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Live updates about TROM Project

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: Oh, the comments that I see are on FB and just like 2-3. I am expecting more the following days. That's good. I prefer this than a total silence.

Tio: I start to see "interesting" new comments on the video, which is good. People who seem new to the project and they question it. Will have a ton of patient with these new people in the hope that they will get to understand what TROM is all about. I often hear from new people who hear about the project that they doubt it. Like "Yeah dude, you wrote lots of books and made videos, but who are you? Do you have any degrees? What do you study? Are you an expert?". And I feel like they easily throw TROM away in the same garbage bin with all of the nonsense most people post on FB. Like "Yeah, TROM, yet another 'movement' of crazy and cultish people who think they know shit." - and I totally understand this position because the Internet is indeed full of bullshit. So it is hard to make them understand that everything we do we source using reliable sources: from scientific papers to like national agencies. And we talk about nothing controversial. It is the same thing that pretty much all organizations that are trustful talk about: profit is ruining everything. We just pack it better with "trade as the source of most problems" and are more bold in saying we need to remove the need for trade to fix this, unlike most organizations who are proposing yet more laws. So it is very challenging to make new people understand the value of this project - I don't know what we can do more than sourcing everything we say in an easy way that everyone can check.

Tio: First day with the FB ad: it does seem that we are reaching more and more people, but I wonder how many of these are bots and how many are real people. Also I wonder how many of the real people are interested in TROM after seeing that video. Our interest is in people coming to the website and engaging with the content. So far no new Newsletter subscriber and only 1 new email about the project. They also say that 80 people clicked the FB link that directs to tromsite.com. Again, how many of these clicks are real is hard to tell. However people could also have clicked the links inside the posts and I have no stats for the. Also, we have no stats for tromsite.com because for one I don't want to track people, and second in time I realized it didn't add anything relevant to the project. Regardless if 10 people or 10.000 visit tromsite a day, we will do the same kind of work. So in that sense it doesn't matter at all.

Tio: So I am a bit obsessed with the research for the past TROM books....and I had to see like 150 documentaries (no joking) for the last The Origin of Most Problems book. For the last parts of it I got down to only 5. I've seen them, but then I discovered another great source of documentaries....CBC from Canada (state television). Damn! And I started to watch all of their documentaries smile

). Well I selected the relevant ones. I watched a bunch and now I have 10 more on my to watch list.....I just can't help it. I watch a lot, take notes, then will transcribe all of that knowledge into the book + add these documentaries to VN. CBC seems to do great documentaries or just stream great doco form other sources. EXCEPT docos about mental health. Poor science there, if any. Anyways, a bit of a delay with finishing up with my research. Basically for this entire book I went through most relevant documentaries for the past 5 years for the following: BBC (UK), AL Jazeera (Qatar), ABC Four Corners (Australia), CBC (Canada), PBS (US), VPRO (Nederlands), DW (Germany). To get the pulse from many parts of the world....imagine that. I am a bit nuts sometimes haha. But I really want to know before I write about something.

Tio: Finally FB approved the ad for our tromsite trailer. Let's see what it will bring. I am super curious laugh

Tio: FB still didn't approve our advertising....will wait longer....and will let you know here

Tio: We aim to finish Dmitry's book (proofreading and review) until Monday. Sasha, who travels around the world for the past 10 years, also contributed to the book. Awesome!

Tio:

Tio: Facebook ad created! I am waiting for FB's approval. Here are the details: Location - Living In: Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, New Zealand, United States
Age: 18 - 40
People Who Match: Interests: Community issues, Volunteering, Gift economy, Sustainability, The Venus Project, Current events, The Zeitgeist Movement, Charity and causes, Jacque Fresco, Environmentalism, Sustainable living, Sustainable products, Charitable organization, Recycling, Zero waste, Nonprofit organization, Ethical consumerism, Social change, Equal opportunity, Sustainable development, Environmental organization, Natural environment, Social movement, Sustainable Development Goals, Social equality, Activism, Renewable energy, Environmental science, Humanitarianism or Environmentalist, Field of study: Sustainability, Human rights, Environmentalism, Sustainable development, Environmental studies, Ecology or Environmental science, Employers: ‎Human rights, Environmentalism, Humanitarian aid or ‎منظمة خيرية‎‎, Industry: Community and Social Services and the photo attached.

