Skeptic Project

5 The meat article

A while ago there was a guy (Colin) who was writing for TVPM quite a lot, more than anyone else who wanted to help out with articles. He made a few interesting articles, but then he submitted one about meat consumption saying from the get-go that he is a vegan and he made this article from his vegan perspective. I didn't care about that, only the article though, but it became apparent later on that there was a bias in the article.

The article was full of non-scientific claims, and I won't even go into details because is pointless and I don't have the original article anyway (he deleted it as I remember, or made it private) where I showcased to him in detail where the non-scientific aspects were. This is the original article that he posted on his website

http://colinculbreth.tumblr.com/raisingthesteaks -

I spent almost 3 months discussing with him over his article, reading all of the sources he provided, watched documentaries and videos he sourced, and so forth, but it was not a scientific article unfortunately. Just as a small example, he used Cowspiracy as his source for some of the claims, but this documentary has been criticized many times to have relied on sources that are not 'peer reviewed'. For sure the consumption of livestock is a huge issue and I didn't realize the extent until Colin wrote this article and I had to 'investigate' the matter, but let's present it in a scientific manner - no point in inventing statistics and claims when there is enough scientific data that'll do the job.

Anyways, so the article was very unscientific relying on shaddy claims and a ton of assumptions, and I provided a detailed review, sentence by sentence almost, for it all. Later on Colin agreed to rewrite the article and take my notes into consideration. I was super happy, but then when he sent the new article it was pretty much the same article he sent before....and I told him that I am not going to review it again and say the same things again. I proved to him beyond any shadow of doubt where many of his claims were dishonest and not scientific. But because I thought this is a super important subject to discuss I told him that I will write a version of that article from my own perspective and based on scientific facts and I will send it to him for review and for suggestions. I did that, sent to him, and he was very put off by it all. No reason other than an emotional one. He sent me several messages while the entire story was unfolding telling me that I do not care about planet Earth and I need to act now....and so on. He was very emotionally attached on this subject, and this is something he said many times, but that made him (I think) prone to mistakes. Anyways, I need to mention again, I am not attacking Colin at all, but I needed to present that for what will follow now:

Colin sent the article to J&R first, and usually all articles were sent to me first to review them as J&R didn't have the time for that. He was also in touch with J&R for a while. So J&R approved the article for publishing and they thought it was a "very good article". A suite of conversations between all of us happened in this period of time, and I saw J&R how unable they were to verify facts - they were ping ponged between me and Colin, sometimes trusting me, sometimes Colin....and could not make up their minds. That was a proof at how vulnerable they are when it comes to verifying facts. For sure they do not have the time to go through such articles and verify the claims, but just keep this aspect in mind.

Roxanne was also very put off by the fact that I re-wrote that article....and I never understood why. I only tried to present that important subject from a more scientific perspective after Colin failed to do so. I even told them I can publish using Colin's name if they want that as I never cared to be 'mentioned' as an author...for me the subject is always the most important one, not who talks or writes about it.

In the end I told Roxanne that if they don't agree to publish my version of the article in TVPM then I'll publish it on my blog and that's that, but I won't publish Colin's article as I am not going to make TVPM a pseudoscience magazine that then I have to deal with the backlash for it and overall mess up the magazine's reputation. I would have, for sure, made another article "debunking" Colin's article if they 'forced' me to publish it anyway :).

But this entire story that lasted a few months taught me that I can't rely on J&R to ever check any facts for any article.


6 TVP Movie Script

Roxanne contacted me at one point to ask if I can help make a script for their big budget movie. I was super excited and I said I will give it a try! Even if it just so happened that I didn't have an internet connection for a week or so because of some reasons, I managed to work on it. They wanted a script for a movie that would be appealing to the masses. I thought of adding some drama and mystery and in 2 weeks I managed to make something. I rushed to send them the script as soon as possible because Roxanne told me that they would appreciate if I send something to them in a week or two as I remember. This is the script if you want to read it :) ( https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fIsGKG7QsqKBPyThDJ8oFv2hPb0ogZ5E0rURwSWC2tU/edit )

I enthusiastically sent the script to Roxanne but I got no feedback for a couple of days....they really have to work on this because is very unfriendly to ask something from someone to do for free and then they do the thing, send it to you, and you don't reply. At least say: I received your script and we will get back to you in 3-4 days. Or we are busy....but say something. Anyways, they replied after a few days time with a very simple and unsatisfactory feedback. Something like "this is not the direction we would want for the movie but there are many good ideas in there". So that's how that story ended. I will become like a broken record but understand that I don't accuse Roxanne of anything, but when people struggle to do stuff for you at lease please take some time and focus on what they are doing. TVP is very un-motivational from this perspective. VERY!

Later on they shared a script with me that someone else made for them (a script producer...writer...not sure) and I can only say that I was deeply disappointed. But won't say more than that. I told that to Roxanne in a bigger feedback than she sent me for my script.

Anyways...I wonder though if they managed to make the script as I remember in 2011-2012 Roxanne was saying that they are so close to finish it up. It is almost 2017....I really wish they could do the script by now. I really do!


7 Statistics

This one is short but interesting. I always sent statistics for the mag to Roxanne, for every issue: unique readers, time spent on the mag, and so forth. However they never had statistics for their main website and I asked them so many times, even recently, and they said the stats don't work properly. Same answer I got in 2013. So if TVP has a web development team, why not foxing this minor issue?

What was interesting while sending the stats to Roxanne was how disappointed she was when we dropped in views. Almost like views were the most important factor for the magazine.


8 Financial proposal

Recently I propose to Roxanne a detailed plan of changing their financing model to better help themselves, the magazine, and other projects, plus allow more people to buy their materials as it would have reduced the costs of their materials. I did that after I asked her if I should bother with that proposal, and she said I can tell her about it. But she gave me no feedback to my proposal. In short my proposal was about making all of TVP's materials digital - books, dvd's and cd's. And offer them as a subscription plan ($5 a month). I also proposed to extract a winner out of those subscribers each month for a free tour and make new TVPM issues a week available in advance for the subscribers on TVP's website. I had to remind her later on to respond to my proposal and she did very briefly like "we can't do this right now"...but I also wanted to know how much money they make a month to know how to approach this and much more. She was completely disengaged.

I even tried to make their "The best that money can't buy" book in the magazine's format so that they can sell it digitally so that people don't pay lots of money on the transport when they buy it physically. It took me a while to convince Roxanne to let me try that, but again Roxanne lost her interest.


9 Comic book

I tried several times to create a comic book depicting life in the future based on TVP's ideas and designs. But from what I got from them, they do not like cartoonish 'things' so it was a failure and something I wasn't able to even start. Even if Roxanne said at one point that I can give it a try, later on she wasn't sure Jacque would want his designs to be 'cartoonized"... these answers that you can't make sense if they are a yes or a no, was something I had to deal with TVP for years, and it gets stressful after a while because you are always confused as to what they want or do not want.


10 The Newsletter


TVP had a newsletter system that was broken since I first saw it in 2012. It didn't have a captcha nor a confirmation for subscription, making any spam-bot able to sign up thousands of times. I told them that several times in the past, but again I was being ignored (their best quality). Later on the guy in charge to sending the newsletter to about 250,000 subscriber list (most of which I always suspected are not real subscriptions due to that flaw in the subscription form) stopped dealing with the newsletter and I had to take over that process and send the newsletter for TVPM, even if I was not familiar with Joomla (the 'thing' the main website was built on). I told them to build the website on Wordpress several times as I could help with building and managing it, but they ignored that as well. Now I had to adapt to Joomla to send out the newsletter. I even ended up being the one who sent newsletters for TVP, not only TVPM.

Anyways after a while, new people in charge with the website decided that the list, guess what, is indeed made up of many non-human subscribers and said they had to sort that out somehow. Pause for a moment because this is important: since TVP had such a huge newsletter list it required a big expensive server for them to send out the emails to all of those. Interestingly it is super expensive to send out newsletters (server-wise). So a part of what TVP paid for the sever was to send emails to no one. But the way they tried to sort this out brought me again in a stupid and nonsensical situation with TVP as follows:

When they decided to do that, it was exactly when we had to ask money again for yearly donations for the magazine, and so this break, this inability to send out a newsletter in this period of time was affecting the magazine a lot. Anyways, using some sorting methods the TVP folks ended up with a list of some 13,000 subscribers out of 250,000. They reduced the list in the past for several times and I have the bad habit at looking at the data and what I saw was that every time they reduced the list they also reduced the engagement for the newsletter. Meaning: list shorter, fewer people got the message. I thought for sure they must do something wrong because that 'good' list of 13,000 or so was bringing about 300 people to the magazine while a few months ago, that huge and ugly list brought about some 2-3 thousand readers. HUGE difference.

Because we dropped so hugely in readers due to this new newsletter list I decided to try and help them because here's what they did to 'fix' that list: their server was compromised and was recognized by many email clients as a SPAM sever. Meaning: when they sent you a newsletter the Gmail server recognized thevenusproject.com as SPAM and the email ended up in your SPAM folder. HOWEVER, they decided to send a confirmation email to the ugly list so that only those who subscribe/confirm again their subscription, will become the good list. That's how they ended up with 13,000 from 250,000. BUT what I tried to explain is that it is naive to use an already compromised server to try and reach the 250,000 list to build a new one out of them since most of these emails will end up in spam as always. So I proposed to take all of the 250,000 subscribers and import them to an external server for mailing, like MailChimp, to make sure that when they send the confirmation email it reaches most of those people. Quite logical, isn't it? But again I was either ignored (completely) or they tried to tell me that I do not understand how newsletters work, or that it is too expensive. I talked to Roxanne and she was ready to pay for such a thing as she thought it was a 'great' idea. I asked TVP folks why my idea is not good, and I got no reply. So, nothing happened, as usual.

