Updates: TROM II, moving, making money, etc

By tio | April 30, 2022 | Comments 4 comments

I am very active on the fediverse but when it comes to more important posts I will still use my blog for that.

Because I do not have money I will have to pause the work on TROM II and try to make some money.

So.

TROM II is going very well. I made 2 parts already, a bit over 2h long combined. But I will have to add some 20 minutes to each + very likely make 2 more parts. Everything is setup and ready to go.

This is the first part in the editing program:

What is in red I have to add to it still. First part is about us and how the environment shaped us as humans. It explains the role of culture, movies, music, school, and so forth. But also the scientific evolution of the universe and the creatures on this planet.

Second part:

Again that red thing needs to be added to the documentary. Here we talk about the evolution of human societies and with the focus on trade. We talk about our personal situations with university, money, jobs, and so forth. It is what introduces the viewers to what trade is and how it is the core of our society.

Third and fourth parts (in the making):

Left is the third part, right is the forth. They are kinda done in terms of the storyline. I had to cu through around 30-35 hours of footage and bring it down to this. The third part is about detailing what problems we have in the world today, from biodiversity loss to climate change or waste. And how trade is to blame for that. Fourth part is about solutions and a new way of looking at all of these. How to move beyond this awful society.

Now I’d say there will be 4 parts, each around 1 hour 20 minutes long. So….it will still be a long documentary. It is a different approach that I am taking with this one. I am making it more personal, but it is still packed with facts and hard science.

I think it will take me some 2-3 weeks to merge the leftovers into the first 2 parts so I am fully done with them. However to finish the 3rd and 4th parts it can take me some 3-4 months. Maybe less idk.

This being said.

Here is the current situation. I have around 1.800 Euros. All of my money. The monthly donations for TROM are at about 350 or so Euros a month. I and Sasha live with my parents and my sister in spain, in a rented house. Our spendings here are around 900-1.000 euros a month in bills and rent. I and Sasha spend some 300 euros or less on food a month, and contribute some 200 euros to the monthly expenses. We can’t contribute more. I also pay some 60 euros a month for the servers and backups. In total we try to survive with 500 euros a month, 2 people.

My parents worked in Spain for some 15 years now and this year they are forced to retire. My mother gets some 300 euros a month in retirement money, my father needs to see….but he worked with shitty contracts in spain (being forced to do so), and his 15 years of work only count as 6 for example…both of them try to save and then in November go back to Romania for good and try to survive there if they can.

My sister is going to move to another rented apartment here in the same town.

I and Sasha?

That’s the dilemma. We cannot support ourselves right now. We would need at least 1.000 Euros a month to survive on our own.

My parents and my sister will have to do a lot of gymnastics when they move because of stuff…and we also have stuff, tho not as much. We will also help them move to Romania so either way we will go there in the winter.

So what to do?

We won’t be homeless of course since we can go to Romania and live with my parents. I have a small room there. But for me to finish the documentary I need to be relaxed and focused on it. Romania is not that sort of environment for me. We also have some stuff so where can we put that!?

It is very tricky and the following months will be very busy for us.

My plan.

Finish with the 1st and 2nd parts of TROM II. Add those leftover bits. After that is done (hopefully not more than 2-3 weeks) pause the documentary. I hate this, and I want to work on it and finish it, but I have no better alternative.

As soon as I finish with those 2 parts, I will start the “MAKE MONEY” operation. I need to. There is no way around this. People’s donations are amazing and super helpful but nowhere near enough to support myself. Donations are not working unfortunately. With the money we have now I hope to be able to support us for 4 or so more months. Until August. If there will be more donations that would be amazing, but I can not rely on this at all.

So I will focus on making money. I was never good at this but I need to try. I have some ideas. We will also try to sell our stuff, whatever we have. We have a TROMjaro tablet, a heater, a not-very-functional electric scooter 😀 and so forth.

So from at least June on, we are focused on making money. If a miracle happens and we have enough money by October, then we can rent a place here and move and I can continue the work on TROM II. But likely that won’t happen, not so fast at least. So likely we will end up in Romania and try to make money somehow. Maybe I can still work on TROM II this year, but we shall see.

I will try to work in cleaning this summer, also will release a website for my webdesign-money-making plan, so I can try and make websites; a TROM friend may also help me find a job in some IT company….not that excited about that tbh :D.

No worries, TROM and TROM II are happening and being supported.

TROM II will be finished. But I want to make it very well and not rush with it. The info there is relevant for the many years to come, maybe centuries. As for our websites and projects they will continue uninterrupted. New TROMjaro releases and a few improvements and fixes as usual, trom.tf services will be maintained; VideoNeat will be updated; we may even do some TROMcasts if I have the time. And so on.

It is unfortunate but this post is not about complaining. I did a lot of that and now I need to take care of myself in order to take care of these projects. It is me and a few wonderful people who support these projects financially or volunteering their time. It is very hard. But if it wasn’t, then we might have been wrong about bitching how bad this society is. This is, in fact, a proof of how fucked up this society is, where you can’t even focus on doing good things. You have to trade yourself all the time.

We are the pioneers.

We are doing trade-free projects and try to make humans aware of how fucked up this society is, while doing so from inside the monster itself. We face a lot of hurdles. We struggle. But whoever is against this society, has to face those. Big changes come on a horse called “Suffering”. And this horse has a long journey ahead. And it gets tired, and depressed, and scared at times. But we need this horse to go where we want to reach.

Not long ago we met with this human who was perhaps quite normal. But because “we”, the ones who have this (let’s say) TROM mentality were outnumbering the human, the human started to see what we talked about as normal. We were the normality. I felt like the world flipped. Suddenly the other side was smaller, and ours was bigger. And of course we agreed that is fucked up to force people to slave for even their basic needs, all of their lives; of course we need to provide trade-free stuff for people. Of course trade-free makes sense and is such an important approach. Of course. But we had to bleed to reach that point, that situation. If there will be more of us talking about these things, and doing the things we do at TROM, then that could become normality, at least in pockets and groups. And that has a tremendous power because what we talk about is backed up by facts, so when it becomes normal, it also becomes stronger and stronger.

Don’t worry. Really.

I will feel a lot better if I could build and manage some 10-15 websites and get paid monthly and make enough to have a good life on this planet and support TROM, than seeing a handful of people trying so hard to support TROM and me financially. And having to complain that I have no money all the time. I’d feel so good if I could sustain myself and TROM financially. I have some plans as I said and I will put them into practice very soon. We will see how this goes.

Of course it would be amazing if I would get enough support for the tons of work I am doing on these projects. I am busy enough with these. And it worked for a few years and who knows in the future, if TROM becomes more known, may work again. But for now I am beating a dead horse and the poor horse can’t go anywhere, if I were to try and rely fully on donations.

I keep everyone posted on the Fediverse and of course, if anyone wants to still donate this is the place to do so https://www.tromsite.com/donate/ but don’t sweat over it. In the long term I have to anyway make money somehow. Because projects like TROM may never get enough donations anyway. We are too odd of a project for that :).

Ok friends. Will try to finish the first two parts of the documentary. And as soon as I can get back to work on it I will. We could even release this year, if not for sure the next year.

Cheers!

Why I don’t post on my website again?

By tio | March 28, 2022 | Comments 0 Comment

I started in 2005 or so with a website. In Romanian. My blog. My own place where I could write my thoughts. It was easy thanks to WordPress. No need to code anything. Just write and add some images/videos. Great!

Having your own digital space where you an share your thoughts publicly is a fantastic thing. And something I personally really need because I have too many thoughts inside my skull. But after I made TROM documentary in 2011 I felt like I burned myself down a bit with such a long documentary. I expressed myself via the documentary in quite detail. So I stopped writing on my website that often. I then started TVP Magazine and I was writing books basically. More detailed, and now I could design them a lot better, enhancing the message. Did that for a few years.

Currently I have a ton of projects to manage and I work again on a big documentary, the sequel to TROM. I used to also write books for TROM and that was my way to express myself in extraordinary detail. However since I work on TROM II for the past 1-2 years and I have some 30 projects under my belt, I was unable to write books, and yet I still want to express myself form time to time

I thought this website is the perfect place. It is a simple website and to write here is easy-peasy. And yet I rarely make blog posts here. Why?

Because of the “social network” effect. Since we released our Friendica instance I find myself using that a lot. There are two main advantages to it that makes me want to post there instead of here:

I use my account to follow a LOT of stuff. People, Sub Reddits, websites, projects, youtube channels, etc.. The nature of Friendca makes it a perfect social network where you can follow and connect with the world. Facebook is shit compared to Friendica, even if it was trade-free. Speaking about that there are no ads on Friendica (of course), so it is a clean and neat place to be on. I keep in touch with people there, follow, so for me it is the website I visit the most.
Friendica allows you to create big posts and add images/videos inline. So posts look like blog posts. Since I am already on Friendica all day, it is so easy to click the “post” button and quickly make a post. Plus I can add them to a “blogs” category.

So then why would I choose to open my website, log in, then create a new post there and all that!? When I can do it much quicker on Friendica….and there there are the people I know who will react/share my post. Easier than via my website.

I wrote several blog posts on Friendica both for my account and TROM’s. To me the content is the king, so I’d rather have a fast way of expressing myself rather than go through some hoops and loops to do that. Books are different. They take months to finish so it makes sense to properly design them and such. But quick blog posts should be quick and easy to make.

Now….having a personal blog is better in the sense that people know it by name and can visit it. On Friendica they need to know my “handle” – tio@social.trom.tf. Then have a Fediverse account to connect with me. Or know my profile url: https://social.trom.tf/profile/tio

tiotrom.com is much easier to remember. Plus on my blog I am limitless in what I can do and post….I can have a page with my photo gallery, video gallery, whatever….and posts can have sliders, columns, you name it!

So if I ever want to post something more substantial and complex, I will use my website. Then the post will be automatically shared on my Friendica profile. But for shorter posts (most of them) I will use Friendica.

The Best of Both Worlds.

Friendica has an addon that let’s you post from Friendica to WordPress automatically. That’s amazing because it means I can use Friendica to post (which is easier and more handy as I explained) and then also have those posts here on my website. The problem is that the addon does not work anymore….I submitted the bug to the developers. If that would work again, then that’d be the perfect solution.

I can also do the opposite. And I actually do. I can post here and then the post is sent to my Friendica as a native post. So it looks like I posted on Friendica too. And whoever comments on that post on Friendica, I can see their comments on my blog post too. So awesome! But it is still easier for me to post via Friendica than via my website…

The best is that there are options to connect the two, and in time I will improve on that 🙂 .

So if you wanna see my Friendica posts here are the ways:

All of my posts at https://social.trom.tf/profile/tio
My blog posts at https://social.trom.tf/profile/tio/status?category=blogs
TROM’s posts at https://social.trom.tf/profile/trom
TROM’s blog posts at https://social.trom.tf/profile/trom/status?category=blogs

Bye bye MusikWave. Hello alternatives!

