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chordsykat · 1 year

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I see the "Herald" descriptions for Baen-she and I was wondering how you came up with that?

It's uh... aliens. No, it's not. And it's not substance abuse or secret access to unreleased Metalocalypse lore or secretly being Brendon Small or even having a space helicopter that can fly to the future (all are excellent and very popular guesses, however).

If I told you the secret is having a lot of time to think about it all, that'd probably be the real answer. But I realize it's a huge cop-out, too. So what if I told you that character development that goes beyond the surface-level and ascends into metaphorical and symbolic territory is something you can learn to do? Or maybe, better yet, it's something you can train yourself to do? Like flexing a muscle you didn't know you had..?

But to give this question its proper due, I'm going to have to delve into both Dethkomic and (very speculative) Metalocalypse fan-theory. Therefore, spoiler alert if you follow me below the cut :)

One of the nice things about working with an entire cast of OCs, as opposed to just one, is the built-in ability to play each one off the other, and build intricate thematic relationships that seem a lot harder to pull off than they actually are. The other nice thing Dethkomic specifically has going for it, is that I get to borrow off of themes already found in the canon.

Finding good ways to connect your characters to the world you put them in on an abstract level takes one thing above all else, and that's listening to who they really are. So, whether I'm writing fanfic or my own fic, I ask myself "Why are we writing these people in the first place?"

Sometimes this will lead you to answers like "They're just here to hang out with X," and I think the majority of fanfiction has that component to it. Mine sure does. But that's not always the totality of any character's purpose in the story by a long shot. If you're looking to throw symbolism, metaphor, and themes into your work, you're probably not writing one-shot hookup fics where that actually is the final answer (and if you do want to put that stuff into one-shot hookup fics, you should send me your WIPs because that sounds amazing).

It should be said -- None of the stuff I'm talking about here is necessary to tell a good story. Working with layers of metaphor is tricky, but if you successfully pull it off, even a little bit, it can add to the "wow, cool!" factor. That's not just something for the audience, either. As a writer, your overall satisfaction will see an uptick as well.

Symbols and character themes come about in two ways -- one is intentional, and one is incidental. You look at a character's personality and you might say, "This is Bob. Bob's spirit animal is a naked mole rat and his guardian celestial body is a black hole and his guiding natural element is ragweed." These themes are intentional and you can and should have fun putting little tidbits of them into your writing, straight out of the gate. Bob goes to a zoo and he gravitates to the naked mole rats? That's so Bob!

Incidental themes are a bit trickier. They appear as side-quests in your writing journey, and it's up to you to notice them. Here's a pointer -- if you get good at spotting symbolism in others' writing, you are "training your writing muscle" to be better at spotting it in your own. The bad guys escaped into a cave and the good guys are all afraid of the dark? Well holy shit! What about using Bob to go in and get them? Maybe Bob's not afraid of the dark? Maybe Bob is a natural spelunker? Bob's spirit animal is a naked mole rat, after all! This is so Bob!

So how do you "train" to spot symbolism? As I said above, the best way is to look at the media you enjoy, and see if you can spot any themes the authors have snuck in. Don't be afraid to "cheat" by interacting with your fandom and looking up some connections other people have made. Metalocalypse is full of this stuff, and we get into what I think are some of our liveliest discussions when we go back and forth about the prophecy. Go look at the wikis. Go peruse fan-theories (even "debunked" ones) on message boards, Discords and... *sigh*... Reddit (no offense to all my Klokateers on Reddit out there -- ilu but not the platform). Join in on the discussions right here on hellsite when they come about. Prophecy-speculating one of my favorite things about this fandom, personally.

So that brings us back to me and why my characters are here in the first place. Most of you know this, but Baen-Shee is in the Dethkomic story to explore the supernatural side of things. Not every MTL OC out there (or every character in the show for that matter) is going to be involved in the Prophecy, but I enjoy torturing myself with difficult and incomplete lore puzzles, so mine are players in it. All that said, here's probably what you came for in the first place -- a breakdown of some of the things I'm thinking about with my own characters as I examine the canon and my own stories, and little tidbits about how some of it came about:

Nita: We know she's head of the group, muscially, but I liked the idea of her being the last one anybody expected to be the most powerful character, supernaturally. I saw a lot of opportunities to play up her kind and unthreatening nature while simultaneously giving her character arcs that emphasize personal growth and strength of character. Nathan's a character who is giving off every indication that he's in charge and capable of managing his band and becoming a leader when the end of the world goes down -- but we all know he's incredibly insecure about all of it. I wanted Nita's purpose to not only be the usual finding herself stuff, but also helping others to find themselves. She's the Holy Unifier, and her "great appointed eternal task" is to keep everyone together. Too, I feel Nathan as the Chosen One is representative of the power of an individual, whereas Nita's on the flip side of that coin as the power one gets from others around them (she's totally Twilight Sparkle is what I'm trying to say, here).

Caj: She's a study in duality and surprises. Guardian of life, but also an assassin. The Holy Mother and (wo)man-at-arms. She's a girl who presets as a boy. Her eyes are two different colors. Her totem is a chameleon. And lest we forget, it's funny as hell that her Chosen One is also her greatest rival on the planet... etc, etc... Some of you guys already picked up on this, but watch closely, every mention of angels and devils in our current Dethkomic arc. This is a good example of a theme that sticks around for one story, only -- which is a thing that happens often in fictional serials and something you can totally employ if you only have one story to tell.

Cherry: The Holy Messenger -- and the Metalocalypse's first sacrificial player. Unlike Charles who follows her into the great hereafter a few weeks later, she doesn't get to escape death and become the Dead Man. I am so utterly stoked to show you her part in the continued Dethkomic stories, and that starts happening in just over a week from now, so I am going to try containing my excitement and keep from spoiling too much, but... Cherry's spirit animal is a phoenix for a reason. Also, I've said before the reason Cherry dies is not just a matter of emotionally torturing my readers, nor is it angst-porn: She dies because you need to get comfortable with the idea of major characters dying in my stories. ...and now I've probably said too much.

Sparkles: I've said before how Sparkles is my favorite character to write for, and how it's not just because I don't have to think up any dialogue for her beyond the occasional grunt and growl. Sparkles is a spirit of purity, nature, and all that's good and right in the world. It's definitely more an abstract concept than it is an "element" and I get to really stretch my imagination when coming up with the kind of things she's capable of. One symbol, one idea, one theme can mean several different things, and you might find as a writer (and especially if you're only just beginning to dip your toe into this stuff), it's easiest to loosely define your connections so as not to write yourself into a corner. You'll see Sparkles' powers finally come to the fore in Issue #7 of Dethkomic, and they suit her on several different fronts. I really surprised myself when I came up with it, in fact.

Eden: Her element is "the void" -- whatever that is -- and it's more than just a connection to her position as herald of death. Here again, keeping things kinda vague and loose, but the mirror-effect of a character whose history is (currently) a big question mark, having powers that come from something as obscure as a "concept" of an element is a connection one might make. Too, we throw that extra element of the moon in there, as a sort of guardian celestial force (calling to mind other visions too -- like space in general, the stars, the afterlife, the heavens...) and you can make further connections with Toki's association with rabbits on a mythological level. It's kind of all over the place, but tight enough to work, I think. Oh -- and speaking of mythology and bunnies in the moon... brush up on your world mythologies every chance you get. They'll do nothing but serve you in this endeavor, because at the end of the day, it's all about connecting the dots... or the stars in the sky, as it were!

SO. That was more of a tutorial than it was an answer. I hope you got to read through this and are still interested in this question, Claudia. It was a lot of fun to ponder and equally enjoyable to throw in some pointers for all my writers out there.

Also, I haven't gotten into it yet, but this is a good time to remind anyone reading this far that I'm doing a how-to-make-comics thing over on @dethkomic, and I release a tutorial every update over there. I totally will be covering more about metaphors and the like, very soon.

Great question! Thanks for reading!

#writing #metaphor #theme #how to cram holy-shit moments into your metalocalypse fanfiction #dethkomic #spoilery #answered

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thewhitefluffyhat · 5 years

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Feminist Relevant Themes

<-Previous (Introduction)

To talk about Magia Record’s writing in detail, it helps to understand how the game is structured.

Magia Record has many story modes:

Main Story: The main plot, centered on new protagonist Iroha arriving in the city of Kamihama to search for her missing sister. Everyone can read this at any time, and new chapters come out every few months.

Another Story: The events of the Main Story, but told from the point of view of the original Madoka Magica cast. Also always available to everyone.

Magical Girl Stories: short stories centered on one specific magical girl - usually they tell the backstory of the girl’s wish. Can only be watched after obtaining the character in the gacha.

Mirrors Story: A very slowly updated story unlocked by completing many player vs. player battles.

Event Stories: Short stories that come out roughly every two weeks. Sometimes introduce a new character for the gacha, sometimes related to a seasonal holiday. Playable to anyone around during the event (and will be stored in the archive afterwards).

Costume Stories: Tiny story snippets involving a character wearing a special outfit. Implemented one year in and unlocked by obtaining both the character and the outfit in question.

Good

Female Friendship

As with the better side of magical girl media, the game’s biggest feminist plus is its complex female characters and focus on female friendships, including some great examples of female mentors and role models. The mechanics of the setting are even tweaked to facilitate this - gone is the TV series’ lonely, competitive system that isolated girls from each other. Instead, in present-day Kamihama, witches are so strong and plentiful that magical girls are better off forming teams to support one another.

While this change arguably waters down some of the thematic weight of the original (in that this isolation was another example of how Kyuubey’s system is an easy metaphor for other oppressive systems), I find it a worthy trade-off. Allowing for magical girl teams to exist results in much richer possibilities for interactions between characters, especially welcome in a sprawling game with far more narrative content than a one-season anime.

And the game takes good advantage of this - no two magical girl teams are exactly alike, both in terms of internal dynamics and how they interact with other teams.

Doppels

The main gimmick of the game’s story is the existence of “doppels” - a mechanic where a magical girl partially transforms into her own witch to unleash a powerful attack. And from gameplay to story to art, doppels are excellent. They look cool and they’re rewarding to unlock and use in game. From a feminist perspective, I also love the idea of reclaiming witches, the “adult” form of magical girls, into a source of salvation and empowerment for girls* instead of a curse. On a meta-level, it echoes a common magical girl trope of the character transforming into an older version of herself, while specifically to Madoka Magica, it’s a creative way to dismantle the misogynistic implications of Kyuubey’s system!

(*There are supposedly drawbacks to doppels, but that bit of setting mostly serves to make them a ~dangerous forbidden technique~ that shouldn’t be overused.)

Struggling against class prejudice

The tensions between different wards of Kamihama are a key component of the setting, and affect many character interactions. One aspect the Magical Girl Stories are good at is showing how arbitrary and hurtful this discrimination is, and how difficult it is to overcome prejudice once it has become entrenched. It’s made abundantly clear that Kamihama would be a better city without these attitudes - the question is, how to get there?

A variety of careers

Several girls make wishes or have backstories centered on what they want to do when they grow up. What’s especially neat is that most girls ask for the opportunity to follow their passions, rather than having a talent magically granted to them - thus avoiding the pitfall of having a female character’s abilities originate from a power granted by a male character.

The range of career interests depicted isn’t as amazing as it could be (In a cast of 80+, I would love to have more than three girls representing STEM), but there’s some decent variety. Many girls aspire to take over their parents’ family business, for example.

And even some characters who follow more seemingly feminine careers (a model, a chef, an artist, etc.) have serious narratives centered on the skill and effort needed to succeed in those highly competitive fields, which is quite refreshing to see.

Mixed

The many different ways to be a girl

The nice thing about having a large cast of female characters is that it gives plenty of opportunities to show how all of these characters are different. And in general, Magia Record does very well on this front! One aspect I’ve particularly been enjoying is the how the cast has widely varying tastes in fiction. Yes, there are girls who like dreamy romances, but there are also girls who bond over their shared love of a hotblooded shounen series!

