#default gateway

[betterbemeta]

I understand how intuitive 'conservatives are Weird' is, which makes it successful,

and i understand others have already written about how to differentiate 'good weird' and 'bad weird' as different concepts that use the same word,

I think there is one more idea we need to make broadly known that would bring 'conservatives are weird' out of the bully instinct catharsis zone.

and that is to expose how it's a right-wing strategy to control 'weird.'

There will always be in-group/out-group decision making. This has been true since before sedentary agriculture. To adult human beings in an everyday context, 'weird' is a concept that we use making in-group out-group decisions. It isn't the decision itself. Something can seem weird to us at first but also not be a problem at all. 'Weird' is part of calling for a decision to be made.

But the right wing does not want ordinary people to decide anything.

It historically has roots in monarchism. The right wing of politics enfranchises a very hierarchical view of power where the fewer resources you have the fewer decisions you get to make, and accepting the decisions of 'your betters' is mandatory.

This is generally an unpopular way to run things. People don't like to vote for 'a party for dictators.' So right-wing groups don't run on a platform of truly competing with other perspectives. Their way to win involves maintaining the conditions that help the right wing itself to be reproduced, while nullifying any competition.

Part of this is controlling 'normal' and 'weird.' Making 'weird' the decision instead of the call to decide.

And that form of 'weird' is ruthless. You see it in the right-wing reaction to 'weird' itself! They cannot come back from 'weird.' If the abusive authority notices ANY exception in their world, you're already dead. To 'not be weird' under a strict hierarchy is only to be temporarily passed-over by violence, and you could be revisited and 'normal' can be revoked at any time. It's never active acceptance, but to only be left alone.

This is also how many children use 'weird', because of how often humiliation and abuse are used casually to 'correct' them. But how could they be aware to think a landlord is 'weird?' A billionaire? how 'convenient'?

The right wing knows adults making decisions violently rejected it before.

It doesn't want to deal with those again.

I think that's pretty fucking weird of them?

[stavee]

Boy oh boy do I wish I understood networking. I know absolutely jack shit

[kifflepiffles]

Hey btw if you wanna mess with people, you totally shouldn't go into one of the big three browsers (Chrome, Firefox, or edge) and type into the address bar 192.168.1.1, put a wifi username and password in, then start absolutely fucking with it by lowering the amount of allowed users to 2 at a time or logging users out every 10 minutes or blocking URLs or--

[a-very-tired-jew]

The Columbia University Taskforce on Antisemitism 2nd Report is out. And it's a doozy. https://president.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/content/Announcements/Report-2-Task-Force-on-Antisemitism.pdf

Before I get into the nitty gritty of it let me pretty much summarize and paraphrase the Taskforce's position: "Holy shit the antisemitism on campus is so much worse than we thought, and it's repeatedly done by people saying they're 'just anti-Zionists'".

Let's start with the Taskforce's working definition of antisemitism.

Fig. 1. Columbia Taskforce on Antisemitism definition of antisemitism

This is a pretty good definition as it includes such things as Holocaust Denial, perceived ties to Israel, double standards, and all the usual things. It pretty much encompasses everything we have witnessed and experienced since Oct 7th. However, the Taskforce then follows it up with this bit.

Fig. 2. Columbia Taskforce on Antisemitism says their definition should not be used outside of training and education.

By saying that their working definition of antisemitism should not be used outside of training and education purposes the Taskforce is pretty much admitting upfront that the antisemitism they are reporting on falls well within their definition and breaks Columbia University code of conduct to the point where the perpetrators would and should receive various punishments ranging from suspensions to expulsions to revocations.

This is an example of the double standards that Jews experience. If this was a taskforce working to find evidence and address any other form of bigotry and racism then there would be recommendations made using the working definition. The irony is that they talk about double standards right in their definition. Now, of course the whole argument comes down to First Amendment Rights. But speech that induces and instigates violence against individuals and/or ethnic/racial groups is not protected. Considering that the Taskforce found calls to violence against Jews then this is not covered. Furthermore, while supporting terrorism is covered by the First Amendment, material support includes distributing terrorist approved and produced materials, of which many students and groups like CUAD are on record doing (even on their own social media) is not.

The report then does what we always, always, always see when it comes to anything with antisemitism. It recommends training on antisemitism AND islamophobia. Now, I am for this personally. A lot of others might be like "Why link the two?! It's always like this!" but I think training on both serves a purpose.

Explicit training and education on what is antisemitism and what is islamophobia. Such things as criticism of the Israeli government's actions, Hamas's actions and rhetoric, the Nakba and the Farhud, the Arab League, and so on being the things that come to mind as examples of not antisemitism or islamophobia. Then getting into the things like stereotypes and conspiracies and how criticism can easily fall into these, how people often seed in "innocuous" conspiracies that are actually the gateway to more serious hateful ones and how to recognize that ploy.

By having courses and training on what is and what isn't either of the two you start to address that leftover guilt since the 9/11 era that has prevented any and all criticism of Islam, Islamic groups, and Islamic regimes for fear of being labeled "Islamophobic". We have seen since Oct 7th the projection of "Jews are weaponizing antisemitism to prevent criticism of Israel" from groups that defend the use of Hadiths that call for the death of Jews under the guise of "you're being Islamophobic" as a means to prevent criticism.

Now, will such education and training actually address these issues? Of course not. They'll likely be opposed and never implemented.

Let's move on, shall we? The report then gets into it's introduction and tells us that they heard from nearly 500 students ranging from undergrads to post-docs about their antisemitic experiences. These testimonies come from Zionists, anti-Zionists, non-Zionists, and those the Taskforce couldn't exactly label. Furthermore, those that did not attend the listening sessions did what we've seen all antisemite do since 10/7; they denied the experience of these students and the Taskforce acknowledges this.

That's huge.

Acknowledging that the greater Columbia University community is denying the antisemitic experiences of these students whom are across the political spectrum and academic experience is signaling to the antisemites that the victims will not be drowned out by the mob with pitchforks.

They then follow it up with this.

Fig. 3. Acknowledgement that the antisemitism students are experiencing does lead to physical violence and has historical precedent.

The Taskforce is admitting and acknowledging that Columbia University has failed in fulfilling part of its mandate in protecting students and addressing acts of bigotry, hate, and violence towards students and students of a particular group. By also acknowledging that antisemitic rhetoric has a historical precedent of leading to physical violence they are also admitting that they know how bad it is and it needs to be addressed.

