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Keep TROM alive and relevant

TROM needs financial support to pay for software and server, food and bills, rent and backups. If people like you would donate a "cup of coffee" a month we could make this a reality. Thank you for your kindness!

GOAL: 1.200€/month 33%

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NOTE: The percentage is a clustering of all donations received through Liberapay and Patreon - the rest of the donations are one time donations and it is nearly impossible to calculate them in this fashion. TROM needs monthly support the most. You can manage the recurring donations via your Liberapay or Patreon account. The main platform we want to use for donations is Patreon because they are simple to use and well known. The Donate button will redirect to our Patreon account where you can donate.

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Server, backups, and software

what keeps me, TROM, digital and accessible for all

Bills: Electricity, Internet, and Water

it keeps me connected to you, clean, and hydrated 🙂

food

I need to eat too, else I can't stay alive 😉

rent

I can't afford a "box" for myself, but at least I would like to rent one

Everything we do is 100% free and available for download. This is only possible due to wonderful people who support us financially. That’s why we make no compromise. We post what we think is relevant, when we want to, where we want to, without being influenced by anything or anyone. That’s a huge power to posses in today’s trade-based world where everyone is forced to prostitute themselves or the work they do. But this comes at a huge cost when you are not properly financed since it is impossible to do anything in this world without financial support. We are far off from what we need in terms of financial support and this causes a lot of stress and uncertainty for this project. The good news is that if most who know about TROM would donate a few bucks a month we would run this project without a problem. Every donation adds up and counts! Note: Right now all the money goes to me (Tio) - I created TROM in 2011 and currently I manage most of the project for which I work full time (no weekends, no breaks). My goal is to get enough financial support to be able to make my work sustainable and then financially help other people who are volunteering for TROM.

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To know when we release a new book, or video, or something important!

Mind you, some updates may sound a bit "personal" and unrelated to TROM project, but are indirectly related to it: my struggles with the project, my work on sister projects like VideoNeat and so forth. I want to give you an insight into my work on TROM and related projects. But most updates are, of course, entirely about TROM and the work that goes behind the project. I, Tio, created this project back in 2011 and I manage most of it at the moment. In time, other volunteers will be able to post updates here. If you can help my work please donate here - it really matters.

Tio: If you want to kill yourself, watch this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5E5wo-RunV4 - honestly this kind of things make me so demotivated and like....I am shocked....fucking christ this society is really fucked up.

Tio: 85% done with reviewing the Entertainment book by Dima. I wasn't able to work much on the big book though. Hard to work in parallel on many things.

Tio: Thank you so much Natalia for the $20 monthly Patreon contribution! https://www.tromsite.com/support-us/

Tio: I wont do that live this friday I'll do it on 1 December wink

- easy to remember date. Will let everyone know very soon the exact hour. I don't hope it will be a big deal like I don't think we will get a lot more financial support through that, but I want to make sure I explain to everyone the importance of this project in a more direct way - in case I will have to put the project on hold next year, at least I did my best laugh

- I find it hard to think that I will do that because I am too "passionate" about it, but living with like 270 Euros a month is not going to make it. No way. Impossible. Will see, I want to release the big book and then make the plans for that documentary I want to make, and will see in the meantime if the financial situation will improve.

Tio: Will give up on the fuckin' youtube video advertising. These charlatans were about to charge me 90 euros a day because, as if I should know, they charge daily and for a month period. Their dashboard is so complicated and messy and I can't even remove my credit card from there now. I removed all the "ad campaign" I made and contacted them to urgently remove my credit card from there. I am so broke that even 10 euros charge is a huge deal for me. Man i hate these "advertising" things - I wish I would not have to deal with any of this and just focus on what I do best: writing books. Don't get me wrong, it is super helpful to "invest" into advertising this project when anyone donates money to us specifically for this purpose, but I wish I wasn't the one dealing with this too. I have to deal with so many things. I envy those who write books and sell them, and all they do is write books. I have to do the research for the books, write, design them, publish them, advertise them, respond to any criticism, and everything else. Anyways, fuck it, I'll focus on the book(s).

