#Best Video Conversion Software

[techdirectarchive]

2 Free Ways to Convert MP4 to MP3

In this article, we shall discuss “2 Free Ways to Convert MP4 to MP3”. Whether it’s audio, video, still images, or text, there are all kinds of file formats out there. Please see How to convert distribution group to security group, and how to Run MBR and GPT conversion with the best GPT converter. Formats like MP4 and MP3 have become mainstream in the media world. I bet that at some point, you…

[techavtar]

Tech Avtar is renowned for delivering custom software solutions for the healthcare industry and beyond. Our diverse range of AI Products and Software caters to clients in the USA, Canada, France, the UK, Australia, and the UAE. For a quick consultation, visit our website or call us at +91-92341-29799.

[what-even-is-thiss]

Free or Cheap French Learning Resources So You Can Talk to Belgians

I will update this list as I learn of any more useful ones. If you want general language learning resources check out this other post. This list is French specific. Find lists for other specific languages here.

For the purposes of this list "free" means something that is either totally free or has a useful free tier. "Cheap" is a subscription under $10USD a month, a software license or lifetime membership purchase under $100USD, or a book under $30USD. If you want to suggest a resource for this list please suggest ones in that price range that are of decent quality and not AI generated.

WEBSITES

Lawless French - A free website with french lessons, vocab lists, reviews of different programs, worksheets, and an AI chatbot. The website is in English.

TV5 Monde - TV5 Monde is a TV network that provides French language TV to audiences globally. They also have free video lessons and listening exercises for learners. The website is available in multiple languages.

University of Montreal French Course - This is an online course in Canadian French for beginners on edX that can be taken for free. If you want college credit for it though, you'll have to pay for the certificate. The course is provided regularly but it also happens on a specific schedule so pay attention to when it starts next if you want to take this one.

Le Point du FLE - A website originally made for French tutors but it also has a lot of links to different resources like worksheets and dictionaries that can be useful for self study. The website is entirely in French.

French Today - A website with free articles and lessons explaining different aspects of French culture and casually spoken French. They have different articles explaining specific words and phrases related to different topics like tennis or mother's day for example. They also sell audiobook lessons but those are quite expensive at $70+. The website is mostly in English.

YOUTUBE CHANNELS

HelloFrench - A channel by a woman named Elisabeth who is a Belgian living in France. She has videos about vocabulary, culture, news, slang, and listening practice videos with her husband. The channel is fully in French but with English video titles. There are often French language subtitles onscreen and vocabulary words will pop up onscreen with English translations. Likely best for upper beginner to lower advanced learners depending on the video.

Easy French - A channel part of the easy languages network that has a mix of videos with phrases and dialogues for beginners and interviews with french speakers on the street mostly in Paris but they have made trips to other French speaking regions like Madagascar. The channel has dual language French and English subtitles onscreen. They also have a podcast for intermediate learners.

French Comprehensible Input - A channel with listening practice and comprehensible input for absolute beginners to advanced. The channel discusses a variety of different topics and has different series reading through and discussing French comic books and a series for absolute beginners discussing one different word or concept per video.

French Mornings With Elisa - A channel that's mostly about the nitty gritty of different aspects of grammar, pronunciation, French dictation, and French Culture. The channel is entirely in clear and slow French and subtitles are available in English but only auto generated in French. The channel is mostly targeted at intermediate learners. Elisa also has a podcast for intermediate learners discussing more history and everyday topics.

Français avec Nelly - A channel for French learners entirely in French. It's kind of a catch all channel for upper beginner to advanced learners with discussions of grammar, culture, different learning resources, and travel vlogs and listening and conversation practice. French and English subtitles are available.

Piece of French - A channel by a woman named Elsa who makes vlogs in clear french about everything from traveling to voting to history to teaching her boyfriend French. The channel is in French with English descriptions and video titles. Some videos put vocab words on screen with English translations while others don't.

maprofdefrancais - A channel about Quebec specific culture and language. The host speaks relatively quickly but subtitles are available in French. The channel is entirely in French and better for intermediate to advanced learners.

READING PRACTICE

French graded readers by Olly Richards - French probably has the most books available on storylearning. It seems to be the language they use to test out new book ideas. Every chapter of the books has comprehension questions and vocabulary lists. Short stories and conversations for beginner and intermediate, 30 day mastery series, climate change, world war 2, and western philosophy in easy French. The books are $5-$20 new depending on whether you buy them digital or not and how old they are. They're also fairly easy to find used for much cheaper either at used bookstores or on amazon.

News in French - A free daily email newsletter of news in French for French learners. They also have a paid tier at $5 a month that provides access to their archives, vocabulary lists for every article, and an audio version of their articles.

Journal en français facile - This can either be counted as news articles or a podcast because you can read it or listen to it. It's daily news articles/podcasts for intermediate French learners by Radio France International. They also provide grammar exercises and practice tests. The website is entirely in French.

bibliothèque rose - This is a series for French speaking kids age 6-9. They have original stories as well as novelizations of things like disney movies or winx club. The books range from about $5-$10. The link I provided is for buying them in North America but if you're in Europe you may be able to buy them directly from the company website.

Lire en français facile - Books made for learners of French. They are simplified versions of classic literature that are sorted by CEFR level (A1,B2, etc.). They have definitions of certain vocabulary words in the margins in French. The link I've provided is in French and has a list of them but doesn't have a link to buy them. There isn't really a convenient place to just buy all of them and you may have to do a little digging on amazon or ebay to find the one you want but they're almost never impossible to find for under $20 in my experience.

PODCASTS

Radio France - National public radio station made by the French government and also an app. This is a site made for native speakers but it does indeed have a lot of podcasts and French language music. They also have a news in easy french podcast as mentioned earlier. There's also a lot of content for children that may be easier to understand depending on your level. The website/app is free with an account.

Easy French Poetry - A podcast in slow French. Every episode the host reads out a classic French poem and discusses the history of the poem and a bit about the author. They also often talk about common analysis of the poem and explain different vocabulary words.

Learn French in Your Car - This is one of those classic learn a language in your car CDs that has been put on spotify for free.

French Voices Podcast - A series for intermediate to advanced learners. It's a series of interviews with French speakers about their regions and things they're experts in. The podcast hasn't updated in a few years but there's over 130 episodes in the archive.

Français avec Fluidité - This podcast discusses everyday topics and culture in French, mostly about France. There's also the occasional interview. Likely best for upper beginner to upper intermediate.

innerFrench - A podcast aimed at intermediate learners that discusses a variety of topics. The website and episode descriptions are in French.

Easy French Podcast - A podcast by the hosts of the Easy French Youtube Channel aimed at intermediate learners where they discuss different topics and answer questions from listeners.

SELF STUDY TEXTBOOKS AND DICTIONARIES

French all-in-one For Dummies - The for dummies series has one of the more affordable complete self study course French textbooks out there. It comes with a CD for listening and pronunciation practice. You can also buy the individual books in the series on pronunciation or grammar. The complete course book is usually around $25 new but you can also find it used fairly easily.

The Complete French Grammar Course - This series also has books on other things like pronunciation but each book is individually about $30 new. They are also available used however so if this series seems good for you there's still ways to buy it for under $15.

French Made Easy - This series is a budget option at about $10-$15 per book but there are multiple books in the series. It's good enough though.

Easy French Step by Step - This is the McGraw Hill budget option at usually less than $10 that only focuses on the most essential vocabulary and grammar. In other lists I recommend the McGraw Hill complete all-in-one series but for some reason their French version is like $40. They're also harder to find used because they double as workbooks and people write all over them.

Merriam-Webster's French-English Dictionary - This is the classic dictionary for learners with thousands of words with decent explanations and new editions are less than $8 with older editions being even cheaper.

DK French Visual Dictionary - This dictionary is organized by subject and has pictures and translations in English. It goes for $15-$30 depending on which edition you buy. In general older editions are cheaper and it's decently easy to find used.

Exercises in French Phonics - A book written in the early 80s that helps learners make sense of reading French phonetically. Much like English, it can be difficult to sound out or guess at the pronunciation of words in French and this book is designed to help with that. It can be bought from anywhere between $2-$10 depending on how new your copy is.

SERIES FOR LEARNERS AND KIDS SHOWS

French in Action - A series made in the 1980s for use in French classrooms. The series follows different people in everyday situations and is useful for beginner to upper beginner learners. You have to pay for the supplementary workbooks but in the US and Canada the videos at least are free. Outside the US and Canada you may need to pay or use a VPN to access them depending on your country.

Totally Spies - Yup, Totally Spies is a French series. The French language YouTube channel has full episodes and a few full seasons as well as clip compilations. The series is aimed at preteens so the language used is pretty fast paced but because it's an animated series there's also a lot of exaggerated visual storytelling which makes it easier to follow.