By tio | December 21, 2021 | Comments 0 Comment

Today I am closing down musikwave.com. I started this website a few years ago just so that I could listen to music, ad-free. And for others who want that too. I do not listen to music much, but I detest the trade-world we live in where nothing can be provided for you, unless you give something back, be it your dineros, attention, data, or whatever.

But musikwave was using a template that I bought from a genuine website, and because of “copyright” issues it seems, it was removed from there. Thus getting no updates for years, so parts of it were not working. I highly customized this theme but it was beyond me to do more than that.

I later on moved all of our websites from Dreamhost to Contabo, and managed them by myself, cutting the cost per server power to 10 times or more. I was paying around 50 Euros for a server with 4 cores, 4 GB of RAM and 120 GB SSD. Now, for 50 Euros I have 2 servers. One with 8 cores, 30GB of RAM and 800 GB SSD, and another one with 10 cores, 60GB of RAM and 1.6 TB SSD. So you can imagine the price difference when you manage your own servers….

Anyway. I moved all websites there but could not move musikwave since it was built for Apache and our servers run Nginx. So the structure of our new server universe could not handle it. I chose the cheapest Dreamhost subscription to keep musikwave alive, but still paying some 7 Euros a month. I announced that I will close it many months ago, and the time has come.

Bye bye my friend….you were great and almost 2 thousand people used you. But it is time to retire because you are old, and I am broke. You do not work well anyways, and there are better alternatives out there.

Nuclear Player

Musikwave was great because it was streaming music directly from youtube, and thus the music gallery was far better than that of any music streaming platform out there. And you could easily make multiple playlists and add music to them. Nuclear does all of this and more:

I was surprised to hear from the developers that they got partially inspired by Musikwave when they designed Nuclear. So awesome! I won’t go into details but this one is the best and it is an app you can install on your computer. For TROMjaro users it is as simple as going here to our TROMjaro app library, and click install. For others just go on their website and grab it from there and read more about its features.

It can even play local music. Has a music visualizer like Windamp back in the days, plus it can stream not only from youtube but from different other sources. It is my Musikwave replacement!

Audiotube

This is a very simple player that plays music from youtube. As simple as that. TROMjaro users can find it in the Add/Remove Software – so easy!. It is called “audiotube-git”. Others can grab it from here.

YouPlay

It is similar to the above, but even more simplistic.

TROMjaro users can again find it in Add/Remove Software by the name “youplay”. Others can go here and install.

Perhaps there are other players too, but these are the ones I know and are trade-free. Clean, no ads, no data collection, no sign-up, no bullshit!

Bye Musikwave! 🙂

My theory about black holes :)

By tio | November 17, 2021 | Comments 0 Comment

Shut’up. I know, ‘am no physicist. And no scientist for that matter. That’s fine. I just had an idea and is likely to be wrong but it makes my brain giggle with curiosity.

Last night I was watching a documentary about black holes. I watched so many documentaries and courses so far, thousands upon thousands. I have a website full of them. So I’ve heard a thing or two about black holes. And considering that scientists know very little about them, or about dark matter, I’d like to share my idea because it has a minute chance to be partially true, tho I am kinda sure it won’t be the case.

Anyways. Let me share it.

Black holes for 7 year olds:

So the basic idea of a black hole is that it is a “rupture” in space/time. A huge star collapses and then boooom. BLACK. We see nothing. We only observe when something else gets close to them. Like stars that orbit them, or other objects that get so close that the “hole” swallows them. Look at this (perhaps the first evidence) of stars orbiting a “black hole” (those stars are orbiting it…they are fucked!):

You can’t see it, only its effect.

An this is an illustration of a black hole eating a star:

These happen. Read more here. They are fucking nuts!

We also know that they have a strong gravitational pull. We know that whatever matter it eats it adds to its mass, so is not like that matter disappears. We also know that they can collide with each other and create bigger black holes.

Now: dark matter.

No one knows what the fuck it is. Simply put when they observe galaxies through the lens of what we know about gravity, is not enough of normal matter for that galaxy to have that shape. So something heavier NEEDS to be there, else galaxies cannot form. So they invented basically an invisible “matter” that they called as “dark matter”. This is a NASA Hubble map of a galaxy cluster, and the blue foggy patches are what we believe to be concentrations of dark matter:

They think dark matter is there based on whatever they calculate in terms of gravitational pull.

So dark matter has a gravitational pull (it is heavy), and it is there it seems. But who the fuck knows what it is. They also say that dark matter seems to not interact with normal matter except via gravitational pull. They also think dark matter barely if ever reacts with itself except again via gravity. So basically they don’t think it can create black matter planets for instance. But all of this is speculation as far as I know.

Black Balls!!!

This is my theory :). Listen!

Black Holes form when a huge star collapses. So a fuck ton of pressure. We also know that most chemical elements (whatever the matter is made of) are created when big stars explode. So stars need to explode to create the matter that we know. WHAT IF when these giant stars collapse into black holes, they actually create dark matter and transform into BLACK BALLS!? Like maybe when giant stars collapse they transform the “visible matter” into all sorts of “invisible matter”, meaning matter that does not interact with light. And maybe it creates a lot of different atoms of dark matter. After all, stars are the creators of other elements….

Maybe that’s how dark matter forms. This is where it comes from, since Black Balls (black holes) also lose energy (a bit), and will die after a while. This is known and discovered by Stephen Hawkins.

And it is an illusion that it is a “hole” eating visible matter. It is actually a “ball” around which other objects like stars orbit. It is a black star. And when it “eats” the visible matter, it simply pulls it towards itself and it transforms into black matter due to the immense gravitational pull. Imagine a planet being sucked into a normal star. Observed from distance you see a dim body being sucked into a glowing body. Almost like a glowing hole eats that planet. But in fact it is a spherical object that eats that body. With black holes it is the exact opposite in terms of visibility. A black star is eating a glowing object (a star). And the same way that a normal star is digesting that planet and incorporates it into what makes that star, a black star (black ball) does the same and rips apart whatever it digests into its own matter that we call as “dark matter”.

Makes more sense. A new kind of star! We already have stars that after they collapse they are only made out of neutrons (the guts of atoms) and they are super bizarre….like a spoon of that can go through Earth since it is so dense. So what if we also have Black Stars formed of dark matter!?

Yah they say dark matter seems to not interact with visible matter or with itself, except gravity. But what if there are many kinds of dark matter, same way that there are many kinds of visible matter? And some dark matter atoms are like that, but others interact with the visible matter and they are only found in Black Balls.

Funny enough I’ve read that they are considering a connection between black holes and dark matter. They say dark matter may in fact be black holes. Read here. So this idea may not be that crazy….although what am saying is different, at least they are considering a connection there.

So this is not a hole!

It is a BALL! A black ball. Or call it a black star! And this black star is made out of dark matter of many kinds, like a periodic table of dark elements. And everything it eats, it transforms into dark matter because of the gravitational immense pressure!

There you go I solved the black holes and dark matter mystery. Anyone wants to do the maths!?

🙂

It can be a fun discussion….and I am very sure I am wrong but is worth sharing haha.

UPDATE: Adding more to my theory 🙂

Ok so here are a few more “proofs” of my theory. haha.

Black Holes have a magnetic field it seems. This falls in line with how stars are, since they too have a magnetic field. For example a Neutron star (another type of collapsed star) can get nuts and starts to emit radiation via its poles – we call that a pulsar. They also “eat” stars and what-not. See this video about pulsars:

And this is about “black holes” (cough: black balls) emitting radiation in the same way (they are named quasars):

So you see…these types of stars are similar. A neutron star is a collapsed star made out of neutrons – a very bizarre type of star – and at times it ejects matter through its magnetic poles, and we call that a pulsar. Neutron stars also eat other stars/objects, and it looks similar to how a black hole eats them. A black ball it is also formed by a star collapsing, plus it has a magnetic field, and at times it ejects streams of energy/stuff via its pols. We call that a quasar.

We also know that black balls emit some sort of radiation back, and that should be normal matter isn’t it? That’s why we detect it. So maybe the theory of visible matter transforming into dark matter is not that crazy. Also read this paper where they seem to suggest just that.

And also don’t take this post too seriously, since I am a dude who had an idea one night :D. There are physicists and astrophysicists who spend a lifetime of teamwork to understand such crazy monsters. I am pretty sure they thought of such ideas and probably made no scientific sense so they had to discard them. But considering how little we know about black holes and dark matter, and how they do not seem to fit our scientific understanding of the universe, there is a little chance that such ideas like mine can be true. And that makes me smile in wonder :).

Update 2: I was wrong about some stuff….

I had a different image of what a black hole is. I thought it is that entire black thing that you see bellow, outlined by the shinny stuff around it:

But in fact the mass of the black hole, they say, is in a point called the singularity.At the center of it. Somewhere there, you can’t even see it 🙂

And all of that black disk is the “event horizon” a portion where probably the normal matter is traveling towards the center but can’t emit any light, so we can’t see anything.

So my view of a black hole was kinda wrong. This is why I “theorized” that it may be a black ball.

These videos explain it very well:

But now, do not forget that these might be wild assumptions, as wild as mine :D. Since the science that we know seem to be weirded out by these monsters. I do find it more difficult to imagine it as a black ball now that they theorize the mass of it is in that tiny center, and the black we see around is simply a gravitational field that’s so strong even light can’t escape. The light we see around the black circle is matter that orbits it. Now this is not a circle probably, it is a sphere shaped object since we talk about a 3D space. So even this “hole” is kinda like a ball of gravitational field.

Damn these are bizarre.

Thanks to the friendly Future is Foss for engaging over the fediverse and pointing this thing to me. He wants to destroy my theory and take my nobel prize!

Update 3: 3 years later 🙂

See this video:

Maybe my black ball theory was not that wild 😀 – honestly this is super fun to think about and discuss.

Should I moderate videos.trom.tf?

By tio | August 8, 2021 | Comments 5 comments

I’ve been debating in my head, and discussing with others, about moderating videos.trom.tf.

And here are the difficulties I am confronting with:

1. I hate censorship

I moved away from Youtube and Facebook, not only because they are ad-networks and data-collectors (awful platforms to grow your project ‘inside of’, or to use for personal motives), but also because they have removed/censored some of our TROM content. We are not even talking about conspiracies here, but simply nudity, copyright, or “hate speech” and the like. And if you know TROM, we do not make porn 🙂 (as if that’s so bad in the first place), nor do we instill violence. We make educational content, and at times we talk about sexuality, or touchy subjects. But we always source our claims and we do so via scientific and well know sources, nothing shady at all. Like Wikipedia level, wtf. As for the copyrighted content, yes, we have used in the past such materials to create videos, but we make no profit out of anything, it is simply for educational purposes and we source the materials we use as much as we can.