Where this falls down somewhat is an overuse of “but look, she has a secret feminine interest.” Sometimes this plot can work, if coming at it from the angle that superficial judgments can be misleading, or that there’s nothing wrong with having feminine interests. But when all the more masculine-presenting girls end up with a hidden fondness for stuffed animals, the sheer repetition becomes rather irksome. It’s as though the game feels the need to insist “but look, she really is a girl!” because the audience wouldn’t believe it without such a trait.

LGBTQ+ characters

In terms of LGBTQ+ content, the game feels rather similar to the original anime and other Madoka spinoffs. That is to say, there are tons of shippable f/f pairings that get teased, but as of the present, only one new playable character (and a tiny sample of minor characters) are explicitly confirmed to be lesbians. No trans or otherwise queer characters either, unfortunately. (Though of course that’s not to stop a good interpretation or headcanon!)

However, as a whole, the game is oddly averse to showing the characters in active, healthy relationships. One of the early frustrations I had with the new character’s portrayal was that the game’s one mutual gay relationship was never directly shown on-screen and gets broken up in favor of more ambiguous teasing. That being said, all the het relationships are treated similarly, either never being confessed and requited or never getting shown on screen. So… I suppose there’s not actually a double standard here, but players hoping for lots of canon yuri content might end up a bit disappointed.

Also, a note on Homura specifically - this game’s version is “glasses Homura,” who hasn’t realized she’s in love with Madoka yet. So despite what you might expect given Rebellion, in Magia Record there’s nothing beyond heavy hints and ambiguously cute scenes between her and Madoka.

Characters with disabilities

A few characters in the game have difficulty speaking. It’s not made clear if this is a speech impediment or something like social anxiety (or autism - I know I’ve seen headcanons for that). There is some depiction of these characters getting bullied, but in each case the character ultimately finds a group of friends who love and support them as they are.

After two years, now there is technically a magical girl who uses a wheelchair. (And it’s a cool custom wheelchair too!) Unfortunately I hesitate to count this as a full positive, because shortly after she appears in it, the character becomes unable to transform and fight for an unrelated reason, so we haven’t seen her in battle since. But who knows - the story’s still moving forward on the Japanese server, and there’s likely to be more content with her in the future.

At the end of the day, though, this is a setting with magic wishes and healing effects. Thus, it’s very common for girls to wish to cure someone’s illness, or to use their abilities as a magical girl to cure themselves, which can easily fall into ableist tropes.

College age magical girls

Yes, really! Although even the oldest characters are only nineteen. However, there’s also a subplot about how two of the nineteen-year-olds are losing power because they’re older, which… hm. The message that we all need to accept passing the torch to the next generation is generally a valuable and good one. Aiming it at older teen girls just on the verge of adulthood is where the implications nosedive into unfortunate. Young girls already get far too many messages that their worth is entirely dependent on their youth/beauty/innocence and that it’s better to stay a “girl” than to be a fully grown “woman.”

The entire reason it’s exciting to see college age magical girls in the first place is that even now, it’s rare to see adult women as protagonists in these types of fantasy adventures. By introducing these young adult characters only to caveat their inclusion with“they’re getting too old to be here”, it puts a very sour note on what’s otherwise a welcome expansion of the Madoka Magica universe.

(It’s also hilariously contradictory to other spin offs in the Madoka Magica franchise, including the implications of the anime canon itself, so… whoops?)

Bad

Lack of diversity

(Particularly racial diversity.)

The only non-Japanese magical girls are from the pre-existing Tart Magica spin-off set in medieval France… and Meiyui. (And maybe Alina.)

Meiyui is a complicated case - her family has ties to both Japan and Hong Kong. Meiyui herself is a fun character, but she also ticks a lot of the checkboxes for a Japanese stereotype of a Chinese person (a la Xiao Mei in Fullmetal Alchemist). As a white person only familiar with US culture, it’s not my place to make a judgement call here, but I’d love to hear from someone who knows more!

The largest disappointment, though, is in wondering what might have been. The Madoka Magica anime implied that there are magical girls all over the globe from every different time and culture, so the game’s narrow focus on one modern Japanese city greatly limits the setting from its full potential. And even within that limitation, the sheer homogeneity of the new cast is starting to get awkwardly same-y.

The arc two’s logo teases what might be girls from several other backgrounds, though, so perhaps this will improve in the very near future. Of course, success will depend on the writers’ abilities to handle other cultures. Which, when given the example of Meiyui, might actually be cause for concern...

Revolutionary Girl Utena, this ain’t

In a game full of decent-to-good backstories, you’ll sometimes hit an unfortunate and very disappointing outlier.

My personal least favorite is the victim-blaming one mentioned in the content warnings. Another low point is a story where a girl frantically diets as a response to another girl’s comments about her weight.

Then there’s the backstory the above picture comes from. It involves a girl who has to drop out of sports because her next school only has a boy’s team - and instead of challenging this situation, it’s the inspiration for her to discover she’s actually happier as a cheerleader anyway. Hm.

This last case is actually pretty emblematic of the game as a whole. Whoever’s doing the writing (the credited scenario team is four people, and from the names at least two might be women?) mostly seems to mean well, but they occasionally step hard into the -isms that come from not actually thinking about the problems with the status quo.

So the game isn’t typically hateful, but it doesn’t push the envelope in any revolutionary directions either. As a result - and it feels weird to say this, but - I really miss having Urobuchi as the writer. Sure, his writing had its own problems, but in comparison, it was at least genuinely thought-provoking. The way that even the adult female characters got complexity and screentime, that whole conversation between Sayaka and the misogynistic men on the train, the compelling exploration of consent and determination that underlies the whole anime – even six years later, these aspects hold up and stand out.

Magia Record is an inversion – far more pleasant on the surface, but without the backbone and depth that made the original so thematically intriguing despite all the suffering.

Next (Other Writing Aspects)->

#puella magi madoka magica #pmmm #magia record #magical girls #feminist analysis #my blog organization tags #magia record analysis #my feminist friendly magireco review #madoka magica #magical girl genre #magia record jp #magia record na #my ramblings #haha this section is so long #nothing else even touches it #and even then there’s so much other stuff I could rant about lol

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junker-town · 4 years

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How sports is Seven Worlds, One Planet: Episode 6?

Kei Nomiyama / Barcroft Media via Getty Images

David Attenborough’s new show is epic ... and sports.

We continue our extremely important mission to conduct a scene-by-scene review of the BBC’s new nature documentary, Seven Worlds, One Planet, in order to see how sports it is. We determined that Episode 1, which focused on Antarctica, was reasonably sports. Asia was very sports, as was South America. Australia was more drinking than sports, and Europe was extremely sports. Now it’s time for ...

Episode 6 North America

Scene 1: The Hare Hunt

Unless you’re either exceptionally lucky or exceptionally cynical in your choice of teams, following sports can be a thoroughly miserable experience. Every year, most teams fail, and they fail in heartbreaking ways. A sports obsession is a form of emotional gambling, and the house tends to win. Why do we do this to ourselves? I think it’s because we have to. Humans are fascinated by games, and, once captivated, it’s difficult to escape.

Sports might be a bad bet, but for many people they’re nourishing in a way that — the efforts of political punditry aside — cannot be found anywhere else. Also, while there’s not much joy in watching your team fail, it’s a lot of fun to watch everyone else’s also fail. Sports are schadenfreude.

Anyway in this scene a lynx repeatedly fails to catch a hare.

I spy with my little eye...a snowshoe hare #SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/Y2nCQi8tDe

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) December 1, 2019

I think, if we were somehow turned into wild animals, most of us would choose to be apex predators. Being a prey creature, constantly at risk and having to stay on high alert all the time ... well, that sounds really too stressful. But most hunts end in failure, and barring freakish luck, predators seem hungry all the time, which can’t be any less stressful.

I think the lesson here is not to be a wild animal.

This particular lynx is stalking snowshoe hares in the depth of the Yukon winter. It looks cold, hungry, and miserable, and has to walk hundreds of miles in search for food, and when it finds one the hare just hides in a bush. A second hare also runs away and hides in a bush. Being a hare and getting chased by a lynx can’t be fun, but being a very peevish and hungry lynx would hardly be a good time either.

Aesthetics 10/10

Cats must be nature’s most stylish terrestrial predator. Even the smaller ones, like lynx, move with an instantly-recognisable grace. They’re beautiful creatures, made even lovelier by the pristine snow of the Canadian north.

youtube

Good lynx.

Difficulty 8/10

It’s obviously quite hard to catch a snowshoe hare.

Competitiveness 8/10

Frankly the hares seem to have the lynx overmatched, although the continued existence of any lynx at all implies that the contest is closer than it looks from these scenes.

Overall 26/30

I hope we’ve established that failure is, perhaps, the essence of sport.

Scene 2: Chubby Fish Boys

In Tennessee, a fish is building a fortress. And honestly, it’s pretty impressive:

BBC Earth

This contraption is the responsibility of a male river chub. In early spring, these foot-long fish embark on a quest to breed. The males seek out a quiet section of river in which to build a nest. These structures can get rather elaborate — they’re significantly larger than the fish themselves and can contain up to 7,000 pebbles, all placed by mouth. The males, for some reason, also decide to get much uglier:

What you would see looking out from a microwave. #SevenWorldsOnePlanet #isitready pic.twitter.com/V64RyDcyUo

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) December 1, 2019

Sorry boys, but bloated-foreheads-with-weird-growths is very much not my aesthetic. But my opinion doesn’t much matter to a river chub. What matters is the nest. These rocky piles provide shelter from both current and predators, should a female chub choose to lay her eggs there, and so building the best nest becomes fiercely competitive. Pebble theft is common.

Eventually the lady chubs make their choices, the eggs are laid and fertilised, and a new generation of fish is reared as the Mississippi slowly washes away those hard-build nests.

Aesthetics 1/10

These are some ugly fish and I really don’t like them.

Difficulty 4/10

Granted, it would be more difficult and time consuming without arms, but I imagine I could make a pile of several thousand rocks without too much trouble.

Competitiveness 8/10

Fighting over building materials and doing your best to build a very good nest? It’s a cut-throat chub world.

Overall 13/30

This is architecture. Architecture, while cool, is not sports.

Scene 3: Tidal Bears

Thanks to various quirks of geography, sections of the eastern coast of North America are subject to some of the planet’s highest tides. Tide present opportunities for land animals to harvest the rich bounty of the seas, and there’s no more opportunistic land animal than the bear.

Tidal zones might be rich in food but they’re also disgusting, rank places, with the stench of half-rotten seaweed everywhere. You can almost smell it coming through the screens. But we’ve dealt with the turd penguins, so we’ll forgive this bear family their rancid crab snacks. This is, or so we’re told, the cubs’ first visit to the seaside. They seem to be enjoying it:

A fierce hunter retreats with his starfish catch#SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/QjLDxWpig7

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) December 1, 2019

Sibling rivalry...a tale as old as time#SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/0zgCE3yKzp

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) December 1, 2019

However! Much like last week in Europe, the baby bears encounter a male whole isn’t their father, and are forced to flee up a tree to avoid his wrath. Fortunately, just like during the Finnish forest scene, nothing too bad happens. The grumpy male bear leaves a scent mark on the tree — how anyone might smell with so much seaweed around is beyond me, but bears have noses many thousands of times more powerful than ours, poor things — and the family skedaddles back to safety.

Aesthetics 5/10

These are some adorable, bears but while I love the seaside I have a visceral reaction to seeing much exposed seaweed. Gross.

Difficulty 8/10

The various climbs the little bears undertake seem sort of difficult, as evidenced by:

He’s beauty and he’s grace, he’s fallen on his face #SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/UYONQtceiT

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) December 1, 2019

Did I add this just because it’s cute? Yes, obviously.

Competitiveness 0/10

Despite things threatening to happen, nothing actually happens.

Overall 13/30

A stroll down the beach to munch on some crabs is not sports unless someone actually tries to fight the big bear at the end.

