I will probably close the gofundme campaign for TROMhome soon. It was likely not a good idea and we are getting no support anyway. We are going to buy the motorhome ourselves and manage the money situation somehow. Problem is after we buy it we will have around 900 Euros all of our money and at best 400 Euros a month from then on. It is a mystery how we will move forward with that, but we’ve been in a lot of financial shit over the years so we will find a way. I hope.
The best support is the 200 for TROM https://www.tromsite.com/donate/ – just 5 Euros a month max per person, to distribute the financial pressure on people and make this sustainable. It is damn hard to reach any of these goals that are stretched at the extreme low end of the needed support, but at this point I am tired of it all, so I accept whatever it is. If we cannot support ourselves financially I may shut down some of the TROM.tf services and move the project to a cheaper server. Will see…
So I am bouncing around in my head these days between extreme excitement about the motorhome, and terrible concern about what we do after we buy it.
I am also very eager to create more stuff for TROM, content wise, but well these next months I will be busy with the motorhome life.
I am trying to not let these failures with the gofundme campaign or 200 for TROM destroy my thin layer of motivation that has been getting thinner and thinner over the years. In a way I feel like an old man retiring after many years of work. In the sense that TROM had a lot of traction in the beginning, then I pushed a lot with TVP, I made books, articles, videos, managed many “social” networks, whatever, and now for the past few years I got tired of being fucked by these “social” networks who won’t even show your posts to your followers, so I retreated myself into the fediverse. Friendica, Peertube, and the like. Losing even further the little reach we had. But I love these places, they are cozy and sane.
However I have no clue if anyone is still interested in TROM or these sort of projects. Even the few people who got to be active and involved and we became good friends because of TROM, got sucked into the system.
I have great friends now, super exciting plans with the motorhome, but I don’t have TROM that much. TROM is a side dish, after it was the main meal for many years between me and the people I got to know online.
As you can see, the “old man retiring” blabbing about the past. But in the thing is that TROM is as relevant as it was 10 years ago. The “trade as the origin of most problems” I think is one of the most important ideas out there. The content that we’ve made, the projects that are still alive, are all very relevant. It’s just that this society sucks everyone in. Jobs, netflix, wars, elections, money, stress, day to day bullshit, consume, ads….hard to focus on TROM-like things.
But anyway, I will let the TROMhome project become part of my life, or vice-versa, and I am not giving up on TROM anytime soon. I have a lot more to do, but at times it helps me vent, so I let my brain share bits of my frustration into the interweb, almost like a modern prayer 😀 – maybe someone is listening, or cares, or doesn’t. I certainly don’t care, it simply helps me to write :D. I used to keep an offline journal years ago for such reasons, and this is similar, but well….public since it has a lot to do with the many public projects I am doing.
I drew that in Inkscape from one of the motorhomes we are looking at to buy.
It is around 6 meters long, so a small one for a motorhome. I think the smallest you can find is 5 meters. But we want to have a proper bathroom with a separate shower, and another place in the back where we can make a desk/room. The inside layout is so important for us and I will share more about it soonish when I’ll make more videos about this new adventure.
But basically we are about to start something completely new and exciting. Maybe a bit concerning for me.
A Dog and a Wolf
All of my life I lived in 3 places. 2 in Romania and 1 in Spain for the past 14 or so years. I like stability and comfort. I want to have my own private place to hide from the rest of the world and do TROM-like projects, read and watch about the world, learn and stay away from normality. I need my room, my laptop, my internet connection, my privacy. I am a house dog….that’s the truth.
Yah I like to go out, but mostly, if not mainly, in nature. I hate crowds, big cities, “going for a drink”, and stuff like that. Sure I can do them thrice a month max, but anything else is causing me a mountain-weight of stress.
The thing is that unless I’d live by myself I cannot achieve this kind of life. Living with my parents or other people in the same place is not fun at all for me.
But for the past 4-5 years I’ve been sharing my room, my place, my privacy and my internet connection with Sasha :D. Surprisingly it worked and I quickly felt very comfortable with her around. But we had to move with our parents for the past few years since we were broke. So that sucked.
But Sasha is a wolf. She does not care as much about the “cage” she lives in. She wants the outside. Mountains, trees, waterfalls, surfing.
So how can a dog and a wolf live together?