Actually one of these TVP folks sent me an email calling me 'desperate' because I insisted to take my idea into account, and he told me he will ignore any of my emails from now on. Ha!? :)) I was so surprised, I just tried to help, at least they could have give me some info as to why my proposal may not work. Later on the same guy apologized for his email. Ok, I said, np. And I moved on. Here's part of that conversation (pdf). ( https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3TarwrhZhiYX09tRU1HNk9pX3c/view )

The conversation

Re: newsletter list
18 messages
Borislav *** Tue, Nov 3, 2015 at 7:20 PM
Reply To: Borislav***
To: Roxanne Meadows ***, Sven ***
"tio.trom@gmail.com" <tio.trom@gmail.com>
I've been further thinking on this issue. The only possibility that came to mind is to send an email to non gmail users,
asking them if they would like to continue receiving news from us. If so, they would have to sign up for the newsletter
again, using the form on our site.
Not sure how many people would go through that. It could be many or it could be very few. Also, I would prefer to do
this move when the new site launches because it will display well on mobile devices (and so likely have greater
effectiveness).
We can also do it now. I think it will have less effectiveness due to the site not being mobile friendly.
I recommend waiting for the new site and then doing it, however I have no problem doing it now. I don't really consider
the size of the list very important. It has importance only in the very short term. In the long term, our reputation has
much more importance, because that ensures that we actually reach people when we send a newsletter.
So I'm cool with both options. :) Please let me know which one you prefer.

Hi Bo and Sven,
Tio is asking if he can send another news letter but he also mentioned it went down to 6k. This
actually couldn't happen at a worse time. We want to hold an event for Jacque's birthday and
sell tickets and we have no mailing list to send this invitation to. Is there anything that can be
done to bring back some of those people to the list? This hampers things a great deal. We
also want to announce a fund drive for the city during the event but have no one to send the
announcement to. Kind of rough. Is there anything that can be done about this? What do you
suggest?

Tio TROM **** Tue, Nov 3, 2015 at 7:52 PM
To: Borislav ****
I suggest the following to keep a balance between reputation and list size:
1. Export the old 200k subscribers list.
2. Import it to MailChimp and buy a month subscription for 860$.

9/17/2016 Gmail - Re: newsletter list

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3. Send an email to the 200k that is well written and to the point, asking them to subscribe again to a new list and pay
attention to future newsletters, to check their spam folder and mark it NOT SPAM.
4. Since MailChimp lets you send 3 4 times per month, take those who didn't open the newsletter sent via MailChimp,
and repeat the process for the entire month, until you get the most out of those 200k.
5. After the new list is done you can work on improving the tvp server reputation.
An alternative to point 5 is to continue to use mailchimp for newsletter if the list is not that big, so you cut the costs
from the tvp server and let all the newsletter be handled by a 3rd party. We can only know if it is worth it after the
malchimp experiment with the 200k.
Point 4 can be improved if we manage to insert the TVP newsletter form into the mailchimp directly so there won't be
issues with the website design.
If I can be of any help let me know.
[Quoted text hidden]

Borislav **** Tue, Nov 3, 2015 at 11:07 PM
Reply To: ****
To: Roxanne Meadows**** "tio.trom****Sven Gillessen
<****
I see many problems with the approach Tio is suggesting. Money is only one, and the easiest for me to explain. I'm
noticing the rough estimate below (50k 80k). Based on my experience with communicating and sending instructions
to site members so far, I find it extremely unlikely that so many people would follow the instructions we send in the
email. I would consider it lucky if even 10k people subscribe. For example, I remember an instance when I reached
out to some dozens of people, telling them to change their occupation on the Sci&Tech database because it was
wrong, and nobody replied or changed their occupation.
But my other concerns with this approach are about the technical difficulties involved. I see many possible problems
in importing and exporting (especially such a large number of contacts), in possibly keeping sync between our server
and the external system, in understanding the external system how it sends, how it handles bounces, etc., etc. Very
likely we are also making assumptions (like that the emails would surely go to the inbox, or that we would not be
sending from our own domain, or that there are no legal implications even though the sending organization is TVP)
which may turn out incorrect. I see a good amount of investigation needed there (as an example, it took me weeks to
set up the mailing system on the new site). Also, probably it's only me or Sven who can do this work, and I think our
(unfortunately limited) time is better spent on the new site.
I am aware of technical ramifications, such as our IP and domain reputation. That is why I am always leaving out
gmail users. But I am much less aware of the legal ramifications. Sven has been explaining to me that when someone
submits our newsletter subscription form, we are required to send a confirmation email to the person, and only when
they click the confirmation link there can we start sending them emails. It turns out we weren't doing this for the past
years we started sending the confirmation emails only recently. When we discovered the whole issue, we dropped
the list from 200k to 12k (the number of confirmed users). I understand that if we send emails to people to whom we
did not send a confirmation email, people could sue TVP and there could be fees imposed. I can't estimate the
likelihood of that happening, but I am aware of how high the fees can be (judging from the CAN SPAM act which
regulates email sending practices). So, if deemed safe enough, we could just include the non gmail users from the old
big list to our current list. This is another option, if it's worth anything.

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If not, I can get on with sending an email to all non gmail users with instructions to subscribe on our newsletter form
again.

On Tuesday, 3 November 2015, 21:38, Roxanne Meadows ****
I was just looking up your email to write you
Because of the conference coming up March 12th we need to start selling tickets asap It would
be ideal to have as many people on our news letter list as possible. I tend towards doing what
we can do now to try and get more to sign up and doing it again Jan. In regards to the
conference we can't wait until Jan. I know I don't know all of the ramifications that you know
about it but if you see a problem with this approach please let me know.
This is what Tio wrote me. Is this a good option?


I gave them an idea about the newsletter that may work but it can cost around 860$, though we
may get the money back from people. I thought to export all the subscribers, the 200k ones,
then use a 3rd party service out there to submit the list and send an email to all of those saying
to register again for a new tvp list. This way we are 100% sure that we get to those 200k people
because a 3rd party system has no issues as the tvp server has. Then the new list can be
made out of those who subscribe again out of the 200k. I think that's a good solution. Costly,
but I do not know of any other solution that is better.
It costs 860$ but we can send 4 5 times in a month for that money. So, we send it once to the
200k. X open the email, Y out of those, subscribe to the new list. Then we repeat the process
and send another email in a week to those who did not open the email in the first try. This way
we make sure that they didn't just ignore it. And repeat the cycle with those who do not open
the email until, in a month, with a 3rd party system, we increase the chances to get to all of
those that we could reach. That's my solution and I told to Bo and his main concern was money
but I think 800$ or so TVP can raise if it makes a tiny donation campaign on the main website.
Let me know if I should insist with this method. Maybe out of those 200k we will get a list of 50
80k or more, maybe we won't, but throwing away 200k subscribers without trying such a
method is nuts to me. We will definitely get more subscribers with that method, but how much I
can't tell.

9/17/2016 Gmail - Re: newsletter list

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Tio TROM **** Wed, Nov 4, 2015 at 12:30 AM
To: Borislav ****
I have been using MailChimp for 4 years now. They have an easy way to submit large lists and export whatever you
need: those who opened the email, those who did not. I said in the email that there is no guarantee how many we will
be able to reach this way, but it seems like the only solution to make sense of that big list. When you eliminated so
many and we lost 1.7k TVPM readers, certainly something from your method was wrong for those 1.7k people who
wanted to receive the newsletter from TVP but perhaps they didn't see your newsletter to subscribe again, and they
were forgotten.
Since no one can tell how many of those 200k will subscribe again to the 'good' tvp list, we have 2 options:
1. Send email from the 'broken' server to all of them and ask to subscribe again so we build up a better list.
2. Send email from a good server to all of them and ask to subscribe again so we build up a better list.
I vote for 2 :)
Mailchimp: You don't have to sync anything. You export the list (200k) from TVP, import to MailChimp, then for a
month you start sending newsletters using mailchimp this way:
send to all 200k. 20k open the email in a week. you export the 180k who did not open the email. send again to
those. 10k open after a week. send to the rest of 170k. do this for a month.
Those who opened the mailchmp and subscribed to tvp newsletter list, will become the tvp list.
That's all.

9/17/2016 Gmail - Re: newsletter list

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=a164174e1a&view=pt&q=roxanne%20newsletter%20sven%20bo&qs=true&search... 5/9
You can also include the bounced emails as 'not opened'.
About legal implications? I personally find it hard to think that would be an issue since I have friends who spam 10
times as more subscribers as tvp has, and they do it 'legally' for companies, to people who never subscribed to their
list. But my opinion about 'legality' ends here.
That's my suggestion.
[Quoted text hidden]

Borislav **** Wed, Nov 4, 2015 at 1:18 AM
Reply To: ****
To: Tio TROM****, Roxanne Meadows**** Sven Gillessen
OK Tio, let's make this more concrete. Are you saying that you can take care of all the technical aspects if I give you
the list?
[Quoted text hidden]
Tio TROM **** Wed, Nov 4, 2015 at 1:41 AM
To: Borislav Zlatanov ****
I won't take care of anything, I can't manage this. I suggested this method of using a 3rd server to sort the 200k
subscribers before doing anything more to that list. Try to consider it before ditching it. Look into MailChimp or other
such systems before making assumptions. See how they handle bouncing emails, what types of lists they allow to
import, etc.. You don't have to sync anything with them as I explained.
[Quoted text hidden]
Borislav**** Wed, Nov 4, 2015 at 11:26 AM
Reply To: ****
To: Tio TROM****, "meadows****, Sven
Tio, I'm not ditching the idea. I tried to explain that I'm not familiar with mailchimp so I don't know whether it can do the
work we need done.
I guess I explained (or at least tried to) my stance on all proposed approaches. If anyone sees faulty thinking or
assumptions or biases in what I said, please let me know.
Is there anything more that anyone would like to ask me?
[Quoted text hidden]
Sven Gillessen **** Wed, Nov 4, 2015 at 11:51 AM
To: Borislav Z****
Cc: Roxanne Meadows ****, Tio TROM ****