Scene 4: Fireflies

If you’re lucky enough to live in a part of the world inhabited by fireflies, make sure you take advantage of those lazy summer evenings when the temperature is just right to draw them out. The little beetles twinkle in the air like borrowed stars, adding magic wherever they go.

BBC Earth

Since this is nature, of course, the flashing of their lights is basically morse code for “S E X M E P L S”, the sort of neon signs one might imagine populating a red-light district, but the lurid nature of the show hardly takes away from the beauty.

And since, again, this is nature, sometimes the lights are a trap. There are some species of fireflies which have evolved the ability to mimic others species mating signals, using their lights to attract an innocent bug looking for a mate and eating it.

This sequence doesn’t show that degree of aggressive mimicry, but we get an accidental one instead, with fireflies finding themselves glowing postmortem in a spider’s web, which summons more fireflies which etc. It’s a very pretty dinner.

Aesthetics 10/10

Yeah this is an easy call.

Difficulty 7/10

This isn’t talked about at all during the scene, but I really wonder how on Earth individual fireflies manage to cut through the noise of tens of thousands of other fireflies to hone in on potential mates. Is their vision short-ranged enough that most of the lights gets diffused into the background? If you tried to get me to pick a specific firefly out of that video I would not do a very good job.

Competitiveness 7/10

Following on from the last part, I’m slightly baffled as to how fireflies differentiate themselves from their firefly competitors. Many mating rituals have an obvious ‘fitness’ component to them, but I can’t tell here. Is it because the world of coleoptera sex is just too alien for me to comprehend? I hope so. (The spider part gives this zero bonus points because that shit is really just too easy.)

Overall 24/30

If humans could glow, synchronised people-glowing would be an Olympic sport.

Scene 5: The Tale of the Naughty Prairie Dog That Only Listened To Its Mother Sometimes

Once upon a time, there were six little prairie dogs living in a hole in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains. They were good little prairie dogs, or so they thought. They played nicely with each other (sometimes), kept the burrow clean (sometimes) and even listened to their mother (sometimes). They liked their burrow, and had lots of good grass and seats to eat. The six little prairie dogs had a good life.

They were neighbours with a burrowing owl family, and were good friends with their chicks. They didn’t see them very much, because the owls preferred to come out later, but the chicks liked to play almost as much as the prairie dogs and the mother owl wasn’t nearly as strict as the prairie dogs’.

The prairie dogs thought that their mother worried at little bit too much. She insisted that they not go too far from their burrow — the world was “big and dangerous,” she said, and they were small and many creatures might find them tasty. Their mother also forced them to return to the burrow at a moment’s notice, even if they were having fun playing or had found a particularly tasty patch of grass!

Their mother, the prairie dogs decided, was clearly overthinking things. Surely the world couldn’t be as dangerous as she thought. Nothing scared the cubs.

She is having none of it #SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/JHIYxbTc9u

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) December 1, 2019

So slowly, as they got older, they started sneaking further away from the burrow. Whenever they could, they’d also wait a little longer to respond to their mother’s recall shout. Nothing bad ever happened. The world didn’t seem so big and dangerous after all.

One day, as they were playing, the little prairie dogs noticed the burrowing owl mother driving off a badger. “I wish she was our mother,” the eldest and most rebellious of the little prairie dogs. “Look how safe she keeps her family! Our mother just tells us never do to anything.”

The prairie dogs kept playing, glad that the badger had gone away. They’d never seen a predator before, but something told them them the badger was bad news. But with it gone, they could eat and play all day.

The eldest of the little prairie dogs was wrestling with his youngest sister when they heard their mother shouting for them to come home. “Let’s go back,” said his sister.

“Don’t be such a scaredy-dog,” said the eldest. “There’s nothing here that can hurt us. That badger went away ages ago. Mother’s just being ridiculous again. Stay and play.”

“Are you sure?” said his sister.

“Of course I’m sure.”

So the two little prairie dogs kept on wrestling.

The look your dad gives you when you announce that the whole family is going on a juice cleanse.#SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/v7DH1OxmyS

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) December 1, 2019

For the rest of his short existence, the eldest of the now-five little prairie dogs had to live with the guilt of his sister’s death.

Aesthetics 7/10

The prairies are not the continent’s finest scenery, but the little prairie dogs are very cute. And quite tasty-looking.

Difficulty 6/10

The ending wasn’t very difficult, but the badger did a lot of hard work to sneak up on the prairie dogs. The burrowing owl attack was pretty good too.

Competitiveness 10/10

Badger against baby prairie dogs? Not a contest. But a little burrowing owl (8 ounces) taking on a whole-ass badger (20 pounds) to defend her young? That’s the stuff right there.

Bonus point for the, uh, ill-judged prairie dog wrestling.

Overall 22/30

Depressing sports. Also, listen to your mom, kids.

Scene 6: Meep Meep!

Like many others, I was devastated to discover that roadrunners were neither blue nor locked in an elaborate, contraption-fueled feud with technically adept but curiously stubborn coyotes. Roadrunners are, in fact, little brown birds that like to eat lizards. Here is one on the hunt.

Practising for when Coyote turns up.#SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/vbRCqA2zxW

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) December 1, 2019

I was also devastated to find out that they don’t actually say “meep, meep”. It’s as though Looney Tunes was lying to me all along.

The roadrunner hunt is really quite odd. It doesn’t go after a gila monster (fair enough), and fails to chase down a couple of spindly-legged speedsters (fair enough), but it totally ignores a half-buried horny toad, and then at one point investigates a tasty-looking lizard of unknown description and instead of catching it lets it run away. And then chases after it.

I’m starting to suspect that roadrunners aren’t that smart. And with the lizard hunt not going very well, this one settles on a centipede. Job mediocrely done — my kind of bird.

Aesthetics 7/10

There’s a pure component to aesthetics, certainly. A goldeneye duck, for instance, is a beautiful bird in any context. But there’s also an aesthetic of time and place, and a roadrunner in the American West just feels right. It’s dusty and dirty chasing, after other dusty and dirty things, and while I might have preferred something blue and meepy, this’ll do.

Difficulty 5/10

Catching lizards in the heat can’t be easy, but there are so many unforced errors here it’s hard to give this a high difficulty score even when the hunt ends up mostly failing.

Competitiveness 8/10

Idiot bird vs. lizard seems like a pretty good fight.

Overall 20/30

Running aimlessly and mostly failing to get the job done? That’s a sport. I mean, I’ve just watched an Arsenal game.

Scene 7: Mullet Hunt

Somehow this is not a hair metal tribute band’s tribute band. I’m sorry if this disappoints you. Instead, we have grey mullet, a medium-sized coastal fish moving south with the currents off Florida. They’re moving south in vast numbers, too, with millions of fish heading towards their spawning grounds.

The mullet stay close to the shore in order to avoid the worst of the predators, yet somehow manage to go more or less undetected by the human sea-goers. But running in-shore only works for so long. Eventually the mullet draw the attention of a group of tarpon, large fish with a very large appetite. And so the hunt begins:

To get close to the mullet in the shallows, the tarpon turn on their sides now the mullet can’t see their shining silver flanks.#SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/mhgpgzO4Jx

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) December 1, 2019

The tarpon gorge on the mullet, and are soon joined by sharks and pelicans. But no matter how many predators converge upon the giant school, they can’t make much of a dent in its numbers, and the mullet keep moving south sans a few thousand fish.

Aesthetics 9/10

I very much enjoy the overhead shots of bait fish, and it’s especially fun to see them having to move around predators (the tarpon are magnificent) as well as human interlopers.

Difficulty 6/10

The tarpon, sharks and pelicans have it pretty easy. The mullet are jammed so tight to the shore that there’s nowhere to escape, so they mostly don’t. For the mullet there’s safety in numbers, but only for reasons of sheer probability.

Competitiveness 5/10

Not much of a fight, but I think sheer weight of numbers plays a factor here. The tarpon are trying to reduce a population 10,000 times their size. Granted, they probably think that sounds more ‘delicious’ than ‘intimidating’, but it’s a relatively tall order.

Overall 20/30

Sure. Fishing is a sport.

Scene 8: Sea Cows

America’s swamps aren’t always hot and humid. The shape of the continent allows arctic weather systems to penetrate right down to the south coast, dropping the temperature below freezing. Alligators can go into a sort of cold fugue state, dropping their heart rate to a beat per minute and sticking their snouts above the ice to make sure they can still breathe. But manatees cannot, and so they need to migrate somewhere warmer.

The waters off Florida should still be too cold for them during the winter, but Florida is an unusual place, and that strangeness manifests itself here through some surprisingly benevolent hydrology. The peninsula’s underground river systems are significantly warmer than the sea, and that’s where manatees see out the cold.

Some manatee babies get bored of all the waiting and play an unusual game:

BBC Earth

Yes, that is an alligator

In the depths of winter it’s not sleepy alligators which threaten the manatees. Instead, it’s boats. Florida’s water-ways are obnoxiously packed with motorboats, and dozens of manatees are killed by propellor strikes every year. Many of those that don’t die bear the scars of collisions, which are common even on young manatees.

Maybe learn to sail, Florida?

Aesthetics 7/10

Manatees aren’t cute, but the overhead shots have a sort of dreamy quality, like we’re watching a surrealist film about ambulant gnocchi. Also, the frozen alligator is very cool.

Difficulty 10/10

The baby manatee annoys an alligator. ANNOYS. AN. ALLIGATOR.

Competitiveness 4/10

Ok, let’s be fair: it’s a pretty sleepy alligator.

Overall 21/30

Most of this sequence is not a sport. Annoying alligators? That’s definitely a sport, albeit one I must legally recommend you not partake in.

Scene 9: White Whaling

I knew I shouldn’t have used so many Herman Melville references in the first episode, because we now have a genuine white whale hunt on our hands. Canada is warming faster than any other country on the planet, which has led to some difficult times for polar bears. Used to hunting on sea ice, which gives them a platform and a means to ambush the marine mammals they eat, the bears have had to adapt to a warming climate in which ice is much rarer.

Fortunately, bears are adaptable. Along Hudson Bay, a group of bears has developed a new hunting technique: they go whaling.

Polar bears are so dependent on the ocean, they are officially classed as ‘marine mammals’.#SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/pZzBtdLbFc

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) December 1, 2019

Bears, as it turns out, are not very good at chasing down belugas by swimming at them. But the older, smarter bears have a better technique: standing on a small rock, conveniently placed some distance into the water, and dive-bombing the whales as they swing by. This technique proves more fruitful, and one bloody encounter later, the bear is dragging a very dead whale to shore to share with his friends.

Polar bears are fucking terrifying.

Aesthetics 8/10

We’re used to seeing polar bears in icy conditions, so it’s quite nice to see them frolicking somewhere else.

Just a polar bear lying in a flower meadow #SevenWorldsOnePlanet pic.twitter.com/jiU5WDG7TO

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) December 1, 2019

As ever, the drone shots are magical.

Difficulty 10/10

An adult beluga can weigh up to 4,000 pounds. Imagine having to kill one in an ambush fast enough that it couldn’t escape.

Competitiveness 10/10

It takes a lot of brains and patience for the bears to overcome the fact the whales are far superior swimmers.

Overall 28/30

Diving is a sport, and it’s even more of a sport if you have to try to kill a whale with your teeth as you dive. From hell’s heart I bite at thee etc., etc., etc.

0 notes

onlinemarketinghelp · 4 years

Photo

10 Best Products to Sell at Christmas 2019 https://ift.tt/2Owu9X3

The weather might be cooling down, but shopping season is about to heat up. And if you’re beginning to wonder what dropshipping products you should sell for Christmas 2019, we’ve got you covered.

Below we’ve revealed a list of items we believe have high potential for the 2019 Christmas season. The products in this list were picked after reviewing the hottest products from Christmas 2018, using Oberlo product statistics to discover the top products from August to September 2019, and applying our entrepreneurial know-how.

Join us as we explore why it’s important to start preparing for Christmas early, what products you should consider, and how you can market them.

