tio – Page 11

TROM Google Account back!? WTF!

By tio | October 15, 2017 | Comments 0 Comment

As you may know Google deleted my entire TROM Google account in May this year without a warning. Everything I had: gmail, picasa photos, google drive, API, everything … except for my Youtube account, that was there but I could not access anymore. So it was weird as fuck. Contacted them and they said they cannot help me out. Checked several times on a special Google page to get the confirmation that my account was deleted and it was indeed deleted (confirmed by Google). I even created another Google account to post our TROM Series there since I could not access the old channel. For the past months I checked the account several times and it was the same – inaccessible. I did that because it felt weird that they deleted everything yet my Youtube was still up and running, so I hoped to at least see a message from Google with an explanation – I thought that it may take them a bit of time to let you know the exact reason of why they deleted my account.

Last night I tried to sign in with the old credentials and it fucking worked. Just like that. WHAT!? Every Google service was back again – all of my files on Google Drive intact, gmail, picasa photos, everything. What is even weirder is that I had that gmail address set up to forward emails to my personal email address and it never did that, UNTIL I logged in last night and started to forward emails out of a sudden. In a way it looked like my login activated my account again or something like that. I have 1.3k unread emails (imagine that), and even though most could be spam, I still lost some important stuff because of this circus. I also realized that I was paying for my “deleted” Google drive for the past months when I could not access it … I deleted that account now.

This is beyond weird. I searched through all of the unread emails to see if Google sent me a cookie or a bottle of wine in apology for the stupid mistake they made, but none what so ever. All I can tell is this: Google deleted my entire account without telling me a thing about it. Then I checked and it was confirmed by Google that it was deleted and only if I made an appeal to court (or some legal shit like that) I “may” get it restored. I, of course, did none of that and forgot about it. They continued to charge me for the Google Drive however. Yesterday I tried to log in and it worked – my account was back again. No notice from Google about that. So they kinda deleted my account for 3+ months without telling me, and then brought it back from the dead (again without telling me).

But I lost my “faith” in Google entirely regardless if they restored it – although who knows, maybe in a week I can’t access it anymore. I am glad that this entire thing with Google happened so that I can learn a lesson: never trust any company with your data (digital stuff). This experience made me back up everything locally and use more and more the offline Linux apps available. I will post TROM Series on the Youtube channel again, here https://www.youtube.com/user/TROMdocumentary/ but I won’t make a big fuss about that. Whoever watches there, good for them, but I will only promote tromsite.com for everything we do. I can control tromsite.com entirely and you can bet that you’ll find all of the TROM stuff there. But I can’t guarantee you’ll find TROM stuff on Youtube or anywhere else.

So, Google re-enabled TROM account, and I give little fucks about that. Fuck off Google :P. Don’t need you bro.

It is unfortunate that we can’t share TROM videos properly with people – if Google doesn’t close our account, then it for sure will eat us alive because of copyright, so it will make our TROM Videos on Youtube unavailable in certain parts of the world. Either way, it is a reason not to care to use Google anymore. This goes to show that these companies own you. They can do whatever they want and whenever they want to.

Thank you Linux community for allowing me to give the middle finger to all of these idiot companies. Most of what I use is open source and free.

You, the one reading this, maybe should learn something from this and avoid giving your digital stuff to companies, no matter how sweat their offer seems. But more than likely you won’t properly get this (like I did), and only after going through what I went through (rebuilding VideoNeat and all of the hassle that followed the disabling of the account) you’ll learn.

Net Neutrality Bullshit.

By tio | July 13, 2017 | Comments 3 comments

The idea goes like this: some companies want to make the Internet like cable TV – if you want to access certain websites you may have to pay extra, and stuff like that. So for example the BIG BOSS company that provides Internet to people might be like: “We have a GREAT package containing Youtube, Wikipedia, Netflix, and this list of websites, for only $9,99 a month.” And if you buy that package then you can either only access those websites and nothing else, or those websites will be prioritized over others.

From Freedom Press website: “When you go online you have certain expectations. You expect to be connected to whatever website you want. You expect that your cable or phone company isn’t messing with the data and is connecting you to all websites, applications and content you choose. You expect to be in control of your internet experience.

When you use the internet you expect Net Neutrality.

Net Neutrality is the basic principle that prohibits internet service providers like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon from speeding up, slowing down or blocking any content, applications or websites you want to use. Net Neutrality is the way that the internet has always worked.

In 2015, millions of activists pressured the Federal Communications Commission to adopt historic Net Neutrality rules that keep the internet free and open — allowing you to share and access information of your choosing without interference.”

Oh, so wait….Can I use the Internet freely without restrictions? That’s so cool man, except is not at all. Websites are blocked all over the world for all kinds of reasons: copyright, violence, paywalls, etc.. P2P or other kinds of traffic can and is monitored and some get fined for downloading certain content. Apps, browsers, software to access the internet are either behind paywalls or filled with ads and trackers. Your Internet speed depends on your purchasing power – some have fast connections, some super shitty. And so on.

In this super popular video that everyone shares nowadays, a super popular YouTuber explained that this Net Neutrality thing is like water: Imagine if you will be charged for what you use your water for. Like if you drink it, it costs something, if you water your plants it costs something else, and so forth. That would be ridiculous he argues. He says that the Internet is and should remain regarded as a UTILITY, like water. And I agree, it should be like that. Like accessing any website should be regarded the same and not be charged for accessing one site over the other. But these people are so blind it is cringy.

Let’s use the same water example. If the water utility was like the Internet utility (what he implies) then it will be like this: some get better water pressure than others, depending how much they pay for. In some cases, water can only be used to drink, not to water your plants (like you might be able to access some sites, but not others because they are blocked by your Internet Service Provider). Or the same as some internet providers won’t allow you to download or upload on p2p networks (they don’t allow certain kind of traffic). Some will only get a limited amount of water (think of mobile Internet – or other kind – that is DATA limited). They say water is free, but they seldom mention that it is filled with all kinds of chemicals that track your health to sell you toothpaste or beverages or a water hose if they detect that you water your garden a lot. This is the Internet with ads analogy, where your traffic is monitored to sell you stuff, and ads are all over websites. So to complete his analogy, if the Internet was like water today, then I’ll have lower water pressure, my water consumption would be monitored and I would get offers in my postal mailbox based on my water habits, and I’ll have to add in all kinds of filters to filter the chemicals they put in to track my water consumption. One day I might also be accused of storing water because, they say, regardless if water pours through your faucet, it is not your water.

So if you tell me that today’s Internet is free and “neutral” then you are either a fool or a fool.

It is so curious to see people arguing against making the Net like the TV because that sounds so like “communism” ;). This is so anti-capitalism as it could be, yet the ones praising capitalism (the money game) are also the ones pretending to care about this. They only can care if it breaks their business model. Like for example Google and Facebook want for people to access the Net and not only a limited amount of them via subscriptions because they sell ads and user data. For them subscriptions are less important than the amount of people accessing their services.

The Internet is a complete mutant in today’s monetary system game as it grew in this kinda free access manner (though as I said it is completely raped by the money game and not neutral at all), but if the Internet was to follow the money game course and became developed like the TV (and this was normal today), then the same people who argue today for Net Neutrality would argue against it. Like imagine the Net was like the the TV, people would be like: “Of course it must be this way man! Youtube and Google could not function if everyone could access their services for free, are you nuts! This is the power of capitalism: you pay for good services”. And we, the small percentage, would be like: “But man, the Internet should be access-free for all and to any website….we can do that nowadays, we have the possibility.” And then people would look at you like you were a fucking hippie or a communist. Same as we, the ones following TROM-like things, say that “People should not be forced to work because we can automate all jobs + food and basic needs should be free because we are able to do that with the tech and science we have today.” and people look at us like we are nuts.

So all of these talking heads that are so against the Net becoming like the TV, are fucking clueless of what they are talking about. At least those who have a clue should be more honest when talking about the “Net NotSo-Neutrality”.

Don’t get me wrong, of course it is better to have the Net like today rather than a TV-like-model one, but I am sick to hear people saying that today’s Internet is “neutral”. It is not!

VideoNeat is back, and why that’s important.

By tio | July 7, 2017 | Comments 5 comments

A month and a half ago, half of VideoNeat went offline. I knew this will happen one day and I was prepared to let it go. To move away from the project, because it was too much of a hassle to rebuild it in case it will happen. But I spent the last month and a half rebuilding VideoNeat.

But dude, why you spend time on this and not only focus on TROM? You know, we have Netflix, Youtube, shit like that for documentaries, why bother reinventing the wheel? Or at least why not just make a list of recommended documentaries and people will find them online to watch if they are interested….