So our videos have been removed several times, and our Facebook account banned for up to 1 month. You have to understand that Facebook banned me for like posting an image with text from Wikipedia explaining what viruses are and how they infect us. 100% scientific. That’s the level of censorship we experienced. Ridiculous and wrong.

2. We have limited server disk space

So now we moved to Peertube and Friendica, alternatives to Youtube and Facebook. At first I used some instances I found and I was still not 100% comfortable with that, since these instances were also moderated and I was concerned they may ban us in the future. Like wtf is so bad about nudity that everyone bans it? I find it a lot more harmful when people post positively about cryptocurrencies since these currencies, along with any other, create a lot of harm. And is not like we post nudity a lot – it is rare and only if we talk about human behavior. But it may be enough for these instances to ban us. So I created my (our) own instances.

Now I feel 100% comfortable that no one can ban/censor our content.

I said I am going to let anyone post anything on these instances, because I do not want to become like the ones I hated when I was using their platforms. And so these instances of ours fit very well under our trade-free initiative/idea. We did it! But….

Creating a video platform requires a powerful server and a fuck ton of disk space. I didn’t want to limit the upload quota because I know from experience that this is going to make people not use it. I mean….if I make videos and your instance only allows me to upload 5GB, or even 50GB….I cannot think to seriously use it since I have a limited quota and when I reach the quota what happens? This is not at all appealing.

We have a very good server but not as much disk space. We have a 1.6TB SSD. It is already 50% full after just a few months of the release. We have a lot of services on that instance, see trom.tf. Out of the 800GB that are full, some 600GB are due to Peertube videos. So Peertube is the greatest offender.

Luckily Peertube developers are working now to make it much easier to add an external storage to your instance, and when that is released we could buy a lot more storage. From my calculations some 2TB for like 10 Euros a month. That’d be fantastic and this way we can always expand the storage space at a cost. But it will take time for them to properly implement it (months), and time for us to set it up and test, and then move all of the files there. Plus….I am broke so….

Therefore, storage space is a BIG problem.

3. We are the trashcan of Youtube and Facebook

Even if I could expand the storage space now, at 0 costs, the problem is that we have become the trashcan of these big platforms. The vast majority of people who use these alternative platforms, from what I can tell, are not people like us who got a few videos/posts censored out of thousands, and censored for very questionable reasons; No! The people who come to these alternative platforms are not using them because they had enough of this ad-driven, data-collection BS that Facebook and Google is doing; No! The vast majority of people who come to these platforms are the craziest of the craziest. The ones that post about things that are unreal and create harm. Like the ones who deny the existence of reality basically. Those who are against vaccines, say the earth is flat, accuse others of drinking the blood of children, and a vomit overall of politics, conspiracies, and trolling. At times you see people coming to Peertube who got booted out of these platforms because they were uploading a lot of copyrighted materials, such as movies and series.

Unfortunately this is the situation right now. Most of the videos posted on our Peertube are either batshit-crazy videos, or copyrighted movies/series. So, do these people “care” about a censorship-free platform, or are they simply taking advantage of such a platform to spread their BS? Also, what if someone makes a website called “freemoviesforeveryone dot something” and uploads a ton of movies on our platform, to then embed them into their website to attract views? And their website is full of ads and scams, and they make money on the backs of our instance!? Is that ok?

Therefore, if the absolutely vast majority of content on our Peertube is batshit-crazy or stupid copyrighted movies, and overall I get the impression that we are used like a cheap prostitute while we pay for that, how can I be motivated to expand the storage space and keep this instance alive? You tell me!

I spent all of my life promoting science and sanity. Everything we do is so well sourced to the point of bleeding. I have created a website that curates very well made science documentaries/courses, or investigative-journalistic ones; another website that does the same for news/videos; and overall I am trying to be a sort of Carl Sagan or James Randi, or both, of the internet content. Should I now become a vessel for idiocracy!? All of the work I’ve put into creating and curating scientific and sane content, to be counteracted by our Peertube instance!?

4. Your content, my responsibility

So, even if we had infinite storage space, and I would not care about what users upload, the truth is that in today’s world I may be held accountable for the content you upload on MY server, for which I pay with MY OWN money and using MY OWN credentials. On top of that, I make local backups so if you upload some “illegal” videos, I then end up storing them on my own hard drives….

Think about this: someone will upload bunch of videos with little children being raped. They are now stored on my server and on my local hard drive. Should I honestly allow that to happen and risk it? Risking it and fighting for a Peertube instance that is full of crazy nonsense videos? Nah…. I honestly do not see it worth it.

So your content is, unfortunately, my responsibility regardless if I want it or not. This society won’t accept me saying “The content is the responsibility of the users.”. I wish this was the case, and I still argue strongly that the content is the responsibility of the user, but please understand that I subject myself to a plethora of adverse effects if I allow absolutely anything on the platform.

5. Your content, everyone’s responsibility

Lets say we have enough disk space, I do not care about what users upload, and I accept the legal risks associated with all of that. Even in such a scenario, our Peertube instance will become an isolated island.

Peertube federates with other Peertube instances in order to find more videos. But instance admins can block the federation with any instances they prefer. When you upload videos on our instance, these videos are likely to show up on other instances (not hosted there, but accessible there). Therefore, the admins of other instances will see that and eventually block our black-hole instance that’s fully of crappy videos. So, in the best case scenario we will become an island instance, something I really do not want to. Imagine that….to risk it and pay for an island full of crazy people. WTF….

So what should I do?

In my mind it boils down to only 2 main approaches: to moderate, or not.

To not moderate.

If I will go about not moderating AT ALL, then I have to consider the above points very seriously. So:

Limit the upload quota: I will have to limit the upload quota for all users, since our storage is getting filled up pretty quickly. And by limiting I mean some 5GB per user. This will make our instance very unappealing for those who are serious about creating video content. Also, I bet that crazy people will create hundreds of accounts to be able to upload more. So 1 crazy user can create multiple accounts and upload a lot of crap.

Moderation will be forced upon us: I will have to accept the risk that “Illegal” content or harmful, will be stored on my server and my local hard drives. This will create a lot of stress for me + eventually we will get into troubles forcing me to remove some of this content. So we will end up with moderation after all. Even 4chan or 8chan, websites that are known to host a fuck ton of crazy content (not even videos, just text and images mind you…) are moderating their black-holes of vomit-like-content. They were forced to. They then got banned from many tribes, and such. It is not an easy task to have such platforms. Especially a video platform.

We will become a silo of nonsense content: and this does not sit well with me. I do not feel motivated to fight for videos.trom.tf when I know it is 90% crazy people posting nonsense content.

To moderate.

If I am to moderate, then where will I stop with this? And how much work will it put on me?

Look, I really, REALLY, REALLY do not want to moderate such platforms. For one it defeats the purpose of them in the first place and the trade-free idea cannot be tagged to such a project. Second, moderating the content means that you accept the responsibility for it, and thus I feel like it makes me even more responsible for the content that users upload. Suddenly I am not a phone-line that connects people and sends data from one part to another, I am the host of a party in my own house and responsible for everything that anyone does inside my house. And this is not the role I want!

So I am concerned that moderating means that I accept the responsibility for the content uploaded on our Peertube, and this I strongly REJECT; and second it will transform me and the platform into a Youtube/Facebook like platform from this perspective. I will be biased in what I let or not on our platform, and it will give me more power over the content, which is BAD.

Let me give you some concrete examples. Lets say that I accept to moderate and I start removing the batshit-crazy channels with their videos. What is batshit-crazy? Canon? I’ll say it is for sure! Flat earthers! Yup. Humans being abused/killed? I’d say so, although what about documentaries/videos documenting such cases with good intentions!? Now things become muddy….what about hours-long podcasts that talk about crimes? Should I listen to them all and decide if they should be removed!? This is insane! How about videos talking positively about our very harmful trade-based society (form money, economy, to cryptocurrencies)? Should I let that on the platform? Form my perspective, no! Religion? That’s surely batshit-crazy. Where do I stop? I would also have to not accept any videos in foreign languages, only English. Because I cannot vet Chinese videos or whatever other language.

IT. IS. COMPLICATED.

It is also concerning that if I start to moderate our Peertube, then I will create a precedent and maybe when we get invaded by crazy people on our Friendica, I will start moderate Friendica too….and this is quite unacceptable to me.

If you came here for an answer, I have none at the moment. We have created a poll to ask users about this dilemma. Please vote/comment there. We are also making 3-4 TROMcast episodes about this topic so that I can try and find an answer. First one we already released:

In 2 days we will have an interesting discussion with Sophia Moskalenko, an expert on radicalization and someone who is currently studying Qanon (Canon 🙂 ). I want to learn more from her about what drives these people and how can we approach this weird situation we are in. Then, in a few days we will have another discussion with some other admins of such instances and the developers behind Friendica, to ask them about this topic. What are their thoughts….

In an ideal world, it should not be me acting as the phone-line between you and you. So we should not have servers. We should broadcast our thoughts (via text, images, video, audio) directly to others from our devices. This is already happening with platforms like Scuttlebutt. It means that if I want to talk about whatever I want, and you want to listen to what I say, there should be a direct connection between us and no one in the middle. And if I think that what you say is batshit-crazy then I will simply not follow you and also block you so you can’t ever reach me. But no one has power to ban you from others. So then you don’t have a handful of people telling you what you are allowed to share or not, since everyone becomes their own personal moderators, stopping the content they do not want to see, from reaching their faces and ears.

With fast Internet connections nowadays, every computer can act as a server and even if you share a huge video, people should be able to stream it anywhere in the world. Considering that your devices are pretty much connected to the internet pipeline all the time, then your “server” is up and running all the time, available to send any request to anyone who is asking for that. And the connection between you and whoever wants to see your content should be encrypted. This way you can create your own unique place where you broadcast your thoughts and only those who want to listen, will listen. And the rest can simply choose not to listen…Simple!

These technologies are still in beta but I think this is the future, for better or for worse. But the same way that people argue that encryption is necessary despite the fact that some idiots use encryption to secretly plot terrorist attacks, I argue that directly broadcasting messages in any media form, to the ones who want to listen, should be a MUST despite the fact that many idiots like Canons would use these platforms to spread bullshit.

We have to go from:

YOU ———–> ME ——–> THEM

YOU ————————-> THEM

UPDATE 1:

After I finished the post I thought about a great analogy. We, the ones running these small instances, are like Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and the like when it comes to waste disposal. You know that rich tribes send most of their waste to these poor tribes, right!?

The idea of banning and censoring people online, is as good as that of shipping your country’s waste to Thailand, China or other poorer countries. Sure, you’ll say: “But look how clean US or Germany are….” Of course! Because you shipped all that waste to poor countries that are full of garbage. That’s how pretty much all websites do it nowadays. They ban many people, and these people end up on “alternative” social platforms that have to deal with this garbage and they do not have the resources of doing it.