A MOTORHOME. A home that we can take with us to different places. 🙂
This is my dream! To be able to have a comfortable and familiar “cage” (house), with a comfy bed, with a kitchen and a fridge where I have food, with a bathroom and a shower, with a little space for me to work on my computer. With an internet connection, power from the sun, and big enough inside to feel like small home, yet small from outside to feel like a big car when driving. This way we can go places, stop for a few days, work on my projects, feel safe and comfortable in this house on wheels, while also go out for some walks and hikes with the wolf to see some cool nature places. 🙂
That’s the dream!
If we are broke how can we to buy one?
A decent motorhome that is around 20-24 years old is some 20.000 Euros. We usually live month by month with very little money. But for the past two years thanks mostly to Sasha who worked a lot, we manage to save some money. Actually 2 years ago I would have not imagined that we would have the money to buy a motorhome. But sharing the living expenses with my parents helped a lot, plus the donations I got for TROM. Basically the donations helped us eat and maybe pay some bills, and Sasha’s money payed for the rent, around 230 Euros our part, and the rest we could save.
We were also able to get some unemployment money from the government for a few months.
We are really cheap people. We dont buy anything that’s not needed, we don’t go out almost at all, we rarely buy clothes, or I think never. Sasha gets all of her clothes from my sister who has more than she needs (right Georgi!?). On top of this my parents kindly gave us 2.000 Euros for the motorhome.
So we think that by the end of this year we would have around 20.000 Euros in savings. And that sounds like we are rich, but we will become poor very fast, again. This amount of money is unfortunately not enough and it is ALL of the money we would have.
Why not rent a place?
After working in Spain for 17 years my parents will retire and go back to Romania. Therefore I and Sasha need to move anyway. Renting a place somewhere is very expensive and it means we will have to make a lot of money constantly. Plus Sasha cannot stay in the same place anymore….the wolf needs to go. And I also want to try something new, to see other places.
Because of visas, documents and the bullshit paperworld, even if we wanted to move to cheaper place in other European countries, to rent something, it would not be very feasible. Probably impossible. Plus we really do not want that. And renting in Spain would cost you at least 400 or so Euros a month, plus water, electricity, gas, or other bills, it is expensive. And 400 Euros a month is a super cheap place that is hard to find in Spain.
The type and costs of a motorhome.
Currently we are eyeing 3 motorhomes. So to give you an idea…
This one is from 2003. It looked ok but had some water infiltration inside that was never fixed. This is not good. People say water infiltration for motorhomes is like cancer.
It costs 20.000, has one solar panel but not a great power system and we need one. The fridge didn’t seem to work that well and were other things that were kinda “meh”….
This is the one that I like the most, granted we didn’t see it in reality and that’s crucial. We will see it on Tuesday:
Costs around 20.000 but the price is negotiable. I am quite sure we could get it for 19.000, but would be excellent if we could for 18.000. It is from 2001 and it too had water infiltration but in the back from the bike-rack and they said they fixed it.
It has no solar panels and such, but I learned how to do it myself and I think with 1.000 Euros we can get a very good system in place. The owners had it since 2011 and that’s super important for me. You want to buy from some people who used the motorhome and took care of it.
This next one is expensive at 22.500:
From 2003. Price negotiable. Has a good power system in place with solar power and big batteries. But even in the photos it looks a bit messed up inside. We are yet to see this one. Did not have water infiltration the owner said. At very best you could probably get this for 21.000….but may not even drop it so low.
All of the three have a very similar layout because we really want this layout.
The bed on top of the driving seats:
It is a huge double bed. 2m long and 1.5m wide. As huge as the bed we have now. Granted Sasha takes 70% of it despite being 60% my size….
Having a bed on top like that frees a lot of space in the rest of the motorhome. I cannot accept a motorhome that does not have this. And it is not as tight as you may think…
Moving on, all have the dinette area like most motorhome do, where you can sit and eat, or whatever .. work on your computer. Feels like sitting in a nice train 🙂
These two features many motorhomes have, but the next not many. A bunk bed in the back:
They look like this:
We want to create an office out of this space. This is really important for us. But this office to also be able to convert into a bed because we want to take some friends with us too for a few days, whenever we all can :).
All of the motorhomes on our list have this layout.
So we think one of these could be ok for us. The price can be anywhere from 18.000 to 22.000. I think we cannot afford one that’s more than 20.000 tho…
Other costs.
If we buy the one without the solar panels and a power system, we need to invest at least 1.000 Euros into putting one. Even those that have it need at least more solar panels for our needs if we are to work on our computers. We also need Internet and that opens up a new set of can of worms…but let’s say it would cost us some 4-500 Euros as a one time antenna payment plus a monthly subscription.