I think people do not have the ability to distinguish between good science documentaries and bad science documentaries. Just because it is called “a documentary” it does not mean it properly “documents” a particular subject. I feel like people nowadays are just impressed by the way something is presented and they don’t go further than that. If they see a cool Netflix trailer for a documentary they are hooked. The package is what people are looking for, and not the content. From my experience of curating documentaries and science materials for the past years, I would say that when you see a great package it is very likely that the content is shit. Netflix, NatGeo, Discovery, and the like, are in the business of selling you stuff, so it is in all of their interests to make documentaries that look “wow” so that you pay to watch them, or TV stations and Cinemas pay to broadcast them. BBC or PBS are very different in that they get a budget from their countries (from taxpayers money) to make educational materials, so they don’t have to sell the stuff they create, and so the quality of their products trumps the other like Netflix because the focus is on making these documentaries for the public. These last ones are far from perfect, but it is something you should bear in mind. But these publicly funded organizations that make documentaries are limited in budget and distribution. US makes some documentaries from its citizens’ money via such organizations (like PBS), and then US is like: “We only make them available for out taxpayers, our citizens, and the rest of the world can suck a duck.” And so these documentaries are rarely available anywhere else.

Show me a site like VideoNeat with its library and I’ll shut it down :D.

So no, Netflix and other sources do not compare to VideoNeat. Not to mention that VideoNeat is free, providing multiple options in terms of watching/downloading. If a documentary cannot be found on youtube, it is on p2p, or Dailymotion, or Internet Archive, or other sources. At times there will be links to pay for a particular documentary/course/movie, but you’ll find more options than on any other website. Plus people can submit more links (more options).

The basic idea is this: good documentaries are hard to find, and Netflix and the like (although more available) make quite shallow content.

Ok dude, but we can find documentaries on Youtube for free nowadays. So why make a website that sends me to youtube to watch a documentary?

I know people who search “documentary 2017” on Youtube to watch documentaries, and my head explodes when I see that. Here’s the thing: if you watch funny videos, or videos that do not try to explain you the reality, then I see no harm in searching “funny videos 2017” on youtube and watch a bunch. But when it comes to watching documentaries, then you can’t be that naive, can you!? We live in a world of attention whores, a rush for likes, views, shares, because that brings money money money. Therefore Youtube is just another platform for prostitution and many people along with scripts (bots) upload a shit ton of fucked up content there for this reason. Content that is messed up: the footage, the year, the title, the everything. They will take good documentaries, chop them up so they are not detected by google copyright or for other reasons, combine them with other documentaries, and label them with a bombastic title and a “2017” tag, so that they can get more naive people watching them and make money off of ads. Not to mention the shitload of ‘documentaries’ that are just videos made by lunatics about all sort of conspiracies. Youtube is full of crap. If you are really looking on youtube for documentaries then you are either knowledgeable of what I said and you know what to search for, or you are very naive.

Look dude, there are a dozen of websites out there (like topdocumentaryfilms), who sort these documentaries for us and recommend us good ones. So you are a copycat of those websites basically.

These websites are one of the worst parts of the Internet. They do not sort documentaries, they find tons of content that can be labeled as “documentary” and simply add them on their websites for ad revenue. Look at these websites: they are full of ads. Their goal is not to curate documentaries for you, their goal is views, likes….money. Not to mention that the vast majority of the content they post becomes unavailable in just a few weeks after posting because they take videos from YouTube and embed them on their website and these videos are deleted soon after (for all kinds of reasons). These websites are zombie full of ads.

VideoNeat never added or will add any ads. I make no money from VN. I rely on donations to keep the site alive. If I’ll have no money I’ll shut down the site. I won’t prostitute it over anything. That being said I have 0 reasons to add stuff to VN for views. I only add stuff for VN that I watched and consider good quality material.

Ok, enough with asking myself questions. Let’s point out to other important aspects.

One source = Troubles.

Vpro is a public broadcaster (like BBC or PBS) from Netherlands. They make very good quality documentaries and post them for free on youtube either in English or with English subtitles. They contacted me a few months ago and asked if I want to post their documentaries on VideoNeat. Sure, I said, but I must review what I post so that it is good quality. All great so far. I posted several documentaries and looking forward to posting more. It’s great that they themselves post these for free on Youtube as they are easily accessible, but because Vpro is quite unknown worldwide (not like BBC or PBS) these documentaries can ONLY be found on youtube and this is problematic. Why? Because Vpro can shut down or restrict their channel at any point, and all of those documentaries will be gone. Or maybe Youtube will close their account, who knows. If that’s the only source where they post their documentaries then it is a shaky decision. Same applies to ABC Four Corners, great journalism-based documentaries and again public broadcasting (in Australia this time) – it is super hard to find their work in any form online, and that’s perhaps because they are largely unknown and/or do not make the effort to distribute their content on multiple platforms.

This is where VideoNeat tries to stand out: options, options, options. And you can always help by submitting links. If you see a documentary only available on Youtube via VideoNeat, but you find it on another website, then don’t be a dick :D, submit the link (I made it so easy – just paste the link, and send, that’s all). Look at what happened to the old VideoNeat – it relied on a single source for streaming, that source was shut down, then all the site got fucked. This aint’ gonna happen’ anymore with the new VN. Now with the new VN you can use p2p along with streaming and indexing sites. You can find direct links to watch a documentary, or link to websites that search online for that documentary, or magnet links to stream/download that documentary via peer to peer (sharing) technology. Plus download these materials when available. Even buy them at times.

Actually, the original idea of VN was a database of documentaries for sourcing purposes for TROM ebooks. I linked hundreds of times from TROM ebooks to VN to cite/source parts of TROM ebooks, so that’s what I wanted VN to be. But then I realized I also have to make it easy for people to access these materials because if I make a claim in an article and I source a documentary, but people can’t watch that documentary (only read a description of it), that’s pointless. So I had to make this option a must.

Why VideoNeat is crucial for TROM.

Besides the fact that it acts as a database of citations/sourcing, VN is a wonderful tool to keep people sane on a daily basis. TROM is about educating people on how to think scientifically and contemplate a very different kind of world than today’s one. People need a shit load of scientific baggage to accept a world without trade, to contemplate a world without work, to get comfortable with a world where we share instead of sell. It is a life long journey. VN can (and is) keep people busy with relevant stuff. As simple as that. If I only focus on TROM and release TROM ebooks that can be read in a few days, though it takes more than a month to make one, then what are people doing the rest of the month? At least with VN they can keep on enjoying good science content.

Being busy is great and sucks.

I work way more on VN and TROM than most people work at their jobs. I said this many times but it is hard to explain properly. So I have this ‘masterplan’ about VN – to make it a great tool (stream from p2p, offer options, and all that I explained and more), and I start working on it and doing it, but then I feel so tired to explain it to people. I do a lot of work and I have tons of ideas, but it is hard for me to explain them to you. I want to explain to you why this is important though I feel I can’t do that properly because it is too complex to perhaps understand for someone who doesn’t read my mind :D. I don’t just make VN, I know a great deal about other documentary-based-websites, I know a great deal about how and why some documentaries are bad quality, and so forth. I am doing this kind of thing for a while now, so it is not like I make a simple, blog-like website, where I share some documentaries I see, and post some links to Youtube where you can watch them. I add proper sourcing for these documentaries (so you can trace them down and see who made them), I add a proper description, I add proper trailers/previews, I create a system that enables people to watch these documentaries. I made VN stand time in a world of the internet where everything is so shaky.

Don’t use the Internet without these!

I wrote about this on VN (tips page) but I’ll briefly mention it here too: The Internet is a reflection of our profit-based (trade induced) world. People want and will take advantage of you for their own gain. This is not a conspiracy, it is pure business. Your browsing is tracked to show you targeted ads, your internet traffic is monitored to punish you if you do ‘bad’ things. Whatever these are, they exist. Give them all the middle finger with these 3 tools that will allow you to enjoy VN and use the Internet like a boss:

Virtual Private Server to encrypt all your internet traffic. No one would be able to look at your traffic. I recommend Private Internet Access (PIA). The best one out there, period. Don’t get fooled by their cheap stock footage on their site, they are old in the business and everyone recommends them. $40 a year is a bargain. They also block trackers and ads. Free VPN’s are very limited.
AdBlocked. I recommend AdGuard. It is free as a browser extension and $8 or so a year for desktop and app license. On phone, you don’t have to root it as with other AdBlockers to make it work.
P2P client. The best, most robust, and safest way to share stuff. This is basically about “torrents”. I recommend installing WebTorrent as a P2P client. It is free and open source. On VN most items have a MAGNET link. Click it and it’ll open WebTorrent and you can download and watch the stuff. Simple as that. No ads and nothing like that.