They then recommend that the university change its policies because of the utter failure to address these incidents. Further elaborating that some of the incidents actually violate state and federal law and that the university is culpable in such cases and the university itself is, once again, adhering to double standards for its Jewish and Israeli students.

The report then goes into the incidents students experienced starting with section 1B. Student Experiences in Day-to-Day Encounters. I will not go over that here in detail, but it contains multiple testimonies and excerpts from testimonies about the antisemitism the Jewish students experienced since 10/7. What is important to note is that the Taskforce acknowledges the "slippage" of anti-Zionism into antisemitism in the majority of these incidents, that the perpetrators don't think they're doing so, but to everyone else it is very clearly happening.

Fig. 4. Taskforce stating that anti-Zionist activities have fallen into classic antisemitic tropes and canards on Columbia's campus(es).

Furthermore, the Taskforce acknowledges that Jewish and Israeli students purposefully had their words misinterpreted to villainize them. Any attempt at facilitating discussion or understanding was dismissed with heavy prejudice.

The Taskforce also talks about how social media has played a role in the harassment of Jewish and Israeli students.

Fig. 5. Student testimony and screenshotting of antisemitism online from Columbia students and orgs.

Moving on to section C. Student Experiences in Clubs, we find one of the most heinous incidents.

Fig. 6. Founder of an LGBTQIA+ group defends their antisemitism then acknowledges it and brags that they got away with it.

This incident highlights one of the issues we have seen since 10/7 where people place Jews as "white oppressors" to validate their antisemitism. They engage in open antisemitic conspiracy and defend it through the use of progressive language that makes it difficult, if not impossible, to address their bigotry. Why? Because a person like this will fall back to being a minority themselves to say that they can't be a bigot. This type of defense is hypocritical and is solely used to silence any attempt to address their hate, to which this student fully acknowledges as she bragged that she got away with it.

This is why Columbia University apologizing to Khymani James after expelling them for their comments about "Zionists don't deserve to live" and that we were "lucky" they weren't out there killing them right now is so abhorrent. Across the internet we saw accusations of white supremacy and silencing BIPOC and queer voices because of Khymani's sexual identity and ethnicity. Is this not the kind of weaponization that antisemites accuse Jews of? This is projection and the testimony above and the Khymani incident highlight this type of behavior. You don't get to be a hateful bigot simply because you're a minority, but the double standard for Jews is a consistent issue.

As the report continues we then find out that the CUAD is not just one group, but actually a coalition that has multiple student clubs and organizations underneath it. CUAD demands that its member clubs and orgs adhere to its mission and rhetoric. According to the report, any student in a club or org that didn't express outright (((anti-Israel))) sentiment was silenced and eventually ousted and/or removed. In almost all incidents, any group signing on or joining the CUAD coalition did not abide by their own rules and excluded any and all Jewish and Israeli students from the process. If they spoke up they were told their opinions did not matter and were removed.

This coalition is further expanded upon in section E (I'm skipping D as it is about curriculum issues and is much shorter). Testimony points out that CUAD is a coalition made of over a hundred student organizations and that they are also bringing in outsiders to the campus. So the claims of "outside agitators" are moot because it was CUAD who brought them there in the first place. The intent was also never to be a peaceful protest or encampment as multiple testimonies talk about the violent language and actions within the encampments and across the campus(es). Specifically the language being used during "vigils" was not about peace or in memorium, but celebrating death and highlighting violence. The issues that the Taskforce learned are, I think, best encapsulated by this paragraph from page 36 in section G.

Fig. 7. Paragraph highlighting how Columbia is now seen as an antisemitic university.

I can attest to Columbia now being seen as the antisemitic university. Its reputation is entirely tarnished by the administrations refusal to act on the very real and violent antisemitism that has been present on its campus since the days after 10/7. I know professors who have turned down jobs, grad students that have withdrawn applications, and donors that have stopped giving.

This report by Columbia University's own personnel provides evidence that contradicts the narrative we have been told by members of the CUAD encampment(s) as well as people across social media; that the antisemitism is fake and made up to prevent criticism of Israel. The Taskforce admits that they were astonished by how bad it actually was and that the university refused to do anything. This should be telling to anyone who has witnessed these claims by people trying to dismiss concerns regarding antisemitism in the pro-Palestine movement. We've seen this across social media and this site where antisemites accuse Jews of being Nazis while they themselves spew antisemitic rhetoric straight out of the Protocols and the Third Reich.

Antisemites will always try and paint Jews as the actual perpetrators of hate, violence, and villainy while they themselves commit those very same acts (that is not to say that no Jew has every committed a crime or any such act themselves, but the projection that we have seen by antisemites is massive). This Taskforce report has multiple testimonies of Jewish students just trying to exist and go about their lives to only be harassed and assaulted for the crime of living while Jewish.

I am going to end this post here as the next section after the testimonies and incidents of antisemitism goes into recommendations for the university and actions to be taken. That is a separate post that will be couched in this one later on.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Too big to care

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in BOSTON with Randall "XKCD" Munroe (Apr 11), then PROVIDENCE (Apr 12), and beyond!

Remember the first time you used Google search? It was like magic. After years of progressively worsening search quality from Altavista and Yahoo, Google was literally stunning, a gateway to the very best things on the internet.

Today, Google has a 90% search market-share. They got it the hard way: they cheated. Google spends tens of billions of dollars on payola in order to ensure that they are the default search engine behind every search box you encounter on every device, every service and every website:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/03/not-feeling-lucky/#fundamental-laws-of-economics

Not coincidentally, Google's search is getting progressively, monotonically worse. It is a cesspool of botshit, spam, scams, and nonsense. Important resources that I never bothered to bookmark because I could find them with a quick Google search no longer show up in the first ten screens of results:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

Even after all that payola, Google is still absurdly profitable. They have so much money, they were able to do a $80 billion stock buyback. Just a few months later, Google fired 12,000 skilled technical workers. Essentially, Google is saying that they don't need to spend money on quality, because we're all locked into using Google search. It's cheaper to buy the default search box everywhere in the world than it is to make a product that is so good that even if we tried another search engine, we'd still prefer Google.

This is enshittification. Google is shifting value away from end users (searchers) and business customers (advertisers, publishers and merchants) to itself:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/05/the-map-is-not-the-territory/#apor-locksmith

And here's the thing: there are search engines out there that are so good that if you just try them, you'll get that same feeling you got the first time you tried Google.