Tio: Now I also have to go to the dentist to solve an issue that would cost me 100-200 euros because, well, when you are poor you also have problems orbiting around you smile

). But really now, the dentists (this service) are charging you a ton of money. Going to the dentist, in our world, looks more like a luxury and not a need. Same with going to the doctor. Our marvelous intelligent species is so intelligent that with all of the advancements today cannot provide these two essential services as trade-free for all. No alien species would want to deal with the human species when they would see how primitive and violent this species is. Only by changing the environment you can ever change these petty behaviors.

Tio: These days watching a very positive 10 part documentary series about the newest tech. Awesome so far. Will be added to VN soon. Told you, the positive documentaries are coming!

Tio: tomorrow i'll deal with youtube advertising for our tromsite trailer. i tried today but google is retarded - makes it complicated and they wanted to charge me 90 euros a day for 30 days! jeeezus. these people are awful. i hate ads!

Tio: The script for the next TROM video and audio book is done and sent to Sebastian. Whenever he has the time he will start working on it! so so happy that Sebastian is back on helping with the videos. Videos are still easier to digest than books, I totally understand that!

Tio: Good work on the big book today! 4k words already! But I am sure this will be like 40k words. Lots to do but it is taking shape! I've also uploaded our tromsite trailer to our main youtube channel here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9urYOO08iE - this is where I want to start the live podcast/show thing. Still unsure about it but maybe I should do one live for donations, like a big 3-4h one to try to raise money for TROM. Then if people like it and will be efficient to draw in more attention, I should keep on doing more. Will see.

Tio: oh and I also have to deal with advertising tromsite trailer on youtube - you know, we have 90 Euros left from Mark for that! Too much stuff to do....

Tio: The things that I am working on: the big TROM book (write), Entertainment book written by Dima (review); Seabstian is back and will help to create new TROM videos out of our books which is AMAZING! I have to create a script for the next video (because every book that we make as a video has to be edited to be more like a video); I am waiting for Yoav to finish with Overturism book design wink ; Colin from https://freeworldone.com/ contacted me these days to make a video for them (a paid gig) - Colin has several interesting projects (I think he started the project around the time TROM started - we are similar in terms of our 'mission' wink

. So I am glad he contacted me - in the near future we will collaborate more (interviews, books, etc.). I told him I would have done the video for free in jan-febr because now I am super busy but also super broke and they need the video by mid december so I'll do it. We are also uploading TROM video files to decentralized video streaming websites (as another source for our videos). The live video thing maybe should wait more so I don't get myself distracted with too many things. Anything else? I don't know, but quite a lot to do! GO!

Tio: although tired today I worked a bit on the big book and I worked even more on my "video podcast/show" thing. if i do it, i want to do it really awesome with OBS Studio, you'll see. not a simple streaming, but one that looks great and i can share the screen and lots of other stuff. maybe it will evolve into something nice. my first stream will only be me talking about stuff (i think) and the other ones will have guests (i hope). the streaming will be either on youtube or facebook (will see), but each episode will also be uploaded on tromsite.com.

Tio: A new book translated into Russian by Dima: "Driving Us Crazy: How to Fix Transportation" - thank you Dima! https://www.tromsite.com/ru/#dflip-df_8481/1/ and here all the Russian TROM materials https://www.tromsite.com/ru

Tio: these days i am resetting my sleeping schedule to be more efficient with my work. i usually go to sleep at 05-06, sometimes at 07, but that means i wake up at 13 or 14, which is bad because it is getting dark at 17 or so. so you feel like you are in constant darkness if you have this schedule and i cannot work that well because of that silly. i am now resetting it to go to sleep at 00 or 01 and wake up at 09 or so. to do this ill have to put the alarm at 09 for a few days and regardless how much sleep i get i'll wake up at 09. it works to reset your sleeping patterns. so these days i will be super fucking sleepy, but still i'll work on trom as much as possible. i would be so fuckin' happy if i'll be able to finish The Origin of Most Problems this year (nov and dec). Let's see!