Extr@ - A 13 episode sitcom made for French learners that follows an American student moving to Paris.

The Adventures of TinTin - This website has free TinTin animated shorts, movies, tv shows, and documentaries going all the way back to the late 50s. The website is available in multiple languages.

[maisims2]

👽questions for sim 2 players👽

‼️THIS IS NOT A SURVEY OR QUESTIONNAIRE‼️ you can answer whichever questions you'd like in whichever way you'd like, and feel free to add on to your answers in any way you'd like - share as much or as little about your sims 2-ing as you want, i am keen to hear it all! 👂👀👂

📻audio📻

do you listen to music/streams/podcasts/tv/etc. while playing? if so, is it stuff you would also be listening to if you were doing something else, or do you listen to specific things while playing sims 2?

conversely, do you listen to the sims 2 soundtrack when you're not playing the sims 2?

📺visual📺

if you have little or no cc or other visual changes to your game, are there particular reasons? e.g. disk space/performance, nostalgia/just prefer the vanilla vibe, etc.

if you use a lot of 4t2 and/or 3t2 cc are there any particular reasons? e.g. you play the other game and also want the same stuff in the sims 2, you don't have the other game but want the other game's stuff that you've seen, you prefer the aesthetic of the other game but prefer the gameplay of the sims 2, you feel like eaxis content from the other games is part of the same "set" as the sims 2, you just prefer clay hair, etc.

if you use the vibrant, colourful, and lower contrast? aesthetic that's often called "maxis match", does it actually "match" the sims 2 in your view/experience of the game or do you consider it "maxis match" in the sense of the whole sims series? alternatively, do you not consider it "maxis match" and just prefer the colour and brightness? if so are there any particular reasons? e.g. it reminds you of a game or other media that you like, it gives you a feeling/vibe that you like, etc.

if you use cc that isn't the "maxis match" style mentioned above, but that you consider "maxis match", are there any particular traits that qualify/disqualify "maxis match" cc for you?

if you use "realistic" or "alpha" cc, would you consider your "aim" to be to make the sims 2 game more like real life, or to make a version of real life in the sims 2? alternatively, do you just like the aesthetic, are you used to using "alpha" cc in other sims games, or is "alpha" cc something that is nostalgic for you?

📖experience📖

do your real life experiences influence the way you alter and/or play the sims 2? e.g. adding or replacing stuff with cc that is more familiar to your location and/or culture, making sims, families, builds, or stories that are familiar to you, etc. alternatively, do you have a game that is removed from from your real life experiences? e.g. fantasy, non-human, historical, etc.

do you use the skills you use for sims 2 gameplay/content creation for work/school/other hobbies? e.g. image/video editing, 3D modelling, coding, making/using spreadsheets, writing, internet research, etc. if so, does that influence the way you use your skills? e.g. software, habits/best practices, decreased/increased motivation, etc.

📠mentions📠

@heyoniina, @ennysimmer, @trofysisters, @mocuna-sims, @itschaniesims, @phoebe-twiddle, @squeezleprime, @withlovefromsimtown, @funderberkersims, @kindreddarling

i have just tagged the people that interacted with my posts asking if people would be interested in answering questions, but ‼️if anyone sees these questions and would like to answer them, please do‼️ ‼️especially if we are mutuals‼️ ‼️also please @maisims2 with your answers so i can read them‼️

thank you for your time 🥰

[big-snack]

Porcus Isle Part I

Dom had always been larger than life. Standing at an impressive 6'5" and built like a linebacker, he was the kind of guy who turned heads wherever he went. But beyond his imposing physique, Dom was known for his easy-going nature and infectious smile.

Dom worked at a tech company downtown, San Diego, often putting in long hours. Despite his demanding job, he always found time for his true passion: exploring the vibrant food scene in San Diego. From taco trucks in Barrio Logan to high-end restaurants in La Jolla, Dom's weekends were filled with culinary adventures, always in search of the next great bite.

But Dom's favorite place was a small, unassuming diner near the beach. It was there, over a stack of pancakes and a steaming cup of coffee, that he found a sense of peace. The diner was a hidden gem, known only to a few locals, and Dom had been coming there since he moved to Socal. The owner, Jack, greeted him like family, and the regulars always had a seat ready for him. The whole diner was run by and frequented by big men. Dom felt right at home with these guys.

One sunny Saturday morning, as Dom was savoring his breakfast, a new face walked into the diner. He was a tall, built man with sharp features and immense confidence. He took a seat at the counter, glancing around the diner as if taking it all in. Like he was appreciating all the men. "Hey stud, you find what you're lookin' for?" Jack asked...

Intrigued, Dom decided to introduce himself.

"Hey there, first time here?" Dom asked, flashing his friendly smile.

The man looked up, meeting Dom's gaze with a curious look. "Yeah, just moved to San Diego a few weeks ago. Name's Alex," he replied, extending his hand.

"Welcome to the best diner in town, Alex. I'm Dom," he said, shaking Alex's hand firmly. "What brings you to San Diego?"

Alex chuckled. "A bit of everything, really. New job, new city, looking for a fresh start. I'm a software engineer."

Dom's eyes lit up. "No kidding! I'm in tech too. It's a great field, but it can be pretty demanding. This diner is my escape from all that stress."

As they talked, Dom and Alex found they had more in common than just their profession. They shared a love for video games and a passion for good food. Dom offered to show Alex around the city's best eateries, and Alex eagerly accepted.

Their friendship grew quickly, and soon, weekends were spent exploring San Diego's food scene together. Whether it was sampling street tacos, enjoying a craft beer at a local brewery, or having a quiet meal at the diner, Dom and Alex's bond became a craving for both men.

One evening, after a particularly grueling week at work, Dom and Alex decided to unwind at a new barbecue joint that had just opened in North Park. The restaurant was buzzing with energy, the scent of smoked meats wafting through the air.

As they dug into a platter of ribs and brisket, Dom looked at Alex and asked, "So, how's the new job treating you?"

Alex wiped his hands on a napkin, leaning back in his chair. "It's been challenging, but in a good way. The team's great, and the projects are interesting. It’s just... sometimes I miss having a bit more of a work-life balance."

Dom nodded. "I hear you. That’s why it’s important to have nights like this, to just relax and enjoy good company and good food."

Alex smiled. "Speaking of good company, thanks for showing me around, Dom. Moving to a new city can be pretty overwhelming, but you've made it feel like home.", "Anytime, man" Dom replied, raising his glass.

As the night wore on, their conversation shifted to their mutual love for video games. Alex mentioned an upcoming release he was excited about, and Dom suggested they set up a game night. This became the perfect way to unwind after eating out.

One evening, after a particularly intense gaming session and drinks, Dom and Alex found themselves talking about their interests. Alex expressed his admiration for Dom's physique and said he's looking to join a gym. "All this eating is starting to fill me out." Alex jiggled his belly. Dom's eyes darted to his bloated stomach. "Damn man. I didn't even realize." Dom was stupified.

He had always been focused on his own weight, but he hadn't noticed the changes in Alex.

"Yeah, it's been creeping up on me," Alex admitted, a bit embarrassed. "I've been so caught up in work and our food adventures that I haven't made time for the gym. Do you think you could help me out?"

Dom smiled, feeling a surge of excitement at the prospect. "Of course! I'd love to help you. Dom had no idea why the thought of Alex's weight gain turned him on.

That night in his dark room. He thought about that moment. His belly jiggled like it was no longer a part of him. There was no visibility of his ribs. His arms filled out his shirt sleeves more. His face softened up. Dom had never masterbated to a guy before. He stopped for a second to think about it.

It was late. He was alone. No one could judge him if he stared to look up what he was fantasizing about. He pulled up Google and started with image searches. 'Fat belly': 'fat belly guy'; 'beer belly'; 'beer belly men'.

That night he spent a few hours looking at fat guys. The bellies started small, but the longer he searched the bigger they got. He glanced at a picture of a man 600 pounds. His belly was covering his lap in bed. Every single ounce of his body jiggled from the slightest shallow breath from being overstuffed. The guy leaned back on his bed and his head disappeared. The big bulbous crescent shape stood at least 4 feet high; he imagined.

Dom hit his climax and started to cum. His body filled with chills, made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. "I need to see this in person" he screamed and then he slumped back in his seat. He had some clarity and was worried about what he'd just done. "Why the hell did I do that?"

The next day he saw Alex at the diner, for brunch, and had a new appreciation for his body. "You know, after you mentioned it, I thought more about your physique." Dom shared. "Oh really? What is it you appreciate?" Alex said flirtatiously. "Um, well, I mean you're pretty beefy. That's a popular body type." He said nervously. "Beefy implies that I've been working out. I'm all jello, buddy."

