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Offensive and Obscene

CATEGORY / Behavior TAGS / sex AUTHOR / Tio DATE / 20/04/2015

Author: Tio

In one of our previous articles we discussed ‘morality’ and ‘ethics’ idea(l)s, showing how they are notions without a proper meaning.  Today we will discuss the notion of obscenity and what causes people to feel offended.

A while ago, while managing some social networks for a project, I posted a promotional image across all of the official social networks of that project and it was only banned from Facebook, by the Facebook staff.  We were posting images every single day, promoting articles like this one.  However, this particular photo was removed because it included something called ‘nudity’.  Here is Facebook’s official statement, which is very important for this article:

“A photo or post on your Timeline was reported to Facebook.  After reviewing the report, we determined that the photo or post doesn’t follow the Facebook Community Standards:

Nudity

Facebook restricts displays of nudity because some audiences within our global community are particularly sensitive to this type of content.  We understand that these limitations will sometimes affect content shared for legitimate reasons, including awareness campaigns or artistic projects, and we apologize for the inconvenience.  We’re constantly re-evaluating how to balance people’s interest in free expression with the needs of our diverse, global community.“

The picture showed exposed ‘female milk glands’, as a side effect of the Swaziland’s clothing tradition where women do not wear a bra.

This is the photo: ---------------

The image text provided this relevant message: “In Swaziland, a poor tribe in our modern tribes world, it is illegal for women to wear clothes that resemble men's clothes.   If they are caught wearing such clothes, they are subject to having them forcibly ripped off of them by soldiers, and humiliated.”  The message was a very important one, but the emotionally-driven reaction to a somehow offensive pair of ‘boobs’ stopped the message from being spread.

The irony is that this picture represented an article about ‘morality’ and ‘ethics’, and how the present system is as coercive and as ass-backwards as the ancient world when it comes to such judgements.  Facebook proved that more than any picture could ever have hoped to achieve.  Because of this incident, we had to manually censor any such image from there on so that the Facebook account won’t be removed.

As we have shown in the ‘morality’ article, many companies/organizations/clusters of people have been actively trying to impose their own values onto others through such tools like the internet, restrictive laws, or whatever else they find appropriate to impose their own ideals.

On the other hand, that post was flagged as inappropriate by someone who saw it, and we have to wonder what this person thinks of as being inappropriate.  Why did this person think that this digital representation of this certain ‘thing’ (a celebration dance) was obscene (bad) and, for that matter, what is ‘obscene’ after all?

If you were to look at nipples close-up, you often wouldn't be able to tell if they are female nipples or male nipples.  The ‘bulges’ of the typical female breast are also not specific to females when it comes to how they look.  Take a look at the pictures below and try to guess which nipple/’bulge’ belongs to a woman and which ones belong to a man.  Click the photo to see who is behind the ‘nipples’.

Have you guessed right?  Perhaps not, since it’s hard to tell sometimes.

I am left wondering why so many in this world regard female chests as ‘obscene’ but male’s chests as completely normal.  It’s a bizarre contradiction with no apparent justification.

At the same time we posted that image on Facebook, it just so happened that a very well-known Facebook page called “I fucking love science”, which has over 18 million likes, posted a news item from their website that asked “Have you ever wondered why men have nipples?” and included a big picture of a man’s naked chest.  Our post showing naked female chests was removed, but their post was not (and I promise that we’re not at all jealous of that).

So, imagine that you are a guy just changing your shirt alone in your own bedroom, when suddenly your sister bursts into the room and accidentally sees your naked chest.  Your manliness is now destroyed!  Your sister saw your nipples.  How creepy is that, right?  Well, I don’t know anyone who would be emotionally impacted by such an event, since it’s a ‘normality’ in this world for guys to walk around without a shirt.  How crazy is the idea for us to socially ‘force’ guys to wear a bra from now on?  Well, then ask yourself why it is ‘normal’ for girls to be socially forced to wear a bra.

Now, imagine the opposite situation: a girl changing in her room and her brother bursting in and seeing her naked ‘bulges’ with nipples.  The girl will definitely be ashamed by this incident.  Perhaps even more interestingly, so will her father.

If this wasn't allowed by us to be such a taboo, it wouldn’t be able to emotionally hurt anyone.

If you look across human history, human beings started to wear ‘clothes’ of some sort around 72,000 years ago, and it is thought that the primary causation was the utility factor (cold, rain, protection from the elements, etc).  Clothes served a very real function (unlike in some cases today).  For about 128,000 years before that, however, it is thought that humans did not wear clothes at all (maybe because we had much more body hair protecting us, we hadn’t yet migrated far from warm climates, etc.).  From this perspective alone, it is ‘unnatural’ to wear clothes, yet going without would not be a smart decision for many present day societies living in a plethora of climates where clothes still serve a very necessary function.