And guess what happens? Thailand, Indonesia or other countries become a source of pollution: water, air, soil. And they dispose the waste into the oceans. And then US and other rich countries realize that the air is polluted, the water is, and so forth. Same thing happens online where these marginalized (banned) humans grow in numbers in these “alternative” places where they bake all kinds of crazy conspiracies, and these crazy ideas then end up again on the same social platforms that booted them.

The circle of “life”. Because much in the same way that waste is not a US or Germany problem, but a global problem that needs a global solution, online conspiracy theories are not a Facebook or Google problem, they are global internet problems. And both cannot be solved if we move the trash from one place to another, just to keep our backyard clean. The same garbage will become worse and bite you in the ass eventually.

So keep these in mind. Humans should take the time to understand these problems and deal with them. But who has time when everyone is busy trading trading trading. That’s all they know. More stuff, more stuff, more stuff. We are doomed!

UPDATE 2:

Unfortunately we lost the recording of our TROMcast with Sophia….this is the reason why. Basically I forgot to tell Peertube to save the recording after the live ends…it was such a shame because it was a great podcast. In the followup TROMcast that just ended a few hours ago, I tried to summarize the key points of that episode. You can watch it here (we had 2 guests, the main developers of Friendica):

I think the description of this TROMcast is also relevant so I’ll drop it here:

In this episode we will discuss about moderating the fediverse. Is it different from the online moderation in general? Is it even effective? What about the technicality of it?

Our guests are Hypolite Petovan and Michael Vogel, some of the lead developers of Friendica and instance admins themselves.

NOTE: We have lost the recording of our last podcast. We had a great discussion with social psychologist Sophia Moskalenko about “Qanon, and the like”. In this episode we will try to summarize our discussion and the most important points. But we recommend that you follow her work.

About her https://ebcs.gsu.edu/profile/sophia-moskalenko/

We recommend the following interviews:

– TFTRH #54 – Mia Bloom and Sophia Moskalenko: Pastels and Pedophiles https://ytb.trom.tf/watch?v=hUhKd_cdVGE

– #FemFriday w/Mia Bloom, Sophia Moskalenko, Kim Kelly, Hadas Thier & Kate Willett | The Nomiki Show https://ytb.trom.tf/watch?v=9N8KtxuOPLs

– Inside the Mind of QAnon Believers with Dr. Sophia Moskalenko https://ytb.trom.tf/watch?v=A2Abz1X7vxU

– Sophia Moskalenko on “Radicalization and Martyrdom” https://ytb.trom.tf/watch?v=DwRGjeGRre4

Her Twitter account: https://bird.trom.tf/sophiamoskalen1

We’ve also had some really great discussions at our TROM Chats about this topic. I highly recommend you join our Matrix Spaces. More info here. After all of this I think I have made up my mind, but I will still thinker about it till the end of this month when I’ll announce what’s my final decision.

So.

I will moderate videos.trom.tf. Sorta. Maybe. Am I?

Here’s how I am approaching it: from the beginning the website was labeled as “science/technology/activism”. I knew that this instance will be invaded by crazy people so I labeled it in a way that I would like this instance to be about. But guess what? Many users did not respect it. It is a trade-free video platform for science/technology/activism videos. So if you post pseudoscience, or politics, or movies, and such, then you do not respect our website’s thematic. I do not ban or moderate you, I simply remove the videos that do not find in those categories. It is simple. If we made a trade-free websites about cats and you start to post about dogs, then fuck off honestly….why are you such a big-dick!?

This way, I do not feel any guilt in removing the 80% of the videos hosted on our instance. Since they posted dogs. Worst, they posted dead raccoons.

That’s all I’m telling you at the moment since we will explain in detail in our next (and last) TROMcast about the topic. Should be in a week or so.

UPDATE 3:

Final decision: our Peertube is a thematic instance and it was so from the beginning. Science/Technology + Activism that needs to fall into those two categories. Plus, English based content only. Simple! Please respect that. Here’s my latest video update:

I want to get over this so I for now, and hopefully for the future, this is the final decision. I want to focus on TROM II and a lot of other awesome things.

Am I using your emotions to make you donate to me?

By tio | June 6, 2021 | Comments 4 comments

In my last blog post I was writing about how bad I felt about my personal situation. How broke I am and that I haven’t been like that in years (since 2013). I also hinted about “killing myself”, although was not literally, just to emphasize that I felt like falling into a deep black hole. The post was my way of expressing my anger, and I’ve been doing this since 2006. Actually my blog was what helped me not literally kill myself in high school when I was so depressed, because I was able to let my anger out by writing about it publicly. So, my blog is my personal space where I write about whatever I want, whenever I want. And it helps me. So anyways, I published this blog and two very contradictory responses took place.

First was a massive donation from Taras, of 2.000 Euros, that helps us enormously. I can now be relaxed for the next few months and work on TROM II. He also sent this message: “Thank you for your amazing work. Don’t give up!”. I also got this kind of message from another friend:

I have collapsed psychologically reading Tio’s thoughts and all these problems. I feel you both, all this fucked situation…i have learned awesome things from you both and have helped on so many…i wish could have more shit-money to do my best but i can’t… I have spent more than 43 years of my life working for this fucked trade system and need 6 more months to retire and still can’t help you financially. Please guys…DON’T GIVE UP…stay together…the more important in such hard times is to have each other. I really feel my words are so…useless… But DON’T GIVE UP!! We need to become “friends” with the “Beast”, with the horror that it instills…to live “within it without it”… I believe there are always ways…just think about it. Thank you both for all your awesome work. i’m very glad to hear your determination and the passion to keep going that hard but so valuable “road”. Always the few but pioneers were helping this society to move forward. I wish sometime in the future your choices to guide you for a visit in Greece. Would be so nice to meet each other. Please give my best regards and my sympathy to Tio.

They power me a lot to keep on doing what I’m doing, but also make me sad that I make them sad and put a burden on them. I always struggled with that: when a few people donate money, then I am in a very shitty situation and make a blog post about it, the same people (at times new ones) donate a huge ton of money….I feel like not wanting to say I am broke because I make others sad and maybe I make them feel “obliged” to help financially.

So anyways, this is the second reaction on a Facebook post about the blog (someone told me about it since I don’t dare to go on fb anymore because it is such a shithole):

Jizuz dude! One thing is for certain it is hard to support a hypocrite. You say “i tio am good guy because i am trade free” then you say “they bad because they sell you stuff” then you say “hope sasha sells a billion books”. Hahahaha. This is painful to read. Not cuz i pity you because it is like i have to trade my comfort to gain access to trom goods. Like we have to hear you cry and cry about being broke in order to get your “tradefree” services. Bro everyone is in the same boat. Most are struggling financially emotionally mentally and we dont have mommy n daddy to help us and we dont have a following who donate. So save ur self pity tears. If you love the work and are good at it and want to help others than do it and be humble and stop using this as income. This kind of story you write (you wrote many MANY times before) is so annoying when there are actual people suffering and starving in this world. Also u say “i tio watch thousands of docos and write long childish stories about complex subjects and make some stuffs so i shouldnt have to work but you all are not as curious as i so u go to work and give your earnings to me…!!! Whah, whah, whah, yah yah yah…”

To which I replied:

Suzzie Cutter I do not use FB but someone told me about your comment so I had to reply when I saw the nonsense, because you are confused. I never sold anything TROM related and never will. Except a TROM USB card in 2012 where I didn’t put any profit on it and it was for like 1 month to make it more available for people. So keep that in mind.

Second, Sasha will provide her book (not a TROM material) for free online (trade free that is), but the hard copy will always cost money unless we print the books ourselves and pay to send to people, which is ridiculous. So she will be forced to sell the hard print anyways. Sure, she can put a 0 profit, but then us being financially fucked she won’t do that. Maybe it will end up helping us so we won’t ask for donations for TROM again. Yes, people selling stuff is “bad”, but also I fully understand some have no choice. I always talk about how this environment makes people the way they are, and never accuse people themselves. Not even the billionaires.

You can project whatever you want about me (Tio), that I “complain” and such, but I am just telling people how the situation is exactly, so they understand it. Because if I go fully broke, then I cannot even pay for TROM. My mommy and my daddy are helping us now, is true, and that’s something I would do for my kids too, sorry you have no mommy or daddy or a “following”, but maybe if you do what I do at TROM, you can have the latter.

You take my complaint, a personal blog post, as if I came to your door and started to cry and asked you for help. People have shitty lives, and some have websites where they complain about them. And you read these stories it seems, and then you get annoyed by them. For sure there are people starving and having cancer and all that. This is not an excuse for ignoring situations like mine, or not “complaining” about my shitty situation just because there is a kid now in Africa dying of starvation. If anything, I am one of those who screams about that kid in Africa, and a lot of other problems.

As for your last paragraph…the childish part is you in this story. You got nothing from that blog post or from the work we do at TROM. If you didn’t get it, my point was that if anyone wants to be curious about this society and this world, the problems, the solutions there are, then they can’t even do that and take it seriously, because they are forced to work. It is not about me, it is about everyone including yourself. You missed that entirely.What is your motivation to moan here on a random fb post about this personal problem of mine? Nothing relevant to do to maybe, so that in the future get financial support for? Is fb too easy for everyone nowadays to comment and think that they are doing anything? At least next time comment on my blog post not on a fb automated page that no one is managing.

Then Suzzie continued:

Do you have food to eat? Yes. Do you have a bed to sleep in? Yes.Do you have ability to go to doctors? Yes.Are you disabled? No.Are you at risk of loosing any of these things? No.Do you have a safe clean environment to live in? Yes.So why so dramatic? Why play on peoples emotions to get donations? You mention starving kids in africa at times but most of your complaints are about your life and how “bad” you have it and how money “helps” you not be stressed.

People fall for this bc they know the world sucks and think by donating to you they make a difference but thats a scam. I say hypocrite bc you say “dont donate to others bc they sell materials if the publish a book” then say “but its ok if we do it” an bc you use sad pity stories to get donations. Just make the content or not. Dont make people feel sorry for you and give you money then preach about “trade free blah blah”

Is like “hey who wants dinner?” “ i will feed you without any conditions” then the people eat and its “but i cooked for you” “i washed the dishes” “i cut the ingredients” and so on. “I need money bc all of that cost me time and effort” and “now im so stressed and want to kill myself bc i gave no money for myself bc i cooked for you all” now all the people who ate the food feel guilty and “donate” to you for the “free dinner”

And my last reply to that:

Suzzie Cutter you really want to drag me into a facebook conversation aren’t you? The best of the internet…. If you want to discuss in length and are really interested in a discussion and not trolling, feel free to comment on my blog post.