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I will not repeat what Bo already said. I just want to emphasize on the legal problems. Tio, please take some time to
read and understand the can spam act. As TVP is a company operating out of Florida they need to follow Florida and
US litigation. I know you don't like to bother too much with laws, but in this case Bo and I try to protect TVP from both
fines and applications for restrictive injunction, which could mean that TVP had to stop operating online altogether.
[Quoted text hidden]
Tio TROM **** Wed, Nov 4, 2015 at 1:31 PM
To: Sven Gillessen ****m>
Cc: Roxanne Meadows ****
I forgot to reply to all for my past emails and may be important so I will do that now.::
Tio
I have been using MailChimp for 4 years now. They have an easy way to submit large lists and export whatever you
need: those who opened the email, those who did not. I said in the email that there is no guarantee how many we will
be able to reach this way, but it seems like the only solution to make sense of that big list. When you eliminated so
many and we lost 1.7k TVPM readers, certainly something from your method was wrong for those 1.7k people who
wanted to receive the newsletter from TVP but perhaps they didn't see your newsletter to subscribe again, and they
were forgotten.
Since no one can tell how many of those 200k will subscribe again to the 'good' tvp list, we have 2 options:
1. Send email from the 'broken' server to all of them and ask to subscribe again so we build up a better list.
2. Send email from a good server to all of them and ask to subscribe again so we build up a better list.
I vote for 2 :)
Mailchimp: You don't have to sync anything. You export the list (200k) from TVP, import to MailChimp, then for a
month you start sending newsletters using mailchimp this way:
send to all 200k. 20k open the email in a week. you export the 180k who did not open the email. send again to
those. 10k open after a week. send to the rest of 170k. do this for a month.
Those who opened the mailchmp and subscribed to tvp newsletter list, will become the tvp list.
That's all.
You can also include the bounced emails as 'not opened'.
About legal implications? I personally find it hard to think that would be an issue since I have friends who spam 10
times as more subscribers as tvp has, and they do it 'legally' for companies, to people who never subscribed to their
list. But my opinion about 'legality' ends here.
That's my suggestion.
Bo
OK Tio, let's make this more concrete. Are you saying that you can take care of all the technical aspects if I give you
the list?
Tio
I won't take care of anything, I can't manage this. I suggested this method of using a 3rd server to sort the 200k
subscribers before doing anything more to that list. Try to consider it before ditching it. Look into MailChimp or other
such systems before making assumptions. See how they handle bouncing emails, what types of lists they allow to
import, etc.. You don't have to sync anything with them as I explained.
[Quoted text hidden]
Tio TROM**** Wed, Nov 4, 2015 at 1:32 PM
To: Borislav Zlatanov <****
Yes, my question is what are the technical problems considering what I explained about MailChimp?
[Quoted text hidden]

9/17/2016 Gmail - Re: newsletter list

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Tio TROM**** Wed, Nov 4, 2015 at 1:46 PM
To: Sven ****
Cc: Borislav **** Roxanne ****
Sven, this was about doing this once to sort them out. We did it for the past year multiple times in this 'illegality', and
this time would only be to sort them out so we become 'legal'. It's just like sending another newsletter. I personally
think is worth the 'risk', if there is any such risk. I think is far more illegal to ask money for TVP Magazine or other
projects through TVP website, social networks, newsletter, and such, when we have no company, no non profit 'thing',
no documents to describe what we get the money for.
After that you will have a much bigger list, at least bigger, and you can work out to improve the server to make sure
we reach those people from tvp server.
I insist on this because I saw that by reducing the list you remove good subscribers and I want to make sure we get
the most out of the 200k because fewer subscribers mean less support for any TVP project. And I will repeat, we lost
about 1.7k readers to the magazine because of this last time, in a moment in which we desperately needed help. We
lost 80% of the readers we've got from the newsletter. That sounds disastrous to me. And please don't think I don't
understand that server reputation is very important, or protecting TVP from the stupid laws, but also please
understand that if you go on and reduce the list as you did so far, it hurts TVP and its projects a lot.
Let's try to maximize the new subscriber list from the 200k ones and also improve server reputation. I can try to help
with mailchimp as I am familiar with it, if you need any help. Or ask me if mailchimp can do this or that and I will
research and let you know.
[Quoted text hidden]
[Quoted text hidden]
"Sven Gillessen"@TVP **** Wed, Nov 4, 2015 at 2:45 PM
To: tiotrom****, meadows**** filip****
borislav
I'm just forwarding this last reply from Tio to Bo because he was forgotten on the last reply.
I also added Filip as we recently discussed the subject matter outside of the ongoing issue and he might have to ass
some valuable insights.

[Quoted text hidden]

Borislav **** Wed, Nov 4, 2015 at 7:25 PM
Reply To: ****
To: Tio TROM****
Here is my answer: I'm not familiar with mailchimp so I don't know whether it can do the work we need done.
[Quoted text hidden]
Tio TROM **** Wed, Nov 4, 2015 at 7:47 PM
To: Borislav ****
Make an account Bo http://mailchimp.com/ . It is free for 1k or so
subscriber list. You can create newsletters, send, import, export,
test. Need help? Ask me.
[Quoted text hidden]
[Quoted text hidden]
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Borislav **** Wed, Nov 4, 2015 at 8:32 PM
Reply To:****
To: Tio TROM**** Roxanne Meadows ****Sven Gillessen
I understand that you are asking me to do the research and tests needed in order to check whether mailchimp can do
what we need. I tried to explain before that I think my time is much better spent on the new site.
If you consider the approach you suggest as worthwhile and you have years of experience with mailchimp, then I
don't think you need anything from me.
[Quoted text hidden]
Tio TROM**** Thu, Nov 5, 2015 at 3:26 PM
To: Borislav****
Cc: Roxanne Meadows**** Sven ****
What is it that mailchmp has to do Bo? I said to add the 200k to mailchimp and 'milk' the list for a month with a 3rd
party service until you have a much larger list to start with your approach on improving tvp server for newsletter.
Explain again:
1. import 200k to mailchimp.
2. send newsletter to all to and tell to subscribe again (a simple link to tvp website should be enough) and tell them to
confirm the subscription, like you have now on the website (right?). So they click, susbcribe, confirm.
3. send newsletters for a month using mailchimp to those who didn't open the newsletter until you reach the most of
what you can reach.
4. now tvp has a new list fo subscribers, exactly what you wanted in the first place, but this list will be bigger, that's the
only difference.
5. from there on is business as usual.
Try to export the old 200k minus the ones who already subscribed again. Let's see how big is that file. Export as CSV.
Side note: the newsletter system we use for TVPM sends no confirmation email for subscribers and the service we
use (Joomag) is the biggest e magazine publisher out there. Just saying, not recommending this, but I thought of
mentioning it.
[Quoted text hidden]

9/17/2016 Gmail - Re: newsletter list

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=a164174e1a&view=pt&q=roxanne%20newsletter%20sven%20bo&qs=true&search... 9/9
Borislav **** Thu, Nov 5, 2015 at 4:04 PM
Reply To:
To: Tio TROM****
Cc: Roxanne Meadows****, Sven Gillessen ****
I guess you must be quite desperate, Tio. I understand that. You keep putting it on me to do the work. Lucky that I'm
participating in a course that, besides communication skills, is teaching me how to set boundaries. So, for the third
time, I'm saying "no" to you. I will say it ten more times if I have to.
I hope you understand that if I want to see serious changes in this world, I must focus my time and skills on things that
I consider effective solutions. Not on things in which I see no value and only money being lost.
Again, if you think it makes sense, do the work yourself. Don't put it on me.
[Quoted text hidden]
Tio TROM **** Thu, Nov 5, 2015 at 4:21 PM
To: Borislav ****
Cc: Roxanne Meadows ****, Sven Gillessen ****
I saw a while ago a comment on a video, a dude said to one of the negative commentators: "You should buy this book
on positive communication skills and you will improve your attitude. Don't be so negative!"
The guy replied: "Yeah, $40 for such a book....I could buy 80 beers with the money".
Then the 'positive' one said: "Fuck off! If you think is worth spending on beer instead of such a book, then you are a
moron!".
And the guy said: "Aha, I see how effective that book was..... Should I still buy it now?"
Get it Bo? Calling me desperate and replying with only saying that you won't take my suggestion into account does
not address the subject, nor does it solves anything. This is not communication.
If you think my suggestion is not good you need to point out why. You should appreciate that I take from my limited
time to try and help with something I shouldn't even care about because is not something I ever said I am going to
manage. I got into this because based on your solution you reduced the TVPMagazine readers by 80%. If you lose
80% of anything, even the grass in your backyard, you will go on alert mode. :)
I guess I will leave this to Roxanne to decide. I proposed a solution, I am still here to help if I can.

11 Cheaper Server

Some 3-4 years ago TVP was paying, as far as I remember, over 150$ a month for their server to host a website that was much more simple than many of the websites I had and I was paying 120$ a YEAR for them all. After some discussions trying to propose to them better alternatives and being told that I was wrong as I don't understand why they need these expensive servers, they indeed did that and reduced the cost by a lot. But again, if my memory doesn't cheat on me :) their attitude and response was not like: "hm, interesting, ok let's look into how to reduce costs for TVP." - So, again, a situation in which I tried to help TVP and I was 'dismissed' in a very 'rude' way, only to later on implement a solution similar to what I proposed. Classic TVP scenarios from my experience.





12 TVPM Campaign Complaint


When I asked money for TVPM (campaign approved by Roxanne) to keep on making TVPM for another year, I kept my promise 100% like with all the projects I've done. But now I had to ask again for another year and I got a huge message from a TVP guy (Saso) telling me that he does not agree with the campaign and that the money could be spent in a better way and that he won't support the campaign. Mind you all of these campaigns were first approved by Roxanne, I didn't just go bananas and ask for money for TVPM. So he said that we could better use the money to make a documentary about Jacque, a documentary someone else was working on and I even helped with making the website for the upcoming documentary. But TVPM is TVPM, who is there to decide that instead of TVPM let's raise money for another project!? As I told him I wanted to give TVPM readers the opportunity to keep this project alive: if they do that then ok, we will keep on going, if not we will stop. As simple as that. He also said that if we don't raise all money then it looks 'bad' for TVP...weird.

He (and others) also came with 'solutions' to reduce the magazine size or how often we release it in order to ask for less money, not knowing anything about how we work for the magazine. This reminded me that some TVP people in the past told me the same: to make the magazine no more than 30 pages long and release it every 3 months or so.... What the fuck is that? :)) Do you release a magazine for the sake of releasing a magazine!? I guess that's how many people think, but TVPM was the other way around: we released it because we had to present many important subjects that are not limited by pages or sundays :). Weird way of looking at things....

Anyhow because of this new campaign I then got an email from Roxanne (or several emails) asking if I can reduce the cost for the magazine. I made her a list of my spendings (how much I pay for my rent, electricity, food, etc. - not that she asked for) to show her that the money I ask merely allow me to survive and be able to focus on the magazine, but do nothing more than that + I also pay for services for the magazine. But then she said that some people complained to her that I want to do something "extravagant" (the exact word) with the money. I just couldn't stop laughing. I had to call some friends to tell them about that because it was so hilarious considering I barely had money to buy a new pair of shoes and I was working non stop for the magazine. Roxanne seemed to not agree with such views from those people though. And I always appreciated that, though I suspect in the end such opinions from people like Saso had an impact on her attitude towards the magazine. She denies that, but I find it hard to believed that if some people who visit you regularly or are so close to you have such distorted views about the magazine, that won't influence your views at all. Anyways.