That’s it. Be smart online. On top of these, I would recommend the Brave browser (for beginners). Free and open source browser that blocks trackers and ads by default and allows for downloading of torrent files (p2p) and also to stream these files. You can simply install Brave browser and that’s all. But I would recommend the above 3 options.

That’s all. Enjoy VideoNeat! It is not as simple to watch as before where you would click and play, but it is something like (click, click, play; or click, wait….play). The new VN is robust, secure, fast, optimized for all screens.

Dealing with ‘fake’ news.

By tio | June 7, 2017 | Comments 5 comments

Someone sent me this question last night via TROM FAQ: “What can we do, individually, to better distinguish factual news from fake news?” But becuase the answer is quite long, I’ll post it here as a blog post.

I will touch upon this topic in more detail in a future TROM ebook, but here are a few important points based on my experience with news/information lately. So, think about this question: “Is language itself (grammar) influencing the way people think?‘. This is a simple question that you may want to find the “real” answer for. The question does not seem controversial, but how can you go about answering it? This is how I answered it and what taught me about ‘fake’, or unreal news.

I came across the idea that language influences thought and to me it made sense so I immediately accepted it. I was like “Yeah, makes sense.” That was a quick answer based on my knowledge. Any article I’ve read or seen about this topic that confirmed my views I registered it as “proof” that my thoughts about this were correct. The ones dismissing this notion I rarely got to see because I wasn’t looking for that. You may call this a “confirmation bias”.

Later on in life I started a TROM ebook on language and I had to focus more on the topic, so I started to learn about language. After months of learning what language is, how it works, etc., I realized that with so many differences between languages we should see a huge difference between ways of thinking if language were to influence thought, but there doesn’t seem to be any differences. Chinese (any dialect) and English are totally different languages, but can we see a lot of difference between Chinese people and let’s say Americans in ways of thinking? No. So I started to deduce, again, based on my updated knowledge that this idea might not be right.

I said that in order to properly answer that question I have to go straight to the science, to the source, and I started to read scientific research that was looking at answering this exact question. What else can be more valid than going straight to the source, to the science, to the research? Well, the first thing that I realized was that there is a lot of scientific research that implies that “language influences thought”. Many experiments from different sources pointed to that. The second thing that I realized was that the articles and videos I’ve been digesting on this topic were misrepresenting these scientific papers. As an example, BBC (respectable source of science to me) presented in one of their documentaries an experiment that ‘seemed’ to prove how language indeed influences the way we see the world.

After my ‘investigation’ and reading the actual study that the BBC relied upon presenting their claims, I realized how much misinformation the BBC presented in that documentary. Basically, they exaggerated most of it. And I got fooled by that thinking it was BBC, so they must have presented the experiment in an honest way. They didn’t. Basically, if you were to have seen that BBC documentary where they presented how “language influences thoughts” you would easily get fooled by that. This taught me that when you read a summary of an actual scientific research, you will at best read someone else’s interpretation of that study/experiment. And don’t forget that those who summarize (news outlets, blog posts, documentaries, books, videos on youtube, whatever) will want to maximize their profits and therefore engage in click-baiting summaries (misleading summaries). Therefore I learned that going to the source is a must if you really want to know if something is true or not. Summaries will never do justice to any research.

So that’s it, right? I first learned that knowing very little about a subject you are unable to tell if what you read about that subject is true or not, and you may be inclined to only listen and be interested in things that confirm your worldviews. Second I learned that the more you know about a subject, the better your dissection of that subject – you can ask more relevant questions, you can sniff some ‘fake’ stuff when you read it, and so forth. And third I learned that you have to go to the source of information – if you don’t do that then you can at best read someone else’s opinion on the subject.

I wish this was all. But after learning about language and reading the scientific research of “language and thought”, because of my relevant questions and skepticism (based on what I’ve learned about language) I started to get across other scientific research that contradicted that language influences thought. To read the source is not enough, I learned. That’s the point. You also have to have the knowledge to ask relevant questions about the topic you are researching and then read criticism of the research from other direct sources. For example, the research papers I was reading that contradicted the idea that “language influences thought” pointed to very relevant holes in the other research like: the number of people studied was too small; the interpretation was not correct; there was no reproducibility; and so on. So all of the “respectable” sources that

I’ve read previously who pointed that language influences thought, lacked the scientific basis to be relevant. Lacked reproducibility, lacked a relevant huge number of participants, lacked ways to extract relevant meaning from the research. To make it simple: if you go to a tribe that has 3 times more names for shades of red than in the English language, and do an experiment with 20 people from that tribe, and 20 from American culture, to see if indeed language influences the way we think or see the world, then you need to reproduce this study and add in a lot more participants. Whatever you find out from your little experiment is not valid unless you add in more participants and also try to replicate the study + other important details. 20 people cannot be representative of anything.
And so, after all that journey, I got to understand that there is absolutely no evidence that language is influencing the way we think. It can’t. There is no scientific research to showcase that.

To summarize:

The first important thing is TO KNOW. If you don’t know much about how our bodies work, how medicine works, how treatments work, and so forth, then you can’t judge anything you read from healthcare research. At most you may read an article or watch a video that confirms your worldviews (whatever the subject), and feel satisfied with that. But also, if you read the criticism (the opposition to that) you will either ignore it or for sure you’ll be unable to understand it (how can you understand someone criticizing that “language influences thought” if you know so little about the subject itself – language!?).

Second important thing is to realize that whenever you read anything BUT the scientific research, then you’ll read a biased view of that research. You will play the telephone game where the research says something and then the others hear it and project it forward in a mutated manner, then others get that mutation and mutate it forward, until in the end of it when you will read it on a news website, or in a book, and so on, in a form that is very difference from the actual study itself (where it all started). If a research states something, then some journalists read it and summarize it, then CNN or others take what those journalists summarized and summarize it further, then others take what CNN summarized from that summary and summarize it further….that’s not going to be representative of the actual research.

And third, you have to understand that even the scientific research itself is not enough. A scientific research can omit important aspects in the study, can present it as factual even if it is not replicated anywhere else, can mislead by what they interpret out of their findings, and so much more. Even more, many scientific studies are financed by companies so they may be indeed biased in what they present. Or you cannot even access most scientific research since it is behind paywalls or complicated language. So at least, when you read a scientific study, ask yourself what is the sample size (the smaller, the less relevant the study); was it reproduced and what were the results?; who financed this study?; and so on.

But if you are not familiar with a subject then you can’t go through any of these. For example, a doctor can pretty much spot the BS in scientific research if it is in his area of expertise. A doctor can ask: ok, but what are the side effects of this treatment? what about people over a certain age, can they get this treatment? how does this treatment compare to the other ones? and so on. These are questions that you and I can’t ask. We are also unable to measure the answers to these questions for the same reason: we don’t know enough from this area.

In a few words: this is fucking complicated and it depends on what you are looking at.

If it is a news from politics then how can you go to the source of any claim? The only thing you can do is to go back to who said something, or a personal testimony about something, and things like that (the start of the telephone game). But because the game started with basically people testifying things, then this can’t be relevant even if you hear it from the source. This can’t be called science. Therefore it depends on the nature of what you are trying to figure out. If it is a research (science) then at least there is an answer somewhere. If it is politics then I don’t think you can do much about it, so you are left with “trusting” whatever X or Y said. So choose your team…. Even polls that say people think this or that about this subject, it depends entirely how the question was asked for that poll. Numbers and studies masked as experiments can be truly misleading. Psychology and psychiatry suffer enormously from this kind of muddy research that can’t even be replicated most of the time.

The Solution.

It is 100% crazy to ask people to “go to the source” and “know a great deal about a particular subject before making up your mind about it”. The world is fucking complicated. So this is not a solution. The solution is “improve the summarizers”. These are the folks and organizations who have the time and expertise to go through the source of information and summarize it for the rest. And if these creatures are experts in the fields they summarize from, then even better. And if they are also working for an organization that makes no profit out of their work, then even more trustful.

An example is HealthNewsReview. A non-profit organization that keeps an eye on health news. They have hired a bunch of doctors and journalists whose sole job is to go after the source of important health news and ask educated questions. They break them down and showcase if and how media misrepresented the studies.

We need such groups of people for everything out there. Unfortunately, they are a few and very unpopular. The only reason they can survive is because of donations and their obsession with what they do. So we need a bunch of experts who can summarize scientific research and not be in the business of making money out of that. CNN, NYT, BBC, and mostly all news outlets out there are the exact opposite and their core focus (or at least a huge part of their focus) is to make money. This will lead to poor quality journalism research and exaggerated articles/documentaries/etc.. I find governmental sources way more trustful because they are in the business of informing (at least in theory). Like the National Health Institute in the UK has a section called “Behind the Headlines” where they break down health science news in a similar manner as HealthNewsReview does. UK Cancer Research does the same for cancer research.