Tio: added language flags to tromsite.com homepage https://www.tromsite.com/ for the 3 languages that we ahve lots of materials translated: russian, german, and spanish. thank you to Aaron, Dmity, and Rafa!

Tio: Fixed some VideoNeat broken URLS, because I also manage that website on top of the TROM Project. VN, very important project too!

Tio: Today I want to pay for the FB advertising. Very excited to see the impact! Will keep you updated here.

Tio: Only 5 documentaries more to watch for the book laugh

. We will finish them in a few days time, maybe 2. We are also pretty close to finally finish up Dmitry's book proofreading. Then we need to send to Yoav who wants to help with designing TROM books.

Tio: We are still brainstorming about how to use the money Mark donated to us for advertising. We will for sure advertise the tromsite trailer on facebook but we want to know how to do that in an efficient manner. So amazing that we have this opportunity thanks to Mark!

Tio: I found a solution for Draw. As I mentioned the Libre Office update messed up the Draw project for The Origin of Most Problems book. Luckily LibreOffice comes in a few different flavors, one is "fresh" (the most updated), and one is "still" (a few months older but more stable). So I reverted to Still and it works. Although slower and still a few errors what I could quickly fix, at least it is ok. That book is so huge that it makes it look like it is Draw's fault but in fact such tiny errors can happen from one upgrade to another for any software. I reported the Draw bug to the developers like I do for all open source software. It is really effective and you help these projects. Wonderful!

Tio: TROM torrent file updated https://www.tromsite.com/save-trom/

Tio: I decided we should go for Liberapay as our main donation option. But we won't give up on the other options so I updated a bit the donate page to reflect that https://www.tromsite.com/donate/. I also added IBAN as an option for direct deposits. I thought about it and Liberapay seems quite good. I added our main goal there too, which is 300 Euros a week - because they calculate weekly. Liberapay accepts Paypal and Stripe so they have most payment options that are usually available on any website. Soon I will try to push Patreon people to move to Liberapay, but I want to wait a bit longer until i do that. I am also going to add a donate button here on the live page so people discover it easily.

Tio: Ok so I have this great news but I was not sure if to say something about until it was confirmed. An interesting guy contacted me several days ago. His name is Mark. He was talking about a Gift Economy and how that is an antidote to trade and the problems trade creates. I agree with him and we will present such solutions in the last parts of our massive The Origin of Most Problems book. To keep this short, he offered 1.000 Euros to advertise the tromsite.com trailer, the one about trade, on Youtube. I was super skeptical because 1.000 Euros is TROM's budged for 2.5 months. A ton of money. I didn't want to make him donate so much money for advertising so I said we can start with a lower amount and he decided to donate 500 Euros. This is still a lot of money for advertising. Thank you Mark so so much! Now that we have the money let's brainstorm a bit about how we can spend it. Our idea is to promote the TROMsite trailer on Facebook for like 2 weeks to reach English speaking people that are interested in volunteering, social change, activism, and similar topics. Do you suggest something better? Tell us please and Mark you are amazing for this huge donation. I am sure something interesting will happen after we create the ad. We have a big chance of reaching a plethora of new minds.

Tio: I didnt set up a date for the live video I want to make because I am waiting to finish some stuff up before I think about such a date.