All in all, such reactions from people close to TVP are very 'interesting' because they never, as I remember, asked me how we work for the magazine or any details in that regards, so they always projected what we do with the money, even if I always tried to be transparent and even made a few articles for TVPM explaining where the money goes, but as I later on found out several such people close to TVP never even read the magazine (3 years of making it and not reading one issue), yet they came up with 'proposals' for how to run it. Not productive.





13 Tie articles to TVP

'Some' TVP people complained that TVPM articles are not connected with TVP. Though check all articles to see that all are connected with TVP. I guess they feel the need to repeat the same things over and over again for all articles like : TVP proposes an alternative....bla bla bla. Which is redundant.

Also, as I explained to them so many times, TVP from TVPMagazine stands for "The Venus Project", plus 99% of our readers came from TVP (social networks or newsletter). So why do we have to even explain that these articles are connected with TVP? But more to the point: shouldn't TVP be about science? Why should it matter if I mention TVP when I talk about how we can automate the entire world, or how language works?

Roxanne asked me several times to add Jacque's quotes to articles, and it really felt uncomfortable because it sounds wrong from a scientific perspective. If you ever read my articles you will see that I avoid mentioning people's names when I quote them. I say "this guy said....." and I link to the word "this guy" to a wiki page about "that guy" :). I say "this guy said this", without telling who that guy is, because in my view it matters what people did or what they said not who they are. It sounds so cultish to say: As Jacque says: "An intelligent engineer in the 1920s could not understand today's technology". Why not just say that without mentioning Jacque!? I made those views of mine clear to Roxanne, but nevertheless in the end I did as she said. I accepted her suggestions.

Later on Roxanne started to say too that I did not tie the articles to TVP. If that was the case then she should have spent the time fixing that as she was always welcomed to make any suggestions. But I guess you can read the articles and judge for yourself if they were connected or not with TVP.




14 TVPM and Interviews

In January 2016 they announced a 'huge' interview with Anonymous group that had over 4 million followers on Facebook. Great I said! Even if that group is full of pseudoscience is good to have such an exposure. I listened to the interview and aside the fact that I honestly thought that the TVP guy (Saso) didn't explain TVP well at all in my view and also in many commentators' view, when asked where people can find more info about TVP and how people can get involved he spent a lot of time mentioning this or that and the other, yet not once mentioning by far the most active (or the only one) TVP project, the magazine. The only project where you could get involved by writing articles, help with the website, help create new tools, etc.. How come did he forget about the most active TVP project? The one who produced thousands of pages to explain things that TVP should have explained many years ago. Oh, guess what, this guy is the same guy who complained about TVPM campaign...Then later on went bonkers and accused me of taking advantage of TVP to gain followers to make money for myself and so on....Weird. Anyways, I sent a message to Roxanne asking if this guy represents TVP or himself since TVPM is still an official TVP project and he never even mentioned it in the interview. Roxanne told me that she told him many times to mention the magazine in interviews.

I told Roxanne that if they have a future interview I would like to give it a try so I can (maybe) better explain what TVP is. Roxanne said that she will put me next for an interview.

After a few days they had another interview with another Anonymous group. I wasn't asked to go for the interview. The same guy went plus another TVP human :). Same happened as before where they forgot about the magazine's existence, though this time the magazine was only mentioned by the other human :) when they said people can donate to the TVP research center, the magazine, etc.. I mean, wtf :) that's the reason to mention the magazine that people can donate to it even if no one knows what you are talking about? :)

I mentioned these details because that was the song for the past years: they always forgot about the magazine in interviews and even on tours. I was interested in TVP so I listened to all interviews and I saw so many tours posted online, and I don't think I ever heard them mentioning the magazine, yet they mentioned other projects. This was something that bothered me for a long time and despite being vocal about it, nothing changed. And, in the end, why do I have to insist on this!? Do I have to tell TVP to mention their magazine in interviews or recommend it on their tours?!


15 Paradise or Oblivion

Some years ago TVP said it is going to release a new documentary, Paradise or Oblivion, and they need a website for that. I said I can do it and I brought the guy who helped with tromsite.com to help with this as well. I did the design, he did the rest, as with tromsite. I got in contact with Roxanne for the first time for this website. But I also got to see how TVP works in general, the "behind the scenes" :). First was when they tried to release the documentary and they didn't know much about how to put this documentary out and I helped them with putting it on torrents; they also looked rocky at adding subtitles on the DVD they made and I was wondering why not just stream it, why sell a DVD... Just some thoughts inside my head at that time. I also didn't understand why they chose such a name for the documentary as it sounded too dramatic.

Watching the documentary was my first TVP disappointment because I realized it is mainly about segments of old TVP footage added together. I did the same for TROM, the RBE part, and it was twice as long and in my view many times more relevant, and I didn't understand why they didn't consider using that part as their official documentary instead of making a new one again that was basically similar to that part of TROM from that perspective. I was also a bit disappointed when at one point Roxanne told me to remake that part of TROM (the RBE one) and add TVP's watermark on the designs I used. I refused to do that though. Btw, I gave credits for all the stuff I used in TROM at tromsite.com since the beginning.
Here's the thing: I saw TVP as this neutral 'thing' that doesn't care about such things like watermarks, or put so much emphasis on little details like the music for their documentary, or details of their website (use this font, not the other one, etc.), or it looked to me that they just emphasized these minor things instead of focusing on the content. For me content is the king. This didn't look to be the case for TVP and I first experienced that with the Paradise or Oblivion release, then later on when I tried to help make a better main website for them. But anyways, I moved on, as I was only focused to try and help them.


16 TVP website part1


A period of not so great experience with TVP followed in 2012 in which I tried to help with rebuilding the website but I was turned down based on subjective reasons and sometimes in 'rude' ways. I was told by those in charge with the website at that time to just accept that my suggestions are not taken into account because 'they', or 'he' is the coordinator(s). I am never angry or put off by people saying 'bad' words to me, but I was just very surprised that this happens inside TVP. I contacted Roxanne and after many discussions she agreed to let me redesign the entire TVP website. This was a big deal in my view because people will come in contact with TVP through such media/online 'tools', so they need good tools to make sure TVP is properly presented.

So, I worked for several months redesigning the entire website in great detail: I even made designs for mobile use (something not so popular at that time, but I did it to prepare it for the future), I provided them with all the images I used (optimized), colors I used, fonts, PSD project files, and so on. It was the most professional website I designed until then. You can still see the entire project here. (https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B3TarwrhZhiYNE5GOG9GMUtnME0?usp=sharing)

Roxanne loved the design but then those supposedly in charge of building the website decided they won't put my design into practice entirely, as one of them said at one point: "just because I don't want to" - haha. I was literally shocked about such replies - maybe I took TVP's team too seriously and they were in fact a bunch of angry kids. Many messages between me and Roxanne and these people, but nothing really happened. I proposed them to move from the Joomla platform on which the main website was built, to Wordpress because we can build it faster and better since that platform is way more well known and you can find tools for WP (plugins) for everything. I wasn't successful at that either....No one listened. I said I will try to help with making the website if we build it on WP, so I will do more than design it in Photoshop, and I made a big list of what plugins they could use if they moved to Wordpress to make a great TVP website. They refused to listen and I can't tell any real reason why they did that, but one seemed to be that people working on translating the website are not used to Wordpress. And I asked them many times what are the priorities: a good website that needs some training for those translating it, or a bad one that is already translated in 4-5 languages? I tried to help with presenting how simple it is to translate websites in Wordpress, but again I was largely ignored. Any of my attempts to make them build a better website were turned down in childish manners.

So they started to build the new TVP website in their own 'view'. After months with very little to no progress on the new website, Roxanne asked me if I can get involved again and try to speed up the work these guys were doing. I did that and speed up the work by a lot because I found a template for them to buy for Joomla that looked very similar to the design I made, so that they wouldn't build the entire website from scratch as it is no point to reinvent the wheel. They finally saw the advantage and bought that template but failed to project the design I made. It still took them over a year, almost two, to finally make the new TVP website. For me it was a big failure as the new website was not mobile friendly and was very very cluttered (so different from my initial design). I was extremely disappointed and I swore I won't help TVP with anything else from now on because my months-long design work was largely ignored for no reason.

The irony: a year after this 'event' they eventually moved to Wordpress for the main website, and they removed the translations....

17 Managing TVPM


The more I learned about TVP the more I realized that the details are missing: what do they mean by abundance? How can we really automate all jobs? Is human behavior really influenced by the environment alone? What do they mean by "we need a language that is not subject to interpretation"? And so much more... But instead of complaining about this I thought let's help bring these details to TVP as much as we can, and I asked if I can take a dead project at that time: the TVP magazine that was basically a website with 96% of articles copy pasted from other sources. I made a demo to show to Roxanne how that online magazine may look like and she loved it a lot. From there on I continued to make more and more issues and take this project to fully manage.

In the year that followed I worked almost every day for the magazine, for free, ignoring the TVP main website entirely because it was such a badly made website and I didn't want to get involved with it anymore after trying to help with it and being ignored so many times. In this time a few people wanted to help with the magazine and to my surprise, even if these people were TVP folks (from TVP teams) they knew very little about some basic things that TVP itself talks a lot about, such as that design is subjective, and they criticized some of my designs for the magazine saying theirs are better or that I have to follow some strict design rules for designing a magazine, even if this was an online magazine, entirely different from a paper one. These situations where communication was an impossibility made me rethink of who those people from TVP teams are...do they even understand TVP? Anyways despite that I was always open to any of their suggestions - at one point I left a guy do the design for an entire issue the way he thought is better, but Roxanne liked my design more so we stuck with that.

I kept on making more and more issues, tackling very important and essential subjects for TVP such as: abundance, how we can automate most jobs, the influence of genes on behavior, psychology, artificial intelligence, how the monetary system works, why TVP is not about technology, and sooooo much more. Thousands of pages. Years of work. In this time I did everything for the magazine: design, write most articles, promote, I made a website that is very well made and optimized for any device, I offered support, reply to emails, manage the posts I made on social networks for the magazine (3-4 posts a day), managed the financial situation for the magazine, and so on. Everything except proofreading that was done by Ray.