The entire restaurant is quieter than normal. Dom didn't notice, but all the men in the diner were listening.

Dom could feel a twitch in his pants. "Ugh, shit, not this again." Alex was blushing. Dom was intently looking at Alex's body well beyond what was normal. "Something tells me you like it." He said with a smirk.

Dom smiled nervously. "I mean, you could say I appreciate the way you look." Dom was getting hot. "I need to use the restroom" Dom said. "Perfect, I'll go with you" Alex responded. Dom struggled to stand up straight.

They walked to the bathroom. "I feel like we're both flustered." Alex said. "Oh yeah, I guess it pretty obvious. I'm not sure what's going on lately", Dom replied.

Instantly and without hesitation the locked bodies and started making out. Dom's hands caressed Alex's newly sprouted love handles. Alex pulls back from Dom's lips and whispers, "You did this to me."

The door handle turns and someone walks in. They separate and the man said, "Are you that clueless, Dominick? We have all been dropping you hints for a while now.

"Is this like a chubby chaser establishment?"

The man responds "You mean the diner between a bear bar and a leather shop? Of course that's what it is. We managed to get you to gain 20 pounds man."

"Holy shit!" Dom exclaimed. "No wonder I love this place. Fat men make me horny. I can't believe I just said that out loud." Panic washed over him. "It's ok Dom. Nothing has changed." Alex reassured him.

"You were a part of this?" Dom questioned.

"Not really, you spoke to me first. I was coming here because I knew what I wanted. It took me a while to realize you had no idea what was going on. I thought you were playing hard to get" 

"Dude I just found out I might be gay, I don't have the bandwidth to come to terms with a fetish."

"Great tech pun" Alex replied.

They both started laughing. When Dom rejoined the room it was like he was seeing it all for the first time.  Some men had their large sack of flesh bulging out of their shirts.

"All right you guys. Dom knows what's going on." Alex announced.

That day was the moment Dom knew that Alex was the one.

---

The next part flashes forward

[talenlee]

Game Pile: Civilisation 1 (Video)

Watch this video on YouTube

Script and thumbnail below the fold!

In 1991, Sid Meier released Civilisation, starting off a habit that didn’t really get kicked at any point after that. It’s kind of hard to underestimate the legacy of Civilisation as a game, as a genre.

It isn’t that no game of its ilk happened before, that’s not how history works. We rarely are given hard ‘starts’ for some thing, since, you know, there were all sorts of games being made by developers and never ‘released’ to a greater market, so instead we have to kind of point to places where specific, defined, observed events based, annoyingly, on markets and capitalism.

There were probably videogames about running countries before 1991, possibly games with even more elaborate structures and systems and different ideological perspectives, and they probably had wholly text prompts and were run on some truly abysmal software system like COBOL, Decay mention for the bingo card. The thing is, most of them didn’t succeed to the degree that Civilisation did as a commercial product, and the upshot of that is, generally speaking, it’s a common way to see Civilization 1 as the ‘start’ of the genre.

That’s kind of the nature of the game, too. There’s a lot of stuff that just starts in it, around the same time. If you’re not familiar with the genre –

HOW?

but in this game you play an immortal leader overseeing a cultural identity that expands across territory, builds cities, claims land, trades, researches, all that stuff, and eventually retires at a ripe old age of 6,100 years old. The game lets you play a civilization from a small selection of appropriate civilisations, which have their own personalities and biases. Anyone not covered by these options – Romans, Russians, Babylonians, Zulus, Germans, French, Egyptians, Aztecs, Americans, Chinese, Greeks, the English, Indians, and the Mongols – is just… barbarian tribes.

This makes it a game where you can build Jerusalem, Mecca, or Brisbane, but not be any of the cultures that actually founded those cities, it’s an interesting unintentional statement. Still I’m not here to retread the old conversations about how Civilisation views the question of ‘who gets to be a civilisation’ or even ‘what does it mean to be civilised.’ That’s something other people have done, often better than me, and with a broader context of other Civilisation games.

I haven’t really played any of the other ones after the first. I’ve installed them, I’ve run a few of them, and even played through the tutorial on one of the more recent ones – five, I think? but they all bore me and I just find myself wanting to come back to this one, with its systems.

Part of it is just mental headspace. I don’t think I’ve got it in me to care too much about the specifics of each new game, the way things are almost but not quite the same. It’s just too much and I don’t really feel the absence of those things in the game I like to play. And I do not really understand what’s in this game at all – my knowledge of Civilisation 1 is pretty patchy for a game that I’ve played this much.

What is remarkable about Civilisation 1 is how it scales. When you start playing Civilisation you’ll be introduced to its wide variety of systems without a lot of clear explanation.

You start with some starting technology, some starting units, and a starting location that may or may not feature free resources, units or good terrain and you’ve got to make the life out of it. For example, I literally just before reading this learned how the corruption mechanic works, and that the enemy units were doing things I thought impossible wasn’t because I didn’t understand how to do them, but because the game just cheats.

One thing I remember from my childhood years was that developing technology seemed the best way to ‘succeed,’ because that’s what gave you military units you could use to fight and protect. I had this weird sort of hypermilitaristic state where all my cities would endlessly produce just defensive units, until most cities had sometimes six or eight military units guarding a population of 2-3. Which you might be wondering ‘what’s the point’ or, more likely, ‘what do you mean?’ because you aren’t familiar with a thirty-five year old videogame’s intricate systems.

Cities can be built, they can be defended, they can grow, and they have populations, and all of those terms bring with them a new subset of mechanical information that can be expanded on further, and which brings with it a new layer in the very specific way Civilisation, the videogame, thinks of being.

I came back to it as an adult, as a sort of idle game I can appreciate in a small window while I’m doing other things.

And y’know what?

Civilisation turns out to be a startlingly easy game to break. Not even with cheats or exploits – the game gives every single city square a certain ‘base’ advancement, meaning that making a new city will typically yield more results than letting a neighbouring city develop that square themselves. You need some limit on it because you don’t want to go haywire but the general idea is that if you control an area, you can probably get a really good output of all the stuff you want by ensuring that about a quarter of that area is covered in cities, rather than giving those cities the much larger non-competitive territory they can hypothetically control.

The upshot of this is that you can leap up the tech tree at a speed that makes even the most optimistic monkey wonder why they ever bothered throwing the bone if you’re going to mock the teleology of technological progress like that. In one such game, I had access to superconductors before we even hit the Anno Dominis, just because the game doesn’t do anything to slow you down. And why should it?

It’s just trying to let you play with emergent systems. Anything else would be ridiculous.

There’s no inherent reason any given slick of land should have another civilisation on it, meaning to meet with other cultures and engage in the hypothetically important civilisational struggle, you have to develop both transport boats and the units you want to send, and have a civilisation that appreciates that kind of military adventurism.

Even if you just want to go say hi and discover other nations and see how they’re doing, you have to construct something that can fight to do it. Even a humble settler!

And each city can only support so much in the way of units and their presence in the world, meaning that you basically have to dedicate a city or two to supporting the task of ‘finding someone else’ when all you can gain out of it is an opportunity to smush some loser underfoot. Why bother? You can wind up in the later stages of a successful civilisation, with heavily developed technology and nobody to talk to.

Then at some point, a trireme shows up to your civilisation which is developing the cure for cancer and they wonder if you’d like to learn how to do pottery. This is in cities that are doing nothing but making caravans to contribute to wonders, or building barracks that you sell, because buildings need upkeep and only change your stats in that city, and if you’re happy with only making enough and not making everything, then you suddenly don’t care about giving yourself 50% extra happiness off your temples or whatever.

Suddenly you’re left with no real reason to want to build most of anything in a city. People don’t need a coliseum to be happy, they need more people in the city doing the important job of making entertainment and doing cool art.

The solution to every problem in a city, more or less, can be developed by just growing more, and that rewards growth more than anything else, and the systems that let you grow the most are the ones that discourage you from doing anything military, but that’s okay because going and finding people to fight is a pain in the bum.

But and this is where things get really interface-weird, you can’t just sit back, develop tech, and goof around until the space race kicks in, because the way you build things in this game is to tell your cities to build them, and you do that through a menu. This menu cannot handle a game state where you have access to every piece of technology to build with, or even most of it. It splits into two menus when the menus get too busy, but if there are too many wonders and nobody’s built them… it just stops. You open up the build menu to make something – like one of those wonders – and you get a blank menu of nothing. You have been locked out of all production for the rest of the game, or until someone else develops your technology level, makes some wonders, and shrinks what appears on that menu.