When I was in Tucson last month on my book-tour for my new novel The Bezzle, I crashed with my pals Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden. I've know them since I was a teenager (Patrick is my editor).

We were sitting in his living room on our laptops – just like old times! – and Patrick asked me if I'd tried Kagi, a new search-engine.

Teresa chimed in, extolling the advanced search features, the "lenses" that surfaced specific kinds of resources on the web.

I hadn't even heard of Kagi, but the Nielsen Haydens are among the most effective researchers I know – both in their professional editorial lives and in their many obsessive hobbies. If it was good enough for them…

I tried it. It was magic.

No, seriously. All those things Google couldn't find anymore? Top of the search pile. Queries that generated pages of spam in Google results? Fucking pristine on Kagi – the right answers, over and over again.

That was before I started playing with Kagi's lenses and other bells and whistles, which elevated the search experience from "magic" to sorcerous.

The catch is that Kagi costs money – after 100 queries, they want you to cough up $10/month ($14 for a couple or $20 for a family with up to six accounts, and some kid-specific features):

https://kagi.com/settings?p=billing_plan&plan=family

I immediately bought a family plan. I've been using it for a month. I've basically stopped using Google search altogether.

Kagi just let me get a lot more done, and I assumed that they were some kind of wildly capitalized startup that was running their own crawl and and their own data-centers. But this morning, I read Jason Koebler's 404 Media report on his own experiences using it:

https://www.404media.co/friendship-ended-with-google-now-kagi-is-my-best-friend/

Koebler's piece contained a key detail that I'd somehow missed:

When you search on Kagi, the service makes a series of “anonymized API calls to traditional search indexes like Google, Yandex, Mojeek, and Brave,” as well as a handful of other specialized search engines, Wikimedia Commons, Flickr, etc. Kagi then combines this with its own web index and news index (for news searches) to build the results pages that you see. So, essentially, you are getting some mix of Google search results combined with results from other indexes.

In other words: Kagi is a heavily customized, anonymized front-end to Google.

The implications of this are stunning. It means that Google's enshittified search-results are a choice. Those ad-strewn, sub-Altavista, spam-drowned search pages are a feature, not a bug. Google prefers those results to Kagi, because Google makes more money out of shit than they would out of delivering a good product:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/2/24117976/best-printer-2024-home-use-office-use-labels-school-homework

No wonder Google spends a whole-ass Twitter every year to make sure you never try a rival search engine. Bottom line: they ran the numbers and figured out their most profitable course of action is to enshittify their flagship product and bribe their "competitors" like Apple and Samsung so that you never try another search engine and have another one of those magic moments that sent all those Jeeves-askin' Yahooers to Google a quarter-century ago.

One of my favorite TV comedy bits is Lily Tomlin as Ernestine the AT&T operator; Tomlin would do these pitches for the Bell System and end every ad with "We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company":

https://snltranscripts.jt.org/76/76aphonecompany.phtml

Speaking of TV comedy: this week saw FTC chair Lina Khan appear on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. It was amazing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaDTiWaYfcM

The coverage of Khan's appearance has focused on Stewart's revelation that when he was doing a show on Apple TV, the company prohibited him from interviewing her (presumably because of her hostility to tech monopolies):

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/apple-got-caught-censoring-its-own

But for me, the big moment came when Khan described tech monopolists as "too big to care."

What a phrase!

Since the subprime crisis, we're all familiar with businesses being "too big to fail" and "too big to jail." But "too big to care?" Oof, that got me right in the feels.

Because that's what it feels like to use enshittified Google. That's what it feels like to discover that Kagi – the good search engine – is mostly Google with the weights adjusted to serve users, not shareholders.

Google used to care. They cared because they were worried about competitors and regulators. They cared because their workers made them care:

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/4/4/18295933/google-cancels-ai-ethics-board

Google doesn't care anymore. They don't have to. They're the search company.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

[morepopcorn]

New Temple of Jumbok IV Recolour

Above is a before and after in Blender. I'm seriously proud of my remapping work on this model.

I was rooting around in the Sims 4 Studio File Cruiser, looking for the lightning, fire and poison cloud textures for the temple gateway (I didn't find them. If anyone knows where they are, please help!) and I found this (hidden?) green and gold texture for the temple walls. So I fished it out and used it for another recolour for my fountain default replacement. The default replacement and CEP are required or this recolour will not work.

I've updated the original post's download zip, but if you just want the extra recolour, you can get it here:

Download: SFS

[on-leatheredwings]

tell us something utterly mundane and regular about paris ? i need to crawl inside him 👁️👁️

oh thank god because i was just thinking i'm so stumped writing wise LOL i would luvvv to just spitball

his favorite genre of music is probably j-pop. (think koda kumi!) then, 'cunty' pop a la ayesha erotica, slayyter, chrissy chlapecka, snow wife, etc. (Discovering j-pop and gyaru-ism in his senior year of high school was his gateway into crossdressing.) THEN, idol j-pop.

Besides that, he enjoys grunge and soft rock, actually. before he became a full blown femboy, he had a skater boy/grunge phase in high school. It is very embarrassing for him, when he looks back at the photos.

You can imagine his voice in any way you like... But 'canonically', Paris has the most 'middle-of-the-road' voice in terms of timbre. It's neither high nor deep. I think he's flirty and girlishly sly, but he doesn't sound particularly feminine. Still looking for a voice claim for him, tbh. (He's a little bit of a gamer and I think that can come out when he games BAHAHA)

He purposefully taps his nails on tables and counters to annoy people, usually when they are keeping him waiting.

Despite being an accomplished figure skater, he hates roller skating LOL! "There's, like. No range for the tricks you can do on a roller skate," is what he'd probably say about it. (Forgetting not everyone knows about tricks and whatnot, he means that there's no toe pick and edges like there are on ice skates. Which enable said tricks.)

He has resting bitch face for sure. <3 But his default expression is a glossed smile, like he's saying 'I know something you don't.' When he's completely alone is when he looks blank... sometimes, even a little menacing.

Signature scent is something sweet, but not cloying? Something flirty or fruity.

He is fluent in Russian and will be pleased to know if that's attractive to you.

He has definitely... checked to see if he is attracted to men!

here's even more mundane shit

[shaisubs]

Stand up right now—because you need to remember who you are.

You are in complete control of your reality.