While Roxanne liked the magazine and the articles a lot, it felt like TVPM was not part of TVP since in all of my experience with TVP's social networks that I also managed for a while, TVP folks (admins and activists) rarely or never provided the magazine as a source of information while replying to people's comments. I also saw some TVP tours (on youtube) where not even Roxanne was mentioning the magazine when people asked at the end of the tours where they could get more information about TVP. The theme from my point of view was something like this: people asked "How can we automate most jobs?" and TVP folks replying with simple, copy paste answers from Jacque that didn't address it at all, forgetting that we have a 260 pages long magazine answering in detail this question. If people asked how can people work without being motivated by money, instead of linking to TVPM articles detailing this, TVP Folks again copy pasted simple answers or linked to various other websites than TVP's, like the magazine. Why!?

It really seems like I somehow spied on TVP to see if they mention the magazine or not, but the reality is that I was always very interested in TVP and always watched all videos on youtube with or about TVP, or interviews, and I was so involved that it was kinda' hard for me not to spot this.


I used to read a lot of TVP criticism online and try to answer these critiques in detail in the magazine, yet no one seemed to use those articles that are (sometimes) better sourced than Wikipedia. I made a smart search engine so that anyone can easily search for these articles and provide answers for people's questions. But it looked like this didn't help. It felt like I was pushing like crazy, work every day (no weekends for me, holidays, and so on) and my work was largely ignored even if I did that for TVP, under TVP's umbrella.

I told TVP folks many times to write for the magazine so that we expand TVP's library. Plus, as I told them so many times: while writing for TVPM you learn how to present a subject, how to take in critiques, how to source your claims, how to work in a team, so this was more than expanding TVP's library. PLUS all of these articles were highly promoted by me so it was an entire system that anyone could take advantage of. But I don't remember for anyone to do this.

So I tried to create a wonderful tool, TVPM, but TVP ignored it quite a lot and it was never part of TVP.




18 TVP Teams

I always felt like TVP 'teams' were not efficient or existent. I've been dragged into so many Skype groups where people mainly talked (from my perspective and experience). They had some online meetings, and I listened to many of them, and been to 2-3 of them, and I still think they were mainly to talk, but do nothing more than that. I am sure that many of these people are nice people and with good intentions, but I never understood what is the point of a meeting. You don't have meetings because is Sunday, you should have them when you want to say or solve something....it was exactly backwards with them from my perspective.

I also saw again the same focus on little and non significant things and not the content, like how the logo for this team should look like, even if there was no team, or a solid one. Some people were looking for a 'motto' at one point, for their team, but they had no team :). And these discussions were filling up the many Skype groups I was added to, creating a noise for me while trying to focus on writing articles and do other stuff. I know that I may look like a jackass saying that I was bothered by such things when people try to volunteer to help a good cause, but experiencing this inefficiency for 4 years or more will put a toll on anyone.

I challenge anyone to test if TVP has any teams or solid ones, because from my experience they have none. This sounds too harsh to be true, but test it. Where was the web development team when TVP needed a website? Why did Roxanne ask for my help with websites if they had a team? Why did I ended up helping with posters, editing images, and such, if they supposedly have a 'media team'? Where was the social media team to promote the magazine, or to manage their twitter, gplus, or make new original posts on FB? Why did I had to do it myself for 98% of the time? What did TVP teams create so far? Let's be honest, ask that question. How many videos did they create for the past 3-4 years? Why TVP still has a poorly made website after years of supposedly webdev teams and 'coordinators'? Their social network coordinator (or manager) had no idea how Facebook works and how it ranks posts, or what views are, and I realized that when I was writing this article ( https://www.tromsite.com/2015/05/facebooks-business/ ) about Facebook - I took the time to learn these things, and then checked with the coordinator to see what he/she knows, and not much if anything. Basically you can end up a 'coordinator' for shallow TVP teams just by luck or maybe talking a lot - that was my impression at least - if I am wrong then ok, but maybe I am not. Sure this sounds so harsh, but I got sick of seeing for the past 4 years people pretending to do something for TVP. Not saying all people were like that, but from my experience that was the theme.

Regardless of any of my 'opinion' on this, check for yourself what TVP teams did for the past 4-5 years and make a list to see if they were/are efficient or not. I am not accusing people, but this is the situation I encountered with the TVP teams. I know people are busy with their daily life, but I am not addressing this towards them, but towards the situations that I encountered.


Continued...

HEY! Mind you, this is posted in "rants". I allow myself to let my brain vomit when it comes to rants. So take it as that :). This is my personal place where I am allowed to say whatever I want :P. This is why such posts are not going to be shared on TROM networks except TROM Curated News ;). Anyways....

I had enough with The Venus Project. They are a company that does not care about so called "changing the world". They only care about TVP and they have become properly cultish.
Since I left TVP in 2016 I didn't care much about them. I focused on TROM and we grew an amazing project. So many people are involved now with TROM and all of them are so friendly and hard-working. I didn't have time to even think about TVP. But I said I will add their newsletter RSS feed to TROM Curated News and their Youtube channel to TROM Curated Videos so that we try to still inform people about them. But for the past months I lost my last marbles of respect for TVP. For the past months several Points of Contact for TVP got in contact with me and complained a lot about TVP. Similar stuff I've been through with TVP for many years. Volunteers' work is ignored, they are treated badly (almost as if they are employed by TVP), and how cultish TVP is (they said). I had a relief-laughter knowing that now I have nothing to do with TVP, so fuck them with their backwards attitudes. I knew they are like that, so it was no surprise. But a series of events clicked inside my brain and I said "Fuck them completely" and I removed them from TROM Curated News and honestly I won't even mention their website to anyone. Why? What events?



1. TVP volunteers continuing to complain about TVP - these are people that I know and are super nice and friendly and hard-working people and some helped/help TROM a lot and it hurts to see TVP shitting on their motivation and work.



2. I hear that TVP is more and more pushy with "asking" (cough' - forcing) volunteers to sign all kinds of papers, like Non-Disclosure papers (something I was asked to sign several times); a recent one in particular is to sign that you won't help any other RBE organization. Like, what? Are these people crazy?



3. I hear that TVP "high-rank-officials" are asking those who also help TROM why are they donig that and not helping TVP more? Maybe because you don't let them TVP?



4. I hear that in let's say a particular interview/doco that I am about to appear TVP-close-friends are fussy if/about Roxanne should appear in that interview too because Tio is in'it. Such a sick way of thinking.



5. I posted this on FB which was an image that said the following:




It was from a TVP Mag that I wrote and Fresco and Roxanne approved. Of course it stirred the TVP fanatics' hive and one of them in particular started to troll me saying I am irrelevant and attacking me personally. Unfortunately they deleted the comments, I am surprised to see now...So the TVP fanboys don't even like when you post about them. How you dare?!



6. They don't care about "creating a better world" We started to make a series of videos called TROM Poems. Seb is doing it. Great series about short important topics like wars, poverty, corruption, etc.. He mentions at the end of each video TROM, TVP, and TZM. Seb is such a polite guy and he asked me if he should remove TZM and TVP since we are making these for TROM and I said it is up to him. He left them there. It was equally ok for me. I told him to also share these videos with TZM and TVP facebook pages since these videos are universally important. TZM shared a few, TVP said something like: these are great videos but we only share videos that are about TVP and with our footage so come work with us. They are so ego-centric that they refuse to share some "great" (in their views) videos, unless it is ONLY about them. Surprisingly the same guy who responded to this, was the guy who trolled our above TROM facebook post. Such "amazing" official TVP characters!

Aren't we all, these organizations, trying to highlight the immense injustice in this world and point to solutions? How can you tell me TVP cares about such things when they refuse to share such videos? Actually look at their social networks and their website and you'll see that they super rarely or never share anything unless it is from them or only about them. I know this too well since I worked with them for 4 years and I realized this very quickly.

Oh, I apologize, TVP shares other people's work on their "recommended books" page. Well, you have to buy those books. And well, TVP makes money off of that through Amazon partnership. Actually pretty much every adblocker blocks that TVP page and years ago I made them aware of that and told them to put there a frickin' message if they want for people to see these recommended books. It took a while but they put this message:




I see no "can you please disable". Straight simple: "you can disable". haha what a great attitude. But why TVP? Why is adblocker blocking these? Do they track me? Am I trading more than my money to buy these books? Of course, I am trading my data to Amazon through TVP's website.



7. TVP is just a marketing machine. Speaking of selling stuff. The next thing that almost made my frustration with TVP explode was when I've read their latest newsletter and I realized that pretty much all of it is advertising their on-sale videos and products. I then looked at all of their newsletters over the past year and more than 60% are dedicated to advertise their on-sale products. Marketing! There you go:

















Not only that but they are charlatans about them. They offer "free" 'lectures'. But there is a catch (see, no trade-free?): you have to give them your data, and a lot of that:






An here's their "privacy policy" - is TVP Apple? Who reads this?:





And in their "terms and conditions" ( https://web.archive.org/web/20190402014517/https://www.thevenusproject.com/privacy-policy/ ) , besides the carnival-mess of a lawyer-istic language we find:










Their excuse that "we are forced to comply with the law" that I heard from Roxanne many times is, in my view, non-compliant (to use their language) with the values that TVP tries to project through their documentaries and lectures. They could at least mention that they have to put these on their site to comply with the law. I would even apologize for putting this charlatan mess on the website. Oh, here's Jacque saying that lawyers are charlatans: https://vimeo.com/39892481#t=98s - but TVP uses lawyers a lot. Again, maybe they are forced to, but damn this is so un-jacque.



If you look throughout their website you'll see that they employ charlatan marketing tactics to sell stuff, like the .99-type of price. Here, and here ( https://www.zazzle.com/store/tvpofficial/products ):











And when they started the online store it was full of .99 price schemes. I insisted for them to give up on that. And finally they did the change for some products. But took them a while. And they still have such prices on their site.



8. The straw that broke the camel's back. I saw that TVP only accepts volunteers that go through their training process now. Something akin to Scientology if you ask me. You have to go here and follow the many steps, videos, pages to read and quizzes. The "test" starts with:





TVP and its obsession with "levels of education". Jacque talked about the nonsense of these things, but apparently TVP is crazy with these and pushes them onto everyone who wants to volunteer for TVP. Anyways, they have some 7 "levels" and their quiz is designed to not let you move to the next "round" until you complete the first, then second, and so forth. You are given a code that you have to add to the next quiz, and so forth. Man, these people are not joking! :)). The quiz questions range from very dumb to cultish.

Examples:



























And my favorite:





Apparently no one but TVP aims to "prepare people for changes that lie ahead". Just, wow.