To reply to your nonsense

:”Do you have food to eat?” I had only for next 3 months. Would my family let me go hungry after these 3 months? For sure, no. But it would put all of us in a very shitty situation with a lot of stress. Food + Stress is not something I want for any of us. They work in the cleaning industry here where we live, is not like they are rich at all. They stay with rent too and are underpaid and have illegal contracts basically. I do not want to become a burden for them.

“Do you have a bed to sleep in?” – Only because my family can provide one for now. But they too need to move away from here very soon, so then what do I do?”Do you have ability to go to doctors?” Fortunately yes. Here in Spain I do. As long as I can stay here in Spain .”Are you disabled?” Not as far as I know. Are you? “Are you at risk of loosing any of these things?” Yes “Do you have a safe clean environment to live in?” No.

“So why so dramatic? Why play on peoples emotions to get donations?” It is only dramatic because you make it as such. I simply explained my shitty personal situation on my personal blog and shared it here because I am the main one keeping TROM alive, so if I am broke, TROM will also have to suffer. We need to pay for server, for a very good internet connection, hardware for backups, etc.. You just decided to comment on a situation you know nothing about. I guess that’s facebook overall so I am not surprised.I never asked anyone for money in my life. How many people can say that? I only have open donations for whoever can and want to donate. But I never knock on anyone’s door to ask for money. Actually I had to do the opposite with people like Aaron and Roma who donated so much money. I had to tell them to stop and that I will refund their money if they ever donate, since they have to take care of themselves.

“People fall for this bc they know the world sucks and think by donating to you they make a difference but thats a scam. ” – What is the scam here? When anyone donates I keep doing what I promised to do: TROM. As simple as that. I don’t promise anything else. I give no perks and no special treatment.

“””I say hypocrite bc you say “dont donate to others bc they sell materials if the publish a book” then say “but its ok if we do it” an bc you use sad pity stories to get donations.””” You friend are so confused is no wonder I found about you on fb… I never said to anyone to donate or not to anyone. And we sell no books. Are you really that confused?

It’s like I make food and give it for free to anyone, publicly. Come and eat, I ask you nothing. I don’t even have a sign to donate in your face. It is up to anyone to donate. Like Wikipedia. And if I am in a very bad financial situation that doesn’t allow me to continue to make free food for everyone, I’ll say that publicly and not come to your door Suzzie and ask for donations. And if anyone helps, ok. If not, ok. I keep on doing what I can.Funny how in your mind is “too much” for me to complain about my shitty personal financial situation that affects the entire TROM project, but not too much for you to complain about my complaint, in every donation-related post. Can you see the hypocrisy there?

Suzzie also started to make all kinds of sarcastic comments on posts where we thank the people who donated. Those were trolling comments so I decided to delete them from facebook because I do not have the time to deal with people who have too much time to troll.

But it is not the first time I’ve heard someone complaining about the fact that I appeal to people’s emotions to get money from them. For the past 10 or so years I’ve heard this 3-4 times. Which is really not much at all, but still it is something I wanted to address because it bothers me to think that I may do that.

I come from an environment where “begging” is a “job”. Romanian people go to England or other tribes to beg in the streets and they make a living out of this. They appeal to people’s emotions in an aggressive way and have a lot of learned tactics to get as much money from you as possible. It is an industry revolving around this. If you see a beggar in UK, it is very likely he/she is not there by themselves, they came there via an “organization” that “hires” them. Hard to believe, right? Here’s one documentary about it.

I also come from a family who got so much in debt it almost destroyed us at one point. All I’ve heard as a kid was: debt, debt, debt. Banks calling my parents to harass them; them crying; them trying to get another loan to pay some debt; asking friends and family for money constantly, and such. Luckily they managed to go to Spain, work like slaves, and pay all of their debt.

On top of this, my friends and people I knew, were scamming the world online with lies and lies, and making tons of money. Romania, and especially the town I am from, is well known worldwide for these scams.

So I hated this environment of scamming and begging and debt and asking people for money. I HATED it! So even when I had 0 money I never asked anyone for anything. Not even my parents. I am one of those kids who never really asked for anything from my parents (except when I was very little probably, like all kids). But I never said: “Mom, can you give me 100 Euros to buy a pair of jeans?”. Never. Because I knew they do not have money. So if they gave me money or stuff, it was their decision. And they did. They always helped.

So I hate when people ask for money because of that environment I grew up in. But I understand many of these people are desperate and need help. I just don’t want to engage in that. I don’t feel like anyone owns me anything or have to take care of me. That’s why I worked on TROM documentary without telling anyone, and only after it was done I had to ask my parents for 50 Euros to buy tromsite.com + hosting. I had no other choice. And I worked on many other projects without asking anyone for anything.

Donations.

But you always ask for donations!!!!

Donations are very different. It is an open door to anyone who wants to help. Instead of knocking on your door to ask for help, I open the door to my house and let anyone come in and help. This too can be abused, I know. In two main ways:

You give perks to those who donate. I’ve seen this many times. But this is not a donation. It is a trade: you give me money, I give you this. Such people are ruining the meaning of donations. So I never ever did this, despite soooo many people trying to convince me to do that. But I want to keep donations as donations. And I want to treat everyone the same.
You are aggressive about it. You are loud about donations, put buttons in people’s faces, make it invasive for everyone. I’ve heard some people complain about Wikipedia that when they ask for donations they add a big banner on every page about that. You can close it, of course, but I’ve seen people hating that. Wikipedia also sends these more personal kind of messages when it comes to donations, saying that they are in a very bad financial situation and urgently need your help. I understand why people get annoyed by these, and I know there are projects out there who use these as tactics to get more money from people. However, I trust Wikipedia and what they are doing, and I trust that they really need that help. I am more put off by this society that makes a project like Wikipedia ask for donations from individuals. Why isn’t this society allowing for such amazing projects to survive and thrive?

So, I tried to not engaged in these either. But is hard not to. When you are in a very bad financial situation and you are afraid your projects can die if you don’t get financial support, you feel like telling to those who want to listen, about the situation. Like…this is normal… What should I do? Shut’up and silently close several of these projects or not keep them updated? Is that better?

As for the donate buttons and such, go to any of our projects’ websites and you will see there is nothing intrusive there. No popups or anything like that, despite (again) so many suggesting to us to be more “in your face” with the donation buttons to get more support. But I do not want that. I do not want to bother people. And when I post about needing financial support on social networks, that’s 1 post out of hundreds of others that have nothing to do with “donations”. Look at what we post on our social network.

All in all, I hate asking for money or complaining about my personal financial situation. If I were to make a blog post every time I feel down and I am in a financial collapse mode, I would have made one every other week. But I resist that as much as possible. People around me know that I avoided a few times to say anything simply because I know a few friends would see that and feel “forced” in a way to send me some money, and I HATE this so much I want to eject myself out of this planet. But in the end since I know I do not do these things with any intention other than describing a bad personal situation, then why should I care? Should I be like “Poor people who see my complaint and be sad about it…or pissed off….I feel so bad about them”!? I mean that’s ridiculous. I am in a bad situation and then I should feel bad writing about it on my personal blog and share it at times on TROM’s social networks!? How dare I to upset a few with my personal problems!? :))

I can’t be like that. So if I am in a bad financial situation I’ll say that and I expect nothing from anyone. I never plan that I will write a blog post and get some donations because of by “dramatic” story. I’ve made so many honest projects so far, do you think I am like a charlatan trying to appeal to people’s emotions to donate me money!? I would not want to live around people who do such things. And even if I were to do that, then the result is still a help for TROM and a continuation of this project, so why should you care? If I say TROM needs money to keep on TROMing, and you decide to donate money and TROM keeps on TROMing, why is it important how I asked for money, or if I spent it on prostitutes or whatever!?

Anyways, I wanted to quickly rant about this a bit, since it is crazy to me how people invent their own stories about others and convince themselves of them. If Suzzie thinks that I intentionally appeal to people’s emotions to get donations for TROM, then in the worst case scenario I fight to keep TROM alive and relevant. But I’ll never do this. I am actually the exact opposite of this and if I am to be so broke that I end up on the streets, even then I don’t think I’ll go to Suzzie’s door, or anyone’s door, to ask for help. But if anyone wants to help, I’ll put a sing there somewhere that they can help if they want. 😉

My life revolves around TROM and its baby projects. I love them so much they keep me awake at night. We live in a world of charlatans and scammers, so I want these projects and myself to be a counter-example to this shithole. But for that I need a small army of people who can help TROM. And one of the help methods is to donate money since there is no other way I know right now, to keep me afloat in this ocean of trades to keep on working on these projects. If I had money I would donate to other projects too. And if I will ever have enough for me and Sasha, I would give the rest to similar projects. Mark my word.

I hate drama and emotional situations. I do not cry or scream. So whenever I’ll complain about my personal financial situation, it is more of a peer-reviewed paper of my situation than anything else. You have to take care of your emotions and not let yourself to sadden by my blog posts. And if you do, remember is not like I wanted that. And for sure, is not my intention to make you sad in order for you to donate money to me. If I had such values I wouldn’t have made all of the projects I made so far. These two attitudes are incompatible.

Broke.

By tio | June 2, 2021 | Comments 5 comments

This blog post will not have any images. I like adding images, but I feel like I only need words right now ;).

I and Sasha have 900 Euros in total. That’s it. Hopefully we will get back some money from the apartment deposit, but probably it will be around 100 Euros after paying the remaining bills. Perhaps I can get 100 or so Euros from Patreon too. But yah, I can finally say I am broke. I threatened everyone about that for a few years now, haha, and now it finally happened.

I write from the same house where I made the second version of TROM documentary back in 2012. And from the same room where I built TVP Magazine, VideoNeat, and a few other projects. We made the room neat, as much as we could. I took my hand-made desk from the other place, and my galaxies. I printed 8 A4 pages with some of the most iconic space-stuff, back in 2012 when TVP donated me a printer to print a non-disclosure document…yah. Well. Retarded, but thank you for the printer. I have no clue why people still use printers… So back in 2012 (wondering about the same thing), I used all of the ink to print these amazing space-stuff-things. Some of the first exoplanets ever captured on camera, the farthest galaxy ever photographed (that was back in 2012 but still fuck-amazing): our sun, a few other galaxies and clusters, and the cosmic microwave background. I framed them into one mega frame, and hanged them on the wall behind my monitor so I can face it anytime and remind myself of my story – the one of a human being. To diffuse all of the human-invented problems that could cause me a lot of scars. Money problems mainly, and some stupid societal issues here and there, that condiment the shitty life of a citizen.