Forward Thinking: Preparing for the Holiday Shopping Season

In addition to being the most wonderful time of the year, the Christmas shopping season is also a massive spending period. It’s the biggest spending period in many countries worldwide, including the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland.

In the US alone, the 2018 winter holiday season – which stretches from Black Friday to Christmas – reached $998 billion in sales. And while a big chunk of this money was spent at physical stores, a staggering $124 billion was spent online.

With all this cash up for grabs, you can understand why retailers want to release their Christmas stock as early as possible – the holiday season means sales. But while Christmas seems to creep forward each year, the real kick-off to the holiday spending season is always Black Friday.

Arriving the day after Thanksgiving, Black Friday is a massive shopping event. In 2018, almost 21 percent of people said that Black Friday was the day they specifically planned to start their Christmas shopping. This is compared to 32 percent who planned to start their shopping at some point in December.

Although Black Friday has traditionally been an American event, in recent years it has gained traction worldwide – as has its online equivalent, Cyber Monday.

Responsible for $6 billion in American sales, Cyber Monday is the chance for online businesses (that’s you!) to compete with brick and mortar stores and offer unbeatable discounts. It is without a doubt one of the most important days of the year for ecommerce.

So with all this cash just waiting to be spent, here are some products that could help you get a slice of the Christmas turkey.

Personalized Necklaces

Everyone loves gifts that feel intimate and unique, so it’s no wonder personalized necklaces are a favorite with shoppers.

These necklaces were incredibly popular for Christmas 2017 and 2018. Looking at Google Trends over the last two years you can see that searches for personalized necklaces regularly spike in the two months leading up to Christmas.

The best thing about this product is that there are several different varieties you could sell. While the obvious product choice is the script name necklace (which conjures up images of Carrie Bradshaw’s iconic “‘Carrie” necklace from Sex and the City), you could also specialize in necklaces that have initial pendants, or have been personalized with photos of loved ones.

Another incredibly popular personalized necklace variety is a custom pet necklace.

These necklaces let you order a pendant or keychain engraved with a picture of your animal – perfect for pet lovers.

As this is such a visual product it lends itself to being advertised on image-sharing sites such as Instagram, where you could target pet lovers, fashionistas, or jewelry fans.

Flying UFO Helicopter Toy

Christmas is a magical time of the year, but it becomes extra special when you have kids. Parents spend huge amounts on their children’s Christmas gifts, so it makes sense to try and get in on the action.

These flying UFO helicopter toys have recently been a hot product in the toy category and have the potential to be a popular item over the Christmas season as well. In fact, looking at data from the last three months, this item has been the number one best-selling products in the Toys & Hobbies category.

A fun product that can be used by the whole family, this is an item that could easily be advertised to parents on Facebook or Pinterest. Alternatively, try marketing it on YouTube to target children who have a huge influence on what their parents spend on.

Bracelets for Couples

A piece of jewelry can be a very meaningful gift and it’s the perfect way to express your love over the Christmas season. These bracelets for couples are currently popular and would make the perfect product to sell for the holidays. And because there are so many different varieties available they’re a product that could appeal to any couple, from people who don’t mind flashy jewelry to those who want to show their love subtly.

When marketing these products, use Facebook ads to target those who are either in relationships or married. And, depending on what type of bracelets you choose to sell, you could even market them as bracelets for best friends or siblings.

Cozy Blankets

With the winter weather raging outdoors, there’s nothing better than wrapping up warm, which is why blankets are a great choice for Christmas products.

Blankets might seem like an odd Christmas gift, but in reality, there are a lot of factors that make them easy to sell to customers. They’re practical, last for a long time, and come in a range of styles – whether that’s fun mermaid tails, chunky knits, or even ridiculous burrito print.

All of these considerations make it easier to convince potential customers that a blanket is a thoughtful Christmas gift. Plus, if search trends are any indication, investing in a comfy blanket will already be on many minds in December – check out those peaks:

When advertising your product, using YouTube or video ads is a great way to show off any unique feature your blankets have, such as sleeves or pockets. Remember to mention how your blankets will help your customers – they’re not just decorative and nice to look at, they’ll keep them warm over the winter months as well.

Foil RoseSure, receiving a bunch of flowers from your partner is nice, but what about a colorful rose whose bloom will never die? Now that’s next level.

These foil flowers are a hot product right now and we can see them remaining popular over the shopping season, when many people are searching for gifts for significant others.

Additionally, many of the suppliers available on Oberlo know that presentation is important and each rose comes in a pretty box that protects the item during shipping and looks good.

There are clever ways you could market this product such as using social media influencers to create jealousy-inducing posts about receiving the item as a gift from their partners. Facebook and Instagram are a good place to advertise – and be sure to target people in relationships.

Women’s Bags

Sometimes a practical gift is the best gift, which makes offering a selection of women’s bags a solid idea for products to sell over Christmas. Women’s bags are a consistent seller and have recently been a very popular item. For example, looking at the last two months, this bag is the top selling product in the Luggage & Bag category worldwide and is particularly popular in the US.

As we can see on Google Trends, interest in handbags seems to peak every winter.

With such a range of bags to choose from, you can find a product that fits your store. A casual tote or shoulder bag could be easy to sell even if you’re not in the fashion niche. However, a more formal handbag might better suit a store selling other women’s clothing items.

With women being your target audience, try advertising on Instagram, Pinterest, or Facebook. A well-composed, high-quality image is one idea for marketing, though if your bag has hidden features – such as internal zippable compartments or anti-theft components – these might be better shown in a video.

Men’s Watches

It’s no secret that watches are big sellers in dropshipping and at the moment men’s watches are particularly popular. Although watches sell well throughout the year, Christmas is a great time to push them as the ideal gift.

With such a huge variety available you can cater to all types of customers. Sell simple watches for those who are practical, fashionable ones for those who want a watch to complement their look, or watches with features (such as step counters) for those who are health-conscious or interested in tech.

Selling items like watches at Christmas means you can reference the upcoming new year in your marketing. After all, what better way for your potential customers to start 2020 than by being on time to all their events, or increasing their step count.

Don’t forget to advertise to those who will be purchasing a watch as a gift. Targeting women who have boyfriends, sons, or brothers could be a good place to start.

Ionic and Heated Hair Brushes

Don’t be fooled, these aren’t your run-of-the-mill hair brushes, these bad boys are something else entirely.

Everyone wants to look their best over the Christmas and New Year period and what could be a better help than an ionic hairbrush or heated beard styling comb. An ionic hairbrush makes your hair shiny and smooth, while a heated styling comb lets you tidy and style your hair or beard – perfect for all those family photos over the holidays.

These items can be marketed as the perfect little gadgets to be given as gifts, or sold with the promise that they’ll keep the buyer looking good all season long. After all, who doesn’t like buying a treat for themselves while they’re Christmas shopping?

Reusable Stretchy Silicone Lids

OK, I know what you’re thinking, but hear me out on this one – if there’s one thing there’s a lot of over the Christmas period, it’s food. Delicious, delicious food. With so much food on offer, there’s bound to be leftovers and that’s where these reusable, stretchy lids come in.

This product has been a big seller recently and while they might not be anyone’s idea of the perfect Christmas gift, they could be a smart product to sell to those who organize Christmas for their family.

When marketing these lids be sure to hit on the fact that they’re adjustable, reusable, and helpful. And don’t forget to mention why Christmas time is the perfect time to buy a set – all the leftover food!

This is also a great product to show off in a video. People want to see how they can use the product, how versatile it is, and how it will help solve their problem. Putting together a quick demonstration video is not only good for ads but including it on your product pages might just be the thing that converts potential buyers into customers.

Mini Projectors

With the recent explosive popularity of these mini projectors, we’re predicting they’ll be an even bigger seller over the holiday season. After all, who wants to brave the cold to go to the cinema when you can turn your home into a theater?

Mini projectors are the perfect gift for movie junkies or gamers, and best of all, you can easily bundle it with a projector screen for the ultimate cross-sell.

A projector like this lends itself to video ads where you can demonstrate how easy it is to use and how small and portable it is. Given that this product falls into the electronics category, making a review video could be a great idea. Not only does a review talk up the positive aspects of your product, but it also sets customers expectations so they know exactly what they’re spending their money on.

Start Dropshipping for Christmas Today

And there we have it, our list of products we think have high potential this Christmas season.

Hopefully, it has inspired and motivated you to start thinking about your store and how you can capture a piece of the lucrative holiday shopping season market.

And, if you’re at the very beginning of your dropshipping journey, no problem – we’ve got lots of resources to help you on your way. First take a look at our free eBook, Dropshipping 101, and become familiar with the dropshipping business model and ecommerce.

If you’re searching for more hot products to stock your store with, check out the articles below.

Want to Learn More?

What Should You Sell Online?

Best Dropshipping Products to Sell in Fall 2019

8 Ways to Find Winning Products Every Time

6 Best-Selling Dropshipping Products Around the World

The post 10 Best Products to Sell at Christmas 2019 appeared first on Oberlo.

from Oberlo

The weather might be cooling down, but shopping season is about to heat up. And if you’re beginning to wonder what dropshipping products you should sell for Christmas 2019, we’ve got you covered.

Join us as we explore why it’s important to start preparing for Christmas early, what products you should consider, and how you can market them.

Forward Thinking: Preparing for the Holiday Shopping Season

Although Black Friday has traditionally been an American event, in recent years it has gained traction worldwide – as has its online equivalent, Cyber Monday.

So with all this cash just waiting to be spent, here are some products that could help you get a slice of the Christmas turkey.

Personalized Necklaces

Everyone loves gifts that feel intimate and unique, so it’s no wonder personalized necklaces are a favorite with shoppers.

Another incredibly popular personalized necklace variety is a custom pet necklace.

These necklaces let you order a pendant or keychain engraved with a picture of your animal – perfect for pet lovers.

As this is such a visual product it lends itself to being advertised on image-sharing sites such as Instagram, where you could target pet lovers, fashionistas, or jewelry fans.

Flying UFO Helicopter Toy

Bracelets for Couples

Cozy Blankets

With the winter weather raging outdoors, there’s nothing better than wrapping up warm, which is why blankets are a great choice for Christmas products.

Foil RoseSure, receiving a bunch of flowers from your partner is nice, but what about a colorful rose whose bloom will never die? Now that’s next level.

These foil flowers are a hot product right now and we can see them remaining popular over the shopping season, when many people are searching for gifts for significant others.

Additionally, many of the suppliers available on Oberlo know that presentation is important and each rose comes in a pretty box that protects the item during shipping and looks good.

Women’s Bags

As we can see on Google Trends, interest in handbags seems to peak every winter.

Men’s Watches

Don’t forget to advertise to those who will be purchasing a watch as a gift. Targeting women who have boyfriends, sons, or brothers could be a good place to start.

Ionic and Heated Hair Brushes

Don’t be fooled, these aren’t your run-of-the-mill hair brushes, these bad boys are something else entirely.

Reusable Stretchy Silicone Lids

Mini Projectors

Mini projectors are the perfect gift for movie junkies or gamers, and best of all, you can easily bundle it with a projector screen for the ultimate cross-sell.

Start Dropshipping for Christmas Today

And there we have it, our list of products we think have high potential this Christmas season.

Hopefully, it has inspired and motivated you to start thinking about your store and how you can capture a piece of the lucrative holiday shopping season market.

If you’re searching for more hot products to stock your store with, check out the articles below.

Want to Learn More?

What Should You Sell Online?

Best Dropshipping Products to Sell in Fall 2019

8 Ways to Find Winning Products Every Time

6 Best-Selling Dropshipping Products Around the World

The post 10 Best Products to Sell at Christmas 2019 appeared first on Oberlo.

https://ift.tt/2l0kJbH November 18, 2019 at 09:50PM https://ift.tt/2mJcBN9

0 notes

suzanneshannon · 4 years

Text

Thank You (2019 Edition)

One of our yearly traditions here is to thank all y'all CSS-Tricks readers at the passing of a new year. It means a lot to me that people come here and read the words I write, and the words of all our staff and guest authors that contribute here as well.