This is your world. It’s not random, it’s not happening to you—it’s responding to you. Your world is your playground. You can manifest anything you want. And I mean anything—from a billion dollars, to your dream house, to the love of your life, fulfilling friendships, your perfect career, your ideal life. If you can imagine it, you can have it.

There are no limits except the ones you place on yourself.

You are the author of your story. You write every page, every scene. You are the main character, the director, the producer, the creative visionary. Everything begins and ends with you.

The Law of Assumption is always working. It doesn’t pick and choose—it’s constantly running on your beliefs. Not anyone else’s.

Not your parents’, your partner’s, your friends’, your tarot reader’s, your astrologer’s—none of that. Only your assumptions create your life.

You have more power than you realize. You’re not waiting on anyone. You don’t need approval from the universe, a sign, or divine timing.

You are the timing. You are divine. You’re not being tested. There’s no outside force deciding whether you’re ready. There’s no panel judging your worthiness. You already have the power.

So stop giving it away.

Stop doubting yourself.

Stop shrinking to fit old stories.

This year, we’re not slipping back into a victim mindset. Every time you feel yourself doing that, come back to this message.

You can have anything.

Even your wildest dreams—yes, even those—are available to you. You are the center of your universe. Things don’t happen to you, they happen through you.

No one and nothing can stop you—except you.

Not your past.

Not your current circumstances.

Not divine timing.

Not the stars, the cards, or your birth chart.

Only you.

There is no external force choosing what you can or can’t have. You decide what happens, how it happens, when it happens, and why it happens. You have the final say in every area of your life.

So stop letting others decide your path.

Stop letting your circumstances write your future.

Stop giving your power away.

Decide what it’s going to look like. Decide how it will feel.

You give yourself permission.

You are the key.

You are the gateway.

This is your default setting—you’re in total control whether you believe it yet or not.

Now choose to own it.

Choose to step into that power.

You were made to live your dream life. You were made to experience heaven on Earth.

There are no limits. None.

You are completely, entirely, infinitely limitless.

Only what you say goes.

Only you decide what happens in your life.

So own it—and act like it.

[grave-queen-jakrabitt]

An in depth guide for how to get into professional wrestling (as a fan)

As a long time fan of wrestling I’ve tried to get a few people into wrestling and have found a few problems people usually have with getting into it. I’ll be breaking those down along with terms newbies might need for interacting with the fandom, it can be really intimidating to ask questions if you feel like you should know things by default so I made this

The WWE and AEW aren’t everything: there are so many companies 324 smaller North American and even some Asian companies formed independent wrestling television. You can watch more wrestling than you know what to do with. If you can’t pay the 10$ a month (absolutely no judgement like be hard) the internet is a treasure trove of free wrestling even without the ole yo ho ho. But this leads to another problem

“How will I know what I like?”: You won’t unless you’re gateway was catching wrestling while channel surfing and thinking it looked cool. Try everything once but don’t expect to like everything. Find a few indie matches before looking for anything specific so you can find a little bit of everything, you might like the showmanship, the technical details, weapon based violence, it may change with your mood but if you’re making an effort to get into it you’ll find something just take your time

“Some companies have so much history it’s overwhelming”: unless you are a devoted little lunatic don’t try to watch everything from the start, I did that with progress wrestling and I would watch 10 or so hours of wrestling, I’m still 32 shows behind and they run monthly. Almost any show from any company is a good start but I’d say allow yourself to go back like 3 shows max unless you’re already aware of where you want to start

“Things in wrestling don’t make sense”: that is true but an important thing to understand is wrestling has its own internal logic like any show really, these can vary from company to company but it’s like inertia. You start at “okay so this is happening because it’s wrestling” and you get to a point where you’re choice to suspend disbelief carries itself to “fuck it this might as well happen this is wrestling” that being said

It’s entirely valid to not enjoy something a company does and please don’t just accept something or feel like you have to wait it out. Take a break, keep an eye on it try something new but don’t feel like you have to stay glued to a bed of sand paper. You will not enjoy everything done by a company

Bring a friend and be a friend: having a friend to watch with and help you learn is always good but don’t feel like you have to share their opinion about a person or decision, any good friend will be respectful of that.

rules

A normal wrestling match is usually won by one of 4 ways. pinning your opponent to the mat with their shoulders down for 3 seconds, submission, disqualification or knockout

Other small rules: being outside the ring means any potential victory (often aside from a ko for safety) are invalid, if a limb makes contact with the ring rope during a pinfall submission or hold it’s considered out of bounds and must be broken, if you are outside the ring there is usually a 10 count sometimes 20 if you don’t come back to the ring you get disqualified, ignoring a rope break or using an illegal move like small joint manipulation has a 5 count, don’t hit the ref, fishhook anything, bite, or hit balls. No disqualification matches exist

A tag team match: in its most basic has 2 or more teams of an equal amount, only one member of each team is allowed in the ring at once and the others have to wait on the apron, the other partner can come in when they make contact with their partner in the referees vision. A 5 count is issued for double teaming moves. Sometimes it’s everyone at once in the ring, this is a tornado tag match

Steel cage: they put a cage around the ring and you win by either normal means or depending on the match escaping the cage

lucha de apuestas: if you make any friends with any interest in lucha libre you’ll often hear this term it just means a wager match basically the competitors each put something on the line, their right to mask, their hair, a title, or their career.

Terms

Face/technico: the term used for a good guy, technico is usually reserved for Mexican lucha libre

Heel/rudo: bad guy

Over: if someone is over or getting over they’re ve a fan favorite or in the process of getting there

Heat: negative crowd response

Booking: how the show is being written and how people are being used in that process

Cultural differences in wrestling

You’d be able to find any kind of wrestling in most places if you look hard enough but it’s really interesting how different wrestling styles evolved

America: we have historically had a lot of carnival wrestling. How do you con a bunch of small towns out of money with wrestling? Fix them to be more interesting while still having enough skill to put the everyday challenges away without any suspicion. This became the rough and tumble 70s southern brawl style but until the 90s it really just boiled down to “be able to fuck people up so you don’t have to”

Japan: this is a tricky situation because there are really 3 main styles of Japanese pro wrestling. Strong style focuses on a lot of striking a resilience along with strong fundamental holds, kings road style was also very resilience based but had a more defined match structure and had a focus on throws like suplex’s and head drops. Most modern Japanese wrestling is a kind of blend of those, then you’ve got the younger brother and hardest for me to talk about bati bati. I’m admittedly not that well versed in its history but from my understanding it’s like if MMA and pro wrestling had a baby that didn’t suck. There are better resources than me to learn from.