In ancient Egypt (5,000 years ago), clothing was much simpler.  Women wore transparent robes and children went without clothing until puberty, at about age 12.  Many street performers performed nude in that period of time.

In ancient Greece (2,000 years ago), athletic and/or cultist nudity of men and boys – and less frequently, of women and girls – was a natural concept.  Athletes competed naked in public sporting events.  Spartan women, as well as men, would sometimes be naked in public processions and festivals.  In the case of women, this practice was designed to encourage virtue while the men were away at war.  Nudity in sport was very common, with almost all sports performed naked.  The word gymnasium actually comes from the Ancient Greek term gymnós, meaning "naked"(source).  In all of this, such events were intended to promote appreciation of the human body and were regarded as ‘esthetical’ offering to the gods.

In Greek culture, depictions of erotic nudity were considered normal.  In both ancient Greece and ancient Rome, public nakedness was also accepted in the context of public bathing.  Roman art regularly features nudity in mythological scenes, and sexually explicit art appeared on ordinary objects such as serving vessels, lamps, and mirrors, as well as among the art collections of wealthy homes.

In more recent history, in the early 20th century, exposure of male nipples was considered indecent at some beaches.  During this period, women's bathing suits had to cover at least the thighs and exposure of more than that could lead to arrests for public lewdness.  But after WWII, the arrival of the bikini was quickly accepted with relatively few complaints.

In the 1920’s, the Soviet Union under Stalin, by then a well-known tribe of the world, decided to suppress the ‘radical’ ideas that had circulated in the early years of the Soviet Union: Nudism and pornography became prohibited.

History goes on and you can read this Wikipedia article, where you can reflect on a religious influence regarding the human naked body becoming viewed as ‘sinful’ or ‘obscene’.  However, religion was not the only influence on these notions.  In ancient Rome (and other places), they started to associate nakedness with being poor or weak.  This was partly because in war, prisoners were often stripped naked in an attempt to humiliate and convince them that they were no longer in control of their body.  Also, slaves were displayed naked to be inspected for ‘defects’.  These kinds of associations defined ‘nakedness’ as offensive and degrading.

Complete nudity among men and complete or near-complete nudity among women is still common for many communities and social systems (Mursi, Surma, Nuba, Karimojong, Kirdi, and so on).  Many indigenous peoples in Africa and South America train and perform sport competitions naked.  Indian male Digambara monks practice yoga naked, and there are millions of people all over the world that ‘practice’ naturism/nudism.

In some warm climate hunter-gatherer cultures, nudity or near-complete nudity either has been (until the introduction of Western Culture or Islam), or still is, the social norm for both men and women.

It seems that powerful clusters of people, such as ‘Western Culture’ and Islam, are forcing their ideals upon other cultures and changing these notions.

There are so many tribes in the world that do not wear clothes, where guys do not get instant erections when they see naked girls, and girls don’t gawk at boy’s penises or other parts of the body.  We might expect that if we were to suddenly abandon clothes right now, we would start raping each other, and that might actually be true, but it’s only because of the culture we were raised in.  Perhaps people from such tribes look at us, ‘the so-called modern’ ones, and ponder how sick we are.

Some people believe that that breasts and genitelia are the ‘obscene’ parts of the human body everywhere, but if you burst into a room where there is a naked girl, she will cover her genitalia if she is from America or many other parts of the Western culture world, she will cover her face and hair if she is from the islamic world, her ankles if she is from the Victorian era or the back of her neck if she is from Japan.

Sex and nudity are not the only offensive offenders.  I remember all through my school years that teachers would act offended if we wore a cap/hat in the classroom.  Even if it was very cold (winter) and we wore winter caps to help keep us warm, the teachers would force us to take them off.  If you tried to argue with them about it, you could find yourself in even more trouble.  So, people can feel offended just by the way you dress, or talk.

At one point in the 20th century, in the early days of television, it was quite rude (and even prohibited) to show a bathroom on TV.  If you need a source for that claim, just watch your local TV stations to see many ‘prohibited’ things due to ‘offensive’ reasons.

In America, there is a small group of people that establish the rating system for all the movies that go into theatre or TV.  You may have heard that some movies are not suited for certain ages, while others are.  Well, only a  handful of people (less than 20) are responsible for assigning these ratings to everything.  What they do is basically watch these movies/documentaries and, based on their own judgements, they say which are suited for different audiences.  They even have two priests as among their members.