Tio: Entertainment book is around 70% done, but from now on I'll only focus on it for 1h or less a day because I have to focus on The Origin of Most Problems book.

Tio: Finished replying to emails! back to work on reviewing the Entertainment book!

Tio: updated some VN broken links. i really like that people report broken links from VN all the time. very encouraging!

Tio: Almost 50% done with reviewing the Entertainment book. Worked so much today laugh

. Btw after the review is done is not like we are done. We will need to discuss the many comments and edits I made, then review several times again, then proofread it again.

Tio: Thank you Dima for the 20USD donation via PayPal! You are awesome!

Tio: I wish people who follow TROM knew how much work goes into creating a TROM book: from writing it and sourcing and researching it, to review and proofreading. And How important it is that we have created a sort of team do to these. I will show you once a book is reviewed how it looks like with the comments and suggestions and everything to understand the amount of work. Like imagine checking lots of sources, some of which are videos, then some sources cannot be archived so that we don't lose them we save them (pdfs, videos) and upload on our own servers to make them available for everyone - the design the everything. Is a TON of work. I wish we had the financial means to do this without being under a constant pressure - I have to be honest, most of the time I forget that I am completely broke because I am so busy with so much stuff that I do for the project.

Tio: Did a ton of work today on Dima's book "Entertainment". 35% reviewed. Interesting and big book. Will do as much work as possible this week on it then all of my focus will be The Origin of Most Problems book - I won't focus on anything else for more than 1h a day. All of my focus will be that book.

Tio: Cody will help us create new video accounts for our TROM videos on bit.tube and maybe peertube. These will be "extra" places where you can find our videos, and will not replace our tromsite.com streaming wink

. But it is a good idea to have our videos on multiple video platforms. On peer.tube we may even make a few profits out of those videos through their cryptocurrency model - will see. As I said, this is a 3rd party extra thing and will have 0 impact on our project. Thank you Cody for helping with this!

Tio: Working on Dmitry's (Dima) new book on entertainment - HUGE book! Interesting so far smile

. But a lot of work for the review to be done. Will work a lot these next 3-4 days on it, then will limit my work to 1h a day and focus mainly on The Origin of Most Problems since that was priority for a while now laugh

. I am so so happy to be busy with such things.

Tio: This week my focus is on reviewing the new TROM book about Entertainment. Yoav is >50% done with the other book: OverTourism. Will restart my work on The Origins of Most Problems next week when I also want to start a live series of videos.

Tio: I added the podcast from the guys who keep an eye on the "curing aging" science https://www.leafscience.org/the-rejuvenation-roundup-podcast/ to TROM curated News. It is a good way to keep an eye on this domain through a podcast rather than reading the many posts they make. They are very active folks, which is great!

Tio: So there was a problem with the LibreOffice Draw fresh (the most up to date version) rendering wrongly some aprts of The Origin of Most Problems book. The book is big so the problems were quite annoying. This forced me to move back to a stable and less up to date version of Draw. Today I took the time to fix all the issues that the Draw fresh created. Now The Origin of Most Problems Draw project is up to date for the fresh version. I also fixed some typos for the book and for The Money Game and Beyond. TROM torrent file updated - https://www.tromsite.com/save-trom/

Tio: We were using VideoBlocks to have access to many copyright free videos for our own videos - it is a paid service and recently our subscription expired. TROM has no financial capability to pay again for that. Fortunately, Sebastian who is always a great help for TROM and does his own great project Understanding More, will pay for it in full since he also uses it for his project. Thank you Sebastian! great guy!