But these watch-dogs are very few, underfunded, and don’t reach many people. The other ones, the barking-dogs, are so many and so well paid, and so motivated to present bullshit news just to make a buck. On top of that we have a population that knows very little about the world and has very little time (or interest) to learn more. The best that people can do, as I said, is to “trust” sources that summarize information for them, but since their options are mainly limited to corporations and for-profit entities, then it is hard to trust anyone. It is like picking a football team. Some may go with BBC, some with NYT, some with who knows what source. I am not saying these sources cannot be trusted, only that it is hard to trust them. Very!

It is the perfect storm, and it is all the fault of the trade-game we play.

People have all the reasons today to not go in depth on any subject. But they have reasons to present shallow, misleading and exaggerated information because they trade that for money (clicks equals profit). But also, today something weird happens: any moron can become a well-known summarizer because of google, facebook, and other sorting and filtering online tools that measure “goodness” (value) in terms of views or likes, or reactions. Morons put out there ‘bombastic’ news titles and article, or videos, and become more and more well known because of that. The other morons who give likes and shares are masturbating their confirmation bias with these materials, and together they become the shittiest summarizers our there, and the most popular ones. The world is full of these prostitutes that became so cheap that even the likes and shares do it for them. They don’t necessarily need money anymore, they only need likes and shares and they’ll post all the crap in the world for that. The bombastic, the simple minded, the exaggerated, are all working so damn well online, becoming so noisy that nothing of good value (which takes a long time to produce) can be heard. It is like the telephone game where the research says “neutrino” and at the other end comes up as “dick”. Some of these morons truly believe what they promote, so they are not about making a profit (money, likes, views) but because today matters what is popular (as I said more views equals more well known), then these honest morons get to so many other morons out there because what they present is simplistic and bombastic, spreading misinformation. They too are victims of the trade-based world where us, as a society, do not provide them with a proper education and proper opportunities so that they can grow scientific minds. These are the feral morons emerged out of a handicapped society. And they are not actually morons. They only reflect the culture they grew in.

Therefore we like it or not, we can’t all go through the difficulty of investigating claims out there, going to the source, and such, and so we have to choose who to trust. I’ll say experts who work for non-profit organizations are a great start.

I created TROMNews specifically for this reason, to curate news from trustful sources. It is not perfect at all, but for sure it is much better than anything you’ll find out there. Also, to get back to my question on language and thought – because I am helped financially by our readers I could spend more time researching that topic and because I make no money out of selling TROM ebooks I could be as non-biased as possible when presenting the summary of that I learned about language. I am a summarizer too, and the fact that I am a “not-for-profit” creature, then it makes me more trustful I would say. But I am not an expert in what I am presenting, so keep that in mind. Can’t tell you how many people sent me a ton of books to read about “language and thought” and even though I tried to give those a shot, this is not the kind of work I want to do for TROM: to read the summarized and then summarize that. So I went straight to the source of the subject I was writing about. And, as a last thing, don’t forget that I can also be wrong (of course), but at least I am less likely to be biased and the more financial support I get the more work I can put into making TROM as scientific as possible. I don’t need click bait titles, or exaggerated content because that’s not what I am selling. By contrary, doing that I will lose readers/supporters.

Look:

There is no simple answer to the question of how to distinguish fake news from ‘real’ news. The culprit is the society we live in as that’s what pushes people to engage in such behaviors of misleading (intentionally or not) others. If you can’t find someone to trust (a source that summarizes) then I’ll say whenever you hear anything: meat causes cancer; the earth is flat; exercise improve health; and so on, ask yourself where was that news coming from? It has to have a source. Where did the telephone game start? Find that source! Then learn about the subject and not the question. If you know a great deal about Earth or science in general (from gravity to paleontology, climate, astronomy, etc.) then you’ll ask relevant questions when you hear some saying the Earth is flat. If you are familiar with healthcare research then you know that it is never so simple as saying “this food causes this disease”; psychological experiments rarely imply causation; and so on.

Side note: These articles are so easy for me to make because I know a great deal about these subjects. In contrast, it takes me so long to make TROM ebooks (compared to blog posts) because there I am exploring subjects I know very little about and takes a lot of time to research for them. This article took me around 3-4 hours to make. A TROM ebook of the same length (which is super small compared to TROM ebooks) can take 3 days or 10 days, it depends.

Why Jacque is not dead

By tio | May 20, 2017 | Comments 14 comments

Since I found out about Jacque and TVP I knew in the back of my head that this day will come. I will be around to hear that Jacque has died. That day has come and although not a surprising news considering Jacque’s age, it still gave me chills.

Just a little background: I found out about Jacque and TVP around 2006 or so (I think it was the Future by Design documentary) and my first reaction was (I remember so clearly): “Wow this old dude is exactly like me.” The way he talked, the things he talked about, everything was so “like me”. That’s how I felt. But then I forgot about him or TVP. I rediscovered him in Zeitgeist Addendum a few years later and then I went through some intense watching/listening/reading about him and TVP. Without exaggeration, I felt at that time that he was the only human in the world that I could look up to. I never had any “role models” or appreciated people really, but I always looked at ideas. Well, with Jacque it was a bit different because he seemed so sharp and giving no fucks about the establishment or what people think. I came across other people criticizing the world we live in but they never went far enough and that was so frustrating to me. Jacque did that. He ripped apart the monetary system and human values. I loved him. He was, in a way, confirming my worldviews.

This is an article I made in 2010 on my personal blog about him – http://www.teoretic.com/?p=12250 (it is in Romanian) – and I mentioned his work many times on my blog.

He inspired me to make TROM Documentary because he was all about the solutions and I loved that aspect. A huge part of TROM Documentary is based on his work and revolves around videos/audios with him. I was dreaming at that time to meet him and talk to him. I wasn’t fanatic at all about this, but I would have loved to meet him and talk to him.

Later on, after making TROM, I ended up collaborating with TVP and talking indirectly to him through my articles for TVPMagazine that he read/reviewed. I didn’t change my views about Jacque, only my enthusiasm after I grew up (mentally) and realized that the world is bigger than any man, and that there are many hard working people with brilliant ideas out there. And so I questioned Jacque’s views, something I wasn’t able to do before because the enthusiasm blinded me. Interestingly even after looking with a critical eye on Jacque, I still find his work and views on the world valid and important. I may slightly disagree with him here and there (maybe), but I think that what he created is wonderful. It is a very simply explained worldview that anyone can understand.

You see there are many people who have similar (in a way) ideas about the future, but Jacque managed to showcase this vision through his designs. This, I think, was what made TVP popular because people could imagine how such a world might look like. Plus his style of delivering the message – he had the charm/charisma. He knew how to deliver the message. Perhaps that will be missed the most.

But I said: “Why Jacque is not dead”. Well, interestingly enough this was the title of a google document that I made 2 years ago whilst still managing TVPM, because I knew this day would come and I thought I would make an article for TVPM about this.

I never made that article of course, but now that this moment came and I no longer collaborate with TVP, I’ll make a shorter version of that article here, on my blog. The name of the article was to point out something people may be missing.

Let me explain briefly:

One summer day when I was about 12 I’ve noticed something that made my skin crawl. I noticed that I was laughing exactly like a “cool kid” that came to our town for the holidays. This may seem like a nothing thing to you but to me it was super creepy to realize that I copied that frickin’ laughing style without noticing. Then this kinda obsessed me to pay attention to, about copying other people’s behavior, and I paid special attention to it. I’ve noticed it about others, I’ve noticed it about me. I’ve noticed others copying me as well. It wasn’t only about facial expressions and stuff like that though, but also about ideas and ways of thinking. Later on in my life, after being Jacqued’ some years ago, I noticed how I involuntarily copied some of his ideas and talking ‘ticks’ or ways of expression when I was explaining/writing to/for others about the world, monetary system, human values. A part of Jacque was part of me. Like a tiny ghost breathing from inside me. This is not an exaggeration if you think that what we are is a combination of ideas, and similar ideas (worldviews) in different brains make us more like one brain. If Jacque’s brain was 90% about explaining why the monetary system is the fault of most problems, and how a worldwide society based on abundance can solve that, then if at least half of your brain is about and dedicated to that, then you are part Jacque Fresco and Fresco is part you. And this is not a Jacque’s measure, this works both ways. Jacque copied information from others too, so a bit of others lived through Jacque as well.