In the documentary “This Film is Not Yet Rated”, this organization (the Motion Picture Association of America’s Classification and Ratings Administration, or MPAA CARA) was brought into the spotlight to show the ridiculosity of their judgements.  One interesting conflict occurred when a documentary maker created a documentary about war and soldiers, depicting images with real violence and the soldiers they filmed used ‘normal’ language, meaning they sweared, cursed, talked ‘dirty’, etc..

Since it is a documentary, the producer presented that situation as it was, but the ‘rating judges’ wanted to make his documentary not suited for people under 17, censoring it.  Think about that a minute.  A documentary must present reality as it is.  Imagine if you were to censor footage of the world’s genocides or the real plight of starving children, just because some people are ‘sensitive’ and refuse to witness that.  Doing this greatly warps the reality that’s presented to people.

That same association allows penises to be shown in movies, but only to a certain degree for certain ages.  If the penis is at a different angle or state of erection (a very natural phenomenon), then it is considered pornography.

However, these systems fail miserably, because if you censor the word ‘fuck’ with a blip, not only will no one stop saying that word, but that ‘blip’ then becomes the new ‘fuck’.

There are people who feel offended when they see others naked or people enjoying each other’s bodies, yet they too have a naked body and they probably have sex somewhat frequently.  In Romania, the interior of churches is full of orgy paintings, yet people become offended if you attempt to talk about sex inside those churches, or wherever.  Parents don’t let their children watch certain kinds of programs or hear certain words, yet the parents (and often the children themselves) use these ‘dirty’ words everyday.

These examples seem to prove just how hypocritical a lot of people have allowed themselves to become.

Here’s a real story I read once about a guy who was with his wife at a streaptease bar in Thailand.  The woman said, “You’ve noticed honey that I am the only girl in here that would not take clothes off for money?”, and the husband replied, “Well, it depends how much one is willing to pay you…”.  The woman felt quite offended.

If you offer a girl $100 to have sex with you, she would probably slap you across the face (if she is from an American middle class family; if she is from a poor family and culture, then she might be quite happy at the opportunity).  If you offer the same American girl $1,000, she might be inclined to consider it.  For $1,000,000, she might even replace that ‘offended’ feeling with a ‘proud’ feeling about herself (her newly acquired ‘wealth’).  Check out this video of a guy doing just that, as part of a social experiment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWxT08QfRUw

I saw a movie once that seemed to reflect this culture pretty well, especially one particular scene from it (the movie was also inspired by real events).  An udnerage girl (16 or so) had a relationship with a ‘mature’ guy (40 or so).  The police were looking for this guy to arrest him for underage sexual relationships, but the girl refused to give the police any details about him, in order to protect him.  She was saying that she loves him and their relationship is a great one.  Then the police showed the girl some pictures with this guy that depicted him having similar relations with other underage girls.  After seeing that, the girl screamed: “He raped me!  The son of a bitch!  He raped me!”, and she gave all the details to the cops.

The girl wasn’t offended or felt raped before she learned that the guy had other relationships.

It seems that most of the things that hurt people are their own personal projections.  If you take the time to think seriously about it, words are only sounds.  So how is it possible that any word can make you feel bad?  How can a sound be allowed to piss you off?

In Romania, I had a neighbor who had a dog that barked every time time I passed in front of his house.  The dog barked like crazy, but for me, his barking was only noise.  If I was pissed off by anything, it was only because of the high noise he made (they hurt my ears a bit).  I never considered stopping to try to argue with the dog, right?  I view many people as barkers in this world.  They say things that make no sense at all, and then you have to ask yourself why you are trying to argue or feel offended by barking?

If someone starts to curse at me in Japanese, I won’t know what he means.  In that same way, if someone starts to say nonsense things at me, I don’t know what he or she means, either.

In many parts of the world, calling someone ‘gay’ is still considered an offensive thing to do.  But let’s think this through a little.  If you are not gay, then what is the problem in the first place?  And, if you are, then you are; so what?

If you go to a doctor and the doctor says “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but you have a brain tumor.”  Would you say to the doctor “You and your family have brain tumors, you son of a bitch!”?

Of course not.  Then how can you get pissed off if someone tells you that you are a moron or weirdo?  Are you?  Do those words mean anything to your life situation?  If not, then how could you feel offended?

I would like to challenge anyone that reads this article to send me an email and try to make me feel offended.  I have no idea what could make me feel like that.  If I was a black guy and someone said to me “You filthy nigger!”, I would feel nothing because those words mean nothing.  If someone would say “Look man, I read somewhere that black skin is more prone to ‘bad’ smells when exposed to sunlight.”, then I would thank the guy and read more about it.  Maybe he knows something I wasn’t aware of.