Tio: At least I was efficient today at adding all the remained documentaries on VN. Now I'm up to date with that - no more documentaries on the list to be added. I also scheduled them all. I know i said a couple of times that "that's it, I'm going to put a definitive pause on TROM project because of the lack of funds" and yet I continued. Well, I'm not just saying it, I am thinking of doing it when I say it but every time I find ways to keep it going. Perhaps will find ways now too. Very likely. But yeah, it is fuckin' hard to do daily work on 2 projects with a budget of 400 euros a month. I am so lucky that recently a few great humans donated some money directly to TROM as one time donation (cough wonderful Sasha!) and that I hope allows me to survive this winter and finish the big TROM book. In this time I will really try to do some videos to both ask for support and explain to people what this project is all about - hopefully reaching more people that can see the value in this project and VN. It's not like I am in such a bad situation that I'll end up in the streets - that won't happen - but it is super uncomfortable to not be able to do more than buy some food and not even be able to pay for an internet connection and the like. There are several wonderful people around me that won't let me without a shelter or internet or food ffs, but I do not want to rely on anyone in this manner and make their situation more difficult because of me. Someone promised me a part-time job managing some websites, but I was not contacted about that so far. I am always getting depressed at the beginning of each month when I see the donations dropping bit by bit. It is normal to feel like that. Anyways, looking forward to release the TROM book OverTourism and to review the book on entertainment done by Dmitry + getting myself immersed into the writing of The Origin Of Most Problems, last parts.

Tio: Changed the main Liberapay option from our donate page, to Patreon because Liberapay is still unreliable. They have to find a better payment processor. https://www.tromsite.com/donate/ Thank you very much to everyone who still donates to TROM. Unfortunately we are still in free fall with donations dropping every month. Will try to ask for support this month in a live video where I am going to explain the value of this project and its sister project VideoNeat.com in the hope that more people will support these projects financially. At this moment it has become extremely difficult to keep these projects alive. My motivation is in a deep state of "suffering" and this makes it immensely difficult to focus on the project. At the moment we get around 380 euros a month for the project and I am working full time for it. Do the math. 80 euros go to TROM server, backups and other services, and 57 euros to my personal healthcare insurance. The rest can barely allow me to eat. I've been complaining about this since we were getting like 600 euros a month, half of what is needed to run this project. Now, 2 years later, we are at 380 euros and getting less and less money every month. I honestly cannot focus on the next book today because I am really depressive about this whole situation. Noe anyone's fault, but the system in which we live in. I hope tomorrow will forget about this and will be able to work on the book. Problem is that the money is so low that I am so close to complete bankruptcy laugh

- like if the donations drop 50 euros in the next 2-3 months, that's it, I'm done. I'll put a definitive pause on the project and then create a fundraiser to basically save the project and be able to make that documentary. No worries, the big book will be done regardless. But about that documentary I don't think I can do it unless we get the funds for it.

Tio: Our live module may experience issues with updating on most tromsite pages because of our cache module. Will try to solve today or the following days. It updates on all pages but likely will update slower on cached pages. For instance trom curated news and videos, faq, and contact pages are not cached so the live works perfectly.

Tio: TROM Curated News was not working for the past hours - fixed it. Had to go through all sources and disable them one by one to find out what was the issue. One source was the fault. Will try to fix it - right now I removed it. Such things can happen, and will happen, all the time. This is another part of what I do on a daily basis to keep tromsite.com and videoneat.com functional.

Tio: Need to answer some "big" emails these days - sorry to these few bunch of people who are waiting for my reply laugh

- wasn't very productive these days on my "creative side". Maybe it is the frickin' cold and the fact that my hands are so cold I can barely feel them laugh

. Buying an electric heater with the almost no money that I have because I just can't work in such conditions. My live video that I want to make is still on my mind and I am sure will do it in like 2 weeks - need to finish some stuff before doing it. Also, Dmitry's book about Entertainment industry is DONE! Awesome! He works in the industry so I am sure he has a lot to say about it. Will start to review it in about a week. I plan to finish The Origin Of Most Problems this month or this year (2 months time). I know, takes a long time but for one it is a very important book and I need to focus on every detail (it will also be the backbone of the new documentary we will make next year), and second I am a bit tired after writing the last parts + the conversations I had on that advertised video with so many people so I need a bit of a break before I properly start it. The rough schematic of it is done, but that's barely the beginning of it.