So here I am, same place, same stuff. Let me remind myself:

From 2007 or so I kept on writing on my romanian blog about all kinds of important subjects: from religion to money, abundance to technology, mysteries to science. I loved to let my brain explore the world through this digital vessel. There was no Facebook or any such centralized place online – it was a wild wild west kinda. You went there and didn’t know where there was, what was there, how to even reach somewhere. So you went about and around, searching and poking all kinds of websites. It was fun. Today it is all about 5 or so websites (Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, TikTok and the like). A managed online life, by ads companies. It is the difference between my childhood and today’s childhood. Back in my days, all kids were going out. No phones, nothing like that. We interacted with each other, climbed trees, made tree houses, played football or any other game, laughed, ran, biked, it was an endless stream of adventures. Some newer than others. Today, from what I can tell, everything is organized: here is the park for children, here is a gym for adults, a cafeteria for the rest. Kids go for lessons: guitar lessons, football lessons, tennis lessons, ….. Not such thing in my childhood years. We played and had fun. The Internet today is like the childhood of today: a few places, all organized, all tasteless. No adventure, no fun.

So yah, from 2007 on I was poking around the Internet having fun, and writing a lot about the world. I was broke as fuck. Had 0 money. Dependent on my family? I was. Then made TROM documentary, still broke. And remade it; still broke. Then collaborated with TVP and created their online magazine for like 8 months – still broke. I was lucky as fuck when we made a TVP Magazine Indiegogo campaign and we raised over 20.000 Euros. That’s insane that I think about it. It was make or break for me. If we didn’t raise the entire amount, all money would have been returned. I did it this way because I was desperate. I was dragged into a very unpleasant situation living with my family for the past years, mooching on their resources. They were also putting a pressure on me to “do something” – and by that they meant, to have a job; and by that they meant to make some money. So I was like: either I raise all the money and give myself 1 year trial (1k Euros a month for a year), or idk….I’ll just go out and walk until I cannot walk anymore. That’s how I felt. Just go out, walk and walk and walk on this planet until I collapse and I can’t walk anymore. What can I do!?

Side-note: the money for TVP Magazine was for me and Ray who proofread and reviewed all issues, that’s why it was just enough for myself to live for one year with 1k Euros a month.

Ok. So.

2013, the magic year. I finally made it. Had a good ‘salary’ for at least 1 year. Go Tio! Go! And I went! From 2013 to 2016 I managed to get financial support enough to have a good life. I was paying for my own shit. No more dependence on my family. Damn it felt so good. All of that stress was out of the window. From 2014 to 2016 I even managed to live in my own apartment (rented of course), and it felt so cozy and relaxing. I was working like nuts for TVP Magazine and we released one big issue every month. I kept my promise.

Then it declined.

From 2016 on, the donations went down and down. It coincided with me and TVP splitting apart and the discontinuation of the TVP Magazine. But somehow I still had enough to pay for my own shit. In 2016 I moved back with my parents because I was making less than I could afford to live on my own. But since I could still contribute financially to the house’s spendings, I was all fine. I was getting less and less financial support to the point of making it difficult to even contribute to those spendings. But at least I had some money to do so.

Then it was better, but it still declined.

In 2019 we had that TROM meeting and a bunch of people came here to meet me, and meet with each other. We ended up moving together (Me, Sasha, and Aaron). Together we could pay for a nice apartment in the same town. It was fun, relaxing, great. Aaron left after one year, but he kept on supporting me and Sasha like crazy. Honestly the guy is too nice to exist in this society. But me and Sasha were unable to keep ourselves afloat.

Rent: 450 Euros. Electricity over 100. Water + Waste, 30. Internet 75. Servers 50. That’s some 700+ Euros on bills. Then we have to eat. We managed to eat with around 250 Euros a month, which I consider reasonable. We don’t buy much, and nothing fancy. Of course no eating out – that’s stupid, wasteful, super expensive, and stressful. We make some really great pizzas at home for like 5 times less the costs. 1k Euros for 2 people to live in Spain is super low. It’s way bellow the poverty line. But we don’t have a car or other such things – we have no debt and no consumerist values. We just need our basic needs: a comfy shelter with a basic cooking facility, toilet, bed and all that. Basic. An internet connection and hot water. And we can buy some fruits, vegetables, and some meet for myself 😀 (sorry), and that’s all. But it was a very shaky situation. We were sure we will go broke last year, but Roma, Aaron, Shas, and some other close TROM friends saved our asses with big donations.

We knew it was over.

We can’t have several Aarons or Romas or Sebs or Shass or others who helped so much, working their asses off, slaving themselves, to then donate thousands of euros to us. This is insane and unsustainable. So I told Aaron and others to fuck-off 😀 and not donate anymore. Keep the money for themselves. They need that to survive and TROM also needs them. And Aaron is insane-kind and sacrificed his life I’d say, to pull us out of misery lately. He should stop doing that and take care of himself and if possible keep on TROMing because he is so amazing at what he is doing for TROM.

US saved us for a few months. Funny enough. US sent some “stimulus” money because of this COVID situation, to its tribe members, and since Sasha is one of them, we got some 2k Euros from them. It allowed us to prolong the suffering haha.

We. Are. Busy. With. Relevant. Stuff.

You see, both I and Sasha work on some long projects that suck all of our time. Sasha is writing a book about her life that is also tied with these TROM things we talk about – from what I’ve read so far here and there, the book will be super awesome. It may have the potential to reach many new minds. She traveled around the world for the past 13+ years and her stories and what she learned from all of this, coalesce into a great and awesome pie of information. So she needs a lot of time to write it, to compile all of those years and more (she also writes about her childhood). And then is I. I work on a second part of TROM documentary. Like a 10 year celebration. At least that’s what I tried to do. I made a campaign to see if I can get enough support to work on it for the entire 2021, but I only raised some 30% and that’ mainly because of Aaron’s and Roma’s donations….

So yah, both I and Sasha were busy as fuck with these things, not to mention that I am also managing a lot of other projects and in the meantime I released a new one that requires a lot of my attention.

I never stopped working.

If you could look at the donations that TROM received since 2013 to now, they go up till 2016, then go down and down and down, sharply. Right now I may get around 100-200 Euros (maybe) overall, a month. Which is barely enough to buy some food. But if you look for the same period of time at my work and even other people’s work (involvement) for TROM, you will see a rise. A continuous rise. Podcasts, new books, new videos, new amazing tools….all that had no correlations to the support we were getting.

Anyways.

Bottom line is, I am here now, broke. Finally. My nightmare came true. I always feared this will happen and it is here. What am I gonna do now? I have no idea. I cannot see myself having a job. I simply cannot. I put so much effort into TROM and had so many plans….to make the TROM II documentary, to write several amazing and important books about the human behavior, about what science is, about technology and more. To create more trade-free tools….To…

So if I am forced to have a job to make money, it would mean to cut 90% of my work on TROM and by that I also mean to cut 90% of my brain. And I will end up either killing myself or killing someone else at my work place since I am 100% sure you’ll get enslaved in any job out there. I know how to make super detailed books about complex subjects, I know how to make podcasts, I know how to make videos and documentaries, I know how to make a plethora of projects and manage them, I know how to maintain a Linux distribution….I know how to make websites that are (I think) unique and interesting. I know a bunch of things and I do a lot. But I do not know how to make money since I was never interested in that. And that means, I do not know how to survive in this society unfortunately for my own sake. What would have happened if my family or the few people who have donated so far, didn’t exist? I perhaps would have decided to either steal money to support my work (which is ironic thinking about what TROM is), or killed myself. I know this sounds too dramatic, but I’ve always had that in my head: you can always choose not to play this stupid game anymore, by ending your own life. That’s the only escape it seems. Think about how harsh this sounds, and how true it is.

Keep this in mind:

I, a human being on this planet, am super curious how this society works, where are the problems coming from, what are the solutions to these. I am also super curious about how the world works: humans, atoms, whales, computers, and so forth. And I spent 15+ years trying to educate myself about these, and to inform others about them. But I could only do this because a few people helped me stay afloat in this society. Else, I had 0 chances. The society helps you not at all to be an informed human being. It only wants you to work work work. Mostly mindless jobs. Now I am broke so normally I will have to get a job to survive in this society. Like to work in say marketing, sell stuff, be a charlatan and the like. What “good” jobs are out there? Doctors that only “save” people who pay? Mechanics who only repair the broken stuff of those who can afford to fix them? Scientists who are poorly paid and work mostly for for-profit companies, helping them destroy lives and the environment? Honestly, think about it, if I were to say “Ok Tio, we accept a job now! Shut the fuck up and do it!” – then what jobs can I do? Probably some that are pushing this trade based society further. So making things worse in this society.

So:

I am basically forced now to not care about this society and stop be curious, and stop informing others and create educational content and tools, and stop create free services for others. STOP! Stop that, and focus on doing something mindless that in turn creates more waste and slavery.

Am I insane, or the rest of the world!?

Even I get this guilt feeling from time to time when I see myself so moneyless – as if I am not worth anything in this society. I am a lazy, not deserving to live, human being. One that does nothing! But then I look at the stuff I’ve been doing and the stuff I am doing, and the stuff I want to do. And it is a TON. There are people who “make it” in this world by doing just one of the things I am doing, like say a podcast, or write books, or provide services to others like trom.tf does…. The difference between them and myself, is that myself says “All that I do is free for everyone”, and them say “All that we do is not free, so pay you fucking cunt!”. Who is the good human being here!? manyfacepalms.

Should I still play this game?

This is a serious question. It is always going to be a struggle to keep myself afloat while trying to focus on this TROM project. In other words: to keep myself a human being who does important (in my view) projects, I would have to put up with this fucked up trade society till the day I’ll get old and die, to trade myself somehow to it, to keep myself a human. But that trade is going to destroy me. So what should I do? I don’t know. There is one hope and one comforting thought.

The hope:

Sasha. Sasha always found ways to trade herself in this society in a way that maximizes your time as a human on this planet. Trade a little, to be able to free yourself from this shithole. She may come up with a plan about how we can make it in this society. At least I am not alone now. I fight with Sasha and she fights with me. We also have a little hope in the book she will publish, to both attract new minds towards projects like TROM (and who knows, maybe new financial help), but she will also sell the hard copy of the book (the digital will be free), and what if we get lucky and it sells very well and we can support ourselves out of that? This is like the lottery, at least I can dream about that haha. The book is important as it is, and if it sells is not important. But of course, would be fantastic if that would pull us out of this misery. So lets see….with Sasha by my side I feel less concerned about making it in this society.

The thought:

In a weird way, but understandable, my fucked up situation makes me more relaxed at times since it is the perfect proof that this society is the way I have described it. I need no statistics, documentaries or documents, group of scientists or whatever to prove to me that this society is 100% fucked up. Like seriously retarded. The fact that I, Tio the human, who decides to dedicate its life to understand how this society and the world work, and how to fix them, and inform others about all of this, and publish lots of content for free and create lots of other free services, the fact that this Tio human, I, cannot even survive in this society by doing these….it is 100% proof to me that we live in the most fucked up society. And it is funny that so many scream how climate change is fucking us over, corruption destroys our ways of governing, plastic is chocking the planet, destruction, slavery, bla bla bla. Yet the same people support a system that creates mindless humans who have 0 time trying to understand these problems and -0 to do anything about them.