Get it?

Let’s go back to our banned Facebook image with those ‘indecent’ breasts.  In order to more fully comprehend the extent of the tremendous stupidity around what happened there, imagine that the world was more Islamic than whatever else, and we had posted an image of someone’s face with her nose uncovered.  Imagine Facebook banning that photo because it showed a naked nose.  Wouldn’t all of the people find that outrageous?  What is the difference between banning a photo of people wearing blue shoes versus someone wearing nothing artificial?

In my view, such acts of censorship are violent.  I don’t feel offended though :).  I understand why it happens and how we may change it.

One way to help people not feel offended and get rid of notions such as obscenity, is to expose them to real, verifiable information.  The more you know about the ‘real’ (scientific) world, the less likely it is for you to be hurt by such imaginary notions.  If you know that beauty is a subjective notion, if someone then tells you that you are ugly, you cannot be affected by that attempt to hurt your feelings.  You will understand that it is only his subjective reaction.  If someone would tell me that I am so ugly that he pukes a little bit into his mouth everytime he sees me, I would tell him to be careful not to choke on his vomit.  🙂

A scientific mind is the most wonderful mind a human can sculpt.  A scientific mind understands that racism, nationalism, beauty, art, social classes, money and so on, are only human inventions and that it would be near to impossible to be hurt by notions revolving around these concepts.  If you recognize that nationalities are human inventions, you happen to be Italian and someone says that “All Italians are thieves”, you cannot be harmed by that because you immediately recognize the irrelevancy of this claim.  This perhaps applies to every such artificial notion there could be.

A word, a sword, an ass, a penis, a duck, a mock...whatever the fuck, are not the ones that are obscene or offensive.  The human mind can regard them that way or not, as it is completely your choice as to how you view these things.

Let me say it again: the world can hurt you if you have less or nothing to eat, or have no comfort and so on, but many, many things that hurt you are only in your head.  They are merely part of your own projection.

“If people were just as offended by war as they are about showing genitalia,
it would save a lot of lives.”

~ Jacque Fresco

[wpfai_social] 

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Live updates about TROM Project

If you want to stay up to date with everything we do for this project, you can check these live updates from any tromsite.com page ;) - You can also click people's names to go to their personal online places (websites).