Thank you!

Plus, we dig into the numbers this time of year. I've always tried to be open about the analytics on this site. Looking at them year after year always serves up a good reminder: niche blogging is a slow game. There's no hockey-stick growth around here. Never has been, never will be. The trick is to build slowly over time, taking care of the site, investing in it, working hard, and with some luck, numbers trend upward. This year, overall traffic didn't even do that. Sometimes you gotta fight for what you've got! Growth came in other areas though. Let's take a gander.

It was January 1st, 2019 that the current design of this site (v17) debuted, so this entire year overlaps perfectly with that. I'll certainly be tempted to release major iterations with that same timing in the future for comparison sake.

Overall numbers

Google Analytics is showing me 90.3 million pageviews, which is a bit of a decline from 2018 at over 91 million. A 1% decline. Not a big problem, but of course I'd way rather see a 1% increase instead. We'll take that as a kick in the butt to produce a stronger year of content to hopefully more than win it back.

Looks like we published 726 articles over the year, which includes link posts and sponsored links. A good leap from 636 last year and 595 the year before that. Clearly quantity isn't the trick to traffic for us.

I don't know that we'll slow down necessarily. I like the fact that we're publishing multiple times a day with noteworthy links because I like to think of us as a timely industry publication that you can read like a daily or weekly newspaper in addition to being an evergreen reference. I don't think we'll invest in increasing volume, though. Quality moves the needle far more than quantity for this gang.

There is a bunch of numbers I just don't feel like looking at this year. We've traditionally done stuff like what countries people are from, what browsers they use (Chrome-dominant), mobile usage (weirdly low), and things like that. This year, I just don't care. This is a website. It's for everyone in the world that cares to read it, in whatever country they are in and whatever browser they want to. We still track those numbers (because Google Analytics automatically does), so we can visit them again in the future and look historically if it gets interesting again. Taking a quick peak, however, it's not much different than any other year.

Performance numbers are always fascinating. Google Analytics tells me the average page load time is 5.32s. On my fast home internet (even faster at the office), the homepage loads for me in 970ms, but it's more like 30 seconds when throttled to "Slow 3G." "Fast 3G" is 8 seconds. Sorta makes sense that most visitors are on faster-than-3G connections since the traffic is largely skewed toward desktop. No cache, we're talking 54 requests (including ads) and 770KB (fits on a floppy). It's good enough that I'm not itching to dig into a performance sprint.

Top posts of the year

You'd think we would do a section like this ever year, but because of our URL structure, I haven't had easy access to figure this out. Fortunately, in March 2019, Jacob Worsøe helped us add some Custom Dimensions to our Google Analytics so we can track things like author and year with each pageview.

That means we can find things, like the most popular articles written in 2019, rather than just the most popular articles looked at in 2019 — regardless of when they were was written. Here's a graph Jacob sent:

Here's that list in text:

The Great Divide

Change Color of SVG on Hover

New ES2018 Features Every JavaScript Developer Should Know

An Introduction to Web Components

Where Do You Learn HTML & CSS in 2019?

The Many Ways to Change an SVG Fill on Hover (and When to Use Them)

Look Ma, No Media Queries! Responsive Layouts Using CSS Grid

How to Section Your HTML

Prevent Page Scrolling When a Modal is Open

CSS Animation Libraries

8.25% of traffic came from articles written this year. If you look at where these articles fall on the list of all URLs in 2019 (not just those published in 2019), the top article starts at #75! Hard to compete with older articles that have had time to gather SEO steam. This kind of thing makes me want to get re-focused on referential content even more.

Interesting that our top article was editorial, but everything else is referential. I like a little editorial here and there, but clearly our bread and butter is how-to technical stuff.

There are two aspects of search that are interesting to me:

What do people search for right here on the site itself?

What search terms do people use on Google to find this site?

On-site search is handled by Jetpack's Elasticsearch feature, which I'm still quite liking (they are a sponsor, but it's very true). This also means we can track its usage pretty easily using the analytics on my WordPress.com dashboard. I also installed a Search Meter plugin to track search form entries. I can look at Google searches through the SiteKit plugin, which pulls from Google Search Console.

Here are all three, with duplicates removed.

Jetpack Search Data Search Meter Search Data Google Search Data 1 amazon (?!) flexbox flexbox 2 flexbox grid css grid 3 css tricks flex css tricks 4 flexbox guide animation css important 5 css grid svg css triangle 6 css flex position mailto link 7 grid guide css grid vertical align css 8 css important css css comment 9 the great divide border css shapes 10 css shapes background css background image opacity

There is a bit of a fat head of traffic here with our top 10 pages doing about 10% of traffic, which syncs up with those big searches for stuff like flexbox and grid and people landing on our great guides. If you look at our top 100 pages, that goes out to about 38% of traffic, and articles past that are about 0.1% of traffic and go down from there. So I'd say our long tail is our most valuable asset. That mass of articles, videos, snippets, threads, etc. that make up 62% of all traffic.

Social media

It's always this time of year I realize how little social media does for our traffic and feel stupid for spending so much time on it. We pretty much only do Twitter and it accounts for 1% of the traffic to this site. We still have a Facebook page but it's largely neglected except for auto-posting our own article links to it. I find value in Twitter, through listening in on industry conversations and having fun, but I'm going to make a concerted effort to spend less time and energy on our outgoing social media work. If something is worth tweeting for us, it should be worth blogging; and if we blog it, it can be auto-tweeted.

But by way of numbers, we went from 380k followers on @css to 430k. Solid growth there, but the rate of growth is the same every year, to the point it's weirdly consistent.

I also picked up an Instagram account this year. Haven't done much there, but I still like it. For us, I think each post on Instagram can represent this little opportunity to clearly explain an idea, which could ultimately turn into a nice referential book or the like someday. A paultry 1,389 followers there.

Newsletter

I quite like our newsletter. It's this unique piece of writing that goes out each week and gives us a chance to say what we wanna say. It's often a conglomeration of things we've posted to the site, so it's an opportunity to stay caught up with the site, but even those internal links are posted with new commentary. Plus, we link out to other things that we may not mention on the site. And best of all, it typically has some fresh editorial that's unique to the newsletter. The bulk of it is done by Robin, but we all chip in.

All that to say: I think it's got a lot of potential and we're definitely going to keep at it.

We had the biggest leap in subscribership ever this year, starting the year at 40k subscribers and ending at 65k. That's 2.5× the biggest leap in year-over-year subscribers so far. I'd like to think that it's because it's a good newsletter, but also because it's integrated into the site much better this year than it ever has been.

Comments

Oh, bittersweet comments. The bad news is that I feel like they get a little worse every year. There is more spam. People get a little nastier. I'm always teetering on the edge of just shutting them off. But then someone posts something really nice or really helpful and I'm reminded that we're a community of developers and I love them again.

4,710 approved comments. Up quite a bit from 3,788 last year, but still down from 5,040 in 2017. Note that these are approved comments, and it's notable that this entire year we've been on a system of hand-approving all comments before they go out. Last year, I estimated about half of comments make it through that, and this year I'd estimate it at more like 30-40%. So, the straight-up number of comments isn't particularly interesting as it's subject to our attitude on approval. Next year, I plan to have us be more strict than we've ever been on only approving very high-quality comments.

I'm still waiting for WordPress to swoon me with a recommitment to making commenting good again. ;)

Forums

There were a couple of weeks just in December where I literally shut down the forums. They've been teetering on end-of-life for years. The problem is that I don't have time to tend to them myself, nor do I think it's worth paying someone to do so, at least not now. Brass tacks, they don't have any business value and I don't extract enough other value out of them to rationalize spending time on them.

If they just sat there and were happy little forums, I'd just leave them alone, but the problem is spam. It was mostly spam toward the end, which is incredibly tedious to clean up and requires extra human work.

I've kicked them back on for now because I was informed about a spam-blocking plugin that apparently can do incredible work specifically for bbPress spam. Worth a shot!

Interestingly, over the year, the forums generated 7m pageviews, which is 7.6% of all traffic to the site. Sorta makes sense as they are the bulk of the site URLs and they are user-generated threads. Long tail.

Goal review

✅ Polish this new design. Mixed feelings. But I moved the site to a private GitHub repo half-way through the year, and there have been 195 commits since then, so obviously work is getting done. I'll be leaving this design up all of 2020 and I'd like to make a more concerted effort at polish.

✅ Improve newsletter publishing and display. Nailed this one. In March, we moved authoring right here on the site using the new Gutenberg editor in WordPress. That means it's easier to write while being much easier to display nicely on this site. Feels great.

☯️ Raise the bar on quality. I'm not marking it as a goal entirely met because I'm not sure we changed all that much. There was no obvious jump upward in quality, but I think we do pretty good in general and would like to see us continue to hold steady there.

❌ Better guides. We didn't do all that much with guides. Part of the problem is that it's a little confusing. For one thing, we have "guides" (e.g. our guide to flexbox) which is obviously useful and doing well. Then there are "Guide Collections" (e.g. our Custom Properties Guide) which are like hand-picked and hand-ordered selections of articles. I'm not entirely sure how useful those hand-curated guides are, especially considering we also have tag pages which are more sortable. The dudes with the biggest are the hand-written articles-on-steroids types, so that's worth the most investment.

New goals

100k on email list. That would be a jump of 35k which is more than we've ever done. Ambitious. Part of this is that I'm tempted to try some stuff like paid advertising to grow it, so I can get a taste for that world. Didn't Twitter have a special card where people could subscribe right from a Tweet? Stuff like that.

Two guides. The blog-post-on-steroids kind. The flexbox one does great for us, traffic-wise, but I also really enjoy this kind of creative output. I'll be really sad if we can't at least get two really good ones done this year.

Have an obvious focus on how-to referential technical content. This is related to the last goal, but goes for everyday publishing. I wouldn't be mad if every darn article we published started with "How To."

Get on Gutenberg. The new WordPress block editor. This is our most ambitious goal. Or at least I think it is. It's the most unknown because I literally don't know what issues we're going to face when turning it on for more than a decade's worth of content that's been authored in the classic editor. I don't think it's going to hurt anything. It's more a matter of making sure:

authoring posts has all the same functionality and conveniences as we have now,

editing old posts doesn't require any manual conversion work, and

it feels worth doing.

But I haven't even tried yet, so it's a don't-know-what-I-don't-know situation.

Again, thanks so much!

I was thinking about how stage musicians do that thing where they thank their fans almost unfailingly. Across any genre. Even if they say hardly anything into a microphone during the performance, they will at least thank people for coming, if not absolutely gush appreciation at the crowd. It's cliché, but it's not disingenuous. I can imagine it's genuinely touching to look out across a room of people that all choose to spend a slice of their lives listening to you do your thing.

I feel that way here. I can't see you as easily as looking out over a room, but I feel it in the comments you post, the emails you send, the tweets you tagged us in, and all that. You're spending some of your life with us and that makes me feel incredibly grateful. Cheers.