How the fuck can we change any fucking thing in this society if people like me get so raped by this society that it makes it impossible to give a fuck about it in the end.

So perhaps the fact that my life is a living proof to me that this society is indeed as fucked up as I describe it, makes me want to fight it even more. To give it the middle finger and survive despite all the shit it throws at me, and continue (despite the odds) to create awesome and important trade-free stuff: books, services, videos, podcasts, documentaries, and so forth. I also understand why projects like TROM get so little attention, because I can see what gets attention: retarded content. If TROM was popular (and thus more financial support), then I would be concerned….is TROM also retarded!? 😀

Fuck.You.Society.

Last thoughts:

My family is forced to trade in this society, like 3-4 billion other humans who are ~~employed~~ slaves. They are entangled with their jobs and I understand that. If I refuse to trade but stay in their house and cannot contribute to the trades (bills and stuff) it will put them in a very uncomfortable situation and it will create tensions between us. That’s for sure and I’ve experienced that before. I totally understand that. And I do not know what to do about it. So if they want to throw me into the streets, I’ll go and live there, but I will not have a job because that’s a literal death trap to me. They are very helpful and for sure they’ll never do that, but there will be tensions, and we will get stressed. In the end, is the society who fucks all of us in the ass, and we end up screaming at each other. But is little for any of us to do. What can my family do? Say “Yeah is the society’s fault for the situation!”, and then go next morning to their job, trade their time and energy, and through that support me who doesn’t trade!?

Anyways.

I do not have answers right now about what I am going to do. I have many questions tho. We have money for food for like 3 or so months. I will try to go work with my family in cleaning in weekends if they need my help, since that’s the only form of a job I perhaps could do – to do something physical, like cleaning houses, for 2 or so days a week. But even that is perhaps not available for me since there is a scarcity of jobs here.

I will try to not let this society crush me, but I am telling you it is hard. I feel very sad and angry at all of this.

I do not want to become a burden for my family.
But I did not ask to be born in a fucked up society.

UPDATE: I received a 2.000 Euros donation a day after this blog post. This saves our asses for the next few months. I cannot believe… Thank you Tara so much! I do not know you, but donating so much money is simply crazy. Thank you again!

Yellow is not a special color

By tio | April 12, 2021 | Comments 0 Comment

For some reason I thought that yellow is a special color. For years now I’ve heard how yellow is made up of green and red, so it is not its own wavelength. I learned that we have 3 main special light receptors in our eyes that can pick up some specific frequencies, and we interpret one as red, one as blue, and one as green. And the other colors are a combination between these.

But I kept on seeing videos and read about how yellow is weird cause green light and some red light stimulate 2 of these receptors (cells) in our eye and it creates “yellow”. And I started to pedal this notion and be amazed by it.

I was like “Woah we can’t really see yellow…like we see other colors…because yellow is a combo between 2 colors and it is a trick to our mind because of our eyes.”.

Later on writing for the TROM Language book, I wanted to mention this as an example of how we put words on stuff that may not even be there. And while doing my research for the book, I learned that there is in fact a wavelength for yellow but it is also true that the combo of green and red produces the same effect in our brain. I was again amazed. I was like, then what is “yellow” if it is produced by two seemingly different events?

I was not really wrong (I think) – but I missed some very important points. So yah, I was excited how we can’t really see yellow because we don’t have a specialized receptor for that wavelength, and how mind blowing it is that our screens are made up of just 3 colors and how they simulate yellow. I am still amazed by this. When I did this interview, Alex asked me what is my favorite color, and I said “yellow because we can’t really see it”.

Well ok.

Last night Sasha was asking me about this…and we ended up debating for like 5 hours about light, colors, and especially “yellow”. We watched videos and took a snack break :)). Till almost 5 in the morning. Long story short, I was very very wrong, so much so I am disappointed in my brain. Deeply.

I was yellow-blind. But not to the color, to the facts and the interpretation of them. Of bloody course that yellow is not special…the monitor creates all of the colors we see out of Red, Green and Blue because they are the same as yellow. DUH! All colors have either a particular wavelength or they are formed by different wavelengths hitting our eyes and we combine these and see that particular color. In a sense, orange is the same: triggered by either a particular wavelength hitting our eyes hitting some of the 3 main receptors we have, or a few wavelengths that do the same….the output is orange.

I can’t believe I was so blind to this simple fact. Yes, light is such a complex thing to understand, but lets be honest my brain failed. I defended my position for hours, not because I am stubborn I hope, but because that’s what I thought even after Sasha was trying to explain this simple thing. It was too ingrained in myself this idea with “yellow”. I was kinda sure I saw this in the so many documentaries I’ve watched over the past 10+ years. But re-watching some of the videos about “yellow” after I realized I was in the wrong, I spotted some things I didn’t see before…how these people briefly (some less than 1s) mentioned (many in text form) that is the same story with other colors. They simply chose yellow as an example because yellow is cool…idk…

I was surprised at my stupidity to be honest. I could not even sleep much thinking how in the world I got fooled for years. Then I remember that for many many years, even in my 20s, I thought that another yellow thing is where it didn’t suppose to be. I honestly thought that urine was stored in the ballsack. Yah…Because I didn’t think much about it and when I felt the urge to pee I was feeling that urge in that area. I know this really sounds retarded, but when I was in school I also thought that there is God who created everything and I was praying to that creature.

The mind is the most powerful and sensitive organ we have. We can uncover unbelievable things and understand complex patterns, and yet we can be so easily fooled and tricked, it is astonishing. I am thinking now at the many who believe that the Earth is flat, Bill Gates wants to microcip us with vaccines, or that there is an “agenda” out there made by the most powerful people in order to keep us “in line”. Probably these people are wrong, but probably they also can’t see the “yellow” for its true value. But what if we, on the other side are wrong and don’t see what they do!? In the end it comes down to science. We need to investigate the world using the scientific method. But, at times it looks impossible. When it comes to yellow we can measure the wavelengths, we can look at the eye, we can do experiments. When it comes to some world-wide conspiracy we are left with trusting whatever others tell us. How can I truly know if there is an “agenda” out there made up of some dudes that call themselves as “illuminati”? I don’t think we can probe that the same way we probe light. We can say it is very unlikely. And I am fine with that.

We need to remain humble and understand that our brains are limited and we live in a world that is full of infocrap. Explosions of information from all parts, mostly due to our trade-based society that incentivizes people to post post post. I curate my news and videos from sources that seem to be known world wide for their seriosity; I watch so many documentaries especially about science/nature; and yet I got so fooled by this seemingly simple thing. I feel a deep betrayal of my brain. I fed it good stuff (I think) and yet it failed so badly.

I wonder what are the other “yellows” in my brain that I do not understand….

But if I keep on listening to others, to criticisms, to suggestions, then it is a good chance of me correcting my failed brain. I need to force myself to be a lot more humble and park my car in a way that I can get it out of that parking lot if needed, and move it somewhere else.

Like this! Slowly and wisely.

Never like this!

Else I will end up unable to take my car (my mind) out of that spot and will get stuck like that.

Federate the WordPress. How cool!

By tio | December 31, 2020 | Comments 2 comments

I introduced you to the Fediverse in a previous post, and how cool that is. Basically it allows different platforms (websites) to communicate with each other. Something like a Twitter user being able to follow a Facebook or Youtube users, and vice-versa. Not only that, but comment/reshare and overall interact with the other users. Imagine a Twitter user following a Facebook user, and seeing their posts on their Twitter newsfeed and being able to comment, like, or reshare it. And the Facebook user to receive all of that feedback. The Twitter user comments on the Facebook post via the Twitter newsfeed, and the Facebook user sees the comment on the Facebook platform. So they can communicate with each other. That’s extremely important for a saner and more robust internet.

Of course, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and the like won’t give a fuck about such a thing. But lots of people have built alternatives to these platforms that do just that. Ok, you get it, I explained it in the post I linked above. So let’s move on.

These Federated platforms are in many shapes and forms, built in different ways. So, you choose it. But WordPress is perhaps the most well know platform that people use to build websites. And it is so easy to set up a WordPress website and manage it. It is click and install. And then you have access to a fuck ton of plugins to make the website as you want. For example all of our projects, except tromland.org and musikwave.com, are built with WordPress. meaning, this website, tromjaro.com, videoneat.com, trade-free.org and the directory, ourminds.online, tromsite.com. They look in a diferent way and they even serve different purposes.

My website is more of a blog, but I also have video and photo galleries. Tromsite.com is more of content-driven website with books, videos, documentaries, curated news and such. You can’t comment there, you mainly see what we create. VideoNeat is specifically designed to be a sort of encyclopedia of hand-curated documentaries/lectures/movies that are scientific. While tromjaro.com is a website designed for an Operating System from where you can even install apps on your TROMjaro OS.

You get it, WordPress (WP) is a powerful tool to create any kind of website that you want, with 0 coding knowledge.

So then, wouldn’t it be cool if WP would become federated and communicate with all of those platforms? All of those social networks? Well, it can. And it is easy as flies.

ActivityPub is one of the “backbone” of the Fediverse. There are many such out there, but this one is new, shinny, and used by most of the well known platforms. Thanks to the plugin ActivityPub, WP transforms from a slow moving caterpillar that stays on one leaf, in one tree, into a butterfly that jumps from tree to tree. If you have a WP website, install that and I’ll give you a few tips of what to do after.

But first.

What this is doing is opening the doors for WP to talk to the other platforms. Basically, your post and pages (and more if you have custom stuff) can be sent to others on the Fediverse as posts. So imagine this: I have a Frriendica profile (sort of a Facebook profile, but sane and better). And then I follow tiotrom.com (this website) by adding the Federated ID. Whenever there is a new post on tiotrom.com I will see that in my Friendica newsfeed just like any other post from anyone that I follow there. That’s great, But what’s better is that I can even drop a comment on that post from Friendica, and the comment will go to the WP post itself. It should also work for me, the one behind tiotrom.com, to reply via my WP site to this comment and for the comment to go back to Friendica. Right now this doesn’t work but they are working on it, to make it possible. In other words, anyone from the Fediverse can follow my blog via their platforms (Friendica, Mastodon, etc.) and of they like/comment on any of my WP posts, I can see that, and in the near future even reply to them and they can see the replies, so we can communicate with each other.

Another feature of the Fediverse is to send private messages. They are also working to integrate that with WP so that anyone from the Fediverse ca send you a private message and you’ll get it in your WP dashboard or perhaps directly to your email that you have for your WP install.

And so, this is what the Federated WP is doing: allowing your WP website to be followed by anyone on the Fediverse (granted their platforms use ActivityPub), and to comment/interact with your WP posts.