Tio: I am now working on the solutions part for the book + final review of Dima's Entertainment book + TROMjaro.com + trade-free.org website. All of these are "positive" things. I had enough of the negative things :D
Tio: Kostas recently shared TROM in Greek on his FB page here https://www.facebook.com/politismos1/videos/400067940773471/ he has many likes and engagements on his page. great guy Kostas! He is trying to promote TROM on his page more and more. He also put me in contact with some people about translating the entire TROM project into Greek. Awesome stuff!
Tio: I am DONE with the negative part of the book! Yes! yes yes yes! I really had to take that off my chest! I may have repeated some things but I felt I had to do it. I had too many notes and I ddin't want to ignore them. I feel such a big relief....now I am ALL about SOLUTIONS. Cannot wait to start on that! Gogogogogogo :)
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Tio: Stream here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XClYPAqzT9M - really good one I enjoyed it :)
Dima: Chat image
Tio: 14.5k words for the book. 2.5k more since the last update a few days ago. making damn good progress. i think 2.5k more words and i am done with the negative part. man this is crazy. you will get tired reading the many examples i give in regards to "look, this society is not working - laws do nothing". anyways, tomorrow is the tromcast. discussion: language. interesting. dima, seb, tio, rafa are joining so far. maybe more ;)
Tio: oh and I didn't buy the .com one, like i buy all websites, because for one it is not available and second, the .org is used by "free" or non-profit organizations, and we want to reach those with this new project, so it fits perfectly! :P
Tio: I just bought www.trade-free.org !!! Awesome that I managed to buy it. great domain name :P - there we will post the new documentary + organizations that stand behind this idea! It will be like the Free Software Foundation find of thing, the "go-to" place for this trade-free idea! ;) - lots of plans friends! lots! ok, back to writing the big book!
Tio: oh, and I made it in Inkscape! the trade-free software, or TFOSS like we will call them: Trade-Free and Open-Source Software. A nice addition to the well-known FOSS :P
Tio: I think I made a really bad-ass logo for our Trade-Free project/focus. Like I love it :D - I would even tattoo it haha. I am preparing things for our new endeavor: the big book, trom-jaro, the documentary, the trade-free idea itself and how to promote it. the only thing that could really fuck things up now would be a brain tumor or to get hit by a car :))
Tio: Ok so TROM-Jaro I think is kinda done. The Operating System is now slim, beautiful, simple and it just WORKS! No point in pre-installing tons of apps. I installed the essentials and made it "ready" - like firefox is set up to stop as much as possible todays's trades: ads or trackers or data gathering. videos, photos, or audio files work. basically any filetype works. you get basic libreoffice for documents with several packages installed for many languages. and that's pretty much it. I made it simple and trade free, removing the stuff Manjaro added to it by default, and I installed several stuff so to make it more powerful. We will rely entirely on tromjaro.com to suggest applications in a beautiful and simple manner so that anyone can customize their TROMJaro any way they like it. From now on in terms of TROMJaro the focus is the website which is also pretty much done from a basis perspective. I have it set up and the core of it is designed. Need to build the pages and add several applications, then all I'll be doing is to add more and more applications. These are trade-free applications that I am going to test. Btw just to give you a small example of what I mean by TROMJaro being "ready" and that it just works: in Linux there are several package types, like "exe" is on Windows in Linux you get several. In Manjaro (thus TROM-Jaro) we rely on a database where you can find all applications and you simply click install and that's it. Super easy. No "one format" there but multiple. However there are some newer formats like snap, appimages, or flatpak that are trendy nowadays. They are simple to install but that's if you install some other stuff beforehand and you use the terminal. In TROMJaro everything is set up to accept such packages as well. Like, in very very rare cases when there is no Manjaro format available for one app but it is as appimage, then you simply double click and appimage and it gets integrated into TROMJaro. That's how easy it is. Want to install snap? Install it like you would install a snap without installing anything more than that. Flatpak? The same. IT JUST WORKS! LOVE IT! :) And here it is the TROM-Jaro https://www.dropbox.com/s/h9td6yrj7zszoip/TROM-Jaro 11-02-19.iso?dl=0 2.1GB - not much will change to it. basically that's what it is going to be!
Tio: So I am getting closer to finish up the "negative" side of the book but I started to feel drained a little. Like I am sick of the "negative" aspect. But then, if you don't know about that you don't understand how "solutions" can look like. If you want to showcase the negative side of today's society you can write nonstop until the end of your life and you won't even touch 1% of it all. The challenge for me is to put all that in a simple to understand and non-boring manner: both in writing and book design. But this book will be the most important factor for the new documentary! We will extract the essence of it for the documentary. I am also working in parallel on TROM-Jaro. Some days, maybe because of the subjects I research, I feel quite down....but most days I feel great and motivated to do this kind of work. Today was a "feeling-down" day.
Tio: making great great progress with the book! 12k words already :D - that's like the entire TROM Earth book and I am not done at all. I think I need some 5k words to finish up with the "bad" side of it to then more to the "good" side of it. But lots of interesting stuff. Like if you ever wondered what is the global impact of Mafia + Terrorism + Gangs + Smugglers, wonder no more. I had an overview look at it and the fight to stop them, globally. I am very surprised.