But the AI opponents aren’t likely to do this because wonder building is really slow and annoying and a lot of the benefits are transitory, especially if you’re the tech powerhouse of the world learning the hell out of everything. The game rolls dice on whether it makes a wonder, and it seems to avoid making wonders that aren’t useful any more – It’s fine to have a Great Wall of Newark but if I’ve already developed gunpowder, the game’s not going to bother taking it off my plate.

The game doesn’t actually play by its own rules. It feigns playing fair in a moment to moment, looking-at-the-enemy way, but the enemy civs just behave in really banana ways that replicate the appearance of following the rules, but really don’t. They build faster, earn more, and in some cases teleport to ensure they can oppose you. That’s not even accounting for the way the game can have technologically outmatched units win in combat against seemingly much more powerful things. Ever seen a phalanx with spears destroy a stealth bomber? The math says it can happen so the game lets it happen. There, the game is willinng to ‘play fair’ with its math.

That’s the funny thing about this game, to me. All these years later, as I play it, knowing the game now, the priorities of how to play have shifted. I could make it harder by avoiding this strategy, but I like playing this way. I like how silly it makes history. I like going to space with a civilisation that doesn’t know what a king, a pot, or a horse are. I like the distorted way it works and the mid-game challenge of making wonders quickly enough to not break the end game menu.

Basically, Civilisation wasn’t a game made that ever expected you to be good at it. In fact, Civilisation was a game with a lot of expectations and assumptions about what made the world work in the ways it did, and those historical assumptions are… a thing.

Look, this is not a new observation. Back in 2002, Matthew Kapell wrote in Popular Culture Review the article ‘Civilisation and its Discontents: American Monomythic Structure as historical Simulacrum.’ It’s a short article, not really a paper proper, but it’s a good analytical examination of the game and assumptions that are evident in the text, particularly as they relate to how you tell the story of history and whose history you’re telling.

Kapell talks about the idea of CIvilisation telling a fundamentally American style of history, and not just history but mythic history. In Civilisation 1, know where the game talks about slaves across all the cultures it represents? ‘Cos I don’t, and I’ve played the game a lot.

What Kappell describes in Civilisation that many have observed since is that the vision of games Meier poplated around this time was fundamentally a treatment of the world as a frontier. There is free land and resources waiting for the person to take best advantage of it, and you do so only in competition with other equal parties trying to do the same thing. It is a place for capitalism, free enterprise, and a spread of progress.

This vision of the world as frontier, and the civilisation as a simple relationship to resources and one another does a great job of feeling like it’s about history while skirting around all the murder and genocide. That’s why monomythic: This is the story of America that America tells itself. All history becomes part of this, all of the story is not about representing the world as a place for America to be but rather a world that looks the way America needs it to for it to be correct in how it views itself. The leader of America in Civilisation 1 is Abe Lincoln, not George Washington.

I don’t even necessarily want to talk about civilisations and identity in this though. The thing that stands out to me about this game is the fascinating ideology underpinning how it thinks governments are run and the weird moments of cynical realism it expresses in that.

In this game, you can run your country under a specific system – despotism, monarchy, republic, democracy, or, supposedly, communism. These all have special rules that change the way you relate to resources in your cities.

To unlock Communism, you need to research Communism, which you get to after Democracy and Philosophy. Communism then gives you the government system of Communism, which works identically to Monarchy, but with a special, unique perk: Your people can be oppressed with military presence in the city, and, corruption is omnipresent and equal in all cities.

This is a vision of communism that is not about Communism – the description even takes time out to explain that it hasn’t improved lives for workers – but is really talking about specifically, Stalinism – and like, Stalinism of maybe the 1950s, which had a shelf life of Not Long because Stalin himself didn’t exactly rack up a high score in getting through that decade.

Oh and once you have Communism, you can unlock Labor Unions. Labor Unions let you build a tank.

That’s it.

That’s all labor unions are for, in the idea of Civilisation 1.

But let’s roll back and look at that world that breaks the game.

I’m building as many places as I can for people to live in. When populations grow, I make a new place, and immediately connect it via infrastructure. I don’t build military units at all – unless a place is being attacked, military units are bad, and I don’t want them. If I do have them, I can’t use them to go on military adventurism, sending them out to go beat people up, because that makes the people who are supporting them unhappy: my people don’t support a military exploratory force.

I don’t make money. My tax rate is zero, because I want to work on science instead. Cities grow close together so when the population gets too big, they can’t process more of the land around them, and instead are limited to only about 4-5 squares around them and everyone else in the city takes on jobs of being entertainers, artists, or scientists. And I’m not building the buildings that demand more resources to maintain; people are left with their own goods, so they can use them in their own community. If people are mad about the government for more than one turn, that government collapses.

It’s very hard to argue that the ‘democracy’ outlined here is anything like the democracy the game was sold under. Can you imagine if being mad for a year resulted in an overhaul of everything? Can you imagine being able to impact the military operations in your country and indeed, discourage them? Can you imagine a society that only turns to expressions of force when someone else comes in and takes over a city, turning it into a temple-building military outpost? Can you imagine a place without police where people vote and throw parades and have a nice time? Can you imagine a community that doesn’t know what kings are?

The irony is that the optimal strategy of this frontier strategy is a peaceful anarchism that both does no harm and takes no shit.

No, it wasn’t intentional. But that doesn’t stop it from being funny.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[telesilla]

So something came up on Bluesky, a question:

legitimately why are you here (on social media)? i am asking myself the same (other than because of addiction).

And it’s kind of wild, because when I did the math, it is literally 30 years since a very cold night in January of ‘95 when I figured out how to venture from the safe and tame world of AOL out into the wilds of USENET. I spent several hours on a newsgroup dedicated to the works of one of my favorite fantasy authors from my teen years, having a discussion about magic and Christianity with a software engineer in Rotterdam and it was like, oh this is a new thing. I was seriously struggling in those days, figuring out my identity and also the mental illness was coming to the surface more and more, but I knew I’d found a new and important place.

In the last 30 years, I’ve experienced the best and worst of the Internet. I’ve started two relationships online that led to marriage—one disastrous and one happy—and I’ve been through countless flame wars and endless wanks. I have met some amazing people and, to paraphrase, some insufferable people who also met me. And I’ve written. 3m+ words of fiction and who knows how many words of just me talking to people and, sometimes, just yelling into the void. Before February of ‘95 I had never finished a story, because why bother? Writing on paper is hard for me and I only got my PC that Christmas and anyway, I’d told myself stories my whole life. But now…now, I had someone to share them with.

The Internet is younger than I am, but it fits into a long line of brilliant human inventions, from the spoken word, to writing, to printing, to instant communications like telegraphs and telephones, each one seemingly requiring faster and faster adoption. We’re still dealing with the ramifications of instantaneous communication and that was over 100 years ago. No one reading this will be alive when we are able to look back and see how the Internet and social media shaped us as a species.

It’s so easy to look at Elon throwing a Nazi salute and think, “the Internet was a mistake” but tbh, it’s too late for that. I’m sure at least one person looked at the violence and chaos of the Reformation and thought, goddam Gutenberg, this is all your fault. And idk, man, maybe I’m just a naive optimist, but right now, on a cold January night, when the world feels dark, Mongolian horse ranchers are bonding with USAmerican horse girls, and people are watching videos of snowball fights in New Orleans, and someone somewhere is coming out to their online friends using words they might not have had when I was born, and all around the world conversations are happening between people who would never meet face to face—so many flickers of light. Maybe, just maybe, the real Internet is the friends we made along the way.

Happy Internet Anniversary to me.

[myriadlabrynth]

Kiridai Hobby Ramblings

Some of these are repeats from other posts, but wanted to consolidate them here.

Hanamiya - Reading

Has expressed some interest for visiting the Starfield Library in Seoul (same for Furuhashi)

Has a soft expression whenever he is reading, which can somehow be off putting for some. Hard to tell what’s going on in his head.

Is above-conversational fluent in a few languages, enough to read some foreign novels in their original language. For these novels, he will include a couple of sticky notes here and there within, whenever he has to look up an unfamiliar word or phrase.

He’ll commit it to memory soon enough but with foreign languages being a little more tricky to learn, especially the slight nuances, he’ll take notes.

Booktok was a mistake

Prefers borrowing books over purchasing them. Not really interested in having shelves lined with books in his home. 

It would have to be books he truly truly enjoys, or books that his mom purchased for him.

Despite him insisting that his mom not buy him gifts, he will have those books displayed where they can be seen clearly.

Furuhashi - Gardening

First, a really sweet hobby, and interesting that it's one that requires some level of delicacy and gentleness.