Something mind blowing to realize about humans is that they are carriers of ideas. I have digital photos and videos since 2003 on my hard drive right now. They moved from one hard drive to another – big hard drives, solid state hard drives, flash drives, cds and dvds – but they are still the same. What moved was information. The hard drives and cds/dvds are all gone. The information remained. Humans, for sure, are more than just hard drives and dvds: they have feelings and relationships, aspirations, goals, hobbies, that are uniquely theirs. But when it comes to ideas – like for example ideas that Jacque had – then they indeed are like those photos and videos that I moved from one hard drive to another.

Therefore as cheesy as this may sound, Jacque is not entirely dead. He lives through me, you, and so many others out there. The question is how much of the info you copied on your hard drive from him, and how motivated are you to make others copy it on their hard drives?

But then understand that this is bigger than one man, or a bunch of. If indeed you pretend to understand how the world works and what we can do to change it, then you’ll install a firewall on your system and review the stuff you copy on your hard drive (change, remove, improve). Jacque or any other out there cannot hold on information like a CD. Their info changes as well. The information in any of our heads changes all the time. But if you want to truly be immortal make sure the info that you have in your brain is as valuable as to make others copy it further and to be resilient in front of firewalls and big edits (change, remove, improve) over time. Einstein’s ideas are such ideas that remained with us until now. They were valid and strong. Firewalls and edits made little impact on his ideas of relativity. Whatever percentage of his science work was Einstein’s brain, that copied to many of people’s brains and is still carried on. I am a bit of Einstein, others are a lot more. I may be a bit more of a Jacque Fresco, but these two people are bits of others as well. And so we all are a soup of others, a mix that is mutating almost like a creature without a physical form.

If Jacque was a robust piece of data, then Jacque will live for a long time. Good and verifiable ideas can stand up time.

I never wanted a photo with Jacque or a signed book, or anything like that, because I realized that if I want something from him then I can just copy it to my brain. Fortunately, there is no copyright issue in that (at least for now). It is free, so go ahead and pirate this shit like crazy! 🙂 Jacque was not an athlete, singer, Hollywood star and so on to want to take a photo with him like a proof of meeting him or whatever, he was not about the ‘looks’, he was about ideas, so if you ever wanted to meet him, then listen to him, and copy him in your brain.

And if you don’t make this about Jacque, but about ideas, then these ideas can be immortal. If you mingle these ideas in original ways in your brain and then they spread to other brains, then part of you will live a lot longer than your body. You are ideas, and ideas will live longer than you. 🙂

So if you want to live for hundreds or thousands of years, or more, grow your brain, copy ideas, mix them in your head, think, develop original ideas, spread them to others.

The end of VideoNeat and TROM Series youtube channel

By tio | May 18, 2017 | Comments 18 comments

Last night I finished rendering the next TROM Series episode, 1h 16min long episode. Today I wanted to upload it to our TROM Series Youtube channel and surprise: I wasn’t logged in and my password was invalid. I was also unable to recover it. Nothing to say that my entire google account for TROM series (gmail: tromsite@gmail.com and everything associated with it) was shut down overnight. I had to ‘google it’ (the irony) and after reading a bunch of forums I realized that’s the case. I submitted a request for more info to a google page for disabled accounts and I’ve got an email (to my personal address) that indeed it was disabled.

Ok. So now I am not sure what lead to this, and this is the frustrating and scary part. Indeed on that account, there were several documentaries posted on google drive, and we had tons of copyright strikes on our youtube channel, some of whom we disputed. But to close all my account: gmail, picasa photos, youtube, google drive (for which I paid each month), and all google services like access to API’s…that’s a hard hit that will for sure force me to move away from google, at least not rely on it for anything because this can also happen to my personal account any time without warning.

Since documentaries from VideoNeat were connected (I think) to tromsite@gmail.com google drive then those are dead now. That’s almost half (if not more) of VideoNeat (plus images like posters and thumbnails). Google Drive, like all hosting entities out there for sure says “If you do not own a material do not upload here.” but how can you know if you are allowed to upload a documentary or a photo or stuff like that…As I knew all the documentaries I uploaded there were free for educational purposes, for which they were used. More than that what you might have seen on VideoNeat was a youtube-kind-of-version of those files, converted and streamed by google (not by me), not what I uploaded to their drive. More so, google removed a few such files (because weirdly it has bots scanning for copyrighted materials on your ‘personal’ drive that you bought) and deleted a handful of them and I was like “Oh, ok, didn’t know I wasn’t allowed to upload those, but good to know google automated system can detect and fix that like they do on youtube.”. So they had the power to delete any file that was ‘infringing’ their terms and services, and I was “Ok, whatever.” So why, if that was the reason to end all my account, didn’t they just delete all files that were “filthy” (copyright-wise)? Or at least send me an email “Tio, bro, be careful because we detected lots of copyrighted stuff on your drive.”. So I suspect that wasn’t teh reason at all.

Maybe it was the youtube channel where we uploaded stuff that had ‘copyrighted’ materials in them. TROM Series could not avoid getting away from that since we used fragments from documentaries in our videos, that were (again), for educational purposes and we successfully disputed these claims for our TROM Series and we won, at least that’s what I thought because youtube is like “You really want to dispute this? Becuase if you lose we will shut down all your account!”. And I disputed several such claims, never heard back from google, so maybe they decided later on that “Yeah, he didn’t win the dispute, so let’s remove his channel.”. TROM Series was also the channel where TROM Documentary was first uploaded and then butchered by copyright strikes. So maybe it was a really filthy channel….

Therefore, was it my gdrive and my collection of documentaries? Or my youtube channel where we posted original content? I will never know since that’s in google’s policy: they do not disclose the reason more than the email you saw above for which I had to do a request to get it. Basically google can shut down your account and give you no warning. That’s so Hitler-like that is hard to believe, but it is true.

What now?

First, acceptance. There is nothing I can do. To submit counter-notifications is synonymous to perhaps going to court for this or hire a lawyer. Not going there.

Second is to transform VideoNeat into something else where you can’t watch documentaries but you can only read about them. It sucks, but soon all videos will be gone. I will make a beautiful website where I recommend documentaries and I’ll provide the best sources of where you can watch them.

Third, reopening a TROM Series Youtube channel and NOT dispute any claim. If we have a video that might get us in troubles we will post a short video announcement about that and let people know where to watch it (on tromsite.com for sure). We have no choice.

Fourth, speaking of that, I will take all the stuff I made over the years (videos, books, etc.) and save them all to an offline hard drive + upload them in several online places to not rely only on Youtube or Vimeo. Tromsite.com is still the hub where TROM stuff will always have a home and not be raped by companies. This is why it is important to have a website because Youtube or Vimeo or others can get too bossy and fuck you up and you will realize everything you did will be gone overnight. I was aware of this before this is why the TROM Documentary and TROM Series were also uploaded to Vimeo. But now I will extend that to other places. I am also concerned because TROM Series is uploaded on my personal google drive as well, for those who want to download the episodes and do voice over for them. So I’ll have to do something about that too. In brief, I will have to completely divorce from any entity on the web: google, vimeo, etc.

I hope you understand that I’ll be somewhat busy the following days with this and won’t be able to work much on TROM. I will keep you posted here.

Update 1: I see the channel is still up https://www.youtube.com/user/TROMdocumentary/videos so this is likely a gdrive issue. I can’t access the channel. So it will live like a zombie channel there forever I suppose. Trying to contact google to see if at least we can recover the youtube channel, though I doubt.

Update 2: I can’t contact google apparently. The decision is quite final. The only way for me to fight with them would be the legal way – legal and meaningless words, lots of time, perhaps money, and who knows what. No way for me to do this. So goodbye forever to the above. Also, just to mention this: I or no one else made any money from VideoNeat or TROM Series. And videoenat was mainly used as a source of information (to cite claims) for TROM ebooks – like to prove a point or to source from where I got that info. It is not my fault that this world is fucked up and I can’t even source these documentaries because they are blanketed beneath rules, money, tribes, whatever. What are you people doing these ‘educational’ things for if you lock them up and keep them for yourself? And you are doing this in a world where to copy a documentary a billion times for a billion people costs nothing. Awful species. The shame of the universe.

Update 3: I created a kind of personal Twitter, a page where I can post updates and it updates live, no need to refresh. Here it is https://www.tiotrom.com/live/ – from now on I’ll use this all the time to post updates. I will try to ignore fb, twitter, and the like (the unsocial networks) from now on. I’ll rely on my own website at the expense of losing eyeballs. At least I keep my balls :D.