An now happily sign the Non-Disclosure Agreement!!



You know what happens after that? From my 4+ years experience and lots of other people who were or still are volunteering for TVP: they will put you into a team or more; add you to lists; skype groups; you'll talk and have to ask for permission; the stuff you do must be reviewed several times and will never be published; probably you'll have to pass more quizzes and some "mentor" course to prove you are on par with TVP's excellence. I even heard people saying that TVP told them to buy a $400 "package" from them with books and videos in order to become a volunteer.



Here's a joke: how is TVP changing a light-bulb?

They send a newsletter asking for volunteers to help with it and for donations for a new light-bulb. Volunteers must go through a 5 step quiz, and several TVP website pages before submitting their request to become a volunteer. Once accepted, they sign a Non-Disclosure Document and are put into a skype group. They will debate what to name the light-bulb changing team and what logo to make for it. They won't agree on the colors, but at one point they'll have to submit the idea to a TVP supervisor. They wait a few months and after being dragged into several other skype and Facebook groups, they wonder how would Jacque change the light-bulb. Months later and the room is still dark, and those volunteers are dragged back into their normal life. One day Roxanne enters the room and observes there is no light-bulb. She asks if there are any volunteers helping with it. They decide to send a newsletter to ask for volunteers and for donations for a new light bulb. Volunteers must go through a 5 step quiz, and several TVP website pages before submitting their request to become a volunteer. Once accepted, they sign a Non-Disclosure Document and are put into

Admit it, it was funny! And honestly it was true. That"s what I experienced with TVP.



I can rant about TVP enendlessly, but I need to stop. I'll only mention one more random thing:

TVP used to say their phase 2 is a Major Motion Picture, but now they include "documentaries" to perhaps say that they are in phase 2 since the Major Motion Picture is nowhere in sight. TVP raised a shit load of money for the script of the movie, since I think 2009 or so, and basically fucked all of the money on different script writers and have no finished script many years later. Also, nearly zero transparency with the process.





What's next? Phase 3 goes from "Experimental Research City" to "Digital Books and Experimental Research City"?



SO, all of this made me finally say: TVP, the organization, is just a company. That's all.
They want to make money, they are all about TVP and nothing else, and they have become a cult with Jacque transformed into their cult leader. It smelled like that since 2012 when I first got to work with them, but I hoped that I have problems with my nose. Then others started to complain about the same smell. And now I am sure, the smell is real. I accept it and move away from it.

I will still talk about the idea of TVP and Jacque's ideas, but bloody hell I don't want to hear about anything else when it comes to TVP. This organization is worse, in many aspects, than Apple or Facebook. It is deceiving, non-transparent, aggressive at times, has many fanboys (the nice word for cult members), sells the "truth about the world" like any conspiracy-prone and money-grabbing and Facebook-liking organization that you see the Internet being full of. I am not sorry for saying all of this because it is true and I had enough. Why "be nice" with this organization? They are not nice with their volunteers or the rest of other organizations that are trying to help out.

Now that I kicked TVP in the butt, I accept kicks back because this is the rant section. So, go for it - In a way rants are good. Let it out. But also, let it in.

The main character is an 18 years old boy called Jack. He lives in the The Venus Project. The world is divided: the ones who accepted the new TVP system and live in such a system, and those who opposed such, as they call it, 'technocratic and communist' approach. Mostly, the TVP system is widely adopted, but 30% or so of the population still lives by the monetary system's rules (TMS).


The movie starts with Jack's monologue [ the boy records the story through a non-intrusive, small instrument - we will describe it in detail and in accordance to current tech so it is not regarded as a sci-fi device - ]. As he records we show parts of the TVP world:

"Welcome to our world, visitors from far away. This is the story of us, human beings. Star dust and DNA mutants. Great creatures, although we were not like that for all of our history. Sometimes naive, other times violent and misguided. But it seems like we finally found a way to express our smartness.

As lobsters at the bottom of the ocean, pressed down by tons of water and dependent on that environment, we are the same. Our home is only 100 km tall and not very wide. The atmosphere is our 'water', the earth is our spaceship.

We found our way on this huge, yet very small sphere, for thousands of years. Years of fear and blind beliefs, yet sometimes huge and important breakthroughs that propelled us to today. We banged our heads to the walls many times, to realize that the wall is solid. We trial and dealt with errors. We felt forced to apply what works, even if it was contrary to our beliefs. If we didn't, we would not be here today.

We gradually built reliable methods to test, define, and shape our small world. We call it science today, yet we realize it is such a small word for such a big journey it took to become, and more of this journey is yet to come, perhaps never ending.

We learned in a hard way to apply it for human concern and overwrite obsolete systems. The scars are not entirely healed (maybe showing fragments with the TMS world for a few seconds), the success is not entirely achieved (maybe showing TMS people at a border with TVP cities. TMS people are armed), but we know how to deal with both. Knowledge gives us confidence.

We replaced hope with probabilities, and faith with solutions to problems.

Today we live in a world with no leaders. No laws. No police, wars, famine or poverty. No fictional borders, no nationalities or crimes. It is not a perfect world though. There are still some problems, but we use science to tackle them. "

Then his monologue gets interrupted by an event/dialogue with one of his friends (maybe a notification on his personal device).

"Hey Jack! Guess what!? We made it!"

Jack (briefly smiling): "No way! Really?"

Friend (Alex): "Yes! We are going to G2047 (Madagascar) to explore it. Just got noticed (showing his device). You should have it too."

Jack: "Yes, there it is! I was recording :). Awesome! When are we going? Have you talked to Emma? I can't wait :). I feel like Darwin going to Galapagos. I am so excited about this."


The main event - The Jungle

A group of friends from TVP make a trip to an unexplored part of old Madagascar (they have specific gps names for locations now this is why they refer to it as G2047) to search for new species of animals (this is how we make it look like, but it is more than that).

They start packing their bags. Their clothes are not fashion designed but intelligently designed. They don't get dirty or wet. Their skin properly breaths through them and they are smart enough to also monitor their bodies (hearth rhythm, sweat, etc).

Emma: "I hope we get to see an Aye-Aye while we are there. It is such an interesting creature and such a rare one. It is like a dog that mate with a monkey (smiling). It even has a special, long finger like no other mammal, with which it can feel slight variations of heat? It knocks with it to the branches of the tree and using its years it finds larva inside the tree. Then it makes a hole using its teeth and pulls the larva out with its heat sensitive finger." (while she stories that, she acts like an Aye-Aye making Alex's hand the branch of the tree, and his ear as the 'hole' :) )

Alex smiles.

We show them using TVP transportation systems to get out of the city and close to the jungle. We can show them using 2 or 3 transportation systems such as self driving car, maglev train and airplane. Maybe a TVP airplane unique model will transport them to the island. They see amazing landscapes and TVP cities from above, and also a few parts where TMS world still exists, to show the contrast.

Jack to Alex: "Are you nervous?"
Alex: "A bit, yes."
Jack: "Don't worry, it's not like we don't know what we do. We know."
Alex: "Sure" (smiling)

They arrive in the jungle. The jungle is alive with sounds and colors.

Emma: "A mantis that looks like a leaf :).!" (she screams excited)
Holding the insect in her hands: "I always hated when some people said that they disguise as leafs to stay away from predators....they always made transmutation, or evolution as some call it, look like such a dull thing and not the complex process that it is.....fairy tales....
You lucky mantis. If there will be Autumn in this jungle like it is in the North, you won't get to 'leaf' that long :)"

Strange sounds come from the jungle.
It sounds like footsteps.
The group is scared, but perhaps more curious than scared.
A high frequency noise is heard and an arrow strikes the near by tree.
They run. They get chased.
At first we make it look like it may be a primitive tribe because of the arrow (a tribe that never met civilization), and create a suspense situation, then we show that it was a group of people from the monetary system.
Emma and Alex get caught by 4 armed men. They have bows and arrows and also guns.

"You trespassed!" (says one with a loud voice).
Alex: "We are here for scientific research."
The men: "Boy, you trespassed! This is not good news for you. Take them away!"

Jack sees the scene from a hidden place. He looks scared. When he turns around he is very surprised by seeing a 15 year old girl who looks at him without making any noise or facial expression. He is stunned.

The girl says: "Follow me! Follow me or else they will caught you too. You are from 'the cities'?! "

Jack: "Ok" (seems confused but he has no choice).

They walk for an hour without talking to each-other. Occasionally Jack quietly records: "They took Alex and Emma. They are the ones who are not like us. They are groups of people, societies, that live by old system rules that are obsolete and still create misery for their own people. But they are not bad people. They are misguided. They don't know the truth about us. Alex and Emma should be fine though. "

He follows the girl.

Jack: "I am Jack. What is your name?"
The girl do not respond.

Jack and the girl find the airplane with which they arrived at the island.
Jack: "Come with me! It is too dangerous to get back alone. It is getting dark."
The girl is hesitant.
Jack: "You can get back any time you want. It is for your own safety....Trust me!"

The girl accepts but she seems very hesitant and scared. They don't talk. They stare at each other for the entire trip.

They arrive. Jack is recognized by the separation walls that protect the cities (the walls are smart). TVP and TMS agreed on this wall to properly keep their 'worlds' separated and keep the immigration under control.

Jack: "These are the walls. I am sure you've heard of them. They are here only because some people do not understand our society.

Don't be scared "

The girl refuses to go to the cities. She is terrified.

Jack: "I am what you may call a 'biologist'. I study animals and their behavior. Here (pulling from his bag a fragment of a giant egg)... "

Girl (surprised and more relaxed): "An elephant bird egg...They are extinct! "

Jack: "We think we may have found evidences that they may still exist. It is believed that human activity made them extinct long ago. Let's go, it is getting cold."

They both go in the cities.

[ Jack and Roxanne should explain in more detail how the cities will look like when they go inside them. I want to present them as they presented the dinosaur's park in Jurassic Park for the first time:) . That awesome way, with a great music and huge structures. To make people say "wow...." I want to show her reaction to seeing for the first time this new world.]

They jump into a driverless car that takes them to Jack's place.

On the way to his place:
Girl: "Genie"
Jack smiles: "Ok Genie. Nice to meet you."
They arrive to his place. [ We will show how an apartment looks like in TVP ]

Jack: "Look Genie, I know your people are not bad people and that my friends won't be harmed. I also know that you think of us as weird, heartless beings, robots or communists, but you also know that we are harmless. No one will harm you. But if anyone knows that you are here, people from your society might interpret it as if you are being kidnapped and that's the only reason they need to come here with the force of armament that they have and harm us. As you may know we do not have armament, armies, leaders or any kind of government so please, please, let's keep this our secret. You helped me, let me help you to help us all. No one wants any conflict. Right?"