We need to buy a new and different toilet that costs 900 Euros….yah….took me a year to convince myself about that. Crazy expensive….I won’t tell you more now, wait for the videos about it. It is worth it tho! Actually without it it would be really difficult to live full time in such a house on wheels.
We need insurance and since my driving license is so new it would cost a lot. I hope no more than 1.500 Euros.
We need to perhaps fix some stuff with the motorhome, buy new things, or what not. And on top of this have at least 1.000 Euros saved for emergency needs since with a car you NEED that.
In total.
18.000-20.000 Euros for the motorhome plus some 5.000 in extra spendings. As I said we may have 20.000 at the end of this year, but we need those extra things for sure. This is why we made a Gofundme campaign.
Why a Gofundme?
I really didn’t want to make any campaign anymore. I hate these already….for the past 10+ years I made several campaigns and for the last few years many failed to achieve their goal. Like when I tried to get the money to work on TROM II….and I understand. How much longer can people help you!?
But a few friends convinced me to make one, and since we really do not have enough for a motorhome but we are so close to that, I said why not…although I feel kinda terrible for making it.
I was settled for 5.000 for the campaign then decided to put 7.000 since I got scared about what we do after we buy the motorhome and all it needs. Now I put it to 5.000 and will leave it as such. Scared or not, even 5.000 is a lot of money that I do not think we will get anyway…
I do not think we will raise that much money to be honest, but if we do I would be over the moon happy. Even if we do not succeed with this campaign, we will buy a motorhome somehow. We will borrow money and will see….We have to.
Actually it is a big big mystery about what we do after we buy the motorhome. How do we survive on a daily basis?
So from my calculations to live in a motorhome it would cost us this much:
Parking is free, and Europe seems to be a paradise-land for the motorhome life. Plenty of free places to park. So what will we have to pay for?
Gas of course. But since we will move slowly I hope we won’t pay more than 100-150 Euros a month. Then food is like now, 300-350 Euros a month. Gas for cooking and heating around 30 a month. Internet between 50 to 80…it depends what solution we find. Laundry some 30 a month. Maybe add some extra 50 Euros more a month just in case. That’s some 650 Euros a month. Currently I make around 400 Euros a month, and I am always scared the Webape subscribers will cancel their subscription and/or the people who donate to TROM monthly would stop donating.
Therefore I have no idea how we will make it 😀 – maybe if we get the 5.000 from Gofundme and we find a motorhome at around 18.000 Euros, we can have some 2.000 left to use monthly….
TOTAL TOTAL
18.000-20.000 the motorhome. 5.000 extras. Around 1.500 insurance a year. 1.000-2.000 repairs a year. 650 euros a month minimum. Not cheap!
Now…we’ve always been at the limit and somehow we made it, so I hope that will happen again.
If we have the motorhome then this is our home. We don’t have to pay rent and most of the energy needs we can get from the Sun. In the worst case maybe we find a place to park and stay for a while, and hopefully have money for food and Internet. But at least we know we have a place to stay and we only need to make the minimum to pay for food, fuel, Internet and some repairs.
TROM
So far I talked about the “home” part, but this is called TROMhome for a reason. TROM is tattooed in my brain and I will continue to do things for this project(s). That’s why I need a space to work on TROM from. But this time maybe it will force us to take TROM on a different adventure.
You see we have a fuck ton of materials for TROM. Many books and videos, so much so it is overwhelming. And so many projects. And although I will create more content (still working on several books at the moment) would be fantastic to got to events and present TROM, organize meetings, and overall talk to people about it. I want to put a TROMhome sticker on the motorhome with the website, to “advertise” it everywhere we go.
We will make videos about our adventures, and although the first months would be a lot about how to live in a motorhome, I hope they will evolve into more TROM-like videos. TROM on the Road :). Maybe we can meet new organizations and volunteer for hem, maybe we do some presentations and so forth.
Of course my main concern is always the money situation like I explained above, but on top of that I have some other slight concerns.
When you live in a motorhome you can’t just park somewhere and stay for like a month. For one you are not allowed, and second you need to empty your grey water (water stored from the kitchen and shower) but also fill up the tanks with fresh water. So we will have to move move move….every other day. And I am concerned to not start to feel like I cannot relax and have time to focus on some TROM stuff for longer periods of time.
Speaking of moving, you get to sleep in new places all the time. So what if you park in a sketchy area, noisy, windy, cold? I always struggled with my sleep and any little noise wakes me up. Would I be able to adapt to having the home be in a parking lot all of the time?