Tio: I am very unhappy with the donation options we have....I mean we have patreon, liberapay, paypal, and cryptocurrencies....too many! But what can I do? I could stick with patreon since it is the most well known and secure and stable, but they take a lot of fees...Liberapay promotes a fair way for donations and have no fees except the ones that paypal or stripe take (their payment gateways). Paypal is limited to Paypal users for recurring donations....We need something that has a monthly goal and one frickin payment gateway that can accept pretty much every method (card, paypal, whatever). Very frustrating! Plus, from any of those methods we get conversions from one currency to another at their own rates. Paypal, Stripe, Patreon, all suck in their own fees. So I don't know how to deal with this. It stresses me out a lot. I wish I could only use Liberapay but I am afraid people don't trust it or because they are not very well known at all and are underfunded as a project they will go bankrupt or something like that will happen with them and I will go bankrupt with them.

Tio: From Aaron (who deals with the German part of TROM): ". last weekend i was on a youth event about education for sustainable development and made a workshop there. Around 20 young people which were 15 to 22 years old came to my workshop and we discussed about TROM topics, which was great. We had only 1 and a half hour, so not really enough time to get deep into this new way of thinking but i hope i made them interested in reading books and watch the documentary"

Tio: Libre Office Draw got an update recently and messed up a few things when I open the latest book project with its Draw tool. Meaning now I can't do much to update this book because of this bug. I reported it...but it is very challenging for me as a "creator" of these books to deal with updates that always seem to break small parts of the design in Libre Office Draw. I completely understand that this can happen with any piece of software....it is frustrating though

Tio: A big thank you to Patreon and Liberapay supporters for the ongoing monthly and weekly donations. https://www.tromsite.com/support-us/ Without you this project would not be possible. Hopefully more people like you can support TROM.

Tio: Today I want to finish up the Spanish tromsite page + watch a bunch of documentaries for the book + I will set up a date for the Live I want to do about TROM in general. I want to post it on the main TROM youtube channel where we have 3k subscribers. I want to record with OBS Studio https://obsproject.com/ - free and open source software design for this purpose. If everything goes well and I enjoy doing this I want to do it every week and start inviting people (TROM friends or anyone who wants to participate). I want in the future to start discussing important topics: from open source software and hardware, to volunteering, news from TROM News, human behavior, or any particular topic (based on TROM books or not). Let's see how this goes wink

Tio: Today was a "free documentaries" day since I watched none for the book. Been to do some yearly medical check-ups, in particular I am doing a yearly skin cancer screening, which sounds more "severe" than it is. Basically the dermatologist looks carefully at your skin (usually the skin that was most exposed to the sun) and if it sees something suspicious then we can catch cancer while it is not dangerous. I stay in the sun quite a lot in the summer and I don't usually wear sunscreen so I decided to do this since it was covered by my health insurance. Ok, now think about how this could be done in an automated way for all people as trade-free. The dermatologist only looks for patterns on the skin, that's all. It would be so easy to have an app on your phone that can do this - yes I know there are some but are profit driven and not well tested from my knowledge. Skin cancer is a serious thing and perhaps one of the easiest to prevent. We don't need 1 dermatologist for 1.000 people, we need an automated system for every one of us. You know, "IF suspicious moles detected, THEN suggest more automated tests, AND IF necessary send patient to a human doctor for further investigations." - that's how it should be. I also have this weird "canker sore" inside my mouth for the past few days that hurts like hell and I went to have it check-up (they say nothing to worry about but I need to meet with a surgeon in 12 days to have a proper look). Again, medicine should automate these things. Today I have to have a health insurance, then create an appointment, then wait, then see this doctor, then make another appointment, then see another one, and so forth. Very inefficient. Today's healthcare system is so ancient. I also have a kidney stone - f**kin hell smile