It’s an outlet for him to relieve him of some stress, out of the recommendation from someone, since he used to have…other means of doing so.

For sure is all “Plants >>>>>> People”

Cause plants are pretty and quiet and stay still,  letting you take care of them with no resistance  :)

Spends a lot of his time in his greenhouse, even when he’s not taking care of his plants, just being in there and taking in the scent gives him solace.

More into gardening outside than indoors, but he has a few indoor plants.

His parents were initially not sure about the gardening, since they normally would have their hired gardeners take care of it. But they soon grew accustomed to it and now enjoy the literal fruits of Furuhashi’s labor, taking advantage of the fresh crops that are available. 

It’s certainly a bragging point whenever people visit the home.

His parents got him a hydroponic system, but he’s not really into it.

His parents had also made suggestions of how to make the gardening more “efficient”, with some tools that would supposedly “speed up the process”, but Furuhashi refused.

He doesn’t feel the desire to rush the process, as the process itself is what he enjoys.

Enjoys the "repetitiveness" of it and how he can shut off his brain and go on autopilot for some of it.

For your sake, please do not disturb him while he is at work.

Has an area in his garden with plants that are good for honey bees. 

Uses organic fertilizers.

Has a dehydration machine for drying out flowers for tea.

I can see him treating relationships similarly.

I know his type is a masochist, but for those he loves, he treats them with a similar delicacy at times.

Hara - Music

Has a playlist of songs that he plays drums to regularly.

Comes up with rearrangements of his favorite songs in his head, but has never tried to create it irl.

Related to the above, he purchased high-end music software, out of impulse and from  the recommendations of videos he’s seen. But he has yet to use them.

Also has other instruments in his house, catching dust. The only other instrument he dabbles with occasionally is his acoustic guitar.

Great at master level difficulty for rhythm games. 

He loves when he zones out and his hands move almost automatically, still getting perfects. (the closest we’ll the “zone” from Hara)

Had once thought of making reaction videos that are titled like “Drummer reacts to (insert artist and song) MV”, except they would be click-baity as he wouldn’t put too much intellectual/drummer related input, just to piss people off.

They could also be random, not music related videos like, “Drummer reacts to best fighting compilation videos”. And these random videos are when he would commentate on the “percussions”, even though it’s not relevant.

Yamazaki - Fighting Games

The most we’ll get out of Yamazaki as far as injuring people.

Gamer rage for sure, has gotten kicked out of arcades a couple of times for manhandling the machines too roughly or just being loud and disruptive. He’s toned it down since.

One incident was caused by Hara, who was just standing behind him, backseating or distracting him. 

The backseating being particularly infuriating cause Hara doesn’t know much but will just make suggestions like “Have you tried dodging? Can’t you use your super strong ultimate  attack?”, cause he knows it’ll get under Yamazaki’s skin.

Has a decent MMR/ranking in games.

Takes new character reveals very very seriously (like new Smash or Tekken character reveals). 

Has a separate group of online friends that he enjoys playing games with.

Some of these friends include members of other teams, but he doesn’t know that it’s them. Like in the drama cds where Hanamiya has played games with Imayoshi, Riko, etc but doesn’t know it’s them(presumably anyway).

Seto - Memorization

I think the facts that we do know about Seto, including his hobby, go hand in hand.

His motto of “Free and unrestrained”, the reason he joined the basketball club, and even the fact he sleeps most times.

Dabbles in and jumps around new activities and skills. He like to learn new things and doesn’t like to be tied down to any one particular thing. The exception being basketball since that is because of Hanamiya.

But I think that’s part of why Seto was ok with joining the basketball club, because it was something new for him to learn.

His sleeping is a key part of his ability to memorize and learn things quickly and thoroughly. Sleep is known to help with memory retainment after all.

“I’ll sleep on it”

That’s why Hanamiya is chill with Seto being asleep during games, because there’s some “productive” element to it.

Throwing this in here, but I think Seto being really smart was something that developed throughout his life. 

It wasn’t something that came natural to him at birth. And I think that created a bit of an inferiority complex for him, especially when he was often compared to his older brother.

That’s also why Seto started to wholeheartedly learn things and expand his knowledge.

At first it was to try to surpass his brother but he started caring less about that, and now just learns things more out of enjoyment of it.

[yesloulou]

Do u have any tips/tutorial how to make gifs so smooth if there's movement? Mine are always choppy and weird :(

Hi anon, ty for sending this ask. I'm sooo honored!! (and plz don't call your gifs choppy or weird i have a feeling they're very lovely 😌)

✨ Gif Tutorial: making movements in ur gifs as smooth as possible✨ (updated)

↳ aka: speed management in gif making

Remember to always source your content responsibly!! Process in this tutorial is simply what works best for me. Every creator has their own preferences and imo there is no right or wrong. We should always make content in the way we enjoy 🤍 Outline: 1. Remove duplicate frames 2. Repair missing frames 3. Speed management in Photoshop 4. Smoother slomo using Video Frame Interpolation

1. Remove duplicate frames

Obviously, if there're duplicate frames in a video, our gifs will end up with lil lags here and there (since some frames get more screen time than others). Although the dup frames are likely barely observable once compiled into gifs, imo this is what makes the difference between smooth and butter smooth. the two daniel gifs above (guy with big brown eyes, if ur not from our fandom 🤍) can hopefully showcase this difference**.

**technical explanation for this that you can totally skip: the persistence of human vision is approx. 0.1s, ie everything we see stay on our retina for this amount of time. since gifs refresh faster than this (eg. 0.04s on every frame for a 25 fps gif), we usually can't pinpoint exactly which frame is a duplicate just by looking at a gif. however. by definition, a duplicate frame will slow down a gif, by making it pause longer than it should. as a result, a movement during this lil chunk of time will move less pixels than your brain would've expected. and this is where we perceive the not-so-smoothness.

ok, now that we've established that we don't like duplicate frames -- I know it's common practice to handle this by looking for an optimal output frame rate to offset the dupes. to me this feels chancy. bc it's a process where you don't have control over exactly which frames to keep or discard. Personally, I prefer making sure my videos are dupe free before everything else. (Again, this is just what works for me. Everybody has their own process and imo there is no right or wrong :)

To remove duplicate frames, the first thing I do with a clip is to play the first few seconds frame by frame to see which one of the following scenarios it falls into:

a. no duplicate frames ↳ best case scenario! congrats!! plz proceed directly to step 2 b. there is a duplicated frame once in a while ↳ This happens most often with (but not limited to) videos from social medias ↳ Reason behind this is frame rate conversion. For instance, instagram/tiktok has a default frame rate of 30 fps. However, many media sources (eg. no brakes, sharl's vlogs) produce at 25 fps. When these videos are uploaded, instagram/tiktok convert them from 25 to 30 fps by duplicating 1 frame every 5 frames, hence twitchiness in gifs when slowed down. ↳ Solution: in photoshop, go through the clip frame by frame, delete dupes manually (recommended) ↳ Alternative solution: use duplicate frames remover softwares (see next bullet point) c. almost every frame has duplicates ↳ This will almost always** be the case with screen record. ↳ What not to do: When there are many duplicates, we may be tempted to use photoshop's 'import 1 out of every n frames' function. this is not ideal bc, the dupes are rarely uniformly distributed. you could end up losing frames you don't want to lose (resulting in choppy gifs) or end up with dup frames still in the mix (resulting in laggy gifs) or, most likely: both. ↳ A better way: is to import all frames into photoshop, adjust the output frame rate to offset the dupes (here is a good tutorial on this) Pros: efficiency; yields decent results in most cases. Cons: again, in my experience this is a process where you don't have precise control over the frames. Therefore runs the same (albeit smaller) risks as the method above. It can also limit how much you can slow down a gif, and generally doesn't work well if the target frame rate (of the clip you're trying to gif) exceeds your computer's recording rate**. **More on this statement: when target rate is comfortably lower than recording rate (~ 55 fps for many), chances are most to all frames will be captured. It is therefore more tolerating towards skipping a unique frame from time to time. However, when target rate (i.e. anything 60 fps) nears or exceeds recording rate, you will be dealing with dup frames as well as missing ones. Using the method above can therefore subject you to the possibility of losing two unique frames in a row, making the gifs noticeably choppy. ↳ Solution: we always have the option to trim dupes by hand in photoshop. But in this case, it can be time consuming, even with keyboard shortcuts. as a result, here is where we can really use a: ↳ Dup remover software: google search 'dup frame remover software' will give you several options and tutorials (here a plug-in for after effects). i've heard good things about some of these but unfortunately can't give recommendations (they do cost money sooo i wrote my own)

Demonstration:

This is a frame-by-frame animation of an ad Charles did for apm. It was produced at 25 fps & uploaded to socmed where the default is 30 fps. You can see that: i. With screen recording, every frame has an unpredictable amount of duplicates. ii. Original clip from instagram has 1 dup frame every 5 frames. iii. After deduplication, the movement becomes lag free and continuous.