Also….what if things break and you need time to fix them? Thus less time for TROM. What if you have to send the motorhome to a repair shop? What do we do? Go rent a place to stay for a few nights? What about our stuff?
What if we go for a hike, come back, and notice that our motorhome was stolen or someone got in and stole our stuff?
Many concerns as you can see…BUT….
Life is short, give new things a try!
When I made TROM in 2011 I was 23 years old. Now I am 36. In the past 13 years I did so many projects. Wrote so much, made videos, projects. So busy. Nonstop most of the time. I also had kinda the same life: me at the computer doing things. You know you can get cancer, or get hit by a car, or go to sleep and never wake up. I would like to experience new things as well, and this motorhome life is something I’ve been dreaming for quite some time now.
Despite all of the concerns it is beyond FABULOUS to be able to look at the map and say: let’s go here. Then there. Then over there. And to know that it is a continuous adventure. I write that with a genuine smile on my face. There are amazing caves and mountains, great lakes and wonderful forests. I want to see them :).
In 2026 there will be a total solar eclipse visible in one part of Spain, imagine being able to go to the best spot with the motorhome and observe it. Or go to the darkest places in Europe to see the night sky. Go visit our TROM friends, take them with us for little adventures, meet new people…let things evolve and emerge out of these experiences.
We have a microscope and a telescope. Let’s look at the small and the big, from different parts of the world.
And let’s share our experiences with others. Maybe we will inspire. 🙂
This Tuesday we go see some motorhomes and we will film some stuff. If we buy a motorhome before December then we can already start to do some work on it and make videos about it. If not we will buy a motorhome in January. In December we will be busy with some personal stuff – we will go to Romania to help my parents move and we may spend the entire month there before we start our adventures with the motorhome.
I am both excited and stressed. I am sure I will feel a lot of stress when I’ll see our bank accounts empty after we buy the motorhome. But maybe once we start living in it, the excitement can grow for both of us.
End.
Right now, while writing this article, I have my headphones on just to cancel the insane amount of noise coming from outside. My parents….as much as I care about them and I want them to live forever and be healthy, stress me out beyond belief. They are noisy, scream at each other frequently, and overall are these normal citizens that make me depressed to be around. Our neighbors scream, their dog barks non-stop. I feel so stressed. But that makes me so eager to fucking go go go. Fuck it. If you live in a motorhome and have noisy neighbors just drive somewhere else.
I really hope this new home would be a great home for us, and that TROM will continue to live through my actions, me, others.
At times I read my old blog posts out of curiosity to see how things have changed. I know Tio you will read this post in the future….where are you now? You happy? I hope so. I hope you have a great motorhome and got used to that lifestyle. I hope.
Two things scare me the most, personally. First is death or health related issues. It is normal, if I die I’m fucked for eternity :). I think this is easy to understand for many people.
Second thing that scares me so much is to slip back into the fantasy world that humans created and forget about the amazing reality discovered for the past hundreds of years. To become too normal, even if that can mean to laugh, have fun, enjoy. I am scared of this. I battled this for all of my life trying to inject myself with reality bits and info (atoms, galaxies, evolution, stars and everything real) in the hope that my brain can understand the value of reality. It is hard. It is so hard and it is something I feel not many, if any, understand. It is also something that you can lose very fast, when you “get it”.
I wanted to put a printed Hubble image of the Andromeda galaxy on the ceiling in my room when I was in college so that when I wake up it will remind me of how reality is mind blowing and the human invented one is a simplistic, myopic and colorless at best.
Most humans are today as they were 400, 1.000 , or more years ago. Let’s have a beer, a chat, get married, fuck, have kids, gossip, have fun or war. Not saying some of these are not good or reasonable, but isn’t it mindblowing that not much has changed in the core of our global society and the day to day life of humans for the past 400 years considering in this time we discovered cells, atoms, galaxies, evolution, and everything in between?
To me, this is so odd it creates a turmoil in my head. I think I have an explanation why this is the case tho: an aggressive trade-based society where everyone is a working ant. No time to even know about reality, let alone absorb it.
Reality is shocking, mind-blowing, fabulous, scary, infinitely complex and amazing. Day to day life in this society is simplistic and almost parallel to reality.
If you don’t fee like losing your mind when you think about this contrast, I don’t think you understand.
Unfortunately I may not be able to start any new video series for TROM anytime soon, due to the circumstances I am in. I have tried but it is kinda impossible.
Driving school madness.