) what the heck haha. Not a huge deal but if you "pass it" then it hurts like crazy so I have to meet with an urologist this month. Jeez, I don't like to go to hospitals but this period of time I have to do several tests that I do every year due to my past issues with my digestive system and the fact that I have some gallbladder polyps that have to be checked every year (if they grow too big they may get cancerous). So, here I am doing a skin cancer screening, having a kidney stone, a canker sore (hopefully), and gallbladder polyps. hahaha. Thing is, most people may have these without knowing. If you are searching for a "problem" you'll find more problems. Like I found about the kidney stone from the ultrasound that I had for my gallbladder. And the canker sore from a routine check at the dentist (cleaning). Anyways, such little things can become stressful to anyone who has to wait for appointments and tests. I am 100% fine, these are not even issues really, but they can be a bit stressful. Will work on TROM again starting tomorrow wink

Tio: TROM German page updated https://www.tromsite.com/de/ - lots of content available into German thanks to Aaron!

Tio: I tried these days to add the text to our Draw project files for our books, for the ones that do not have text added to (the majority of the books), but I gave up because it is a lot of work and maybe not that needed. Up until recently (a few months ago) we made our TROM books using joomag.com, a paid subscription service. It was very expensive and we didn't have much control over these books. Now we make the books into LibreOffice Draw and we publish directly on tromsite.com. That's fantastic and it allows us to share the Draw Project files with anyone (public) for translation purposes. But that meant we had to convert the old books from PDF to Draw format. We did that but it is very difficult to mirror the text so most Draw files do not have a text. For translation purposes this is not a big deal, but say someone discovers a broken link or typo in one of these old books. The only way to fix that now is to use a proprietary software like Master PDF Editor and edit the PDF file directly. So far is a compromise I have to accept. Btw people should understand that what we do here at TROM goes far beyond releasing some books and videos, we created a model for a project that is quite decentralized. All of our books can be downloaded as PDF, Draw, or plain text. This anyone can translate them., use them, edit them, share them. Even our videos can be downloaded without narration (voice) so that anyone can add a voice to them in a different language, and people also have access to the script for each video. All such files, everything we have created, is available on people's computers: peer to peer (torrents). So the TROM project wants to become a "model" for how we can create a trade-free project and I will explain that in the last parts of The Origin of Most Problems book.

Tio: I am so excited that we are going to organize a TROM meeting (in person) very soon - in a few months time. Can't wait to meet all of the people that are part of TROM, who wrote books, helped with proofreading, videos, whatever. Amazing group of people. And I am super excited because by them we will publish The Origin of Most Problems full book + I will work on the script for the new documentary so when we meet I can share it with them and get help and perhaps will film some stuff and "do some interviews". I didn't feel as excited since I started TROM in 2011. So, the following months I have a ton of work to do so that when we meet we have the big book published (alongside perhaps a few other smaller books) + the documentary script done. I will also publish photos and thoughts from the meeting, here in the live section of tromsite.com.

Tio: My head feels so heavy....I am watching too many documentaries for the book....but not many left. Only 22! I hope that in less than a week I will devour them all, and after that I can't wait to get back to write the last parts of the book and then focus on positive stuff like solutions. The beginning of these last pages will still be "negative" and then the rest will be positive. As much as I understand that we have to know in detail what creates today's problems (this trade game) it has become very depressive to focus so much on the problems lately. I've seen only negative stuff...so it is time to focus on the positive side more and more. That will do! Not sure if I will add those doco to VN as I said, maybe I will wait until I am done with the docos from my list and then add them all. Btw I love this LIVE update better than on my personal website since I am on tromsite.com non-stop anyways, reading the curated news and videos, so it is so easy for me to post updates: click the trom logo and post it wink

Tio: I created a template for translated tormsite pages for the pages we currently have: spanish, german, and russian. As soon as we translate these pages properly I am going to add the flags for these languages on the main tromsite page for easy access wink

- so awesome to have tromsite and its materials (part of them at leas) translated into 3 languages. Thank you Rafa, Aaron, and Dmitry!