HOW TO MAKE IT NOICE

1. Install ActivityPub and set it up.

Simply install and activate. The go to Settings – ActivityPub. The first settings is to set up how you want your post to be displayed in people’s feeds. I chose Custom for my website since I wanted to tweak it a bit, such as to write “NEW BLOG POST” and make that bold, to add the excerpt and encourage people to read it fully on my website (since it may not format well on some Federated platforms) and such. This is easy, see my example. If you don’t want to bother with that, simply select one of the predefined options.

And bellow it, select the type of Activity-Object. I left it Note since it seems to be the recommended one. The last settings are about what you want to broadcast on the Fediverse. I chose only the posts. But you can even broadcast when you upload images and such. Which is cool.

And lastly, for the young generation of hashes, you can enable the tags :). So your post tags transform into hashtags for the cool kids to click on them. You can block domains from following you as well. But why do you want that!?

2. Tweak your profile.

Your WP user acts as the profile of your Federated WP. So go to Users – Profile. Add your Bio and all of those goodies if you want, so that they appear in your Federated profile. I recommend installing 2 other plugins: WP User Avatar | User Profile Picture and Username Changer. So that you can change your username if you want to make it prettier, and your profile photo. Like me:

When someone will add you to their Federated network, they’ll see all that. Here’s how it looks on Friendica:

Side note: your federated ID is your profile ID basically. So you can have multiple users, and the content that is federated is, of course, based on what your user posts.

3. Share your Federated “ID”.

In the same WP Profile Settings, at the bottom, you’ll see this:

And that’s your “ID”, or Identifier. Send this to anyone who wants to follow you on the Fediverse. As easy as that.

And you’re done!

On my “follow” page I now provide 3 methods for anyone to keep in touch with whatever I do: Fediverse, RSS, and eMail. That’s super cool. And it is up to you how you want to follow my stuff.

I’ve now done the same for videoneat, tromjaro, and the trade-free directory. TROMsite.com….is used in a different way so it doesn’t make sense to integrate it with the Fediverse. What is posted there is not done via the traditional WP methods…so will see about that in the future. But if you follow the above links, you can follow our projects closely, via the Fediverse, RSS, or eMail. Fediverse is more like: I follow and I interact. RSS is like: I just follow. And eMail is for: I’m lazy so just send me an email when you do something :).

Why is this important after all?

It is true, you can follow our WP websites via RSS on Friendica for example, and all of our work via our main Friendica page, but if you simply want to follow only one of our projects and interact with, then you can do it now. It is also important for people who just want a more complex and customized personal place in the inter-webs, like a WP website, but they want to open the door to the Fediverse. I think that’s great!

It also makes the posts on teh Fediverse look better. Before I was using the RSS to pull posts from videoneat, tromjaro, or the trade-free directory to our TROM Friendica page. Now I use ActivityPub. And they look better:

Pulled from RSS – shows no thumbnail or image. Just a simple plain text.

Pulled directly from ActivityPub WP. Pulls custom text + excerpt + image + link. Much better.

yes.no.yes.no.yes.no. ? !

By tio | December 14, 2020 | Comments 0 Comment

For the past several months I have fluctuated between excitement to do this or that, and total lack of any excitement. Happy and motivated, to then being depressed and demotivated. But I like to try and understand myself, so I always use me as the rat I am experimenting on.

I’ve been through such moments all of my life, and I don’t think it is unusual considering the work I’m doing: researching the ugly face of this world, and then (at times) finding the nice face of the world here and there. So my brain is like “Jeez the world sucks balls. Really bad. And is nothing we can do about it. We are doomed”. Then at times is like “Oh look, nice people and projects. How nice. Flowers and bunnies and all of that.”. And these get mixed in my brain at times. On top of that I always had to worry about money…will I have enough for the next months!?

But lately I am a lot more “yes.no.yes.no.yes.no”. Like a bunch of waves in a storm. Why?

At times I get excited about TROM II and discuss with the people around me about it, and ideas of how to make it more interesting and such, to then, in a few days time, to be like “bleah…I don’t like any of these ideas…I don’t want to make TROM II”. And it goes on and on for months, not making much progress with it. Again, why-why? I think I know why.

2000-2005

2000-2005

From mind to notebook

This trade-based, zombie-full, and retarded-graded society always stressed me out. But once I started to have a notebook (journal) - pen and paper - I got more relaxed. I could express myself. Write about the idiocracy. Felt good.

2005-2009

2005-2009

From notebook to blog

Then I decided to write digitally.

Back in 2005 or so, when I was starting my romanian blog, it felt like I came across a big pile of fresh air. It was me, my computer, usually late at night, writing about the stuff I wanted to write. I felt like I was alone on a planet, beaming my thoughts to other planets. Not many listeners, not many reactions. But I liked that. Because all I wanted was to say some stuff. That's all. After a few years it became a bit busier and I didn't like it that much. People voicing their opinions to your opinion, in your own home (your website) can become annoying. But hey, there is a lot to learn at times, from this minds from other planets.

My thoughts were no only mine, hidden in an old notebook in my room, they were out there for all to see. I retired my notebook.

2009-2012

2009-2012

From blog to documentary

After a few years I felt like I can express my thoughts better in english and in a video format. I was watching too much EN stuff, but I could not write very well, so it help that I could cut segments from videos and make some content that would mirror my thoughts. Like a DJ, I was remixing stuff. So I made TROM Documentary with videos from other documentaries, lectures or other videos, plus a badly written EN script (from a grammar perspective). I remade TROM with a proofread script a year later. I was happy, but not in the mood anymore to write on my romanian blog. I was leaving that behind. Didn't consider it relevant anymore, same way I stopped writing in my notebook once I started my blog.

I tried however to still write in romanian on that blog, but I realized it is not happening. Almost like being 15 trying to jerk off on 70s playboy magazines. I needed new adventures :)). It's not working!

2013-2018

2013-2018

From documentary to books

Making a 14h documentary was a great way of expressing my thoughts. But now I had even more thoughts. I wanted to do proper research, to source what I was writing about, to move from writing articles to writing books. To do "serious" work. And so I created a lot of books, very detailed, very important. A fuck-ton of work. Writing them, designing them. I got better at writing in EN. But not that great at speaking in EN since I could not practice with anyone. I was behind the screen, typing words. That's me.

In this time I tried to go back on the Memory Lane and make some videos based on the books I wrote. That documentary-lane...I tried a lot. A lot. We recorded, and recorded, and recorded. And we released 2-3 videos, and that's it. I felt again like that 15-year-old jerky. Not working anymore. Doesn't excite me anymore to make videos...I made a huge one, and I put a lot of work into it....now I was in the book-mood.

2018-present

2018-present

From books to in-action

Since 2005 I've been broadcasting my thoughts indirectly. But in 2018'sh I started to meet people who were very aware of my work. Meet them in person. We also started TROM-Cast. Us. Live. Speaking directly to each other, and to the other planets. My spoken EN got a lot better.

Until then I felt like a runner who trains for a competition. Year by year, accumulating knowledge and skills. 2019 was the year I could run. Be out there. Touch the other planets. Broadcast my thoughts directly.

Another important thing happened: my realization of "trade" and how it is a thing that influences everything, and how focusing on that is the best we can do. Understand. Destroy. Also, trade-free. Create trade-free goods/services to both help people in an honest manner, and to also inform people about this trade-monster. And so I created tools like TROMjaro, the Trade Free Directory and the website, and I re-labeled and re-purposed all of the other websites to be trade free: videoneat, my website, other people's websites...our tools were directed towards that vision. I wanted to showcase how we can do some work in this saner direction. No more "just talking", now it was doing. More directly. Yeah, small scale. but still...a lot considering my "powers".

For the past 2 years I loved working on TROMjaro and make it better and better and make a point with it within the open source community. And I got my voice heard a couple of times. I curate hundreds of trade-free apps for it, I added stuff to the trade-free directory, I removed the trackers from most of our websites. I started to get away from online trades as much as possible, as a matter of principle and also because it feels damn good and could inform people about why trade sucks, and trade-free goods/services are a lot better. A LOT.

No more books for me, it was all about doing something. Talking to others, challenging them and their values, be out there into the wild. That started to excite me.

But then I had this idea, partially influenced by the people around me, of making another TROM documentary and explain this new thing I discovered with “trade”. I agreed we need such a material on our website and out there on the webs. TROM documentary is still relevant, but talking about abundance, and scarcity, and rbe, and tvp and the like, doesn’t make sense for me anymore. I evolved past that. I changed my mind about many of those notions. We made a TROM-Cast all about that and it is part of the TROM documentary now, as a “review” of it, at the end of the documentary. But it is not enough. I would like to replace that documentary with a new (updated) one. Although that’s the rationale, and although sometimes I feel super excited about it, it does feel a bit forced…as if I force myself to go back to making videos instead of focusing on the “in action” part of my evolving life. I feel more motivated to invite experts on TROM-Cast and talk about the human behavior or other notions, to invite people from the Open Source communities, volunteers, those who want to change the society, and talk to them. Learn from them. Challenge them.

I think I am ready-enough to go and talk/debate with others about these ideas. I want to go fight now :D. Doing things like books or documentaries is an indirect fight for me. But I still would love to write more books. I want to definitely write a few more. One about science so that I learn what it is in detail, one about human behavior in great detail, one about “shapes” (you’ll see it is a fascinating topic and it affects everything: medicine, tech, behavior, etc.); and a few more. I’d like to write them on my own phase and in the meantime do more work on TROMjaro, Trade-Free Directory and the other tools we have, and definitely TROM-Cast.

I fell like that’s my new “era”, the in-action era. And I am kinda forcing myself to go back again to the “documentary” era. But I’ll give it a shot. We are trying to do a different kind of TROM documentary, more “in-action” with filming me, Sasha and Dima. We already started that so let’s see where it goes.

Thing is, my idea was to raise around 13k Euros for a year of work (1k a month to survive), and all of the 2021 to work on TROM II. I could have done that if I had the money. But since I only have raised around 2k then I had to rethink it completely. It will be a shorter one, but maybe more interesting and personal. More “catchy”.

So yah…let’s see how it goes…

The good part is to see myself evolving and trying new approaches to understand the world and explain it to others.

When I know what I want to do, it is a lot less of “yes.no.yes.no.yes.no.”. But when I try to force myself to do things I may not enjoy doing at that period of time, then I fluctuate a lot. It happened to me when I tried to write again on my romanian blog, when I tried to make videos out of my books, when I have to do this documentary it seems.

In any regard, I also have to enjoy life and the things I am creating, else it is pointless. I’d rather have a normal job and forget about this, if I end up in a pile of stress and regard TROM II or other projects as “work that I HAVE TO DO”.

I am so so happy with the stuff I’ve created so far and I will create more of it, and evolve to new kinds of projects and approaches. The flame of “doing something” is still burning inside my essence. That’s for sure!