2. Repair missing frames

At this point, our video clip is (hopefully) free of duplicate frames, which makes our gifs lag-free (yayy!!). At the same time, we don't want choppiness in our gifs either. Choppiness in a gif is usually caused by missing key (unique) frames. To check if there is any, replay the clip, look out for the sudden jumps/fast forwards in movements. Three possible scenarios:

a. no missing frames ↳ best case scenario! congrats!! plz proceed directly to step 3 b. a lot of missing frames ↳ This is usually the case if the target frame rate (of the clip you want to gif) exceeds the screen recording frame rate. ↳ Solution, imo: (surprise!) is to leave things be. Reason is that something like this would be quite tedious to fix, but not that noticeable if made into a gif that's fast enough ↳ Alternative solution: Record at 120 fps c. occasional missing frames If a video clip misses frames, but not a lot, chances are it's only gonna happen very occasionally, i.e. 1 or 2 occurrences in total. A frame-miss in this case is usually due to either the screen recording skipping a frame by mistake, or that the original video misses frames/contains bad frames to begin with. ↳ Solution (for screen recordings): record again, find missing frame (chances are it will be captured on a second try), insert frame back into original timeline in PS ↳ Solution (if video misses frames or contains bad frames to begin with): Let's talk about ✨ VFI ✨. VFI (Video Frame Interpolation) is the process of synthesizing in-between images from a given set of images. It can increase videos' frame rates (i.e. 30 fps to 60 fps), achieve smoother slomos, and by definition, also help with missing/bad frames. There are many software products that let you use VFI by simply dragging videos into the app and clicking 'export'. Afterwards, all we need to do is to find the missing frame generated by the app & insert it back into the original timeline in PS (ahh technology). For more info on VFI, see "4. Smoother slomo". ↳ Note that VFI processed footages will likely differ slightly from the originals in terms of colors & lightings. This may be tuned out using clipping masks (allow a group of adjustment layers to only apply to one frame/layer, keyboard shortcut: Command+Opt+G)

3. Speed Management in Photoshop (✨ updated ✨)

At this point, our clip is without dupe or missing frames (or at least as close as can be). Whether you dodged the first 2 steps like a breeze or freshly emerged victorious from photoshop covered in blood to get here, good news is, things will be very straightforward for this point on. congrats!!!

🎉🎊🎉

As mentioned before, in terms of smoothness, our clip is now in ideal shape. The important thing is to keep it this way throughout the rest of the process. My workflow looks something like this:

Open file, crop, resize, sharpen, color, export gif, reopen gif in photoshop (which won't compromise quality), assign frame delay, export finalized gif

If you're used to finding a comfortable frame delay or speed/duration combo at the beginning, this process might feel unnatural. But it's so so so so important to leave the speed related settings alone until right before exporting. Here's why:

By not converting frames with modified delays into timelines with fps, we avoid having to give our finished product a frame rate (which photoshop timelines have to specify). This is crucial bc, there is no such a thing as frame rates in gifs. According to the syntax of GIF89a (the current '.gif' format, screenshot below), gifs control their speeds through (and only through) how much time to wait in between frames, aka delay time. Our process above does exactly that. It compiles frames directly into gifs, and avoids expressing frame delays (a gif concept) through frame rates (a photoshop concept), a conversion where dupe frames and missing frames come from**. In other words, using frame delays to control speed is simply more natural to a gif's syntax. **Why would this conversion cause dupe frames? ↳ On paper, frame delays should translate into frame rates seamlessly (i.e. 1 second ÷ 0.06s per frame = 16.67 fps). In reality, photoshop does not support direct translations like this. When converting frame animations into timelines, PS defaults outputs to 30 fps, regardless of frame delays. This disagreement between frame rates is where dupe frames come from. ↳ Some examples: i. Consider a frame animation where frame delay = 0.04s (25 fps), to convert it into a timeline defaulted at 30 fps, 5 out of every 25 frames will be 'duplicated' by photoshop (30-25=5) ii. Now, consider a frame delay = 0.06s (16.67 fps roughly 17 fps), to convert it into a timeline defaulted at 30 fps, 13 out of every 17 frames will be 'duplicated' by photoshop (30-17=13) ↳ (the 'duplicated' was in quotes bc photoshop achieves this thru assigning a frame roughly twice it's original screen time instead of actually adding another) ↳ (afaik, currently there's no way of changing the default 30 fps as long as u start with frame animations. If anyone does know how please let me know 😳) **Why would this conversion cause missing frames? ↳ This happens when one tries to reverse the harm done by photoshop in prev step by changing the 30 fps frame rate back to what it's supposed to be (using function 'Set Timeline Frame Rate') ↳ Let's use the last example again. As mentioned, to go from 16.67 fps to 30 fps, 13 out of every 17 frames will receive roughly twice its original screen time (0.033s * 2 ≈ 0.07s). On the other hand, 4 out of every 17 frames' screen time will remain the same (0.03s). to go from 30 fps back to 16.67 fps, photoshop resamples frames from its 30 fps timeline in 0.06s intervals. As a result, any frame with screen time less than 0.06s runs the risk of 'slipping through the cracks', namely ones whose screen time remained 0.03s ↳ (gifs require frame delays to be rounded to the nearest hundredth of a second) ** What if I open the file as video object, instead of importing as frames? ↳ Indeed, when opening as video object (i.e. command+o instead of command+i), photoshop inherits its frame rate as is. We would then have the option to manipulate it's speed by right-click ➡️ adjusting the percentage (of how much to speed up or slow down). ↳ Here, if we slow down a gif without changing its frame rate, we risk introducing duplicate frames into the result (since frame rate is now higher than needed). If we slow down a gif and lowered the frame rate, but the math didn't check out, we also risk losing unique frames (frame rate not high enough). The same (opposite) goes for speeding things up. Therefore the best and easiest approach is, again, leaving speed related settings alone until right before exporting.

(the block of GIF89a syntax responsible for graphic control:)

Ok in hindsight this probably isn't exactly like. the most straightforward thing ever but the execution part is very much so 😳 here goes:

1. Open file in PS via Command + O note the (25 fps) on bottom left

without changing speed, duration, or frame rate: 2. Trim ✂️ 3. Crop 4. Resize 5. Sharpen 6. Color

(Updated!!!) 6. Export gif, and then reopen it in Photoshop **Compare to the original method (timeline into smart object, smart object back into frames), the updated method has the following benefits: i. Avoid lowering gif quality by converting into smart objects ii. Reopening gif into frames and reassign frame delay saves time (bc less steps) and won't hurt the quality at all (bc no image processing required)

7. Assign Frame Delay (i usually go with original frame delay + 0.01s) 8. Export ✨

Tada!! Speed = managed!!

This ad actually came out last December where I was aware of like, maybe 5% of what's in this post. Here is what my original gif looks like. I'd say what we have rn is a big improvement :)

Now, imo there are situations where it simply makes more sense to start with frame animations (imported using command + i). For instance: when we need to remove duplicate frames by hand, when there is a missing frame/bad frame that needs to be repaired, etc. My workflow would then look like this:

1. Command + i 2. (do things to frames) 3. Set frame delay to 0.03s 4. Convert to video timeline 5. (the rest will look exactly like the workflow above)

This works bc when frame delay is set to 0.03s, photoshop will treat your video timeline as a "natural" 30 fps timeline and leave your frames alone. Therefore maintains its uniform speed.

4. Smoother Slomo using Video Frame Interpolation

As mentioned above, VFI (Video Frame Interpolation) is the process of synthesizing in-between images from a given set of images. It can increase videos' frame rates (i.e. 30 fps to 60 fps), hence smoother slomos. There are many software products that let you use interpolation by simply dragging videos into the app and clicking 'export'. I've had very good experiences with Topaz and After Effects.

Let's talk about After Effects first. If you have Photoshop, chances are you have AE as well. To use AE's Keyframe Interpolation:

i. Import ii. Set speed to half iii. Click square twice until you see lil arrow iv. Export

Topaz is a production grade video enhancing software. It's capable of enhancing frame rates (i.e. 30 fps to 60 fps), increasing resolutions (i.e. 540p to 4K/2160p) and more. Unlike AE who uses only the two neighboring key frames to generate an in-between frame, Topaz takes the whole sequence into account, hence better reliability. It's also more user friendly than AE imo.

Here is a before-and-after interpolation using Topaz.