For one I am too busy with the insane driving school – here in Spain it takes ages to do it and they are so draconian when it comes to these exams. You have to drive so perfect and the vast majority will fail the exam the first time. Funny part is NO ONE drives like that here or anywhere else in the world. And everyone knows that, but these people have jobs so they continue to teach you like this….as usual on this planet. Nothing surprising.
My instructor wants me to do more and more lessons, which means more time and money wasted. If she “thinks I am ready” for the exam, I will do it in July (next month). If not I’ll have to wait till September….and based on statistics I am more likely to fail it the first time. So I’ll probably have to wait a few more weeks after the first exam to try again.
This is so absurd it is hard to imagine how fucked up it is. If I knew I would have gone to Romania and get the driving license there in less than 2 months. Mind you I have started the driving school in Spain in December last year. Already some 7 months in…nuts!
I will make an article/video about the entire experience because there is a lot to learn from it. In a TROM-sense.
Summer madness
I live in a very small town that is 100% touristic. 3-4 months a year, from June/July to September tens of thousands of people come here and everything is a fucking mess. Noise, everything busy and kinda dirty, insanity. My family is working all day, they are stressed, they come and go, it is a terrible environment to be able to do anything creative. Add into the mix the extreme temperatures that are coming with the tourists, and it is really impossible to do anything like a video series.
For a video series I would have to first be motivated and have the space to “think” and come up with ideas. Write the scripts, fact check, etc.. Then to record – and when can I? I do not have the space/env to do that. And then to edit….Every summer is like that here, and every time I felt quite lethargic because of it.
Even while I write this article I have to put my headphones on with a white noise to be able to focus because I am sick to hear the noise coming from outside or inside the house. Every night I also put my speakers at maximum volume with an artificial thunderstorm, as loud as I can, to “cancel” the noise that comes from everyone getting up in the morning getting ready to work.
Else I could not sleep. I’ve been doing this for years now. Luckily it works. But this is not an environment that can allow me to do anything creative at all. I managed to do it somehow over the years but am too tired now….something needs to change, and it will!
Make money, buy a motorhome.
We will buy a small motorhome somewhere at the end of this year or beginning of the next. We want to live in it full time. One like the one in the photo.
But this puts a pressure on us to make more money now. Sasha is working a lot as a divemaster and I honestly do not do much. That makes me quite frustrated and depressed. I want to help in that regards but I was always terrible at making money. I can write books, make documentaries, and a lot of projects, but I am unable to make money.
I have tried with Webape.site but I cannot get any new “customer” who wants a website….
Unfortunately the donations I get from TROM are not enough at all to support my work. You know if the 200 for TROM campaign was successful and I knew we have enough money to survive, I could find a way to start a new video series for TROM and do more.
Unfortunately we are barely 40% funded. This is a constant struggle and a motivation killer for me after so many years of doing what am doing.
Motivation.
Speaking of getting support, it has become more and more difficult for me to keep myself motivated in this situation especially when you see that you can’t even get 200 people to support all of our projects with the bare minimum of contribution. It means whatever I do for TROM does not reach that many people. And that is true. So without a proper support how can I push it forward? Projects like TROM are quite impossible to survive in this society….
I’ve been active since 2007, that’s some 17 years. It is tough. But I am not giving up.
The best anyone can do now to help the project is to subscribe to our 200 for TROM campaign. 5 Euros a month, 200 people, make it sustainable. Unfortunately we need money else idk how I can work full time for TROM and keep this project relevant and alive.
Future?
I’ve said for months now that this year will be a bit insane for us. We need to move and do a lot of changes to our lives, make money, put up with a lot of stress and so forth.
The plan is this: suffer for the next few months and make money as much as we can. I have started to also sell some of our stuff that we do not need. And after the driving bullshit is done probably I’ll work some days in cleaning. I will also try to get myself motivated enough to perhaps write some articles for TROM since that can be easier than making videos. I just have to find some quiet place/time (say from 00:00 to 06:00 in the night when everyone is asleep) and write/do research. Maybe later I can transform them into videos.
I will also try to film some stuff with the tourism here and other things “incognito” to then later on make some videos about.
In October we have to plan and see what money we have. We will have to bring my parents to Romania in November, so we will drive their car from here with their stuff since they move back for good. They will retire. We will stay a little bit in Romania to try and solve some more paperwork bullshit if we can – imagine this: Sasha has a driving license from USA, but she is only allowed to drive in Spain for 6 months with it. After that she needs to change it into a Spanish driving license. Easy? NO! She would have to go through the same bullshit driving school and exam like I am now….imagine that shit! She already knows how to drive but she will be forced to do again the theoretical and practical exam and take “driving lessons”.