Yoav: Hello!
There's a site called AlternativeTo, which lets people look for certain kinds of apps, and alternatives to specific ones. I'm going to add all TROM tools there, so hopefully more people will find them, and be helped by them. Currently TROM curated news and ViedoNeat pages are up. if you want, you can can vote, review, and suggest it/similar apps as alternatives, and even edit the information (you just need to create an account which is very simple and quick). this will help people find them. here are the pages -
Curated news https://alternativeto.net/software/trom-curated-news/
VideoNeat https://alternativeto.net/software/videoneat/reviews/
I will post the pages for other TROM tools in the following days, cause it takes them time to get approved
Tio: Added several youtube channels to our curated videos - good ones ;)
Tio: You can see the TROM-Cast recording here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dk9B-csiAdM
Tio: I wasnt able to share the jitsi link here :( .... I was too busy with the livestream and my computer kinda crashed because of so many Firerfox tabs....next time will be more organized
Tio: Live in 5 minutes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0MJgMfb0TE&feature=youtu.be
Tio: Tio, Cody, Rafa, Seb will participate. Maybe Sasha as well....and maybe others too? Will see :)
Tio: The livestream will be here https://youtu.be/b0MJgMfb0TE - in about 5 hours
Tio: Chat image
Tio: We've got a new question to our FAQ: "Do have material on a well designed adoptable alternative to trade along with a rollout strategy?" - answer is here https://www.tromsite.com/faq/
Yoann: I translated another part of the documentary in French. Still plenty of stuff to translate! I'm also working on several other projects. Really busy at the moment :D
Tio: Since I started researching "mafia" and organized crime all around the world I now can confirm with a lot of confidence that LAWS DO NOT WORK! Period! You won't believe the stories behind this subject...you'll get to read about a bunch of them in the book though. I also realized that "terrorism" is not ISIS, terrorism is everywhere from Colombia to Italy. I mean fuckin' Italy is full of Mafia and terrorism attacks but you don't hear about them like you hear about ISIS. Crazy shit. But eye opening. Today I hope to finish up with the Mafia part.
Tio: On LiberaPay (the kinda trade-free alternative to Patreon) https://liberapay.com/explore/organizations we are the 7th most supported organization :D - thank you! https://liberapay.com/TROM/ Chat image
Tio: Thank you to those who support TROM on Patreon, Paypal, and Liberapay! These people who donate every month/week are the ones that are keeping this project still running after 8 years! So, thank you so so much! Maybe some of these have stressful jobs, maybe they don't have enough money, maybe they are sick by the trades they have to engage into, and yet they decide to help TROM. We can only guarantee that we keep on doing the same quality work that we've been doing over the years. In our next TROM-Cast (in 2 days) we will discuss about TROM, our TROM Meeting in Spain this year, our plans to make more videos, the new documentary, and so forth! You will see that there are a bunch of people who are quite active with the project and we have some plans to move together and work more on the project, if we have enough financial support. "tune-in" on 07, 19:00 UTC to hear more about our plans ;) - and if you can support us financially please do so here https://www.tromsite.com/donate/ even 2-3 euros a month, if 10-20 people donate, is a lot of money.
Tio: Did some work on TROM Curated news. Added a few sources to it and the curated search engine. In about a month or two I will restructure tromsite.com in a better way to showcase all the tools we have built over the years!
Aaron: I wrote 2 Articles (in german): one about Free and Open Source Software in general (what is it, why is it so awesome): https://aaronboos.de/2019/02/was-ist-foss/ and the other one about how to install the latest version of our FOSS operating system TROM-Jaro on your own computer to test it :) https://aaronboos.de/2019/02/trom-jaro-installieren/
Tio: And of course we can simply translate tromjaro.com in so many languages :P - I need to think of how to give access to people to translate properly in multiple languages. But it is very possible! We grow! I like it!
Tio: 05:00 some guys on Manjaro forum were able to make it possible to click and install an app from a website. how awesome! still....the AUR packages do not seem to work maybe it is a small tweak they have to do. For it to work we need to set up some small stuff to TROM-Jaro by default. Not hard it seems. But well imagine how awesome could be to have those bunch of trade-free apps and people can click and install them, just like that, from tromjaro.com :D - i love the idea!
Tio: Only 2 more documentaries to see for this part of the book :P - also worked on tromjaro.com a bit and actually made great progress. I want a page with tested and recommended trade-free apps - you click one and opens a popup with details and images about it (very brief) and you can simply search it in tromjaro's software center and install. HOWEVER I am talking to people from Manjaro's forum and maybe we can implement an "install" button that triggers the software center and it installs the application. How could would that be to install apps from tromjaro.com? :D - will see, but even if we can't implement that it will be an amazing website with hundreds and hundreds of trade-free apps. Here is a very early demo of the website (functional) - I will add lots and lots of tags so that you can find any app you desire :P Chat image
Tio: Today I also have to watch 1 series (4 parts) and 1 more documentary. And tomorrow one more documentary (made up of 2 parts). For the book!