Genie: "I have no parents. I live at an orphanage. We were at that place (jungle) for a school assignment. I know about your world. I understand that it might not be a good idea to tell anyone that I am here. There are many problem in our society Jack.....I am poor and I do not afford to go to college.....I like biology too...."

Jack: "No worries Genie, you are welcomed to this world. If you like it, you can stay."
Genie: "That may create problems, don't you think?"
Jack: "Not if only the two of us know about it."


Presenting TVP

[ From this moment on we will present TVP world through Genie and Jack and their interaction with the technology and the people. ]

They go through many situations where Jack presents her the TVP world and Genie gets to change many of her values.

One example of such a scenario:
J: "Let's eat something." (they go to a fully automated restaurant/place).
G: "How do you order food?"
J: "Well there are many ways to do that. Imagine going online, on a website, and choosing what foods you want to eat or to be prepared, if they are not already prepared, and just send the order. Let's do it from the table's touch screen. "
They order food and the food gets directly to the table through an automated delivery system. Genie gets scared for a second: "Wow....where did that come from?"

J: A wormhole? :)
G: ?
J: :) Everything is automated here. We have no waitresses, cooks, no one to clean up or take your money. And you can order everything you want, when you want, how much you want.

G: So I can order 44 of these and they will be delivered to me? Now?
J: Yup
G: No way....that is not smart at all Jack. Really...I mean isn't that stupid to let people do that?
J: Let's do it!
G: Really?
J: If you want to, let's do it
G: .......

Jack orders 44 dishes and the dishes start to appear on their table. 4....7...24......Genie is embarrassed and stressed. Other people look at her....
G: Jack please make it stop!
J: Why?
G: It is embarrassing. People are looking at us! Please!

Jack stops it. Genie is so embarrassed.

J: I thought that's what you wanted, why did you asked me to stop it?
G: Well I was embarrassed. This is stupid!
J: Well you see now why people are not doing this?
G: Ya, but you rely only on people feeling embarrassed to not do such things?
J: It is not about being embarrassed, is about being educated, knowing that this kind of behavior is useless. In your society, when you go to a supermarket, do you fill up 10 carts with food and stuff even though you will only pay for one? How many of your own people do that just for the sake of doing it?
G: ......
(Genie seems to get the point)
G: What are we doing with all the dishes now?
J: We could start eating them, but I doubt we can eat all of them. And the rest...well.....do you want to take them home?
G: Can we order other times still?
J: Of course, as I said, when you want, what you want and how much you want.
G: Well, then I see no purpose taking them home really....only if you want that.....
J: No worries, we can recycle them.
G: I am sorry....
J: It's no problem really :)
G: I still have one question though...
J: Shoot :)
G: What if I want a food that you do not have, let's say some sort of exotic dish, do you have everything I want? I will not order it again don't worry:), I just want to know.

J: Well we have many different ways of combining ingredients in such automated restaurants to make a huge variety of foods and maybe that exotic recipe. If you can explain it to someone, you can explain it to the restaurant's AI and it translates it into the actual food. But maybe it is not possible to be made by such systems and your option is to make it yourself, to give it a try. I think you may find all the ingredients you need. This is not an utopia, a haven, Genie, not everything is possible. This is a better system that creates a better life for all human beings with no exception, and if there is someone who cannot get his exotic dish to be made in this world, at least he can get a huge variety of other foods or have the chance to make that dish on his own. We may always be one exotic dish away from utopia :), but you can never reach such a concept. Technology and knowledge are always evolving, there is no final frontier :)"

Genie approves Jack by slightly smiling.

J: How is the food?
G: Great. Thanks for everything and I am sorry for the trouble I created.
J: Well luckily there is no police here or else you would be arrested for food-abuse :)
G: :)


A second example:

Jack takes Genie to a place where they can see animals in their natural habitat. [we should detail the technology and place for this event]
They see crocodiles.

J: "You know that crocodiles do not age? A 7 year old crocodile is as good as a 70 year old crocodiles."
G: "But I have seen crocodiles that die"
J: "They do, but for other reasons than aging: lack of food (they get bigger so they require more food), infections, diseases....You know, the crocodile dies when the zoo keeper dies :) . We have no zoo parks though so we can't be accused of that. :). We get to see animals in their natural habitat. "
G: "Ha. That's interesting. I didn't know that. What is that men doing so close to the crocodiles ? "
J: "He is studying their behavior to figure it out why they don't properly eat lately."
G: "Is quite dangerous though."
J: "Not if you know what you are doing. You see, you have to let them get used to your presence: to know you. Then let them feel in charge of the situation (although you are the one in charge). Once you do that, you can approach them when you are quite sure they won't bite you. You do that to help them though.

And it's not different from approaching a tribe that you may regard as primitive really.

-----------You let them know about your culture, you make them look like they have control, you make them question their status-quo, you approach them when you are sure they 'won't bite you' :). ------this may be removed.

We are all animals after all. "

G: "Interesting"



[ I want to present multiple such situations with a bit of humor and visual cues. I would also suggest Jack and Genie fall in love, since this is a movie and people look for this kind of stuff, but their 'love' will be explained as an extensionality of each other's personality. We can think about what parts of tvp technology and values we want to highlight and we can create situations like the ones above to present them. ]

Examples of situations:

- Jack has a younger sister (around 8) and she gets to meet Genie. They discuss about 'makeup' and why Genie wears it, why she wears earrings, etc. They bring into discussion 'beauty' and such concepts. While they have this discussion Jack's sister paints Genie's portrait and then explains to Genie how she learn to do such amazing paintings (as Jacque Fresco many time explains).

- Jack and Genie get to discuss about love, decisions in this system, how TVP builds structures, and so much more.

- A tornado strikes the near by TVP cities and Jack takes Genie to show her how tornadoes are used for their own benefit producing energy. In this situation we highlight how scientists work in TVP and we create a bit of suspense and 'action' through that.

And more....



Presenting TMS

[ In parallel with such situations in TVP with Genie and Jack, I want to show situations from the TMS world with the 2 friends that were being captured. The TMS situations won't be as plentiful as the TVP situations, but enough to present the TMS world and its problems.]

Alex and Emma were arrested because they trespassed an area in that Jungle and that area was proclaimed by TMS as theirs.

TMS was the only civilization in Madagascar. They were somehow isolated and TVP people tried to keep an eye on the Madagascar's fauna and flora. The border with TMS were never clear this is why these people got arrested. Some parts of Madagascar could be explored by TVP for scientific reasons. I want to show the TMS world as being as it is today: obsolete, inefficient, corrupt and divided, but I do not want to exaggerate with this and make it look too stupid and dull because it is already like that so we don't have to make it more than it is.

TMS is exactly the world we live in today: same rules, same values.

I want to present TMS through Alex and Emma and their 'fight' with TMS to let them go. TMS will deal with them as they do in today's world with 'immigrants'. They will be 'judged', imprisoned, and mocked by being 'robots without feelings; technocrats and communists.'

They are not physically harmed though. The TVP and TMS still have a mutual respect for each-other and don't want to break this status-quo. TVP provides some resources to TMS, and TMS still have armament (even nuclear armament). TVP fears that.

I want this part of the movie to be similar with the K-Pax movie (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0272152/) . A movie with intelligent (original) dialogues. The main characters (Alex and Emma) are calm, intelligent, smart, and they make the other ones look stupid and primitive and more than anything, they will show how TMS methods are obsolete.

The 2 detained people will be on the TMS news and in all of their media. TMS leaders try to present them as 'bad' people that wanted to trespass their border to migrate, or for other purposes. They want to show them as 2 bad examples to 'prove' why TVP societies are not good enough, and so they can keep their monetary system rules in place and their status-quo intact, so that the rich keep their differential advantage.

Example of a situation:

Alex and Emma are brought up into the court.

Judge: "Do you solemnly swear or affirm that you will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?"

Emma: "What God?"

Judge: "Please answer by yes or no!"

Emma: "Which of the hundreds of Gods are you referring to, Judge?"
Judge: "Your God"
Emma: "I don't need one, Judge. But why do you need one and still look for justice, isn't He the one who should judge?"
Judge: "Are you an atheist?"
Emma: "Are you a non-fan of kurling, judge :)?"
The judge is infuriated: "Please sit down!"

Judge: Are you aware that you trespassed our borders?
E: There are no borders really. No one owns the Earth or anything else in the Universe.
Judge: So you do not recognize our borders ?
E: Is no border, judge. If you put a sign saying 'this is my land' it does not make it yours. We made no harm to no one. We were there to study animal behavior.
Judge: You are not cooperating with us Emma.
E: You are not asking relevant questions judge.
Judge: What do you want me to ask you, then?
E: How to overcome our differences and work together as a global species.
Judge: You are in a court, I ask the questions here.
E: Well, and people say about us that we are the robots....

Judge to Alex: Will you cooperate with us Alex?
A: I want to but....
Judge: What?
A: I think you are a great attempt to solve problems but you do not go very far and thus I am afraid you are not capable of your job. You see, one can buy a better lawyer in your system.....isn't that corruption? Why can one have a better defense than another one?
Judge: You refused to be represented by a lawyer Alex.
A: Judge, judge, judge. We make sounds yet you refuse to listen. You can buy lawyers and influence, power and access, in your world. How can I trust you to judge me?
J: These are our rules Alex, and you are in our jurisdiction, thus the rules applies to you too.
A: Laws are attempts to solve problems judge, but are not working don't you see?! You have laws that say "you shall not kill or steal", yet your world is full of crimes because people have nothing to eat. It costs you less to give them what they need than putting them in prison. I know you want to do good, but this is no way you can achieve that.
Judge: We are postponing the case.



[ The fight between Emma-Alex and TMS is closely reported in their media, but as in present society (today) there are people who do not agree fully with TMS, yet they are skeptic about TVP. These people will eventually expose this entire story. ]

Whatever we present through TVP cities and Jack and Genie, we should not present again through TMS. So is like they complete each other in presenting TVP system and its core values.