Mexico: the origin of the highly acrobatic lucha libre actually has to do with a lot of old Mexican rings being modified boxing ring, the gymnastics of lucha are in service of minimizing bad landings. But there are 2 other important aspects to lucha, Your mask/pride and your family. In lucha your mask is your identity and your legacy, it’s essentially sacred. Losing it is often how careers end, if you’re not a mask wearing wrestler pride is the substitute. But the pride of your family is just as important as often times it’s a multi generational commitment.

Europe/the UK: I’m not slapping these together out of disrespect they’re just extremely similar historically. For a while British wrestling greatly resembled its American counterpart but too many bad actors ruined it for everyone and pro wrestling was briefly banned until being revived with a unified and more strict ruleset with world of sport in the 70s that 80s, taking more after catch as catch can. Where as it’s European brother found it’s stride in long grueling tournaments as a test of skill, a tradition still carried on mostly in Germany with WXWs 16 karat tournament, progress’s super strong style 16, and even the wwe uk title tournament

[milesplayshu]

Tarhos Kovács, a Survivor in the Fog

AU where the killers are survivors, and the survivors are killers. I stole the hair from Felix and dyed it black, Vittorio's medieval clothes from his Rift, and kept Tarhos' cape from his default torso. He's actually pretty handsome when you remove the open wounds and bone sticking out of his jaw <3 Lore in the Read More.

Tarhos found employment with a wealthy Italian Lord. Vittorio Toscano was the Duke of Portoscuro. He was also a scholar, a world traveller, and a collector of ancient knowledge that had been hidden by an unknown cabal of mystics. Tarhos joined Vittorio’s latest expedition to find a fragment of a pillar from an ancient school lost to time. A stone Vittorio called the Lapis Paradisus for he believed it held secrets to open a gateway into a perfect world beyond good and evil.

After months of relentless search Tarhos found the stone in the catacombs beneath the Portuguese city of Sintra, but he discovered something else. 7 corpses and one pool of blood missing the body in the middle, surrounding the Lapis tablet. Around them were the same etchings from it, seemingly drawn by the dead with their own blood.

Upon his return to Portoscuro, Tarhos told his Lord about the true nature of the stone and the death cult surrounding it, but naively handed it over to Vittorio. The occultist smiled and started reading the strange writing on the Lapis Paradisus, his whispers growing to a chant, his chant to a yell. A thick, malicious fog started filling the room. Tarhos ran to the door, finding it locked behind him. As his vision went black and the mad Lord Toscano's voice faded, he finally broke through the wooden door of the chamber, only to find himself in an unfamiliar world...

[dykeulous]

trans men, studs, butches, trans men who are butches, dysphoric lesbians, dykes who find their gender identity can only be described as dyke, lesbians on testosterone, lesbians who had top surgery & he/him lesbians have always been part of the unique, beautiful & long lesbian history; and will continue to be, for so many years from now. no matter how much you want to exclude them, say their identity “clashes” with their sexuality, undervalue them, degrade them, belittle them, or call them homophobic, transphobic & misogynistic slurs– they will continue to exist, and you can do nothing to stop mothers from birthing more lesbians who confuse you & defy traditionalist ways of thought.

we are tired of people closing their eyes before our long history, history that has always included trans men, butches whose gender identity is “butch”, dysphoric lesbians, studs, and lesbians who go against the heterosexual, dumbed-down & oversimplified vision of lesbianism. the heterosexual misconception that lesbians are attracted to male bodies, that all lesbians are gender conforming & non-dysphoric, hyperfeminine white women– is exactly that; a heterosexual misconception of lesbianism. lesbians have always gone against all of that. some of you are going to call us exclusionists, others will call us nonsensical & hyper-inclusive. and i’m going to tell you all one thing– we don’t care what you see us as. butch lesbians, transmasc lesbians, studs & all dykes in general are going to keep doing their thing, not giving a care for what lesbophobic people see us as. we do not care if our identities “confuse” you, in fact, we are glad they do.

lesbians reject the social class of woman, as the class of woman is heterosexual. the class of woman is the subservient, submissive class– whereas the class of man is the dominant, commanding one. this is based in a heterosexual foundation. as lesbians revolutionarily stand up for liberation, through refusing to be a victim caught up in heterosexist classes & divisions of labor– they attempt to escape the class of woman itself. we must deconstruct the classes, and our historical lesbian warriors have been telling us that for years. it is time non-lesbian feminists start listening to lesbian feminists. it is time non-lesbian feminists start learning from lesbian feminists. we want to help the heterosexual woman, as well: we do not want to harm or exclude her. we want her to see the need for deconstruction of the classes, and the need for an end of heterosexism. heterosexism doesn’t benefit her, and just because she finds attraction to male bodies does not mean that the heteropatriarchy, a system designed by & for men, somehow benefits her. she needs to unlearn homophobia, and start working with her lesbian feminist sisters.

heterosexual love & romance have always been described as some incredible female experience, how childhood boy crushes are the peak of girlhood (oftentimes being told by surrounded authorities which the girl trusts that a boy likes her if he’s straight up abusive to her), how women require heterosexual intercourse, bonds & romance to be happy & satisfied. heterosexuality has always been described as some gateway to female satisfaction, female fulfilment & female happiness. this led to women & girls devaluing their bonds with other women & girls. lesbians actively assault this stereotype. lesbians have been going against this stereotype for so many years; encouraging platonic lesbian relations between women & defining patriarchal heterosexuality as a tool that keeps women subordinate. it has been coerced onto us from the moment we were born. lesbians defy the political system based on performing for men & normative society. this way, lesbianism is not a mere sexuality; it is an outright attack on male privilege over women. lesbianism rejects the notion that women are male possession & servants. under the patriarchy, heterosexuality is a standard– it is the oppressive system’s default. it isn’t simply a “straight sexuality”. lesbians are oppressed on the basis of defying the heterosexist regime, which makes it a double oppression, and a unique lesbian experience of both homophobia & sexism; lesbophobia. lesbophobia is the unique dual oppression lesbians face.