That's all 🎉🎉🎉

To sum up: remove dupe frames (if any), repair missing frames (if any), use and only use frame delay to control speed, and software enhance frame rate if needed.

This post got way longer and more technical than I had planned and I honestly have no idea where all this stuff came from lol. But it was really fun and I hope you'll find it helpful. Feel free to message me if you have any questions. Have fun moving-picture making!!

[cyberstudious]

Hey! This is very random, but I saw that you work in cyber security right now. I work in data science, but I'm really interested in cyber security and considering making a switch. I was wondering what kind of cybersecurity work you do, and what has been the most helpful for you to learn what you need for your job!

Hi! Cybersecurity is a really broad field, and you can do a lot of different things depending on what your interests are.

My work is mostly focused around automating things for security, since my background is in programming. Automation is really helpful for speeding up boring, monotonous tasks that need to get done, but don't necessarily need a human involved. A good example is automated phishing analysis, since phishing reports are a big chunk of the cases that security analysts have to deal with, and an analyst usually follows the same few steps at the beginning. Rather than someone having to manually check the reputation of the sender domain, check the reputation of any links, and all of that every single time, we can build tools to automatically scan for things like that and then present the info to the analyst. The whole idea here is to automate the boring data retrieval stuff, since computers are good at that, and give the analyst more time for decision-making and analysis, since humans are good at that.

If you're coming from data science, you might be interested in detection engineering. Cybersecurity is essentially a data problem - we have a ton of logs from a ton of different sources (internal logs, threat intelligence feeds, etc.) - how do we sort through that data to highlight things that we want to pay attention to, and how can we correlate events from different sources? If you're into software development or want to stay more on the data science side, maybe you could also look into roles for software development at companies that have SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) products - these are essentially the big log repositories that organizations rely on for correlation and alerting.

As for starting to learn security, my general go-to recommendation is to start looking through the material for the Security+ certification. For better or worse, certifications are pretty big in security, much more so than other tech fields (to my knowledge). I'm a bit more hesitant to recommend the Security+ now, since CompTIA (the company that offers it) was bought by a private equity company last year. Everyone is kind of expecting the prices to go up and the quality to go down. (The Security+ exam costs $404 USD as of writing this, and I think I took mine for like $135ish with a student discount in 2022). However, the Security+ is still the most well-known and comprehensive entry-level certification that I'm aware of. You can (and should) study for it completely for free - check out Professor Messer's training videos on YouTube. There are also plenty of books out there if that's more of your thing. I'd say to treat the Security+ as a way to get a broad overview of security and figure out what you don't know. (It's certainly not a magic ticket to a job, no matter what those expensive bootcamps will tell you.)

If you aren't familiar with networking, it's worth checking out Professor Messer's Network+ training videos as well. You don't need to know everything on there, but having an understanding of ports, protocols, and network components and design is super useful. I hear a lot that the best security folks are often the ones who come from IT or networking or similar and have a really solid understanding of the fundamentals and then get into security. Don't neglect the basics!

One thing that I'll also add, based on conversations I've had with folks in my network… getting a job in cybersecurity is harder now than it used to be, at least in the US (where I am). There are a ton of very well-qualified people who have been laid off who are now competing with people trying to get into the field in the first place, and with the wrecking ball that Elon is taking to the federal government (and by extension, government contractors) right now… it's hard. There's still a need for skilled folks in cyber, but you're going to run into a lot of those "5 years of experience required for this entry-level job" kind of job postings.

On a slightly happier note, another thing you should do if you want to get into cyber is to stay up to date with what's happening in the industry! I have a masterpost that has a section with some of my favorite news sources. The SANS Stormcast is a good place to start - it's a 5 minute podcast every weekday morning that covers most of the big things. Black Hills Infosec also does a weekly news livestream on YouTube that's similar (but longer and with more banter). Also, a lot of infosec folks hang out on Mastodon & in the wider fediverse. Let me know if you want some recs for folks to follow over there.

The nice thing about cybersecurity (and computer-related fields in general, I find) is that there are a ton of free resources out there to help you learn. Sometimes it's harder to find the higher-quality ones, but let me know if there are any topics you're interested in & I'll see what I can find. I have a few posts in my cybersecurity tag on here that might help.

Thank you for your patience, I know you sent this in over a week ago lol but life has been busy. Feel free to send any follow-up questions if you have any!

[honeyviscera]

♫ vbs writing songs.....

toya knows advanced music theory because of his upbringing. he would take those fancy theory exams and his dad would assign him theory homework, so he knows how music works on a very technical level. i think while writing music he can become wrapped up in chord progressions and modes and the like.

he does use the music mixing software souma's teaching him of course, but i like to think sometimes the best way for him to work through a song is to set up in the Weekend Garage, haul an electric keyboard onto one of the booth tables, spread staff paper out in front of himself, grab a pencil, and plot out chords by hand.

he's still working on "going with the flow" more, in order to make songs that feel more free and relaxed, and fit the style of vbs, but i think this method has allowed him to create some incredibly technically complex and beautiful scores. it's fun to imagine him plotting it out on staff paper, then typing it by hand into his laptop, and then adding effects and layering melodies and seeing how he can digitally alter it to make it even better.

♫

akito knows some music theory, but not as much as toya. when he was first getting into the music scene, he thought it would be important if he knew how to read music, so he taught himself the basics and has worked up from there. and starting his music journey with toya, he also would learn more theory from him as well, even if at the time it was a bit of an uncomfortable subject for toya. i think akito's approach to writing music is more prioritising what sounds good and just. trying a bunch of different things over the technical aspect of it, but he falls back on technical knowledge when something just isn't working, or if he's trying to achieve something specific.

he also will think of the music in technical terms (like note names, basic chord names, etc), as opposed to an, who just thinks in vibes and sound bytes of songs she's heard before lol

i like to think of him up in his room with his headphones in, on his laptop, just trying different things, humming, making small notes in a notebook, tapping rhythms with his hands. he'll aready be imagining the choreography that could go with the song in his head and might jot that down too. he and an will text back and forth little sound bites as they work on songs together and also short videos of themselves demonstrating dance moves to each other.

his notes are a mixture of sketched chords, timing and choreo notes, and generally outline a song timeline. toya: "now if only your school notes were this organised :)" akito: "oi. -_-"

♫

an isn't suuper well versed in music theory, but she does know some things. she more learned music by ear, growing up in vivid street around a bunch of street musicians. her way of using the music software is like. she'll hum something she thinks sounds good and then trial-and-error her way with the software until it sounds like what she was thinking (but she has very good pitch, so it doesn't usually take too much tweaking to get what she wants.)

she definitely goes more by vibes. she'll think something like "hmmm, it needs to sound more 'bwah!' here...." and then she'll make it more bwah. when she and akito are writing together, this habit of hers can be frustrating because "an, i don't know what bwah means. do you mean something like the chord should be brighter? the tempo faster? some effects should be added?" and then an will be like "mmmm.... I don't know. it just needs more bwah." eventually they figure it out though. and akito slowly learns to interpret her noises and hand waves and head shakes lol

she also texts akito sound bytes and choreo clips and general thoughts on songs. i think instead of using a notebook she just texts akito and uses their conversation history as a notebook lol. when they're rehearsing a song she's like "oh that reminds me...." *pulls out her phone* *scrolls through her and akito's messages* "just a minute......." and then akito will be like "do you mean [x thing] you texted me at 1am last week" and she'll be like "YES how did you know :0" "sigh". akito remembers everything she texts him, because even if random or out of context, he really likes her ideas. and so akito himself ends up being her notebook haha

♫

kohane, being the newbie, is just learning..... i think she's trying to teach herself music theory to really understand what goes into a song. when vbs are hanging out and discussing songwriting, she's doing her best to listen and absorb it all. i like to think she'll sit and watch toya when he's in the booth at weekend garage with the keyboard, and she'll ask occasional questions about his process and he'll smile and explain this and that..... ♪(´▽｀)

akito and an both talk about their process with her to help her learn.... i think when she sits down to write her first song she'll take a mixture of everyone's methods to make her own! (❁´◡`❁)

[techavtar]

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[mahamid110]

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[web-witch]

Mediamancy: unknown armies updated class

Mediamancy is a mix of videomancy, and infomancy and a bit of bibliomancy (at least in my mind). It is the magic of using media as a conduit for casting spells. I have read the wiki page regarding mediamancy and have come to the conclusion that it is kinda warped in the sense that it can’t fully be adopted as a practice irl. So, with that in mind, I came up with a way to use it anyway (mainly cause I hate to be told no to things).

How to practice mediamancy:

Media as charms: I have taken to carrying around thumb drives with folders full of videos and photos and books that I simply insert into my phone or computer and plug in. A few minutes of tapping in allows me to feel revitalized and ready to zap. Without these, I feel kinda naked in a way.