Update 4: I am working on rebuilding VideoNeat. This time though it will be unbreakable. Indeed you won’t be able to watch documentaries on the website directly, but I’ll say just don’t worry about that. You’ll see. It will be mobile friendly and I will also add some awesome special stuff like George Carlin’s specials, more lectures, and other stuff. Btw please support me if you can https://www.patreon.com/tio – I am nearly broke and I have to spend money on templates and plugins for the new VideoNeat. Thanks!

Update 5: VideoNeat is back! :).

I think we are fucked

By tio | May 16, 2017 | Comments 11 comments

Honestly, I think we are fucked. 😀

I just think the world is dumber and dumber, to the point of idiocracy, and it is getting worse. To clear the air I will debunk the “World is getting better” notion in a very soon to release TROM ebook, but this is about something else.

The trade world (profit based) fucked up everything and it is increasingly doing that at an exponential rate. Back in 2010 I had a friend who was doing promotion for websites and he was posting on forums with fake names and having conversations on the forum with himself (different usernames) about products to promote them; he was submitting websites to portals like nuts (the mother of all spam); he was creating new websites and linked to the ones he was promoting (link building); he was also buying articles (medicine, tech, etc.) then changed parts of them with automated software (replacing words with synonyms) so that google won’t detect duplicate content, and he was building in automated ways hundreds and thousands of websites with similar content but linking one to another. Why? Ads! He was breaking the internet as I told him many times. He was the worse human in my view. He was literally fucking up the internet for profit. Imagine searching for something medical on google and coming across one of his kamikaze websites and reading the bullshit articles he bought and mingled just because he knew how to trick google’s search engines to get to you. I thought that’s the worse you can be.

Wrong!

7 years later and I look at him the same way people look today at Steve-O: like “Wow, he’s respectable! He’s a legend!”. People regard Steve-O as respectable because the present is so fucked up that someone like Steve-O, a guy who starred in Jackass films (basically dudes kicking themselves in the nuts for money), looks like a damn smart and thoughtful guy compared to the zombie-reactiveness thoughtful-toads of today. And the friend who did those shitty things looks the same today compared to the craziness of what people do today for the money. They fake pranks, mislead with click bait titles, exaggerate everything, lie like nuts, and soooo on.

The idiot kids.

Look at this video please:

[ytp_video source=”SiLaLw2-06k”]

It has 45 million views. ‘Nuff said. What is even scarier is that it has twice more likes than dislikes. (Edit 3 months later: this video has 85 million views….). If you wonder who the fuck are those millions of people watching these online mutations then it is “the kids”. Some profiteers discovered that children watch a ton of youtube videos and for a lot of time (something youtube encourages through their reward system – money for ads). Basically, parents are busy with nonsense jobs and facebook, and kids are sent to watch youtube stuff, ’cause that’s easy for the parents. And indeed they watch a ton because that video is not an exception, it is the rule. Go to their channel and you’ll see each video has millions of views. Also search on youtube for Spiderman or Elsa and you’ll see dumbed down, puked up videos that are made by idiots, but seen by millions of children. They have the most views on youtube out of (perhaps) all kinds of videos. So basically profiteers found a way to take advantage of children for ad revenue. They make, for sure, in the thousands of dollars per month or per video. So kids nowadays will grow up with these dumb down beyond idiocracy content. Their heads will reflect that.

More so, look at mobile games that are played by kids so much. Most, if not all of them, are filled with ads (buy this, buy this, buy this) or they are all a slot machine for children (and adults): you want to upgrade the character, then buy these superpowers; want to advance, buy some coins.

So kids watch dumb down content and play games that teach them to be profiteers. So they will get to be idiot profiteers when adults, breading in turn the same species.

The idiot adults.

Whilst today’s kids are bred up to become idiots, the adults are transformed into idiots. Facebook will be the no 1 reason our species will end up. Mark my words. People watch fake lives, project fake lives, watch fake news, fake videos, everything is fake and exaggerated. Everything is click bait. They have thousands of friends but in reality have none. They follow many pages but in reality they follow their own opinions. They only seek for approval, they know nothing about the world, and any charlatan can take advantage of them. Any “cure for cancer” post on fb is not sniffed for its facts by any such idiot. They can’t. They have no idea how science works, they don’t know that not all sources of news are equal, they are not equipped to detect bullshit so they pretty much eat it on a daily basis.

This lunatic has over 1.5 million likes and it’s growing:

And it is full of them. Any loud-mouth megaphoned through fb posts and videos is a guru nowadays. What people seem not to realize is that these creatures are “for profit” and take advantage of the gullible. The saddest part is that they don’t seem to be doing it intentionally like “Heck let’s take advantage of the morons.”, rather they are idiots too but only loud-mouthed. Fb tells you there is a cure for any disease out there but the government keeps it hidden; that you can’t trust anyone (except those who says that), or that conspiracies are actually a manifestation of free thinkers and skepticism.

Give fb a search for “cancer cure” and for sure you’ll find a million cures.

But you see the situation is disastrous. People have no fucking clue what is going on anymore, nor do they have any tools to fix that. Almost everyone with an internet connection has a fb profile nowadays and they spend so much time on this platform. Basically, their main source of information comes from this muddy place.

The TV is the same, they do whatever brings more money; movies the same; music repetitive and the same. Speaking of these, Netflix and Spotify are amazing tools at keeping the idiots busy with the mindless content. Nice smelling, yes! Tasty, maybe! Good package nevertheless, though quite a shitty content. But it is like eating fast food all of your life and sitting on your couch. Don’t expect good health. Pump shit in people’s brain and they’ll have shit in their heads. They’ll talk shit and do shit.

Preparing for the end.

Some say there are more and more good quality documentaries produced, or youtube shows, or articles (news); I curate these stuff for the past 4-5 years and I can confirm that yes, there are many such good materials produced, BUT for every such healthy thing out there, there are at least one thousand bad and smelly things. One Cosmos vs 1,000 shitty documentaries that together reach immensely more people than Cosmos does. One Vsauce channel vs 1,000 clickbaity, kids-dumbing channels. A handful of well written articles vs millions that are plain simply bullshit-painted.

What no one seems to realize is that this world breeds idiocracy. My ‘respectable’ friend who broke the net may chase profits, but he and others like him also fuck up the world, that in turn fucks them up. My friend uses fb as well and eats the same shit he previously pooped. There is no long term thinking in this world. It is the now, and fuck the tomorrow. Let’s get drunk and give no fuck. Watch this only movie I’ll recommend – when I watched it 10 years ago I thought it is a tasteless and overly exaggerated and poorly written comedy, but now it gives me chills.

And, for my last breath, as I argued so any times in TROM contents, you should look at any entity out there: from the government to companies, celebrities to charities, religions to software, and they are all filled with the profiteer filth. They are all chasing their own tail and give no fucks about the world. This is not an online manifestation only, this is happening everywhere in the world. Just go to the bank to open up an account and you’ll see the jackal employees trying to rip you off with their sophisticated language giving no fucks about you or the future of mankind. Everywhere is like that.

But the most important thing to remember is that these profiteers are not born like that. it is the environment that pushes them to create shitty stuff that in turn creates shitty minds. Therefore, change the environment to change the people.

But if you ask me, I think we are fucked…any effort I and others are doing to promote a new and scientific way of thinking gets rapidly sunk beneath the vast ocean of stupidity. I saw that with people following TROM that although they digest TROM, they are also eating tons of shit from FB and other sources and it mixes up in their brains in very weird ways.

But I won’t give up. I have no choice. I’ll continue screaming.

New website, hurdles writing books, plans for the future, and more

By tio | May 14, 2017 | Comments 4 comments

NEW WEBSITE:

My old website was based on a very old template that made the website unstable and unsecured. So much so that it was hacked several times in the past few months. Nothing that big of a deal since it was hacked by automated bots looking for flaws in the code of WordPress themes and from there on accessed Wordpress posts and were able to change the content. So I was seeing certain posts deleted and the title and content were like “hacked by…”. But since WP has a backup for all articles I was able to quickly and easily revert back all articles. So I had to take the time these days to update my website. Now is all brand new, secure, and more interesting. It is mainly my personal place where I can share stuff I do and think, without being dependent on websites like Facebook to do so. People do not realize how FB for example eats their lives, their creations, their time. Why would I post the stuff I make, my thoughts, on a website that’s owned by a company that cares mostly (if not entirely) to make money and therefore changes its rules of how it operates more often and weirder than quantum particles change states. I don’t want to rely on sharing my thoughts and creations on a website that can say: “Tio, friend, you are not allowed to post these things!”. I don’t need the daddy facebook to tell me what I’m allowed to think and create. FB banned my account 2 times so far because I posted content that IT, the God-FB, found offensive. So from now on I’ll post on my blog then share on FB because unfortunately most people are on FB…I’ll try to make this automated so when I post on my blog it goes on FB, because I don’t use FBb at all, I manage all my FB accounts and pages via HootSuite.