🍻

The post Thank You (2019 Edition) appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

Thank You (2019 Edition) published first on https://deskbysnafu.tumblr.com/

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recentanimenews · 5 years

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Bookshelf Briefs 6/25/19

Again!!, Vol. 9 | By Mitsurou Kubo | Kodansha Comics – Victories are always hard-won in Again!!. Nothing is tidy. Nothing goes right the first time. In this volume, Imamura and the ouendan help the drama club for the school festival, since they essentially poached the new members the drama club would have gotten in this reality. They were originally going to put on a musical Imamura wrote called “I Want to Die,” despite the school’s attempts to shut that down. That is, until, their club advisor collapses and might actually die, at which point they feel compelled to perform the sanitized “I Want to Live” version instead. After initially feeling left out of this version, Imamura ends up being proud of it, and catches a glimpse of a place he might belong in this world. He’s fallen in love, too, and could be happy here. Now the question is… will he be allowed to stay? – Michelle Smith

Caterpillar Girl and Bad Texter Boy | By Sanzo | Yen Press – Sometimes there’s a manga with a premise so bizarre my curiosity can’t help but be piqued. Caterpillar Girl and Bad Texter Boy is one of those manga. It’s also a surprisingly good tale, the strangeness of which can be taken at face value as well as as an overt metaphor. Believing she’s too good for him, Akane rejects Suzume’s confession of love. Miserable, Suzume makes drastic wish from a local god which transforms her into a caterpillar-like creature. The main characters in Caterpillar Girl and Bad Texter Boy are all dealing with some major issues surrounding love, trust, and self-worth, and they definitely don’t always handle them in the best or healthiest ways. The result is a manga that can be incredibly dark and bittersweet. There are some inconsistencies in the story’s internal logic regarding which wishes can and cannot be fulfilled, but I still rather enjoyed this peculiar manga. – Ash Brown

DAYS, Vol. 14 | By Tsuyoshi Yasuda | Kodansha Comics (digital only) – It’s only volume fourteen and Seiseki has made it to nationals. By sports manga standards, that might seem very quick, but actually, one of the things I like best about DAYS is that the main character, Tsukamoto, never takes anything for granted and always pauses to appreciate things, like the random chance of meeting Kazama and ending up on a team with these guys, or the excitement of taking a long bus ride as a team, or the fun of getting to stay in a hotel with Western beds. In between, there’s soccer aplenty, as the third years play against the younger students in an attempt to imbue them with some passion, but the overall feeling is one of “be sure to enjoy this moment,” which I really like. We get a glimpse here, but the tournament will really get underway next time! – Michelle Smith

Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma, Vol. 30 | By Yuto Tsukuda and Shun Saeki | VIZ Media – I continue to be torn about Food Wars!. I really did like some aspects of this volume, like Soma recognizing Erina’s superior skill and having her taste every component of his dish in their team challenge while simultaneously spurring her on to greater creative heights. I was happy with the outcome, and am curious about what the power structure at Totsuki will be like going forward—will Soma and Erina really be on the Council of Ten? However, I just can’t overlook that a major plot point in this volume involves Azami’s “spiritual essence” pulsating outward every time he tastes something delicious, causing multiple students in the audience to disrobe. I get that there needed to be a gimmick so that Azami’s could not refute the deliciousness of Soma and Erina’s two-course meal, but I just wish it wasn’t this. Sigh. – Michelle Smith

Hakumei & Mikochi: Tiny Little Life in the Woods, Vol. 6 | By Takuto Kashiki | Yen Press – I really enjoy each volume of this series, but it can’t be denied that it’s hard to fill even a brief with enough words for a review. Hakumei gets a haircut, but it grows back to its normal scruff fairly soon after. The couple also build a new outdoor kitchen with a brick oven for Mikochi, who is always looking for more and better ways to cook. Probably my favorite chapter in here was the one where Sen goes to the bar and runs into Conju, who is very drunk and very talkative, and we get a nice contrast of extrovert and introvert. For the most part, the series delivers more of the same, a peaceful, easy fantasy that will make you smile. Which is what I ask it to do, so that’s good. – Sean Gaffney

Hatsu*Haru, Vol. 7 | By Shizuki Fujisawa | Yen Press – This has rapidly turned into one of my favorite shoujo manga, even as it comes up with relatively obvious plot beats and complications. It succeeds because of the strength of its cast. Kai wants things to progress now that he’s dating Riko, but a kiss may be a little too much to ask, even with the help of both Ayumi AND Einstein. Meanwhile, an accidental remark by Miki’s sister has Kiyo feeling very self-conscious of her height… and realizing that Riko is not opening up about her own issues puts a “you never talk to me about anything” rift in their friendship. Meanwhile, the one weak link in the series—Tarou and Kagura—had better get an arc dedicated to them soon or else they’re never going to grab the readers. Still great. – Sean Gaffney

The Ideal Sponger Life, Vol. 2 | By Tsunehiko Watanabe and Neko Hinotsuki | Seven Seas – After the first volume introduced the hero and heroine and had them working to achieve their objective (an heir) by having sex (which they do), this second volumes gives us what I think most readers will stick around for: oodles of political intrigue. Zenjiro is finally introduced to most of the major nobles of the area in a dinner party of the damned, and has to navigate being polite but also not overly subservient—and how to accept gifts by not accepting them. He does a very good job, as everyone admits. He may not be able to fend off the need for a concubine or two, though—monogamy is relatively unheard of in this world. Fortunately, he and Aura still really love each other, which counts for a lot. – Sean Gaffney

Satoko and Nada, Vol. 2 | By Yupechika | Seven Seas – There’s a lot more Nada than Satoko in this second volume, which should not be surprising—she’s the one who is “foreign” to Japanese eyes, whereas Satoko’s realization that you can’t get milk bread in America runs a distant second. This is not to say that this volume isn’t great fun, letting the reader learn about Saudi customs (there’s an arranged marriage coming up that it’s hinted will take up a lot of the third book) and also lets her try things that she could never get away with back home (like riding a bike). Satoko is also doing things, like getting a cafeteria job on campus, and her role in this second volume is to become more outgoing—it’s said that she’s gotten better at presentations since she was paired with the gregarious Nada. READ THIS. – Sean Gaffney

Takane & Hana, Vol. 9 | By Yuki Shiwasu | Viz Media – I loved the fact that this series did not decide to embrace all the usual “we’re living together” tropes—indeed, the best scene in the book has Takane running into Hana dressed only in a towel coming out of the shower, and her reaction (and subsequent teasing) had me cheering. Hana’s been informed by Takane’s grandfather that this is necessary for his growth, so they reluctantly decide to go through with it. But that doesn’t make it any easier given that he’s still a lot older than her and she’s still in school. It also gives Okamon the push to confess to Hana, though honestly I’m not expecting much there. This series continues to be very funny and makes me root for the couple despite its problematic age issues. – Sean Gaffney

Whenever Our Eyes Meet…: A Women’s Love Anthology | By Various Artists | Yen Press – The reason to get this anthology is that all of its content is dedicated to adult women out of school and at the workplace. This is so refreshing it almost drowns out the actual content. It helps that the initial story, featuring an artist accepting a commission from a singer who wears a horse’s head mask to hide her face, is a nice start. But the rest of the stories are also quite good, with some being fleeting encounters and some turning into lasting relationships. I also liked the story of the up-and-coming woman who’s doing a presentation and finds her old coworker is her cab driver. Sometimes this risks being just another anthology, but in the end I enjoyed it. – Sean Gaffney

By: Ash Brown

#Anime #News #Manga Bookshelf

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terabitweb · 5 years

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Original Post from Rapid7 Author: Robert Lerner

Earlier this month, Verizon released its 2019 Data Breach Investigation Report. It revealed, unsurprisingly, that a good chunk of breaches were the result of attacks at the application layer and that there was a major shift (almost to the 50% crossover point) in payment card breach volume sources to compromising web servers.

Rapid7’s own [Master] Chief Data Scientist Bob Rudis and our Rapid7 Labs research team pored over the report to identify some key points to help the Rapid7 community navigate through this sea of information. In his blog post summarizing the top findings in the 2019 Verizon DBIR report, Bob provided some guidance to help you better safeguard your organization, and the following section really hit home for me:

“It’s time to get serious about adopting critical security headers like Content Security Policy and designing web applications modularly to enable clean and easy use of subresource integrity attributes on resources you load. While you can start with just focusing on the core pages that deal with logins and payment card transactions, you should consider adopting these two technologies holistically across all web-facing components. If you source your e-commerce applications from a third party, ensure you mandate the use of these technologies in your procurement processes.”

During my spare time, I’ve built both an auditing tool and a tool to retrieve the Top 500 list from Moz to better understand how the world’s largest companies use headers. Through this, I’ve discovered the best place to address vulnerabilities is within your software itself. Click here to evaluate your site.

Browsers may have varying or even no support for the various security headers, so they should be part of defense in depth and not viewed as a holistic solution.

As this project plays very nicely into how you can heed Bob’s advice, I’ve created a series of real-world scenarios in which attackers can manipulate unsecured HTTP headers and how to prevent your organization from falling victim to tactics used to exploit them. But before I get into the fun stuff, let’s start with a refresher on what HTTP headers are.

What are HTTP headers?

Before you even see a page load or download file, your browser (or any client, such as cURL, wget, etc.) and a server have a conversation. During this conversation, the browser may ask for a specific resource, request a specific language, and tell the server what type of browser you are using.

The server responds with information, such as how many bytes are ready to be sent, the type of server being used, and the cookies to set.

Here’s an example request:

GET /index.html HTTP/1.1 Host: www.rapid7.com User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:66.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/66.0 Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8 Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.5 Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br Referer: https://www.google.com/?q=best+dast+ever Connection: keep-alive Upgrade-Insecure-Requests: 1

Here’s an example response:

200 OK Connection: Keep-Alive Content-Encoding: gzip Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 Date: Mon, 31 Feb 2020 00:00:00 GMT Last-Modified: Mon, 18 Jan 2019 02:36:04 GMT Server: Apache Transfer-Encoding: chunked X-Frame-Options: DENY (Response body here)

As you can see, there’s a lot of conversations going on behind the scenes—and this happens several times for each page you requested. Not all of these headers are strictly for rendering your page: Some tell the site not to track you (such as DNT headers), while others tell the browser not to allow frames on the site (such as X-Frame-Options). Sometimes these headers leak into the user realm (bet you’ve seen a few 404: File Not Found pages). The better you know your site, the more restrictive you can be when configuring your headers, and the more secure your site can be.

I will cover the most common security headers you will find on servers across the internet. For each of these headers, I’ll provide a standards document if one is available (such as a Working Draft or RFC), assuming the scope isn’t too broad (the entire HTTP specification, for example). I will also include additional resources and links to the CWEs, where applicable. This document uses the term “media types” to refer to what was previously called “MIME Types,” as IANA has changed the terminology.

Custom headers and the “X-” prefix

Standards organizations—what would we do without them? RFC 2047 §5.1 states that any nonstandard HTTP header be denoted and prefixed with “X-” (hence many of the headers in this blog). RFC 6648 deprecates this. Chances are that the legacy “X-” headers will outlive this blog post, so for nearly all purposes and intents, these should be used in lieu of their non-prefixed alternatives.

Imagine, if you will…

In this hypothetical scenario, imagine you are checking your employer’s intranet forum and you see a topic that catches your eye: “An estimated 60% of the workforce will be laid off this week!”

Panic ensues until the inevitable HR memo comes out stating that this forum post is false and no one is getting laid off. An investigation into how this could have happened uncovers that your organization has fallen victim to a social engineering scheme. But how did this schemer get in?

Here are some examples of vulnerabilities that may have been exploited:

You can set your account’s password without providing your current password

There is a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in the forums

The forum admin only skimmed this wonderful blog entry.

These would allow the attacker to wreak havoc by using the following tactics:

Make a really crafty forum topic title that everyone will click and talk about

Leverages the XSS vulnerability within a forum topic

Executes var cookie = document.cookie;

Makes an XMLHttpRequest to their server with this cookie value

Stand up a server to receive these cookies

Make a cURL request back to the server, using the cookie to authenticate

Set the password to a new value

Log the user out

In this situation, anybody who clicks the forum topic will instantly have their account password reset and be logged off. With this tactic, attackers will be collecting accounts like Pokémon.

So, which headers can help us out here?

HTTP is a stateless protocol, which means it cannot associate state between two requests. Sessions are a technique of providing a unique identifier to your site’s users, allowing them to persist login state across several page loads. These may be persisted across URLs (bad) or across cookies (good). Because of that, we need to ensure we protect information from being stolen. There are three security-focused attributes within a cookie header, but today we are going to focus on HTTPOnly:

Cookie attributes

Example

Set-Cookie: id=Rapid7; Expires=Wed, 06 Mar 2019 02:42:26 GMT; Secure; HttpOnly; SameSite=strict

HTTPOnly attribute

The HTTPOnly flag informs the browser that the cookie may only be transmitted via HTTP—that is, it is not available to java script in the form of alert(document.cookie);. This greatly reduces the utility in an XSS attack.