Tio: Today I kinda learned how to do a custom TROM-Jaro set of icons. I will contact some people I know to see if they can help with custom artwork for TROm-Jaro. Custom icons, custom wallpapers. The theme that we use is already great so I don't think we need to change that. I honestly cannot wait to release TROM-Jaro, but I want to do a damn good job at it, like I feel doing for everything TROM related.
Tio: I installed wordpress on http://www.tromjaro.com/ and I will try to work in parallel with writing on the big book. Won't prioritize it for sure, but in my "spare" time I'll work on it. It will become like an "app center" with recommended trade-free apps for TROM-Jaro, on top of explaining TROM-Jaro itself. I want for people to go there and find hundreds if not thousands of tested trade-free apps for TROM-Jaro. And I would love to add new apps all the time because I love testing new Linux apps. Of course it will be integrated with our TROM Curated News so every time we add an app to tromjaro.com will go to TROM Curated News as well + will integrate tromjaro with TROM Curated Search Engine so that if anyone searches for applications they can sort by "trade free". Ok, lots of plans, and exciting ones :P
Tio: Watched 4 documentaries today. Well, one that had 3 parts (45 min each), and 1 that was 1h 30 min. I need to watch another series (with 4 parts), one series with 2 parts, and another documentary that's 1h 30min long. Give me 2 days and I'll watch them all haha. It is for the particular point of the book I am working on. Also, adding a new VN doco now ;)
Tio: You have to understand that I have notes taken from many months ago about this part, from the tens of documentaries I've seen and stuff I've read. I am now coalescing everything. I am still yet to go through the 200+ bookmarked websites....but is happening....let's see.....am I able to finish writing the book this month? I doubt...but will see.
Tio: Analyzed mafia/drug cartels and organized crime for the book for pretty much all the world except US and Italy. These ones are huge. I am analyzing them these days. I am also watching 2-3 documentary series about the topic. When I am done with Mafia (I hope 1 week), I go a bit through smugglers and hackers. I am analyzing law-breakers. I really hope by the end of this month I am done with this part. This is the last thing staying between me and the "solutions" part. I know that I am postponing the solutions part, but that part is the easiest since I worked on that for the past many months. I LOVE the fact that I feel again "trapped" by my workflow on the book. That's the state I like to be in ;) - engaged into research and writing books.
Tio: Basically UnderstandingMore, Seb's project, will unite with TROM :D
Tio: I am video-excited! Some really cool stuff in terms of videos will come :) - thanks to Seb! So much interesting TROM stuff happening lately. The TROM-Cast, the new TROM videos that we will post, TROM-Jaro, people translating stuff, us meeting in May, etc.. Overwhelmed!
Tio: Live here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhmaTOmVh90 join here meet.jit.si/tromcast password tromsite
Tio: I contacted the hosting company about the server space and we figure out there were some old backups on the server. Deleting them now. But so far so amazing, almost 50% of the disk is now empty! Chat image
Sasha: I put a link to "the ugliness of beauty" in my latest blog post- https://www.bigworldsmallsasha.com/single-post/2019/01/31/For-the-Love-of-Ice-Bubbles
Dima: Chat image
Tio: My workflow for The Origin of Most Problems at the moment: before I jump into the "solutions" part I am going to present why and how laws are not working and I am presenting the "bad hombres" of this world so that people understand how millions of people are breaking every single law. I am going through mafia and gangs....and MY GOD it is endless. I am trying to select the most telling examples but I feel like it is never ending. I hope to finish going through this in about a week. I am looking for each and every country :D - I read a lot but write a little. I simply cannot control myself and I want to REALLY know stuff. I don't want to simply say: "Look man, mafia or gang members and organized crimes are breaking the laws because of trade every single day." - this is tasteless and no one will understand the severity of it. People need examples! Else is a sound-less message. Ok, back to work!
Tio: Our VPS server disk space is getting lower and lower...but it is too expensive to buy more (for now). Maybe it is because we host our books on our server and they are really big + the ones that are translated. Chat image
Tio: Oh haha :D - ok thanks for the correction!
Sasha: Not planning on releasing it this year :P I really have no idea how long it will take so I can't promise anything
Tio: Another TROM-Jaro update. I fixed a few more things. Not much more to fix. I also cleaned it up and reduced its size to 2.1 GB which is awesome. It is much faster to build now. I CANNOT wait to start and build tromjaro.com. It will be wonderful!
Tio: To clarify, this is not a TROM book, but Sasha's personal book ;) - she always talks about TROM in her blog posts and now in her book that she plans to release this year :P
Tio: Thanks Sasha for talking about TROM in your book about your adventurous life and journeys :D
Sasha: So it turns out that writing a book is a lot harder than writing a bunch of blogs, who ever would have known :D I’m 63 pages in deep now. Here’s a little glimpse of where I mention TROM. Chat image
Tio: The "vanilla" version of TROM-Jaro with only the minimal apps and the same settings, is around 2.4 GB. Almost half the size. I like that! Oh jeez it is 6am....I messed up my sleeping "schedule" again. But then, if I think about it...what are days? A human invention :P
Tio: Wow big update ! Also, I am so happy to see others posting here about their work on TROM. I am so happy!