This world is such a load of nonsense it is not even funny anymore.
So we may try to see if we can exchange her driving license into a Romanian one, then exchange it for a Spanish one without doing the exam.
Hey Spain are you fucking mental?!
Anyway. We hope the madness will be over at the end of November. We will spend no more than a month in Romania (I hope). Then come back to Spain to buy a motorhome. Move into the motorhome and go fuckin away from the stupid parts of the world as much as we can.
We won’t have enough money to buy the motorhome + pay the monthly expenses…..so we will also make a campaign if anyone can help out considering all I am doing for TROM is free and the motorhome is a house for me as well, of course, so that’s a help for TROM basically. We will make the campaign towards the end of the year. We have the vast majority of the money we need to buy the motorhome already, but what do we do after we buy it when the only monthly support i get now is around 3-400 Euros?!
So it is going to be a bit rough for us to do the move.
The motorhome life.
Hopefully at the beginning of the next year we will be in our motorhome (TROMhome) and start a completely new life. We will make videos about our “adventures” and how it is to live in such a tiny mobile space with limited resources. Perhaps it is interesting for some. I want to put a big TROMhome logo on the motorhome, and to eventually go meet with interesting communities or projects and make videos about them.
In parallel I will keep our projects alive and relevant and I still hope to start a new video series whenever I can.
Ideally we would be able to travel and meet interesting projects and people and make videos about all of it, and also keep TROM relevant and alive and create new content. Meet our TROM friends, take them for a week or so with us, and try to live a very minimalistic life, enjoy it, and see where it goes.
Final thoughts.
I am terribly eager to make new content for TROM. I have a ton of ideas and notes. I feel quite depressed and frustrated to not be able to do that. But it is what it is. If it wasn’t such a struggle to live in this society, perhaps I’d be wrong about this society when I describe the awfulness of it through our TROM materials. That’s the paradox.
Maybe a miracle will happen and I would somehow start the video series soon, but I can’t see that to be very likely. It is a terrible situation to want for the time to pass by faster, considering that our life is so short, but that’s how I feel now: I want for these next months to be over! I want to see Sasha free and focusing on real important stuff not be trapped working 10-11 hours a day. I want us to not live in the same place anymore and be on our own. I want to start a video series that I can keep producing for the many years to come. I want us to keep on fighting but also have a relaxing life. And it is very doable!
This is a cake my family bought for my “birthday” recently haha. Me and Sasha, and TROMhome :). We will make this happen 😉
This month a bunch of “trom” people visited us and we had such a wonderful time together.
We had an Amber party looking through the microscopes to 40 million years old creatures…
Something most people in this world probably consider as boring and “lame”. But if you understand the mind-blowing reality we live in, then you would understand why an amber party is a super fun and wonderful party :).
We also looked at the Moon through the telescope…
And we enjoyed the nature around, we had interesting discussions and a lot of fun.
I always hated to meet with “friends” because that usually meant lets get drunk or talk about boring shit, or brag about the stuff you have and all that. Or just eat and do nothing. Hated it. But now with these people I LOVE it. It feels natural and sane, and so much fun. And relaxing!
These are wonderful people who care about this world and have very interesting minds. And there are so many more like them. And I want to “harness” them all haha. We will organize a yearly event for sure and do more than just have a fun meetup. We will have fun but also do some important things for TROM and in general for pushing ahead with TROM-like ideas.
I am so happy that I have these creatures as my friends 🙂
Amber! Or stuff that the trees leak, then insects get trapped inside, then somehow it becomes super hard and survives for millions of years. It becomes transparent (lots of it) and we can look inside and see these creatures that lived millions of years ago and they look the exact same as they did when they got trapped…. Can’t believe this “thing” exists on Earth!
My friend Agata game me a BAG full of amber. Her father was a scientist and amber was one of his main focus. He passed away and Agata gave a lot of his collection to museums but kept some.
Now it was the best time to buy a microscope! I spent only 50 euros on this one and it was well worth the money:
I spent ours tonight looking at every one of them and I can’t stop it haha.
I HAVE to start the video series that I keep on talking about! We need not only to inform people about our global issues (cough trade!) but also inspire people to look at the important stuff. To know that the natural world is billions of times more fascinating and complex than any bullshit they are mesmerized to buy due to the aggressive marketing campaigns that happen everywhere.