Secure attribute

As discussed, there is little excuse for not using HTTPS throughout your application. The “Secure” flag instructs the browser to only send this cookie value to requests made via HTTPS. If your connection is subject to an HTTP Downgrade and MiTM attack, this cookie will not be transmitted which will prevent account theft.

SameSite attribute

Can I Use?

The SameSite attribute is used to control how cookies are applied to requests when they originate from a third-party domain. If a user is logged into example.com, they can click around the site and maintain logged-in state. If they then visit rapid7.com, and Rapid7 links back to Example.com to leverage an XSRF vulnerability, then this will be executed against the user’s account on example.com.

If the SameSite attribute is set to Strict, the previous example would fail. The browser would detect this and not transmit the cookies—therefore, the attack would apply to a guest account.

By setting the HTTPOnly flag on our cookies, we instruct the browser that it may not send the cookie to the browser via Javascript’s document.cookie. This single-handedly would have mitigated the kill chain I’ve presented earlier where an account could be compromised. Another header that would have been useful is:

X-XSS-Protection

Example

X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block

Moz Top 500

This header is present on 35% of sites. Many browsers have built in XSS protection that site operators can control. A blank setting disables the protection mechanism, and an attribute of “1” instructs the browser to attempt to sanitize the content. Finally, setting the header to “1; mode=block” tells the browser to stop rendering the page. The latter option is recommended.

This header enables the in-built XSS filtering or blocking that browsers use, and therefore may have also blocked this attack by restricting access to the page where the XSS vulnerability existed.

Other scenarios

The decision to go with the account theft model was to illustrate a real-world situation that could be dire to an organization without backups or that is visible to the public. Cookies can simply be stored, with no programmatic action being performed. It is possible for a stolen cookie to be used to perform any number of actions on your site, from buying items to deleting customers.

Other ways to limit this attack include:

Regenerate cookie values and expire the previous value whenever the following happens:

A user authenticates, or after logoff

A user changes roles, such as logging into an admin panel

After several page loads, this limits the validity period

Limit the session duration

Set either a “0” on the session cookie, or an explicit expiry time. (Also enforce this server-side, since spoofing this on the client is really easy.)

Leverage an additional identifier along with the cookie, such as the user’s IP address, user agent, or other information.

Write secure code

So, what are you waiting for? Go and evaluate your site to verify that your web server is correctly responding with headers designed for security, and stay tuned for my next blog on “Hidden Helpers: Security-Focused HTTP Headers.”

Looking to identify security vulnerabilities in your web applications? Try InsightAppSec today for free.

Get Started

#gallery-0-5 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-5 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-0-5 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-5 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

Go to Source Author: Robert Lerner Hidden Helpers: Security-Focused HTTP Headers Original Post from Rapid7 Author: Robert Lerner Earlier this month, Verizon released its 2019 Data Breach Investigation Report.

#Rapid7

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andreafestefano · 6 years

Text

The best closet ever.

Well hello there! Ready for the weekend? We have some fun plans. The snow started melting today and should throughout the weekend so that's an extra bonus. We saw The Greatest Showman today and it was fantastic. We've heard so much about it and it exceeded my expectations.

I mentioned earlier this week that I've been an organizing fool lately. It's been fun to figure out how our spaces work and what functions best. I purposefully waited to do this because I didn't want to put in all this work to find out later we didn't use the everything like I thought. Of course it will still change over time, but for now I'm thrilled with how it's coming together!

This closet was a doozy. It's my favorite in the house. (Do normal people have a favorite closet?)When I shared our mud room/laundry a couple months ago, I told you I was most excited about the closet we added in the room. A closet JUST for cleaning crap. Hello!

But it quickly became our dumping ground, which I was OK with knowing I'd get to it eventually. Here's how it looked the night I started:

It held tons of stuff but wasn't functional at all. You can see one of the vacuums (I keep the other one in the basement where we have more carpet) lived outside the closet which isn't dreamy at all. 😂 There was obviously no room for it. We had quite a few things I wanted to fit in this closet:

utility stuff like batteries and light bulbs

cleaning rags, sponges and the like

cleaning supplies

vacuum, brooms, swiffers, etc. (we have a lot of these because I use one for different needs)

ironing stuff -- boards, (we have large and small ones) and iron

wrapping items like paper, bags, ribbon, etc.

carpet cleaner machine

I quickly realized not all of this was going to fit, more on that in a minute.

Here's another look at what we were dealing with:

Good times!!

As I do anytime I start an organizing project, I took every single thing out of the closet. First goal is to purge what we don't need anymore.

This is where it got hard for me. I mention the Konmari method every time I organize something, because it changed my life for the better. I've gotten VERY good at letting go of things. Very good. But I discovered I have a weird thing with cleaning supplies. I couldn't let go of them!

And look how much we had!:

What in the world? Here's one thing I've learned since moving in this house -- from this point on like items will live together. At the last house I had a cabinet I built in our laundry room that held all of our extra cleaning supplies and paper items.

When we moved I was appalled at how many cleaning supplies we had, because they were out of site, out of mind. Keeping them down in the basement in a cabinet I rarely opened didn't work. We bought more of stuff not knowing what we had.

I used to use mainly one cleaning brand exclusively around the house -- I have concentrate I would mix up. I don't know why I got away from that and we ended up with so many bottles of stuff, but I know a big part of it was not having it all in one spot.

I've learned people! No more. But I stood there literally frozen in front of it all, having a hard time letting it go. I kind of smacked myself out of it (figuratively) and went back to what I learned with the Konmari method -- do I LOVE the product and (my addition) does it work well?

I was able to start going through items and first decided what I didn't even like. I had a lot of carpet cleaning stuff and I've only found a couple that really work well. The rest went away. I had three cans of a cleaner that were filled in various amounts. I kept the one that was the most full and donated the rest. If I never used it -- it was in the donate pile. I was able to whittle it down to a third and stuff we actually USE. Actually a third of that is just empty bottles I plan to use for the concentrate.

Another item I struggled to let go of (and it is so silly) were cleaning rags. We had WAY too many. They multiply in dark closets. And again it was hard for me to let go of them, which is just weird. I stood there thinking, "Why are you being weird about this? They're rags!" Again, I got myself in gear and sorted through them:

Overall I didn't get rid of much other than rags and cleaning stuff. One thing I easily put in the donate pile was the bag of vacuum attachments that I've kept for eight years and never used one time. Gone!

It was more about figuring out the space than anything. I started on the side where I hung the ironing boards and iron:

The little board on the bottom is for shirt sleeves. It's awesome. The smaller one is a favorite and I use it more than the large board. It's from IKEA and is great for quick items. I also use it when I'm hemming drapes with fusable webbing.

One of the biggies in here was the wrapping stuff. I really wanted it to live in this room because I'm usually running out the door with a gift and needing a bag or tissue paper. More often than not I'd stop and buy something. I thought about organizing it out in the open (we have a large wall over the folding table I could have used for this). But I really didn't want to have it out -- I want to keep the room clean and streamlined so I preferred it tucked away. I looked into all kinds of ways to do this (I was out of floor space) and then came across this pegboard and components at IKEA:

It fit perfectly on the wall and it holds a ton! I have gift bags of all sizes, tons of tissue, tags and banners, tape and then ribbon and pens and random stuff in the hanging bag. LOVE this thing!! It is great:

And it's completely out of the way. I wanted to keep my wrapping paper in here as well but was out wall and floor space. So I grabbed a couple of these plastic jobbies from IKEA as well (we use one in the pantry for plastic grocery bags) and hung them on the back of the door. Not gonna lie, it pained me to put holes in the door. But they are solid wood so I can (fairly) easily fill them if I ever decide to move these:

You can see how I built the big blackboard here! Those are only two bucks each, but if you don't have a store near you, they're available here too.

There were a couple things I didn't end up putting in here and those were light bulbs and batteries. I put the extra metal shelf (also from IKEA -- bought them when we moved in for $13) in the garage by the door. So we can easily access them when needed. I was thinking of what we reach for most -- I grab cleaning supplies way more than light bulbs.

Here's how it came together:

Everything has a place and I love it!! And I'm loving the double doors. It's so nice to be able to open them both up and have full view of the closet. We have them in a bedroom upstairs too and although they take up floor space, I really like them.

Do you spy the outlet? I had one added so I can charge that little vacuum. It's great for little messes and quick cleaning in the kitchen. I just have to find the charger now. ;)

Here's what this side was pared down to:

I use (affiliate) those Sterilite bins everywhere. (You can see them in the linen closet here.)

Not bad considering this is where I started (I had two shelves on that side before)!:

It is such a lovely feeling to open a closet and find exactly what I want! AND it's even nicer to have a place for items we used to just throw in there. ;)

These are my two biggest tips when purging and organizing -- even though it's a pain sometimes, taking everything to ONE location really does help. You see the multiples you have and it's easier to let things go. And think hard about what you love and use. It helps me focus!

Have you been working on closets? Cabinets? Under the sink? Tis the season!

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This industry information is provided by ThompsonsComfortConnection.com.

By: Thompsons Comfort Connection Blog Feed http://ift.tt/2mRwkXi

#Thompsons Comfort Connection Blog Feed #HVAC

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lukerhill · 6 years

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The best closet ever.

But it quickly became our dumping ground, which I was OK with knowing I'd get to it eventually. Here's how it looked the night I started:

utility stuff like batteries and light bulbs

cleaning rags, sponges and the like

cleaning supplies

vacuum, brooms, swiffers, etc. (we have a lot of these because I use one for different needs)

ironing stuff -- boards, (we have large and small ones) and iron

wrapping items like paper, bags, ribbon, etc.

carpet cleaner machine

I quickly realized not all of this was going to fit, more on that in a minute.

Here's another look at what we were dealing with:

Good times!!

As I do anytime I start an organizing project, I took every single thing out of the closet. First goal is to purge what we don't need anymore.

And look how much we had!:

It was more about figuring out the space than anything. I started on the side where I hung the ironing boards and iron:

You can see how I built the big blackboard here! Those are only two bucks each, but if you don't have a store near you, they're available here too.

Here's how it came together:

Do you spy the outlet? I had one added so I can charge that little vacuum. It's great for little messes and quick cleaning in the kitchen. I just have to find the charger now. ;)

Here's what this side was pared down to:

I use (affiliate) those Sterilite bins everywhere. (You can see them in the linen closet here.)

Not bad considering this is where I started (I had two shelves on that side before)!:

It is such a lovely feeling to open a closet and find exactly what I want! AND it's even nicer to have a place for items we used to just throw in there. ;)

Have you been working on closets? Cabinets? Under the sink? Tis the season!

SaveSave

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impurelight · 7 years

Text

Far Cry Primal - I Hate Immersion

I have mixed feelings for Far Cry Primal. It’s one of those games that doesn’t have a very good ending. When I thought I had beaten the game I didn’t get any ending. So I looked it up online (Online! For an ending! Ridiculous!) and apparently you have to complete a bunch of what I thought were optional quests to get the ending.

It’s sort of like in Arkham Knight (1 ending for beating the game and 2 endings for beating optional missions) but you didn’t actually get the first 2 endings and it didn’t tell you how to get the third ending. Could you imagine how confusing that would be? Well, that’s how I’d explain Far Cry Primal’s late game content. Confusing.

My second problem with the game is immersion. You know the modding communities and they’ll say, ‘here’s a mod but it breaks immersion’? Yeah, it’s like a cult. And it feels like those people making ‘immersive’ mods made this game. Yeah, some things are good but most of them are bad.

For example the dialogue in Far Cry Primal is made up of a made up language based on what actual people would speak in 10 000 BCE. And the only way to understand what’s going on is to read subtitles. It sounds like a good idea but it really isn’t. In fact as the game progressed I started liking it less and less.