Tio: One more day of bulk adding VN documentaries. Right now enough documentaries that they are scheduled on social networks for the entire year silly

Tio: Almost done with adding the documentaries to VN. I added a ton these days. Still 3 more days to add - now I am starting to add "positive" ones wink

. This is much harder than people may realize. Take hours every day.

Tio: Now that this is done I will suspend my involvement with replying to new comments on FB and won't focus on FB much at all, except if there is any engagement on new TROM FB posts that I can see and manage from Hootsuite, the tool I use to manage all TROM's social networks. I hate FB so much I don't want to visit facebook.com at all laugh

Tio: FB payment finalized for our video. Total of 409,54 Euro. Thank you Mark again for donating money for TROM advertisement, We are left with 90 Euro and we will let everyone know what we'll do with that - probably advertising on youtube.

Tio: FB will not lift the ban for our advertised video sad

- you can read all about the FB experience on my personal blog, here https://www.tiotrom.com/2018/10/my-facebook-advertising-experience/

Tio: Watching 2 documentaries a day: one negative, one positive smile

- not because I need for any book, but because I love documentaries. Lots to learn from docos silly

. This is one reason why I've built VideoNeat.com so that others can learn from the thousands of documentaries that I've seen over the years. There will be more and more positive documentaries on VN from now on wink

Tio: My plan with the book is to expand all of the notes that I have. What you see bellow are simply notes/ideas that need a lot of expansion. I want to create the backbone of the last parts with my notes. Then, after I am happy with it, I need to go through my 300 bookmarked websites and then go again to the entire text and add or change wherever needed based on those websites. All of this will take a while. When everything is done and I expanded all of my notes, and went through all of the bookmarked websites, I will try to make it much shorter and will re-read the entire Origin of Most Problems to make sure it fits well within. Lots of work, but am excited about it smile

Tio: This is the more complete scheme for the final parts of the book I'm working on laugh

Tio: This is the working link for Mindmapp https://www.appimagehub.com/p/1263419/ - the bellow one got mixed with ")"

Tio: This is how it looks like when I start to write a TROM book - I use Mindmapp (FOSS on Manjaro or directly appimage https://www.appimagehub.com/p/1263419/) - it is very useful to put your ideas into a visual way. I recommend it! A lot more to add to it .

Tio: Updated all TROM German books wink

- Thanks Aaron! btw only the materials in english are available to download from our big TROM Torrent file, not the other ones. That's because it would be a massive challenge to also manage that. The materials in other languages are available from our website to download wink

Tio: Still no reply from FB in regards to the advertised video they banned from advertising. Maybe because it is the weekend....but they say 24h reply and not like "working days 24h". Anyway, I really want to be done with this FB shit. Don't get me wrong, the advertise we did for the TROM video was AMAZING and super useful and we will make a book based entirely on the many conversations we had on that video with new people. like 600-700 comments. A ton. But I hate FB so much I never visit it and now I was not only forced to visit it to keep an eye on the campaign and reply to comments, but also disable the ad-blocker so that it won't interfere with the ad we created. Anyways, let's hope FB gets back to me today and they will lift the ban, though I doubt they will. Will keep you posted here.

Tio: I started to organize the last parts of The Origin of Most Problems (finally!) and will work every day from now on. It is on! Let's do it! smile

- Dmitry is also done with the book on Entertainment which I am very curious to read. 25k words! laugh

- and I am waiting for the bloody FB to reply to my appeal to see what we'll do with that video that we pumped money into for advertising. Let's see.

Tio: I made an "appeal" to remove the ban. Will see. We had another 2-3 days left for promotion and 90EURO to spend. Will keep everyone updated here.

Tio: Our facebook video that we promote is banned from promotion from FB. That's the danger with these huge companies that we address in our latest book - they can decide such things in a way that will only affect projects like ours. It is not the first time FB has done this, they banned TROM educational content for nudity of violence reasons, that had nothing to do with any of that. We are forced to rely on FB because it is the biggest platform to reach people and they have 0 competitors. Youtube is the same when it comes to censorship.