Tio: I removed madeinamerica from TROM Curated News - I was never very happy to add them to the news source - they did have some good pieces on criticizing psychology and psychiatry but I feel they are more and more pseudoscientific. They criticize that psychology and psychiatry are blaming chemical imbalance or genes to psychiatric disorders, which is a correct and deserved criticism, but then they proclaim certain meds are creating depression or diet or the "microbiome". Jeez. You can't even say that this or that food creates cancer, let alone a mood disorder. Then they also started to focus on "meditation" as a cure for mood disorders, which is not entirely untrue but they go to extremes and instead of being moderate and say: "meditation, or relaxation, is shown to improve mood in some people" they go and say "meditation can 'solve' some mood disorders". Anyways, they are not moderate at all and that smells like bad science. Just look at NHS UK how scientific they present such news - break down the studies, properly mention if there is any causation or only correlation, etc.. There should be more people criticizing the unscientific way psychology and psychiatry look at mental disorders as if they are diseases, but we need proper science in the mix not emotionally driven assumptions and correlations. Bye bye madinamerica!

Tio: cleaned up the CSS for the curated videos and news for a bit. continuing to watch documentaries for the book silly

Tio: I think tomorrow will add a lot of documentaries to VN. I watch documentaries for the current book and I already watched like 40 that I need to add to VN so better add them these days than wait until I am done with them all and add 100 documentaries at once. Very sad and eye opening documentaries that need to be kept as a reference somewhere and that's where VN comes in handy. Also, please when you use VN magnets, SEED! We need more and more seeders to spread these important documentaries and decentralize them.

Tio: been talking with the closest people to TROM project and we want to do a meetup in person for all of us, to both know each other better, but also because for the new documentary i want to make we need to unite our forces and do a great job at it, plus i want to film them (us). you'll see, we may be cooking something. we'll keep everyone posted here about all of these wink

Tio: the spanish page is taking shape - also continuing to watch documentaries for the book. i want this month to do a ton of work on it. let's see

Tio: New people are still downloading TROM Documentary from p2p which is great to see! It means that people are still interested in the documentary wink

Tio: I am working on a Spanish tromsite page with all Spanish translated materials - we have several videos dubbed or translated and perhaps the entire trom documentary, which is great". Let's see if I can do it today. When done, I will add something on trom homepage or menu about these international pages - let's make them visible! We have 2 of them, in german and russian. Thank you Rafa for helping with translating the materials into Spanish! Rafa helped with translated TROM stuff for many years now - he did a huge amount of work on translating trom documentary!

Tio: If I watch 4-6 documentaries a day I can finish them up in like 10 days. Then I will start working on the last parts of the book. Sounds like a plan! I added 10 more documentaries to the list yesterday but I have to stop adding them. I think it is enough. These documentaries will be available on VideoNeat.com (sister project of TROM), and I think that website has become an amazing resource of information. The documentaries you find there are not that popular (so it is hard to find) but are really good. And the fact that we rely on p2p for sharing them is fantastic. I messaged TZM to tell them to share the site and they said they will these days. More people should know about VideoNeat (VN) and help see those documentaries. The website is 100% trade free (with small exceptions like it collects some data indirectly through some google things like fonts and stuff like that - I may look into fixing this but this is something all websites have). So it is trade free, simple to use, and full of amazing documentaries and lectures. I wish I had more time to watch new lectures and add them to VN. But my time is super limited in that regards.

Tio: I want to send a newsletter these days about this live module, my idea about making a new documentary based on "the origin of most problems book", and I want to announce a live video where I want to talk about TROM, future plans, and stuff like that. I would like to start making some live videos, podcast-like, every week, to discuss TROM and TROM-like subjects. And I want to invite people who are close to the project. I just don't want to make it in a way that will put a burden on my since I am already super busy so it should be something that requires little to no preparation. The next 2 weeks I want to finish up with the documentaries I have on my list for the lat part of the book. I still have some 40 documentaries to watch. Then I am going to start writing the last parts of the book - I have lots of notes to go through and hundreds of bookmarked websites. I will try not to make the last parts too huge or to take a huge amount of time to finish them. I really want to make that new documentary since I think it is a great idea to spread a very important message. At the beginning of this book my plan was to release another smaller (MUCH SMALLER) book based on this one, so that we can reach more people, but now I think that's pointless, so better make a documentary wink