The Mystery

[ I think we already have a story that can keep people focused on the action of the movie: the love story between Genie and Jack and the mystery around Genie being unknown in this new world; the 'new world' of TVP, the conflict between TMS and Emma-Alex. We already have a way to keep people till the end of the movie to see what happens to these characters and these 2 worlds. BUT, I want more than that, I want this movie to be damn smart. So I am introducing a mystery in the movie that I prepared for the entire script (I inserted small bits that will make sense at the end). ]

Genie hears a buzz sometimes, and we beautifully paint that part, making it obvious yet not giving more clues about it. Genie is also wearing some earrings she had from her mother just before her mother died and she became orphan. We make this obvious.

Another mystery is that TMS does not ask about Genie at all, as if she did not existed.

Also, Jack starts to look suspicious with his recordings.

We build up the mystery and we make people aware that things will 'blow up at the end'. All of these must come at the surface.

At one point we make Genie question TVP. She thinks that she is part of an experiment TVP did on her, this is why she hears that buzz sometimes (in TMS there were rumors about TVP doing that). She starts to look for evidences about that and becomes more and more paranoid about Jack and the cities. But this only happens for the very last moments of the movie so we don't ruin their 'beautiful' relationship.

We want to make TMS as being right for a moment and TVP as the evil-society, and this is through Genie mostly.



The Plot

The plot was this: TMS planned to spy on TVP and they infiltrated Genie into the cities, but Genie is not aware of that. Her earrings have a device that records sound and transmits it to TMS leaders (this is why she sometimes hears that buzz). TMS plan is to find secrets about TVP and use what they find to prove TVP is not a good system. Again, their primary motivation is to keep their differential advantage.

How they set up Genie: they knew she is an orphan and not many will ask about her disappearance. Also they knew Genie is one of those who were interested about 'people from the cities' (TVP). They knew many things about her and organized a school assignment to 'catalog new species of animals' in the Jungle. They knew Genie was also passionate about animals and she was part of such expeditions many times before so she knew the place very well. They intentionally made it so it looks like TVP people trespassed their borders and Genie will remain alone with one of the TVP guys.

They also knew TVP makes such trips to the island for looking at the flora and fauna, and that TVP people won't leave a 16 year old girl alone in the jungle.




The Real Plot

What TMS leaders doesn't know, is that TVP knew about their plan all along. People from TVP studied TMS culture for many years and had their own 'informers' into TMS culture to make sure the both systems are keeping a mutual respect. TVP approaches TMS spying plan like we approach today primitive tribes: " you have to let them get used to your presence: to know you; then let them feel in charge of the situation (although you are the one in charge); once you do that, you can approach them when you are quite sure they won't bite you. " This was the hint Jack gave Genie when they visited the animals in TVP and it translates to: You let them know about your culture, you make them look like they have control, you make them question their status-quo, you approach when they you think they are ready.

Here's how we translate this into visual: " you have to let them get used to your presence: to know you (We show Jack and Genie when they first meet); then let them feel in charge of the situation ,although you are the one in charge (we show TMS leaders putting the recording devices into Genie's earrings and listening to TVP); once you do that, you can approach them when you are quite sure they won't bite you. (you see scenes with the revealing moment). " This part can be the last moment of the movie (will see)

This is why Jack records that story and says "Welcome to our world, visitors from far away. " He was talking about people from other cultures and records the entire study for scientific purposes. All the interaction with Genie is on purpose because he knows TMS listen to them. He gives them cues that will become relevant in their last moments of discussion.


The Confrontation

At one point Jack asks Genie to take off her earrings to go inside the central nervous system of the city to show her how decisions are made in TVP.

Jack says "We should have no metal on us, it may not be a good idea".

When inside the center, Jack tells Genie a lie about TVP . Then when they are off the room and Genie takes off her earrings, he tells another lie. Both lies could be used by TMS leaders to accuse TVP of something different. This way TVP people could prove TMS is listening to them through Genie's earrings if they pick the lie when Genie has the earrings.

TMS leaders hear the lie and use it as their best card to 'prove' TVP is doing something bad

Example of a lie:

Jack after they leave the room: "This is it. Not much really, but very important. The only place where it is a bit different is in G2154 (gps coordinates) where there is a 'carnivore' machine that eats people :) "

Genie smiles thinking it is a joke, but TMS know carnivore machine means that it spies on people. http://www.spymuseum.org/education-programs/spy-resources/language-of-espionage/

[The lie inside the room is not that important.]

Now we are close to the end of the movie and Genie is paranoid about Jack and TVP. TVP looks a bit suspicious, and TMS looks now like they've got something on TVP and we make TMS look like they are not really bad people as we slightly made them look for the entire movie.

Genie confronts Jack.

G: "Jack, why you are never really concerned about your missing friends?"
J: "What can I solve if I am concerned? I know the right people are trying to help them. I can not."
G: "Hm....still seems strange to me that you never even mentioned them. "
Jack seems confused.

G: "And why did you accepted me into the city so easily? I know many people who want to come here and is not very easy since you want to accommodate them first, they must go first to the test cities, where they get 'educated' "

J: "Is true. That is a bit suspicious."
G: "Well it sure is. And Jack, can I see your recording device?"
J: " Sure. Here it is."
G: "Is this metal Jack?"
J: "....yes..."
G: " Well I remember when you asked me to take off my earrings because 'metal' could influence those machines, yet now I remember you had your recording device on you the whole time."
J: "Ha, you are really clever"
G: "You bet I am! And why the hell are you recording on that device all the time? What the heck is going on Jack??"
Genie has tears in her eyes.
J: "You are clever Genie. You remember I told you about the G2154 place? The one where there is a carnivore machine that eats people? Carnivore machine is a term used by agents from your world to refer to machines that spy on people."
G: "....." (confused).

J: "This is it. Look behind you."
Genie looks and there really is a T-Rex chasing kids (for fun). They are in a theme park, a dinosaur theme park.

Genie is even more confused.

G: "What? What are you talking about?"
Jack gently touches Genie's face with both hands, covering her earrings.
J: "In just a few minutes, your people will come here, armed. They sent you to this city without you knowing that. They were listening through your earrings the whole time and I gave them a false clue to catch them with this. I never lied to you. I care so much about you. You have all the reasons to trust me. Here (takes one her earring and opens it) they listen to us. I did not knew at first all that, so we had to make sure about this. Everything will make sense. Please, is the only time I ask you to trust me before I show you in details that I am right. Please! "

Genie has tears in her eyes.

TMS people get into the theme park, armed. They scream :"Get down! Hands on your head! Now!"
TMS people are accompanied by their main mass media to 'prove' TVP is doing bad things. They transmit live, this is how sure they are that they caught TVP in the 'act'.

They start to ask questions and search for the 'carnivore' machine but they don't mention this.

Jack stands up and screams: "That's the carnivore machine (pointing to T-Rex) I think that's what you are looking for. It is eating the kids :)" He has Genie's ear ring (the one they did not broke) on his left ear (he looks funny).
J: "Ah, sorry, I could talk softer, because you hear me properly through this ear ring..."
J: "Here, take it, is yours." (he give the earring to one of the commanders).
They are all stunned.
J: "Here's Genie. You used her to listen to us for the entire time. You used this little girl for your dirty jobs. But go ahead, visit our city while still here. Your entire plan is now mainstream. Good job! And you are still welcomed to visit our cities. "

The general: "He is right. We have listened to them for the past 5 months. We have set up everything. You are smart people. It's no point going on with this game....I have witnessed how our own system is obsolete. I know now you are good people and beyond all, very smart. Your society works so well it was hard for me to believe. We made a fool out of ourselves....I am sorry. "

Genie recognizes the general. He visited once her orphanage and gave her more attention than to the other children (flashbacks).

General: "Genie (crying) I am so sorry we did what we did. It is my own fault. I should be put in prison for life. "

Jack holds Genie's hand.

Genie: "No general. It is your system's fault. No one is born bad. "

The general gets arrested by his own people. They retreat.

J: "I am sure it is so confusing for you Genie. But it will all make sense.

We knew they will set us up in the Jungle, but we didn't know more than that. There are still people who take care of these 2 worlds of TMS and TVP to make sure we didn't break our mutual respect agreement. They informed us about TMS plans.

I truly am a 'biologist' as you may call it, and I am truly interested in animals and going to Madagascar to explore the place. The elephant bird may not be extinct (taking off his pocket the same piece of eggshell). It just happened that we were to face this situation. I told you we were there to study animal behavior :). We are all animals.

I suspected you did not know about this entire plan and you were not like them, but I played along their plot and I never lied to you. Everything that you've experienced is the way we are, is the way this world is.

You see, you have to let them get used to your presence: to know you. Then let them feel in charge of the situation (although you are the one in charge). Once you do that, you can approach them when you are quite sure they won't bite you. You do that to help them though."







The End

The entire story is exposed by TMS 'radical' media and shared with all of the people. Alex and Emma get back to the cities. Genie agrees to share many parts of the recordings for all to see what she's been through. Genie becomes an example for TMS people and she becomes a public speaker that many follow.

TMS and TVP are more closer now, they share ideas and goals. The transition is not complete but in progress.

The movie ends with Jack's monologue:

"Welcome to our world, visitors from far away. You wanted to know about us and now you know. We all have common needs and share the same planet. We all use the same scientific method and we should all collaborate now. TVP is not the final frontier. We invite you and everyone else to push it forward; improve it; find its weaknesses; educate others about it.

There is no other way to communicate with people unless you use their own way of communication. This is what we did. We let you in to explore us. We let you play your game. We showed you our real world so that you can decide if you want to join us.

Welcome. "




End Credits Surprise

Instead of the boring end credits we add credits plus footage. Real footage with the research center to show people this is more than a movie, it is something we are working to achieve. Including footage with J&R and the building models, cars, etc.


Espresso Shoot Resume

The movie is about this future smart society (TVP) and how they approach another culture and change it. Also, it presents how this new society works (technology) and what are its core values.

To also be highlighted

Values/Ideas that should be highlighted in the movie: Language is interpretable and the only one that is not is science; We need no leaders ; no need for crime or war; People's motivation; People's behavior : good, bad, geniuses, genes, etc; Decision making; Real value of money; etc.



Sequel

I am sure that if this movie will become well known and people will love it, they will look for a sequel because they will question: well how did they get from TMS world worldwide, to this TVP world that is widely adopted?

And we make a sequel movie presenting Jacque's life and how he arrived at this conclusions and how we get from now to there.

I named the main character Jack because for this reason of the sequel where we can also create a mystery by making people think Jack is actually Jacque who may have used science to rejuvenate himself, etc. So, my ideas are far beyond this first movie that I just wrote the script for ;)