lesbian love should be perceived as a feminist topic. while so many feminists still refuse to highlight lesbian existence & continue to ignore our voices, we will continue to contribute to the feminist movement, as we always have. we are important in women’s liberation, we did so many things for the movement, and our sexual orientation is an important balance in defying oppressive hierarchies such as gender & heterosexism. we won’t ever stop defending women, fighting against the heteropatriarchy & compulsory heterosexuality (& the way it harms heterosexual women, because although het women often turn their backs on us, we won’t turn our backs on them), and other oppressive systems & tools used for waging war against women. lesbianism is beautiful, historical lesbian activists have had fortitude stronger than steel & lesbian feminists have been excluded from the feminist movement for long enough– it is the 21st century, it is time we stop excluding lesbians from feminism.

the reclamation of masculinity, something that is so expected of men, is what often gets masculine lesbians & butches harasses and attacked. butch lesbians, however, aren’t mere masculine lesbians. it is not a sole aesthetic. it has its’ long history that is intertwined with gender abolition, feminism, and revolutionary activism. butch is a gender identity, a revolutionary reclamation of casual masculinity. many non-lesbian feminists, or even toxic lesbian separatists, claim how the butch-femme relations are a replication of the heterosexual regime, the recycling of the heterosexual gender roles, or an imitation of the heterosexual couple. this could not be more wrong. butch-femme relations challenge heterosexism, heteronormativity, and the heteropatriarchy: the love between two non-heterosexual individuals in a non-heterosexual relationship could never somehow possibly be “heteronormative”; especially when the two individuals in question choose to subscribe to two feminist lesbian subcultures that promote gender abolition, revolutionary action & anti-sexism.

and even though lesbians are still subject to conversion therapy, we continue to exist. we continue to exist, regardless of what is being done to us; we have always existed, and we always will exist. the system will never be able to get rid of us, and we will continue creating inconveniences for the system. we adore the mesopotamian & assyrian lesbian women from ancient times who were depicted to be homosexual in texts, as well as the ancient women of egypt, and lesbian women from ancient greece & rome. no matter how much the system may despise us, we will find ways to strike back. we are willful, and we do not give up. we do not surrender to the colonizer of our bodies, and that is why i love lesbians & lesbianism. we are real activists, and we try our best to strengthen universal sisterhood; even though we are more often than not excluded & segregated from it. i thank my mother for having given birth to another butch lesbian, another butch lesbian with the willpower of a tiger. i have the willpower for social change– and i stand right next to my sisters against this power-sick structure that wishes to nihilize us. we will take it down together.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

Will you tell me why batman is a gateway drug? I like your Batman Year 1 Selena blog banner.

my default good answer is that Batman is gateway drug to giving a shit about comics, a fate I would not wish on anyone

um but actually the URL is a reference to the fact that I joined Tumblr because of Batman! I was a huuuuge Team StarKid fan as a teenager and when they announced they were doing a Batman parody musical I started learning about the character so I could get the jokes in the show, because all of my previous Batman exposure pretty much boiled down to Robin in Teen Titans and a couple BTAS crossovers with Static Shock. (sidebar: I LOVED Static Shock as a kid, that was my shit.) and then I got super into the Young Justice animated series (CRINGE) and while season 2 was on hiatus I joined Tumblr to see what other fans are up to.

and then I accidentally became a sex educator and the rest is history.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The paradox of choice screens

I'm coming to BURNING MAN! On TUESDAY (Aug 27) at 1PM, I'm giving a talk called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE!" at PALENQUE NORTE (7&E). On WEDNESDAY (Aug 28) at NOON, I'm doing a "Talking Caterpillar" Q&A at LIMINAL LABS (830&C).

It's official: the DOJ has won its case, and Google is a convicted monopolist. Over the next six months, we're gonna move into the "remedy" phase, where we figure out what the court is going to order Google to do to address its illegal monopoly power:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/07/revealed-preferences/#extinguish-v-improve

That's just the beginning, of course. Even if the court orders some big, muscular remedies, we can expect Google to appeal (they've already said they would) and that could drag out the case for years. But that can be a feature, not a bug: a years-long appeal will see Google on its very best behavior, with massive, attendant culture changes inside the company. A Google that's fighting for its life in the appeals court isn't going to be the kind of company that promotes a guy whose strategy for increasing revenue is to make Google Search deliberately worse, so that you will have to do more searches (and see more ads) to get the info you're seeking:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

It's hard to overstate how much good stuff can emerge from a company that's mired itself in antitrust hell with extended appeals. In 1982, IBM wriggled off the antitrust hook after a 12-year fight that completely transformed the company's approach to business. After more than a decade of being micromanaged by lawyers who wanted to be sure that the company didn't screw up its appeal and anger antitrust enforcers, IBM's executives were totally transformed. When the company made its first PC, it decided to use commodity components (meaning anyone could build a similar PC by buying the same parts), and to buy its OS from an outside vendor called Micros-Soft (meaning competing PCs could use the same OS), and it turned a blind eye to the company that cloned the PC ROM, enabling companies like Dell, Compaq and Gateway to enter the market with "PC clones" that cost less and did more than the official IBM PC:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/08/ibm-pc-compatible-how-adversarial-interoperability-saved-pcs-monopolization

The big question, of course, is whether the court will order Google to break up, say, by selling off Android, its ad-tech stack, and Chrome. That's a question I'll address on another day. For today, I want to think about how to de-monopolize browsers, the key portal to the internet. The world has two extremely dominant browsers, Safari and Chrome, and each of them are owned by an operating system vendor that pre-installs their own browser on their devices and pre-selects them as the default.

Defaults matter. That's a huge part of Judge Mehta's finding in the Google case, where the court saw evidence from Google's own internal research suggesting that people rarely change defaults, meaning that whatever the gadget does out of the box it will likely do forever. This puts a lie to Google's longstanding defense of its monopoly power: "choice is just a click away." Sure, it's just a click away – a click, you're pretty sure no one is ever going to make.

This means that any remedy to Google's browser dominance is going to involve a lot of wrangling about defaults. That's not a new wrangle, either. For many years, regulators and tech companies have tinkered with "choice screens" that were nominally designed to encourage users to try out different browsers and brake the inertia of the big two browsers that came bundled with OSes.

