf services, some 2TB of files, most of which are yours, the ones using TROM.tf. Your Nextcloud files, your Peertube videos, your encrypted Matrix conversations and so forth.
Thus, I ask you, to please consider helping us pay for this, since we are so low on money.
It only costs 300 Euros and we have to pay it in 2 weeks.
For the first time ever we are able to run our own newsletter system. In the beginning we've used MailChimp or other trade-based services, to then move to a Wordpress plugin solution that never worked well. This is the real deal and it makes everything so much better: from sending this newsletters to managing whatever lists we need. Therefore keep in mind that we are now sending the newsletters from newsletter.tromsite.com/
If you want to unsubscribe simply use the Unsubscribe button at the footer of this email.
A new video series in the making. We hope....
Starting the next month I plan to work on a new video series that should run indefinitely (I hope). It may take some time before I start to make and then post the videos, but I am convinced that I have to do this. I will give you more information once I am close to that moment.
I still feel like I have more energy in me to put up a fight, despite the fact that I do not get enough financial support to help me focus fully on TROM. I will have to spend more of my energy trying to trade and make some money in order to support myself and the project, and that kills me inside little by little. But this is a war for me, a war with this trade-based society. And I will get harmed, and I will have to give up on some projects if I cannot get enough support, but I will continue one way or another.
Much respect for those who are still interested in what we do at TROM and to those who can afford to support us.
Thank you Wojmir for the 10 Euros donation! Let us remind you that we desperately need help to fund our backups for all of our projects. We need to raise 300 Euros in less than 2 weeks. tromsite.com/trom-backup/
To keep on doing trade-free things in a trade-based world is a fight that requires a lot of struggles, almost like swimming against a tsunami. But what is the alternative? Give up and not do anything? That's by far the easiest solution since the water current will push you into the "normal" direction. But for now we are still trying with TROM. We have reached many thousands of minds and with very little funding required. Thus, if you think TROM is still relevant, consider to support it since I (Tio) cannot push it all by myself.
Big thanks to the few people who are still supporting TROM, financially or not.