Images and archetypes as glamours: imagine copying and pasting psychic imagery over your aura to allow for you to enhance certain talents you have or provide you with base skills. That is what this is. Granted it’s an illusion but it is still very useful.

Music as potions: I’ve beaten this one to death, see any of my other posts on cybermancy or pop culture magic.

News articles as bibliomancy: pretty self explanatory.

The key to mediamancy is to always be plugged in somehow.

Tools of a mediamancer

- thumb drives and ssd hard drives: it may just be me, but I’m obsessed with storage devices and storage space. This way I can carry all my stuff with me and not have to worry.

- smartphone: this is like my wand, my scrying mirror and my grimoire all rolled into one.

- portable charger: a good charger is the best way to make sure your phone doesn’t run out of battery. If you’re like me, then you would want to carry at least two chargers and a wall plug to charge the chargers.

- phone attachments and accessories: camera add ons, usb dongles, stylus, Bluetooth earbuds and other add ons are all useful for various functionalities of mediamancy since you’re not just consuming media but creating it too.

- a good bag to carry it all

Software tools of a mediamancer

- streaming services: kinda essential, but at least one good streaming service is required or a free service that gives you the feel of tv watching.

- blogging platform: for those who embrace the written media, this is a good way to work with social media sorcery and literary magic

- news app: I recommend google news since it’s free

- writing software: I recommend scrivener because it’s a writer’s dream space.

Voice notes app: in lieu of a voice recorder, a voice notes app is good for making vocal spells and recording conversations for making media based spells using audio as ingredients.

Music streaming service: at the very least it’s good to boost energy if nothing else. I recommend YouTube music due to the wide range of ambient music available.

- e-reader app: this is essential for literary mediamancy since books are always being written. I recommend kindle since almost everyone has a smartphone and an Amazon account and there are tons of free books you can get from it. If you have an Amazon account then you have a kindle account.

Video game emulator: mostly for nostalgic purposes, this can be turned into a way to practice Ludomancy (video game magic).

[rpgsandbox]

SFWA Posthumously Presents Jennell Jaquays with the 2024 Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award

A multi-award winning and honored artist, game designer, editor, and activist, Jennell Jaquays left an indelible mark on the gaming industry and SFF community for nearly fifty years. Ms. Jaquays’ career began in college, when she and her friends created “The Dungeoneer,” one of the first licensed Dungeons and Dragons fanzines. Now, from magazines to books, Ms. Jaquays’ art can be seen on multiple covers and throughout the pages of the many different forms and iterations of Dungeons and Dragons’ media. Having designed two modules of her own, “Dark Tower” and “The Caverns of Thracia,”  her writing was celebrated by players for eschewing traditional and linear game mechanics and are not only playable today–but continue to inspire game designers and GMs. Also known for her game industry work at companies such as Coleco, TSR, and id Software, Ms. Jaquays designed and contributed to multiple projects such as Coleco Vision, certain levels on the Quake II and III video games, arcade conversions of Pac-Man and Donkey-Kong, Halo Wars, and created an expansion pack in Age of Empires III. Ms. Jaquays was nominated for multiple H.G. Wells Awards for her work and creation of the “Dark Tower” D&D module and for her design and illustrations on“Griffin Mountain.” Her work with Coleco’s WarGames won her the 1984 Summer C.E.S. original software award. Additionally, Castle Greyhawk won an Origins Gamer’s Choice Award for “Best Role-Playing Adventure,” and in 2017, the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design inducted Ms. Jaquays into their hall of fame. Inspired by her own journey, Ms. Jaquays also became a recognized transgender activist, spending time working as the creative director of the Transgender Human Rights Institute. “A beacon of hope and inspiration, Jennell Jaquays worked tirelessly in the spirit of community while gifting us with her art, her games, and her stories for almost fifty years,” said SFWA Director-at-Large, Monica Valentinelli. “The Board is honored to commemorate Jennell Jaquays and her indelible legacy as an artist, writer, and game designer in the video game and tabletop roleplaying industries.” Accepting on behalf of Ms. Jaquays at the 59th Annual Nebula Awards is her wife, Rebecca Heineman.

[lanaindublin]

I'm something of a useless lesbian myself...

05/06/2025

-and I regard this book titled "Mi Experiencia Lesbiana Con Soledad" as a personal attack on myself, and all sapphic-kind. Not by any untruths or slander, but by the sheer brutal honesty that this book's perspective takes.

Nagata Kabi has spent her twenties attempting to balance her passion for drawing manga with a career that offers financial independence, all the while contending with depression, social anxiety, chronic bodily ailments, burnout and the dawning realisation that men just aren't her cup of tea (with the exception of the ones running their hands over other men in illustrated formats). Shes a NEET, shes a FUJOSHI, she has MOMMY ISSUES, and shes JUST LIKE ME (for real, for real).

You are probably more familiar with this visual novel's english title "My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness". My attention was first drawn to this book when it was mentioned in SuperEyepatchWolf's (a cis het male lesbian after my own heart) "Best of Season Y 202X" video. The exact one escapes me, it must have been years since I watched it, but the book never fell off my radar. Especially considering I was having my own round-about journey to discovering lesbianism myself. I must have picked the book up in late 2022, a good while after moving to Barcelona, promising myself I would read it to improve my spanish, just as soon as I finish reading the Iliad (and we all know how that turned out). It wasn't until autumn of last year that I finally cracked the cover with purpose and drive, and started bashing my head against the language barrier.

The reading experience was about as rough and disjointed as you'd expect for Japanese literature, translated to Spanish (with Spanish annotations explaining Japanese customs and terms) and processed through my brains language center, which could just about stumble through a conversation in Castillano on a good day. Many turns-of-phrase were replaced by Spanish equivalents that I was entirely unfamiliar with leading to many pauses where I would attempt to process the directly-translated gibberish I had just read. But with gratuitous translating software, and consulting my dear wife on the unfamiliar phrases, I was able to stumble through the book, taking about 5 to 20 minutes to properly comprehend each 2-page spread. Despite all this, the emotions and comedy conveyed by this book were not lost on me, and goodness this book has a lot of emotions and comedy.

The book opens with Nagata, in her early thirties, visiting a love hotel with a female sex worker, today is the day she loses her virginity. The story loosely follows how her life got to this point, focusing on her experiences in adolescence, her early career as a mangaka, and her struggles with mental health. All of which is told with a candidness and sincerity that draws the reader in, Nagata delves into details of her life that, while not vulgar or overly explicit, really make the reader feel like a fly on the wall, an invader of privacy. But like similarly candid tales of lived experience, that is the heart and soul of the book, and all the way through Nagata can't help but be just the most relatable person ever. I know what it's like to hit puberty and have mixed feelings about how your body changes. I know what it's like to have bodily ailments that feel like a sisyphean task to stay on top of. I know what it's like to struggle to make connections with people. I know the feeling of the constant uphill battle of trying to meet the expectations of one's parents. And I know what it's like to have sexual thoughts that make no sense from a young naive perspective, in a world where most people seem hell bent on denying that queer people exist within the mundane and day-to-day of our society. I get it. I think if I grew up in Nagata's shoes, in her culture, with her ambitions, I might never have realised I was trans. And I could certainly see myself being a virgin until my thirties. I would definitely lose my virginity to a sex worker...

Sorry about that, the truth is that this is a book that has stuck with me more than I give it credit for. I might not have had the idea to journal my life in such a publicly available blog format if it weren't for this book. About halfway through the book Nagata details how she burned out from her work as a mangaka, and after some time she returned to her passion of comics, but not in a traditional manga style, and not telling stories typical to the medium. She instead began uploading short webcomics in a simplistic art style to pixiv. Little vignettes of personal experience, that gained enough popularity that she was approached to publish them in a manga format. Which is how this book came to be. The Nagata's art style is expressive and easy on the eyes, figures are drawn simplistically, but always with enough detail and personality to distinguish them. And the entire book contains only black line art on white, coloured with varying shades of pink. The end effect is that every scene depicted feels like a hazy memory, stressful situations feel very cerebral instead of external, and the rare moments of elation feel like floating on a cloud.

I think different people will relate to some aspects more than others, but I think only an exceptionally small minded individual would come away from this book with nothing to show for it. It comes with my highest recommendations, and I rule it as essential reading for all neets, freaks, weird girls and sapphics out there.

And that's about my thoughts on THAT matter. Will probably post another review soon, as I have a bit of a backlog of them. Until then, stay safe, and for god's (secular) sake just talk to that hot girl that works behind the counter at your local cafe, you useless fucking lesbian.