These choice screens have a mixed record. Google's 2019 Android setup choice screen for the European Mobile Application Distribution Agreement somehow managed to result in the vast majority of users sticking with Chrome. Microsoft had a similar experience in 2010 with BrowserChoice.eu, its response to the EU's 2000s-era antitrust action:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrowserChoice.eu

Does this mean that choice screens don't work? Maybe. The idea of choice screens comes to us from the "choice architecture" world of "nudging," a technocratic pseudoscience that grew to prominence by offering the promise that regulators could make big changes without having to do any real regulating:

https://verfassungsblog.de/nudging-after-the-replication-crisis/

Nudge research is mired in the "replication crisis" (where foundational research findings turn out to be nonreplicable, due to bad research methodology, sloppy analysis, etc) and nudge researchers keep getting caught committing academic fraud:

https://www.ft.com/content/846cc7a5-12ee-4a44-830e-11ad00f224f9

When the first nudgers were caught committing fraud, more than a decade ago, they were assumed to be outliers in an otherwise honest and exciting field:

https://www.npr.org/2016/10/01/496093672/power-poses-co-author-i-do-not-believe-the-effects-are-real

Today, it's hard to find much to salvage from the field. To the extent the field is taken seriously today, it's often due to its critics repeating the claims of its boosters, a process Lee Vinsel calls "criti-hype":

https://sts-news.medium.com/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype-18b08b4307e5

For example, the term "dark patterns" lumps together really sneaky tactics with blunt acts of fraud. When you click an "opt out of cookies" button and get a screen that says "Success!" but which has a tiny little "confirm" button on it that you have to click to actually opt out, that's not a "dark pattern," it's just a scam:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/27/beware-of-the-leopard/#relentless

By ascribing widespread negative effects to subtle psychological manipulation ("dark patterns") rather than obvious and blatant fraud, we inadvertently elevate "nudging" to a real science, rather than a cult led by scammy fake scientists.

All this raises some empirical questions about choice screens: do they work (in the sense of getting people to break away from defaults), and if so, what's the best way to make them work?

This is an area with a pretty good literature, as it turns out, thanks in part due to some natural experiments, like when Russia forced Google to offer choice screens for Android in 2017, but didn't let Google design that screen. The Russian policy produced a significant switch away from Google's own apps to Russian versions, primarily made by Yandex:

https://cepr.org/publications/dp17779

In 2023, Mozilla Research published a detailed study in which 12,000 people from Germany, Spain and Poland set up simulated mobile and desktop devices with different kinds of choice screens, a project spurred on by the EU's Digital Markets Act, which is going to mandate choice screens starting this year:

https://research.mozilla.org/browser-competition/choicescreen/

I'm spending this week reviewing choice screen literature, and I've just read the Mozilla paper, which I found very interesting, albeit limited. The biggest limitation is that the researchers are getting users to simulate setting up a new device and then asking them how satisfied they are with the experience. That's certainly a question worth researching, but a far more important question is "How do users feel about the setup choices they made later, after living with them on the devices they use every day?" Unfortunately, that's a much more expensive and difficult question to answer, and beyond the scope of this paper.

With that limitation in mind, I'm going to break down the paper's findings here and draw some conclusions about what we should be looking for in any kind of choice screen remedy that comes out of the DOJ antitrust victory over Google.

The first thing note is that people report liking choice screens. When users get to choose their browsers, they expect to be happy with that choice; by contrast, users are skeptical that they'll like the default browser the vendor chose for them. Users don't consider choice screens to be burdensome, and adding a choice screen doesn't appreciably increase setup time.

There are some nuances to this. Users like choice screens during device setup but they don't like choice screens that pop up the first time they use a browser. That makes total sense: "choosing a browser" is colorably part of the "setting up your gadget" task. By contrast, the first time you open a browser on a new device, it's probably to get something else done (e.g. look up how to install a piece of software you used on your old device) and being interrupted with a choice screen at that moment is an unwelcome interruption. This is the psychology behind those obnoxious cookie-consent pop-ups that website bombard you with when you first visit them: you've clicked to that website because you need something it has, and being stuck with a privacy opt-out screen at that moment is predictably frustrating (which is why companies do it, and also why the DMA is going to punish companies that do).

The researchers experimented with different kinds of choice screens, varying the number of browsers on offer and the amount of information given on each. Again, users report that they prefer more choices and more information, and indeed, more choice and more info is correlated with choosing indie, non-default browsers, but this effect size is small (<10%), and no matter what kind of choice screen users get, most of them come away from the experience without absorbing any knowledge about indie browsers.

The order in which browsers are presented has a much larger effect than how many browsers or how much detail is present. People say they want lots of choices, but they usually choose one of the first four options. That said, users who get choice screens say it changes which browser they'd choose as a default.

Some of these contradictions appear to stem from users' fuzziness on what "default browser" means. For an OS vendor, "default browser" is the browser that pops up when you click a link in an email or social media. For most users, "default browser" means "the browser pinned to my home screen."

Where does all this leave us? I think it cashes out to this: choice screens will probably make a appreciable, but not massive, difference in browser dominance. They're cheap to implement, have no major downsides, and are easy to monitor. Choice screens might be needed to address Chrome's dominance even if the court orders Google to break off Chrome and stand it up as a separate business (we don't want any browser monopolies, even if they're not owned by a search monopolist!). So yeah, we should probably make a lot of noise to the effect that the court should order a choice screen, as part of a remedy.

That choice screen should be presented during device setup, with the choices presented in random order – with this caveat: Chrome should never appear in the top four choices.

All of that would help address the browser duopoly, even if it doesn't solve it. I would love to see more market-share for Firefox, which is the browser I've used every day for more than a decade, on my laptop and my phone. Of course, Mozilla has a role to play here. The company says it's going to refocus on browser quality, at the expense of the various side-hustles it's tried, which have ranged from uninteresting to catastrophically flawed:

https://www.fastcompany.com/91167564/mozilla-wants-you-to-love-firefox-again

For example, there was the tool to automatically remove your information from scummy data brokers, that they outsourced to a scummy data-broker:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/22/24109116/mozilla-ends-onerep-data-removal-partnership

And there's the "Privacy Preserving Attribution" tracking system that helps advertisers target you with surveillance advertising (in a way that's less invasive than existing techniques). Mozilla rolled this into Firefox on an opt out basis, and made opting out absurdly complicated, suggesting that it knew that it was imposing something on its users that they wouldn't freely choose:

https://blog.privacyguides.org/2024/07/14/mozilla-disappoints-us-yet-again-2/

They've been committing these kinds of unforced errors for more than a decade, seeking some kind of balance between monopolistic web companies and its users' desire to have a browser that protects them from invasive and unfair practices:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/14/firefox-closed-source-drm-video-browser-cory-doctorow

These compromises represent the fallacy that Mozilla's future depends on keeping bullying entertainment companies and Big Tech happy, so it can go on serving its users. At the same time, these compromises have alienated Mozilla's core users, the technical people who were its fiercest evangelists. Those core users are the authority on technical questions for the normies in their life, and they know exactly how cursed it is for Moz to be making these awful compromises.