We need to make this consumption craze obsolete. And reality (science/nature) is by far the best substitute. Often free, mindblowing, and more importantly real!
I wish i would start to make the video series now! But mentally can’t. I need to adjust my enthusiasm and think about money/trade, at least partially. I will do it tho!
Anyway, amber deserves a video. Amber is fabulous. So precious, but not in terms of money, in terms of real value: to see how the past was. To learn about the tiny creatures and other things. To, in the end, know more about who we are.
A trade-free video hosting platform for science/technology/nature videos in the English language. You do not have to trade your currency, data, attention, freedom or anything else, in order to use it.
Do not forget that the internet, youtube, netflix, cars and supermarkets, lightbulbs and modern medicine, do not make our society “civilized”. These are a result of often enslaved humans producing “stuff” in a trade-based society. Technologically we, as a society, are quite advanced, but morally we are primitive.
Despite all of this technological progress humans are still forcing ALL of their billions of members to trade in order to survive, despite being able to feed, house, and take care of everyone on Earth. This means we are still primitive and have no greater goals such as exploration, the advancement of technology and science, understanding where we came from and where we are heading… All that humans do is trade, day in, day out.
Slaves and slave owners. Simple minds. Robots.
If you take away the electrification, internet, the gadgets, the hot water and the mass produced products – stuff – you are left with the “naked” humans who all they want is to acquire more, get “married”, work, have kids, drink, and cheer up for their tribe.
It is the environment who creates these behaviors so if we do not change the “mental” environment, nothing will happen. We do not need new tech, new science, new materials. We need new lives for the individuals of this species. Lives that are relaxed and taken care of. Scientific, globally oriented, and to live in a non competitive environment.
So the UN or other institutions, if they ever want to solve any global issues, they need to first propose that we should take care of people and create a decent life for them. All of them, not just the very poor. We are all trapped in this trade-prison. You can’t expect for a different society to emerge when all humans do is to slave away and compete with each other. Dog eats dog world.
Happy 1st of May to all of the slaves who got a day off. What a disgrace of a society.
I finished reading @Sasha ‘s book after reading a rough draft some 2-3 years ago. I wrote a review when she released the book but now that I finished it and it all is fresh in my mind I want to briefly say some condensed atom-sized thoughts about it, without spoiling it for those who have not read it.
This book can be deceiving. You may think it is about a small cute girl traveling around the world with very little money. And that is part of it, but the unique aspect of this book is the overall mental growth for Sasha. This is what I LOVED about it. To see how a human grows to understand how the world works and how that makes her react. All of the crazy and wonderful (at times scary) adventures are not just that, are part of the ingredients that create the cake.
And she is a wonderful cake.
The places that Sasha saw and got to experience make me feel like I lived in a cave my entire life. I bet many people will think that Sasha invented some of these stories because it is insane in a few years time to jump from tribe to tribe, meet locals, go live with them, have extraordinary experiences with them, have no money, then work a few months make a shit load of money, buy a car, live in the car; hitchhike the entire Europe, sleep in the middle of Australia, go and snowboard for free or little money on so many tall peaks from all around the world, become a divemaster, surf awesome waves in Hawaii, drive your car across the entire USA and swim with dolphins, sharks and manta rays.
Fucking shit! This human lived 55 lives in 15 years. You either get depressed at that, thinking like me that you have not experienced even 1% of what she experienced, or make you motivated to go see the world and free yourself from this trade based society (which also makes me want to do).
Sasha did a WONDERFUL job describing all of these places and experiences. No photos needed! And many of these adventures and places will forever live inside of my brain as if I was a close observer.
Best of all, in my view, is that now she signed a “contract” with me with this book, to join me in my battle! 🙂 A battle of TROM vs Society! Her book is her contribution and there is more to follow!
With that she sandwiched her book perfectly – the beginning bun (prologue) that will give you a taste of what is about to come; in the middle are the many flavors of ingredients stacked neatly and chronologically on top of each other – some 300 pages of life; and lastly the top bun that perfectly brings it all together in a perfect taste, connecting the dots and making all of the ingredients and the bottom bun part of one big thing.
This is @Sasha and her most valuable project to date:
A book. But a book is not simply a lot of words or a pile of paper. It is memories, emotions, worldviews, and a lot of work to put them all together. Her book is a story that spans over 15 years. But these years are hardly what most people experience on this planet.