I also added a live chat on my site, so if people want to get in touch with me quicker they can do that via the chat. If it gets too spammy for me I’ll close it or limit it somehow. Let’s see how it goes. – the chat didn’t work properly so I closed it for now.

Anyways, from now on I’ll post here new videos I make with my drone, other kinds of videos, my thoughts on various topics, photos I make, and stuff like that. It’s my place, my home, and you are all invited in 🙂

HURDLES WRITING BOOKS:

In February last year I started to write the TROM book on language. Prior to that it took me around 1-2 months to finish up a lecture on language that was the start of researching for this series. Now is May 2017 and it’s been 1 year and around 3 months since I am working on this book. Frustrating, amazing, what!?, interesting, wtf!, and so forth. In essence, I worked on this series for more than a year and I still haven’t finished it since I still have to write the last part of it (part 5) that can also take at least 1 month to finish up. This can be frustrating for people to know that a project like TROM may release a full book, on a particular subject, every year and a half (so long!), but this is not the entire story. You see in this 1 year and some months I’ve been through a lot of changes and struggles. I broke up from TVP and had to move everything to TROM, basically rebuilding tromsite.com. I had health problems that made me unable to work for about 3 months. I started TROM Video Series that took lots of time to kickstart and then I helped with it along the way and I am still doing that. I also had several issues with my laptop: some keyboard keys stopped working and that makes writing super difficult; 8gb out of my 12gb RAM memory got toasted and I had to buy new ones and wait for them to arrive before doing any work; I had to rebuild my personal website, work on two other websites to make some more money because TROM money is lower and lower; and overall I was busy with transitioning to TROM from TVPM and dealing with some medical issues (going to hospital, feeling sick, etc.); I also worked on two other big articles and prepared them for when I’ll be able to focus on them 100%.

But there is a more important reason: this book is a monster and the subject is super complex. I think that you can’t choose any other subject that’s more difficult than language. People don’t see how much stuff I read/watch and write that I have to ditch later on when I find out it is irrelevant and I followed a misleading path that I now have to ditch entirely. They see the end result. They also don’t see me designing these books (improving images quality, making some images, testing multiple designs, editing videos for these books, and lots more). Basically, it is a TONNE of work.

I am also battling with motivation. Here’s why: if you look at any creative stuff happening online (blogs, vlogs, people writing articles or making interesting videos, or making games and stuff like that) you’ll see that most of these people, if they are somewhat successful (attract views and support), have a peak of creativity in the first 1-3 years (or less) where they push like crazy and work like nuts. After that they usually experience a deep fall and they produce less stuff, less often. Look at any blogger you followed or youtube channel – in the beginning they were making stuff like nuts, lots of articles, lots of videos, then they started to release rarer and rarer. That’s understandable because you are going to burn yourself out in the first years if you approach things like this. I’ve seen this happening with everyone I followed online. But there are two important things: first is that IF these people attract a big following and support (financial for example) in those first crazy years then they can ‘retire’ a bit afterward, doing less stuff yet still having the support from their followers, and the reach. Things get easier for these folks because of their huge following and support gained in the first years. They may release 1 video a month or 1 article a month or rarer, yet still have a lot of financial support and reach because of the ‘nuts’ past where they worked like crazy to reach this point. These are the people who succeed. The second scenario is when you push like crazy in the first years YET you don’t reach many people, therefore less support, and since you burned yourself out you can’t keep yourself afloat anymore. You produce less stuff and therefore you reach even fewer people, meaning less support (motivational support or financial support), so you may feel like you do stuff for nothing (has no value) + since you don’t have enough financial support you can’t keep on doing what you’ve been doing. Those are the people who push like the rest, yet they don’t succeed.

What happened to me: in 2010 I started working for one full year alone to make TROM documentary. Each day, no breaks, lots of stress, so much work. Prior to this I also had a blog where I was writing (lots of work) + a funny video series that I made for about 3 years (another “lots of work”). None brought me any financial support. Then in 2011 I worked again to remake TROM – same hurdles, same daily work. So around 2 years of daily intense work that followed 3-4 years of quite hard work (but not daily). Next 1-2 year(s) I worked less but still worked on helping TVP with some stuff and kickstarting their TVPMagazine project + creating VideoNeat. It wasn’t a daily work, but still quite a lot. The support thus far was almost 0 in terms of money, so it was not sustainable, but in terms of views it was somewhat increasing. I got the reach, I didn’t get the support. So overall 4-5 years of hard work with a good reach but almost no financial support. Then “boom” – we’ve got financial support for TVPMagazine to work one year, then to work another year (almost two years). But in this time I kinda burned myself. I was a bit burned because of the work before this, but now I felt a bit more forced to produce stuff since people were donating money for this work. I worked 3-4 years like nuts for TVPM. Each day, 10-12 hours, writing tonnes of articles and about very hard-to-write-about-subjects. I built TVPM website and quizzes and lots other tools, tried to help TVP with lots of other stuff like re-organizing their video/audio materials, rebuilding their website several times, managing their social networks, and more. I was unstoppable. I worked so much that I felt like burning out the few people who worked alongside me. But because I finally had my own life due to the financial support we’ve got: so now I could pay a rent, be able to buy food for myself, and so on, I felt super motivated to push myself so much. I knew that I worked a tonne in the past without any financial support, so now that I had a financial support it motivated me so much to keep the work going because I was able to be financially independent and focus 100% on what I loved doing. But I was getting so little financial support that if I needed medicine or some clothes I could go bankrupt. It was at the limit and it was not growing. So that started to sink in more and more, and I started to realize that I need more financial support to be able to keep my work flowing. Then the TVP breakup followed and the stress that accumulated to me over time + the burnout, and that lead to a huge drop in my motivation or ability to keep that kind of work going.

Since the breakup from TVP the views and financial support substantially got lower. So low I had to move with my parents because I could not afford to live on my own. My own place, my own life, that I hardly managed to make for myself by working so hard vanished in one month. With my health issues that I struggled for months, and this situation with TVP, I felt super difficult to motivate myself again to push it hard like before.

For example because of stress and hard work (little sleep, not eating well or too much, and so on) I developed a skin rash on my face that now made me so sensitive to stress (dermatitis). If before I could handle stress like a champion :), now I can’t anymore. If I get stressed a bit (not able to release more stuff or do new projects, and so on) my face turns red and itchy and painful and there is no treatment out there to cure this. So the only way to not get myself ‘hurt’ is to not stress myself. This sucks but it is also kinda forcing me to stress less. To understand what stresses me out: I feel like I found a mind blowing way to explain why the world sucks and how to fix it, so I want to scream that. I want for people to know this. It is almost like you found out you are in a computer simulation, and you know that for sure, and of course you want to tell everyone about it. That’s my feeling. Money does not stress or motivate me, they are only a mean that allows me to continue my work. If I get little financial support it stresses me because it makes my life suck and not be able to focus much or better on the “screaming” part.

So right now the financial support is dropping with each month, the reach is dropping with each month, I get a bit stressed because I want to write about so many other things but because I have to think of ways to make some money I can’t focus much on that. One thing people who do not write stuff do not understand is “the peace of mind”. I can write articles like these in a few hours, but TROM books are a different monster – I have to be really calm and relaxed to be able to write about subjects like language, evolution, monetary system, and such. I am telling you this thing is super difficult. Try it for yourself. Write about something like “instinct” or “human behavior” and try to make it as scientific as possible (with good and reliable sources) and explain it in detail. You’ll realize how super difficult it is.

But the difference between me (TROM) and a blogger or a vlogger or most of the internet “creativeness” is that I don’t do TROM because it is my ‘passion’, ‘hobby’, or is ‘cool’ or can bring me money. Not at all. I do it because it has a super important importance. It is about that “living in a computer simulation” kind of feeling. I feel like I need to do this. I just can’t live without doing this. That’s how important this project is in my view.

Therefore recently I had to struggle to motivate myself to finish up the book on language because of the drop in reach and financial support + the complex subject I am writing about. Although I am so motivated to keep on “TROMing” (to quote a friend 🙂 ), it surely is demotivating seeing how unstable the situation is with TROM from a financial perspective. It surely worries me that with so little money I’ll have to take some radical decisions or else I just can’t make a life on this planet for myself.