Moz has hemorrhaged users over the past decade, meaning they have even less leverage over the corporations demanding that they make more compromises. This sets up a doom loop: make a bad compromise, lose users, become more vulnerable to demands for even worse compromises. "This capitulation puts us in a great position to make a stand in some hypothetical future where we don't instantly capitulate again" is a pretty unconvincing proposition.

After the past decade's heartbreaks, seeing Moz under new leadership makes me cautiously hopeful. Like I say, I am dependent on Firefox and want an independent, principled browser vendor that sees their role as producing a "user agent" that is faithful to its users' interests above all else:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/07/treacherous-computing/#rewilding-the-internet

Of course, Moz depends on Google's payment for default search placement for 90% of its revenue. If Google can't pay for this in the future, the org is going to have to find another source of revenue. Perhaps that will be the EU, or foundations, or users. In any of these cases, the org will find it much easier to raise funds if it is standing up for its users – not compromising on their interests.

Community voting for SXSW is live! If you wanna hear RIDA QADRI and me talk about how GIG WORKERS can DISENSHITTIFY their jobs with INTEROPERABILITY, VOTE FOR THIS ONE!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/12/defaults-matter/#make-up-your-mind-already

Image: ICMA Photos (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/icma/3635981474/

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

[andmaybegayer]

annoyingly the most influential thing in my head from Murderbot is the Feed. The Feed is so appealing as a concept. A universally comprehensible and widely accessible mesh-based standard for mixed machine and human communication with a reliable subscription service, that has a ton of things publishing constantly by default but with a robust (assuming no rogue antisocial biological hypercomputers) cryptographic system for secret data. The Feed very clearly can scale up to an entire space station network or down to one person and their accoutrements forming a personal area network.

Some kind of hierarchical MQTT implemented on a mesh network with public key cryptography could get you so close if you just standardized ways to get the MQTT schema of any given endpoint. After that it's all dashboarding. Publish as much or as little information as you want and allow any given device to access that data and respond to it.

Some of this is probably leftovers from $PREVJOB. When I was doing industrial automation our entire fleet of devices lived on a strict schema under one MQTT server that I had complete read/write for so by doing clever subscriptions I could sample anything from a temperature reading from a single appliance in the back of the restaurant I was standing in to accumulating the overall power draw of every single business we were working with all at once.

On more than one occasion something silently broke and I drove up near the back of a facility in my car where I knew the IoT gateway was, connected to our local IoT network over wifi, fixed the issue, and left without telling anyone.

Unfortunately if the Feed existed people like me would make extremely annoying endpoints. To be fair canonically the Feed is absolute dogshit unless you have an Adblock. So really it would be exactly the same as in the books.

[wavyskies]

please please please ive always wanted to be a a part of editblr but idk how to even start like with the coloring and the editing so a tutorial or any tips would be greatly appreciated i really want to start making grahlpgics and rentrys but i just don't know how 😞

also i love your stuff !

Heyyyya! So, first of all, I unfortunately don't use PSDs which is most likely what you've been seein everywhere. I'd suggest askin someone else about those bc I dunno 😭

BUT! I can show you how I color mine using photopea.

There's a search (magnifying glass) icon, and you search up "gradient map." For me there are two options, the correct one will gateway to this:

Then, just for practice, here's a color pallette to practice with. For me, it's easier to copy the lightest color first then the darkest one last because you start off with the darkest usually when putting them into the gradient map.

Hex codes for this: 400E2B A61439 018868 FE5C43 FEB17D

(Note: you can find lots of great color pallettes on Pinterest, and add as many colors as you want. It will just be easier with less!)

So now that you have your colors, you press on the gradient map. These two things circles are what you press, the square part of the gradient comes first and then the second thing circled will be accessible.

Once you press it, you can paste your hex code in here:

Then repeat this with the other colors, going down the gradient line as you do!

Here's what the gradient map should look like:

Ofc, when you aren't just practicing, you can order or however you want.

Again, I would ask someone abt PSDs because this isn't the most efficient 😔

Now, for tips on editing. I've gotten asked for a lotta tutorials but they're too hard for me to manage so I'll squeeze some answers into here.

1. For resources, there are a lot on Tumblr. However! You can search up "rentry resources" on Pinterest, and there will be pins that you can click that will take you to plenty of resources. However, if it says to credit when using a resource, obviously do that lmao 😭

2. When it comes to gif graphics, ezgif.com is a go-to. When it comes to putting already moving gifs into a frame and not wanting a background, I usually use the "remove background" feature that can be located after pressing "effects" on the home screen. Now, I wanna make this VERY clear before we continue: color in the background/around your frame before putting the gif behind it. Make sure!!! Make sure that the background is a UNIQUE color compared to the actual graphic. If it isn't, the background remover will remove parts of the actual graphic.

This is where you'll put the color of what you want to be REMOVED from the graphic. You might have to play around with it for a bit though.

As for making the gif graphic that goes into this, I use inshot personally. Since the canvas won't always fit and inshots default background is black, I say try to aim for a black background to remove. If not, make sure that the graphic will fit so that it covers the entire canvas.

Example/walkthrough:

4. You can always make differences if you dislike your graphic. It's okay to take a while and go back, and even restart. You'll see a lotta people here talk about how some ways are easier than others, but honestly just play around because you might find things better for yourself compared to others.

5. When starting out on Editblr, I'd suggest NOT immediately beginning with having requests open. It can make it start out as stressful and drive you away from it. Begin with just making graphics for yourself or of things YOU'RE passionate about. Editing should be more about your enjoyment than having something shiny to show off, y'know? (That was cheesy asf)

ANYWAYS! I HAAAATE EXPLAINING THINGS! (Because I'm bad at it lmao, not in general, you're all good dw❤ /p.) Even I can't decipher what I've said here, but to be fair I wrote this during a meltdown so I get an A for effort.

Also, if you make a promo post, PLEASE TAG ME!!! /NF!!! I'll be more than happy to follow you 😮