. But honestly I really need financial support. You know how much money I rely on right now? 400 Euros monthly, 100 of which go towards tromsite server and the like. Luckily I got some recent donations these past months and I have enough (I hope) money for the next 3-4 months. But then that's it. I can't do it with 300 Euros a month. There's no way. So I'll have to insist on getting more support. But how!? I don't know, maybe this new documentary will spark more interest in TROM. And rest assured that this documentary has nothing to do with getting more donations. If I were a villain I would be the worst because I simply cannot do stuff for money. I am not motivated. I am too motivated to do TROM like stuff. The documentary idea came after I spoke to Aaron when he visited me a week or so ago - Aaron translated almost all TROM books into german - and we talked about this and we thought a video would be better than a book. Anyways, lots of plans for the near future with TROM.

Tio: I spent all day today trying to fix an annoying thing about how we make and publish trom ebooks. You see, we don't make "normal" books, we make huge books with links and complex design and publish them through a custom book viewer and want to make these books easily available for translation. So we need special tools. In short: I make a book into LibreOffice Draw in landscape mode, I then export as landscape PDF; then I have to split each landscape page into portrait; then I have to move the first page to the lat position, then I have to convert the PDF into version 1.7 and optimize for web. jeeezz. But guess what? I made a script that does all that automatically smile

. I am proud of it even if it is not really made by me but thought by me as I combined several tools to make it happen. And I made a video about it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1X8b0bilcg (click and opens in a popup here)

Tio: TROM torrent file updated https://www.tromsite.com/save-trom/

Tio: Thank you Uwe for the 10 EURO Paypal donation! Every donation counts!

Tio: Sasha, who is helping TROM project so much (financially or with proofreading and other stuff) is creating these offline discussions that revolve around TROM and TROM like subjects, which is fantastic since she reaches new minds. Read here about her latest meetup https://www.facebook.com/153860248003642/posts/2181500211906292

Tio: After the origin of most problems book is done i want to restructure tromsite a bit. will make it a bit better organized and will create a sitemap page so that you can see all pages and sub-pages on one single page

Tio: btw if i am going to make that documentary then i would love to kinda "spark" a lot of conversations about "trade as the source of most problems" since that's what we should focus on. i want to make a website for that documentary where we gather trade free goods and services + projects that tackle trade. i want to have weekly video chats with people behind these projects and services. i really want to bring a new kind of flavor and direction to TROM through this new project. but first i need to finish up the big book and that's my focus for the next 2-3 months. but very excited about what the new "project" (documentary) can bring. it is not for sure "yet another documentary" - you'll see.

Tio: A brief recap of what my plans are for the next months, for those who didn't follow my personal live updates: I am working on finishing the big book "The Origin of Most Problems" - the last parts will be all about solutions and how we can approach "social change"; we are also working on a new book written by Dmitry about Over Tourism - we need to finish proofreading it then design it; one big idea I had recently was to make a new documentary based on The Origin of Most Problems book - like a proper documentary, not longer than 1-2h, with proper narration, proper script, proper editing, proper music, etc. I want to "spark" a new kind of "movement" with it. You'll see. I may need to start a new fundraising campaign to help me make the documentary. Very excited about the idea. wink

Tio: The live updates module may not be that well optimized just so you know. Will fix it later on

Tio: Hopefully the live is going to work well. Let me know if you find any bugs. For those who don't know this is the LIVE feature I had on my personal website - https://www.tiotrom.com/live. I moved it here since most updates are about TROM and the work that goes behind the project. It is both a therapeutic tool for me smile

since I get to share my work with everyone, but also and interesting peek at what is happening behind the project. There will be a lot of posts so keep an eye on it wink

Tio: First post smile