Someone seeing me struggling with this said these days: “I suggest you just finish up the language book the way you can and move to something else” – because this someone heard me saying that I want to move to other subjects as well, but I said: “I’m not writing this stuff for the sake of writing something. If I can’t provide some super important information through what I’m doing I prefer not doing it at all. I am not going to just write something and finish up the language book. I am going to finish it up in a way that is super relevant and makes a lot of sense. If that takes 4 months then that’s how it will be. Else makes no sense.” – quite a long quote :)).

The point is: TROM is losing reach, is losing financial support. IT also is about super complex subjects that take a tonne of time to write about so that makes people less interested in it (nowadays people want stuff to pour out like a heavy rain – breakthroughs, BreakingNews, breakdance!?) :). So TROM is more likely to go further down in reach and support, and that in turns will make me (us) less able to produce important stuff. Sucks! BUT!

PLANS FOR THE FUTURE:

I am lucky that I live in a very small, quiet, and awesome town and area in the North of Spain. Here’s me on the beach struggling with some breakdance moves :)):

Here I am in a city that’s on a rock. So awesome, can’t believe the landscape (I’ll post a video from the drone on my website soon):

Me on top of a castle that’s on top of a mountain near where I live:

And it is super important that I live in such a place because it costs me nothing to live my life here. Meaning that when I go out it costs me zero money to go to the beach, to the mountain, with the bike, for a walk, and so on. It only costs me money for the car’s fuel, but that’s all. Of course it costs the rent, food, stuff like that, what I meant is that it does not cost me money to go out and in such places that I love. So I get a serious dose of relaxedness because of where I live. When I go out, I go out. Never had FB or Twitter or WhatsApp, or anything like that on my phone. Only a handful of people can contact me and I get no notifications from apps or messages. No one can bother me while I’m out, so I am away from all the stress :).

This is super important for me!

It is true that I can’t afford to eat out (maybe 3-4 times a year I can); it is true that I can’t buy pretty much anything except food, some clothes from time to time, and basic stuff; it is true I have no money to travel anywhere. But fortunately, I don’t need to because of the area I live in. There are so many nature landscapes here that are unbelievable. I like this kind of calm life.

This allows me to compensate for the lack of TROM support. With the money I get from TROM right now, I would not be able to afford to work on it if I were to live in other parts of the world where you need to pay even for going from point A to point B. Any city bigger than 10,000 people would kill me financially and mentally because where would I go to relax? To a bar? Between the concrete jungle?

So because I don’t need much money for now, then I can still make it with what I get from TROM. But is not sustainable for sure since I have to be financially dependent even in this area. This is not good at all. Also, I don’t want you to think that TROM causes me stress. Mainly it is an issue with the money and reach. Money to allow me to continue to do this important work (in my view), and reach is just a bit upsetting because we need people to be aware of such information and I’ve been doing all I can to reach more people (made books, videos, quizzes, a curated news and videos system, and lots more). I am also a bit stressed whilst working on super complex subjects like Language because it is super hard to understand and write about them, and it stresses me out when I can’t work that much as I would like to, or when I can’t figure something out about that subject. This stress is a good stress though because it is my battle with understanding the complex world we live in ;).

Ok. So. I am now done with most issues I had in the past including my health (all good now, feeling great). And so I’ll be able to try and push again this project and my plan is to focus on video, on TROM Series. We make long videos, some longer than documentaries, and I want to release more and quicker. We will push TROM Series and our youtube channel, and TROM ebooks will have to relax so that I can focus on making them super great but do not rush with them. TROM Series more and quicker, TROM ebooks less and more detailed (like we did so far). I may also work on weekends some ‘part-time’ jobs this summer so that’ll affect how much time I can dedicate for TROM, but if I focus on videos primarily then that is many times easier to make than books. So that won’t be an issue. I can basically make these videos if I say: “I’ll start in 3 hours and work 4 hours on them”. Something I can’t say about TROM books – I can only work on the books when I am really into that. Can’t force it.

I’ve been pushing like crazy for about 5-6 years, and that’s way longer than I’ve seen most people push with their projects, so perhaps there is something special about what I’m pushing for. But videos reach more people and the feedback we get for them is great. I also love making videos and love working with Sebastian to make them. Great guy. But we need to support my and Sebastian’s work or else how can we spend time on this?

I’ve learned though to accept the situation that TROM is largely unknown and the only reason this upsets me is that I want for people to know about the subjects we talk about: how trade is the source of most issues today, what solutions there are to overcome this, and so forth. If I were to see others more popular out there pushing this worldview then I’ll be super happy and not ‘upset’ about TROM’s reach. Hell yeah I would contact them and offer to team up with them. TVP and TZM may seem to be doing just that but in my view they are not. They focus on money money money as the source of problems too much, and they are kinda non-cooperative from my experience + kinda sprinkled with pseudoscience (maybe not from them necessarily, but from many of their supporters). So I just can’t see an organization/movement to point out that trade creates most of today’s issues and how to seriously think about relevant ways to tackle that.

I know blogs that get 13,000 dollars a month on Patreon and their websites look hacked, their subjects very opinionated. If I had that money I would help at least 4 people and we would do tonnes of projects. Here’s a brief on what I would love doing (just in my mind right now):

make a weekly video show with the best news of the week; news based on our TROM news, not BS news and exaggerated ones that you see on social networks.
take great articles from the web and transform them into videos; there are amazing articles written by people that would end up as amazing videos; this could lead us to all kinds of interesting collaborations with groups of people that we can’t reach with TROM ever.
create a search engine that can search everything that’s free and open source online: 3D models for 3D printers, videos, images, songs, even free places where you can crash for a night or find free food; a free search engine 🙂
I would also like to buy some stuff like a better laptop for myself because my laptop is old and not working too well; I would love to have a big monitor and a great keyboard so I can design/write better and more comfortable for me.
and lots more stuff + I would financially help others that work in the same direction

Here’s the thing: I am not obsessed with making stuff for TROM for the sake of doing that.I do this because there are so many important subjects to talk about. I have a list of 92 possible future subjects – figure that out :D. And at least 3-4 articles/books in the making on top of the last part of language that I am working on right now. Plus I want to work on a fictional book about how a future saner trade-free society might look like. So I have a tonne of ideas and I will try to start working on them. Will see how the money thing will work out and what I can afford to spend my time on.

And just so those who donate/donated know: I’ll never in my life forget that there are people like you out there who helped me out for so long. There are people who donated over the years hundreds or thousands of euros – that’s just hard to process considering they could have done any other thing with that money.

Oh and btw, I will try to make more “my perspective” videos and “4 things that amaze me” posts. I wish I had more arms and heads because I want to do so much.

TROM Dissected after 6 years

By tio | March 11, 2017 | Comments 30 comments

This dissection will be brief but important. Since I made TROM (started in 2010 and finished in 2011) I learned a ton about the world and some of the stuff I learned made me realized that I was ‘wrong’ in certain parts from TROM Documentary. Mind you I wrote several books since then on topics related to TROM and for the books my research on the topcis was much much more detailed. So it was quite normal to find out small parts of TROM with which I would disagree.

Here are the things that I got wrong in TROM or I kinda disagree with now:

…

Facebook Ban

By tio | December 15, 2016 | Comments 11 comments

Short story short: I published the documentary “The Raw Ones” from VideoNeat to Facebook with this message “Surprisingly educational documentary. I think nowadays you will rarely find such documentaries that are to the point and scientific.” – the documentary is about how sick this world is in regards to the naked human body – it is educational, it is from 1965, and it is banned on Facebook.

I posted it on my personal account, TROM and VN pages. Then bam! Facebook blocks me saying that I didn’t respect their terms and conditions…they logged me out from their messenger for 2 of my accounts, both of which were admins for TROM and VN, yet the other account of mine did not post a thing on FB and never did, it is a personal account to keep in touch with my family. I can’t post on FB for at least 24h, and TROM page is deleted/unpublished and I can only hope they will bring it back.They also blocked another admin of TROM page, even if he did nothing at all.

So Facebook got scared of some tits basically, or something like that because of the documentary’s poster, and went bananas and blocked me everywhere. I didn’t like FB at all, ever, but now it’s just beyond Hitler-like. I will incorporate more about this in a TROM future book (hopefully really soon) to explain why this situation with entities like FB or YTB or Twitter and such are very very scary.

It’s a very sick world, and what an irony….posting a documentary about how this society is so ‘scared’ when it comes to the naked human body to then be blocked by the largest ‘social’ network in the world on the reason that I posted nudity….

Mad, mad world.

I’ll update here if there are any other updates but I am thinking of completely giving up FB.

UPDATE: we are back on FB, but my attitude towards FB will change from now on and I will try not to post messages on FB directly but on my blog and then post a link to FBso people check my blog if they want to read these posts. I can’t rely on the primitiveness and stupidity of Facebook anymore.