Tio: So I spent the past 5 hours understanding how to add the missing applications to TROM-Jaro, and I managed to do it, but I won't. A brief explanation. Manjaro is based on Arch. It is like a Linux operating system built on top of another. This is the beauty of open source, you can re-build stuff with what others have built. Now, Manjaro did lots of custom stuff to the operating system and one thing most Linux distributions (distros) do is to create what is called as "repository". This is basically a server (a website) where they put these packages and people can install them from there easily. An application is nothing more than a piece of code wrapped in a christmass wrapper. When you want to install it you are basically instructing your operating system to unwrapped it and build what's inside the package. Maybe it is a giraffe, maybe it is a car, maybe it is simply a deck of cards. Whatever is inside that package is what is important. In Windows you have the "exe" as the package. Problem is this exe is very messy when you open it - you make a mess (next, next, yes, install, where, now?, agree?, next, next). You also have to find this package online on all kinds of websites. So it is a complete mess. In Linux people put these packages in one single place and check them to see if they are good or not. Think of it like a warehouse. Everything is sorted in categories here. Arch has such a warehouse, Manjaro has one, Ubuntu has one, but the difference between them is mainly in the package wrapper because mainly they are the same. Ubuntu has "deb" instead of "exe" for example. So back to Manjaro. They have their own warehouse - we call that the "repository" (remember?). But they are a small team so they can't put lots of packages there because these packages need to be properly tested and maintain. This means "limitation". Ubuntu suffers from this since their repositories lack lots of new software. But Manjaro is making use of AUR. This is Arch User Repository - this is like a public warehouse where any user can add packages for the Arch based Linux distributions. AUR is perhaps the largest warehouse in the Linux world. It has pretty much every piece of software. So Manjaro relies on their own repository but they also allow you to enable AUR. So you can install packages from any warehouse you choose thus allowing for a huge variety of applications. Software from AUR is not tested on Manjaro, but since Manjaro is based on Arch pretty much 99% of the applications there work. Manjaro disables AUR as default but it is super easy to enable via their Software Manager. This is the beauty of Manjaro, their Software Manager that makes their repository and AUR work together. So for any Manjaro user to install any application is as easy as opening the Software Manager, type (and search) any application and click install. That's all. No use of terminal, no searching the web for an application. Ok, so back to TROM-Jaro: I want to make this Operating System customized in a way that is both trade-free and super functional and packed with the best Linux apps in the world. Manjaro pre-installs microsoft office, steeam, and I think skype - these are not trade-free! So I did everything except that I cannot pre-install AUR applications very easily. To do that I would have to create my own warehouse and maintain it. This is insane considering I have so much work to do already for TROM. I learned how to do this, I tested, but it is too damn hard. But I realized something in the process: do not make TROM-jaro bloated! Not everyone needs the apps I added there and I added too many! So, my idea now: rely on customizations that make TROM-Jaro easy and great to use (so customizations to the operating system) and then rely on tromjaro.com to recommend apps in a beautiful way. When people install TROM-Jaro they will be faced with a sleek, fast, and "ready" operating system. When they openFirefox for the first time they'll see tromjaro.com where they can go through our recommended apps and install any that they want/need! This way people install ONLY what they need! ;) - And this way we can recommend new apps all the time. Imagine if I would discover a great new app....what now? Rebuild TROM-Jaro again for one single app? That's nuts! But in this new way I can simply recommend it on tromjaro.com and anyone can install it in a few seconds. I like this new idea!
Gia: I just finished my first translated video into Romanian. It took me around 5 hours spread across 2 days, that is around 2-3 months of work (3 hours a day) to finish the entire 14 hours documentary. hahaaa seems like a lot of work but I won't give up ;)
Yoann: Hi there, I'm currently trying to study what led trade-free/RBE supporters to see the world and our society the way they do. I also try to finish the French subtitles of the TROM documentary, but as Gia said, it can take 3 hours to translate 10 minutes of video, and we still have close to 5 hours of video to do. After that, I'll start translating new books! I'm so looking forward to start translating books again, I had enough of subtitles haha. Aaron just gave me the idea to start trying to find French scientific sources of any kind to add to the curated news on the French version of the website. More things to do... I love it! :D
Dima: Joined TROM and realized that I am the largest pessimist here :) Besides that, today we've tested OBS studio on my (trom-jaro) PC, and I will host next TROM CAST this Thursday. On the optimistic note I hope that my internet connection will be good enough :D :D HA HA !!! let's pray for that !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Aaron: It´s a pleasure to post some updates of what I´m doing :) I started to collect scientific sources of any kind in german, as we do with our curated news, videos and podcasts in english. The plan is to create that what we have in english for german as well.
Tio: tromjaro.com bought! I will use that domain for TROM-Jaro ;) - it really needs a special website. I plan to add a support ticket/forum as well. I know many people use "org" for kinda nonprofit organizations, but I like dotcom more ;) - Anyways, will work on the website, I hope in a month when I hope we'll release it and we'll be ready with the frickin' big book :D