These companies are not far off from Saudi Arabia, Iran, North Korea and the like. The only difference is that they "manage" far more lives and they are masked as "private companies" as if that exempts them from criticism. Facebook and Google alone are far bigger than any government out there and they are more restrictive than any authoritarian regime.

One thing to keep in mind is that they do these things not because they care about the users, but because they want a "clean" business where investors and advertisers invest in or use. If there were to care about users they would put filters in place that users could use the way they preferred.

We urge people to please follow our updates on tromsite.com (any page, click the top logo), and also subscribe to our newsletter (any page, bottom). It won't be surprising if TROM FB page would disappear suddenly one day so please keep that in mind.

Tio: Toyotis Zeitgeist just became a $15 patron! - Oh thank you so much Toyotis! It helps a lot! https://www.tromsite.com/donate/

Tio: I just had an idea....what if, after the advertising for the video is done, we create a comic book based entirely on those real conversations laugh

? Like these people talking to TROM Superhero laugh

. There are a lot of very informative conversations there and would help others to both understand more about TROM and learn how to deal with difficult questions about TROM and similar projects/ideas. I will really consider this....

Tio: If you want to have a look at the FB discussions on the advertised video head over here https://www.facebook.com/tromproject/videos/1880678108655172/

Tio: Jeez almost 500 comments on the FB video. That's a lot more than I expected. Of course many are replies and discussions, but still a ton. We are working on designing OverTourism book and I keep on adding more documentaries to VN. Can't wait to start writing for The Origin of Most Problems book again. Dmitry is also doing progress with another book about the Entertainment industry. Aaron is talking to people in Germany with organizations there about TROM. We may also create a bigger advertising campaign (someone promised that). So we'll see. We are busy and that's fantastic!

Tio: I don't think I can focus on the book until this video ad is done (5 more days). I sad from the beginning I'll get involved with it and reply to newcomers.

Tio: Spent another day replying to comments on FB video ad - also worked on VN (add documentaries) + updated The Origin of Most Problems (a simple broken link). You can update TROM p2p from here https://www.tromsite.com/save-trom/

Tio: Did some more work for VN today - fixing some links. Maybe I can start writing for the book today....

Tio: I wasn't able to do any real work on the book because I was way too busy with both the FB video thing replying to comments and VideoNeat adding new documentaries. Maybe 6 days from now I'll have more free time to dedicate to the book. We are also making progress with Dmitry's book (OverTourism) - Yoav is designing it and is doing a good job at that!

Tio: Update: half way through the FB ad. Here are the results:

1. 16.200 video views, 8.600 of which they say are 10 seconds or more views
2. 460 clicks on our tromsite.com link (from the "learn more" button that I added to the post)
3. 33 new comments
4. 70 shares

May not seem much, I don't know, but to me so far the best part was the engagement the post got. Lots of very in depth discussions with new people. Like over 180 comments in terms of new comments and replies. This is fantastic. A few of these new people were interested in the project. Most were "negative" about it but after discussing with them they became more friendly and listening more. It is a massive challenge to draw people in with such a project and to discuss with them when they start by calling you names, but if you are kind and genuine then most will cave in and engage into the conversation. On top of these great discussions I am sure most people who came across the post read throughout these comments and had a lot to learn from them, not only from the video.

We have 1 more week of advertising, exactly as much as we had so far. So I expect more comments and more engagement.

I only saw 1 or 2 new subscribers to our newsletter in this period, which is not encouraging, but at least a few thousand people got to "touch TROM" smile

Tio: Added 6 more documentaries to VN. 6 every day wink

- it is very time consuming, like 2-3 hours a day to add them.....

Tio: Started to also add documentaries to VideoNeat.com wink

Tio: I forgot about the live thing....well today I'll send out a newsletter and we'll set up a date for the live. I really want to do the live videos. I was very busy these days with replying to comments on the advertised video and I will still be for the next 9 days or so. Thus, today starting the work on the book + later on sending the newsletter.

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