She was born in Russia but at age 8 had to move to the United States and deal with a new world. New language, new culture, new people; her mom, her bother, and some pets. Her father went back to Russia, and that affected her a lot.
A mountain of changes to absorb as a kid which led her to a world of drugs and anger.
She details these struggles which at times feel like hard to believe stories – a 17 year old girl selling drugs in New York, crazy mushroom trips and adventurous thefts.
But she managed to pull herself together and change her life for the better. She was not impressed by the imaginary borders humans create and call countries, so she went on flying like a free bird :). From Canada to Mexico, Australia to Europe, Russia to Thailand. 15 years of adventures with almost no money. Because money won’t stop Small Sasha :).
A way to discover the world and yourself.
When you get to experience so many cultures and places, you can understand much better what humans are, and what makes them who the are.
The places she saw and the people she met are extraordinarily described in the book, in a way that you feel like you are there. No photos needed. You’ll laugh, wonder, or feel uncomfortable reading some of her uncensored experiences.
It is a galaxy of stories that she had to put together using notes from the past, photos, and her own memories stored in the mushy pile of cells we call the brain.
She managed to compile this massive story in a way that it is super fun to follow, but also to get a feeling of how she grew a mind in all of these years.
That mental growth and her experiences, made her realize how fucked up this society is and how much we are destroying this environment and the creatures in it.
She started to volunteer for some organizations over the years, eventually getting closer to the project I made, TROM. And so here we are, a book later, spending our lives together.
I cannot describe how wonderful this book is, how emotional and funny. So much fun, but also a lot of reality check for many people who are going to have their values challenged.
She crafted this book so much, that at times you feel like Carl Sagan, David Attenborough and George Carlin contributed to the book :).
A wonderful read! A massive CONGRATULATIONS to Sasha for the immense work she put into this. I know too well how for the past 4 years she worked so much on this book that it almost put our relationship under a big question mark. I never saw anyone putting so much effort into anything. It was too intense!
But now it is OVER. Finally! I thought I will never see this happen. Wow!
After so many years of work, and almost no money, she is putting the book for free on her website https://www.bigworldsmallsasha.com/ in digital format, despite us not having much money to make a life for ourselves on this planet. But of course, if you want to support her (us) you can buy the physical copy too. Or donate if you can.
I helped design the entire cover and I am quite proud of it :).
Go read it! I know I will read it again. This time the physical copy, in a hammock somewhere in nature.
Sasha you fucking did ti!
PS: The book was made with trade-free software. LibreOffice, Krita, Inkscape.
No surprise that Alexei Navalny died….unfortunately the situation in this world is not like a movie, where the bad guys are defeated. It seems to me like we’ve built a society that encourages villains and give little chances to anyone who wants to do anything in a more just way in this society.
Navalny had a huge following and was able to pierce with his campaign through the thick and foggy blanket of propaganda that the Russian government is so good and persistent at. And Navalny may not have been a saint or may not have changed much in Russia, who knows considering the level of corruption that infected all governments around the world, but for sure he was attacked, silenced, and eventually killed (directly or indirectly through a lot of abuse).
Many journalists have been imprisoned or even killed, and now we can see these publicly and so clearly. It is naive to think that pretty much anyone who challenges Putin drops dead or in prison, and this has nothing to do with Putin. But probably these wannabe dictators do not even mind to cover anything anymore.
We are noticing the modern public beheading of those who challenge the status quo. But these modern dictators do not have yet the courage to admit that they did it. They only make it very obvious that they did.
Russia seems to have become an authoritarian regime, the old school one. And this is increasingly concerning. Silencing the protesters, killing the political opponents, and infecting the media with terrible propaganda.
“make no mistake” (to quote the chief of USA), the other tribes are flavors of the same medicine. USA, EU, and the rest, are abusive in their own way, and have killed, and still killing, many innocent people. Russia is just worse. So don’t let the degree of “doing bad things” take away form the fact that the other tribes are also abusive. USA may not kill the political opponents, but it is damn good at giving no chance to any radical change in the good direction of their tribe.
Anyway…. it is a sad and scary world. Humans, what a deplorable species.
I am making the documentary about Navalny freely available on our Peertube https://videos.trom.tf/w/b17jsjV11KhxvvnfMusaEy and will be featured on the homepage. See how obvious it is that the guy was targeted and almost killed not long ago. Terrible.
Are we ever going to be an “intelligent human species”, floating in space on a marvelous ball of wonders that we can take care of? Exploring the in and outs of it? Or are we going to continue as tribalistic and primitive creatures, exploiting and killing?….