The characters in Primal are your normal Far Cry characters. Meaning very expressive and a little crazy. That just doesn’t translate well to the subtitles. I found myself reading a subtitle in 2 seconds and waiting 10 seconds for the character on screen to actually say the line. And it makes the plot hard to follow. I frequently found myself learning something that I could only assume was stated earlier that would have cleared some stuff up but I guess I missed because of the terrible subtitles. They should of just used english. It’s OK, it’s not like people are going to believe humans spoke fluent english in 10 000 BCE. We were all forced to read Shakespeare; we get it. And I read on forums some people recommend disabling subtitles to get more ‘immersive’. Insanity. Absolute insanity.

Also I believe ‘immersion’ was a factor in many other decisions. There’s this new quest type that involves following highlighted footprints or paw prints or whatever. Sort of like following footsteps in the Arkham series. Except it’s not because the footprints like to disappear and reappear. Why Ubisoft? Why?

I know what they’re going to say. Immersion. And I say, “I don’t care, just make my game more fun!”. Something else. You have the grappling hook in this game. It makes no sense. It’s the most technically advanced tool you use in the game and it feels out of place. Why? Because immersion of course. You think 10 000 BCE had the same terrain as us? Oh, hear that? That’s the sound of immersion cultists laughing at us.

I’m not sure these are the reasons these last two things happened. I’m not an expert in history but I hope they’re not.

So you may think otherwise but Far Cry Primal is a pretty good game. Yeah, it has it’s problems. The end game isn’t good. The story is poor. But I managed to finish it and enjoyed it and I can’t say the same for a lot of other games.

Let’s start with the most obvious change: the Owl. The Owl basically functions as a UAV. In the beginning you can use it to scout the environment much like you could scout it with the camera in previous Far Cry games. It’s a neat idea and one that I expect to see in future Far Cry games. I imagine in Far Cry 5 we’ll use drones to mark enemies instead of the owl. Imagine if you used one of those drones you throw like a paper airplane to start flying. That would be so cool. Also they could always just go with a Watch Dogs 2 style drone. That would be cool too.

Later on you learn skills with your owl. You can dive bomb enemies and drop grenades. My favourite is the berserk bomb. It makes enemies go crazy and kill their friends. I had so much fun using this. Just drop a few berserk bombs and watch the fun from your owl. And berserk bombs effect all non-boss enemies so they’re a little overpowered.

Speaking of being overpowered in previous Far Cry games you were definitely overpowered once you got a suppressed sniper rifle. In Primal I wouldn’t go as far as saying your underpowered but it’s definitely different. A lot of the media around this game focuses on headshots and your bow and arrow.

But surprisingly it doesn’t play a huge role. Headshots are fine but they’re not the way to take a camp undetected. For one thing if you miss they’ll detect you, if someone nearby dies they’ll detect you, if you hit them but they’re wearing a mask or something they’ll detect you. In the previous games you could just snipe from like 100 meters away so if enemies know where you are it’s no big deal. In primal when enemies know where you are it is a really big deal.

Sometimes you can see the silhouette of an enemy moving towards you and you know he knows where you are and you start freaking out. Also AI is really quick to spot you. If you’re just minding your own business it’s not that bad but I was caught by surprise multiple times when someone just happened to spot me without warning.

You really have to take advantage of all of your weapons to remain undetected. Like berserk bombs and takedowns and use your beast to pick off stray enemies. Might not be how you want to play but that’s how you stay undetected. Also you can throw rocks too in this game but it’s not as effective as before. Until you get the slingshot then you can just spam rocks at enemies until they die.

And your beast, that’s new. Far Cry gets more in love with animals every release and Primal is no different. You can now have a pet. I’ve heard it compared to Fallout 4’s companion system. Not really. For one you can command your pet to move so no more having your companion stuck in a doorway and your only option is to slowly push him out of the way. And it’s much more stream-lined. You can command your pet to attack, you can command it to move, you can feed it, you can pet it (yes, seriously), and for some pets you can even ride them when you have the right skill. You won’t be navigating through menus or anything to select the right option. Although I did have a problem when the feed/pet button ‘e’ was also the loot button. Stupid consoles and their limited controls. Am I right?

Also I definitely recommend using your pet if you plan to take a camp stealthily. As when your pet is discovered it doesn’t blow your cover so you can keep sending your pet in to kill enemies and then calling it back. There is one problem that I ran into that your pet likes to run into battle. It’s not that bad if your careful. It’s one more reason that Far Cry Primal doesn’t play like any other Far Cry game. Oh, and I did get a bug where my pet, upon being recalled, immediately returns to combat despite not being attacked. It’s a bug, I guess.

I also encountered a bug where after doing something like healing my weapon would switch to the bow regardless of what weapon it was before doing said action. At least I think it’s a bug, it’s pretty annoying. Also the lock on is a bit on the aggressive side. Especially when you’re too close to an enemy that circles around you really quickly. Then your reticle just follows it like it has a mind of its own. I blame consoles.

Another interesting new mechanic is the village. You can upgrade the important NPC’s huts. The way this happens is unfortunately disappointing. I was hoping for some Mad Max style cosmetic changes from upgrading. Sadly this was not the case.

Another village component is villagers. After beating certain missions you get villagers. And sometimes if you fail a quest you lose villagers, although this only happened I believe twice in the entire game and those two times were early on before I had my weapons upgraded. Unfortunately this feature doesn’t feel very well implemented. It’s not clear what, if anything, the villagers do except give you a nice pat on the back. And it’s pretty weird. I have over 200 villagers. Where are they? The ‘village’ in the corner of the map must have like 100 tops. Where’s everyone else. Although I have to say it would be cool if villagers were a replacement for exp. How cool would it be if things were like ‘8 more villagers to unlock’? There is one thing cool about the villagers. You know those missions where you have to save hostages in Far Cry 4? Well, they’re back. And the number of villagers you earn from those missions is determined by the number of hostages you save. It’s pretty cool.

Also there are now villagers everywhere. There can be enemy villagers that won’t attack you and run at the first sign of danger. Sometimes I accidentally kill them (it’s easy to perform a take down before you know who they are) and I feel bad afterwards.

Also it’s surprisingly difficult to determine who your allies are. It’s not like they’re wearing the neon team jerseys from the previous Far Cry games. I liked them.

For quests there’s a few different kinds. There’s important quests that are given by important NPC’s, some of these are ’story’ quests if you can call them that. There’s orange quests that generally have you doing random quests for people. And there’s random quests which happen randomly. They’re like the karma events from Far Cry 4. You get this beige indicator on the map, you run there, and it tells you to do something, usually kill two enemies and save one hostage. Also the orange quests are a bit weird. There’s actually 3 types. Village which start in the village, cave which start in a cave, and the normal ones. The normal and village quests appear to have to talk to someone and then move somewhere else to actually do the quest. This means you have to start the quest twice. Also you don’t get told which indicator goes to which quest. It’s a little weird. I thought it was a bug.

Another new big addition to this hastily put together list that I didn’t know I was doing until I got to this sentence is darkness. Darkness is a huge part of Primal. When I said I hated the immersion I only meant immersion that makes the game frustrating to play. Darkness is one of the immersive properties that’s genuinely good. Now in my game I had the brightness way too high. So I didn’t need fire to see in the dark. Good thing I changed that.

The darkness is not perfect dark. It’s a nice compromise. And when it’s dark such as at night (yes, there’s a day night cycle now) or when you’re in the cave it’ll usually be so dark you can barely make things out. So you’ll need to set things on fire. Fire has always been a really great part of Far Cry (since at least 3) and primal is no exception. You can now set any weapon on fire and when you do and it’s dark it’ll give this really nice illuminated by fire lighting. Although it appears the light/dark is on some sort of binary scale because there was this one cave that lighting my club on fire didn’t do anything and I think that was because the game thought it was supposed to be bright. Well, it only happened once.

Speaking of caves there are a few caves scattered around, not to be confused with the cave missions which require to ‘explore’ a cave (and by explore they mean enter and then immediately leave and for some reason you can’t leave the same way you came in). These are only for completionists because they only give you collectables and exp. You follow footprints to find the cave painting. But there’s also a thing called a dasha hand somewhere in the cave too. Sometimes it’s pretty easy to find but sometimes it’ll be so tough the only way to find it is to look on youtube. Think of these like the Tombs from the Tomb Raider reboot just with all the fun sucked out of them.

Oh, and these footprints are only visible using an alternate vision mode. It’s just like the survival instinct from Tomb Raider except no cool sound effect and animation. I have historically never liked these alternate vision modes. I always thought there’s no real reason to have them and they just get you to look away from the pretty graphics. Even Watch Dogs 2 has an alternate vision mode which I think really subtracts from the experience. Oh well.

Speaking of Tomb Raider this game has quick time events. When you get attacked by an animal sometimes you have to quickly mash W/A/S/D and if you fail you die, as usual. I really hate these quick time events because they’re unpredictable.

Also animals are tough. I don’t mean when you attack them. That’s easy. But when they sneak up on you they’re really hard. If a mammoth sneaks up on you early on the game you’re dead. Or worse. Your pet. Then your pet is dead and there’s nothing you can do but spend herbs to revive it.

So that’s Far Cry Primal in a nutshell. A really interesting new experience that isn’t as fun as I wanted. In fact, I don’t think the previous actually illustrates just how different this game is. It’s not just Far Cry with a bow and arrow and a beast. It might as well be it’s own game.

Let’s start with cars. There are none in this game, obviously. But this really shakes things up. Without cars you have to walk everywhere which means things are really close. I’m starting to think of most open world games as driving sims. It’s games that don’t have a very strong narrative and a lot of roads. Mafia 2, GTA 5, Watch Dogs 2. Like in GTA 5 I drove across town to a mission and the guy told me to put some pants on so I had to drive across town to change and drove back. If that’s not the definition of a driving sim I don’t know what is.

Primal carefully skirts around this issue. I originally didn’t like walking everywhere but it’s not too bad and started to really like it towards the end. Especially with fast travel. Nothing is too far away.

There’s also a new ‘previously’ section. I really like this. Only a few games did this before like the Arkham series and Life is Strange. Unfortunately it only updates after certain key missions so it can be a bit bland. And, of course, the aforementioned subtitles hurt it a lot.

Also there’s fog. In the settings they call it ‘volumetric fog’. So, yeah, it’s fog for the volumetric lighting effects. Personally I think it’s overdone. Some times it’s OK but others, especially at night, there’s way too much fog and you can’t see like a few meters in front of you.

Finally Far Cry Primal is the most cinematic Far Cry game I’ve ever played. The forest is so detailed with trees topled over, tons of vegitation, and animals hunting each other. When you’re walking in the jungle you can hear animal sounds all around you.

When you feed or pet your pet you get a nice animation and when your beast hunts you’ll get a snazy animation as it strangles the prey to death. Once while playing 2 rhinos burst into where I was and I killed both of those.

Far Cry Primal is not a traditional Far Cry Game. Some of the improvements are good, some not so much. But overall it’s a welcome change to the series and represents the next evolution of Far Cry.

3.5/5 Enjoyment 5/5 Quality -> 86%

#far cry primal

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onlinemarketinghelp · 5 years

Photo

10 Best Products to Sell at Christmas 2019 https://ift.tt/2mnHA0T

The weather might be cooling down, but shopping season is about to heat up. And if you’re beginning to wonder what dropshipping products you should sell for Christmas 2019, we’ve got you covered.

Join us as we explore why it’s important to start preparing for Christmas early, what products you should consider, and how you can market them.

Forward Thinking: Preparing for the Holiday Shopping Season

Although Black Friday has traditionally been an American event, in recent years it has gained traction worldwide – as has its online equivalent, Cyber Monday.

So with all this cash just waiting to be spent, here are some products that could help you get a slice of the Christmas turkey.

Personalized Necklaces

Everyone loves gifts that feel intimate and unique, so it’s no wonder personalized necklaces are a favorite with shoppers.

Another incredibly popular personalized necklace variety is a custom pet necklace.

These necklaces let you order a pendant or keychain engraved with a picture of your animal – perfect for pet lovers.

As this is such a visual product it lends itself to being advertised on image-sharing sites such as Instagram, where you could target pet lovers, fashionistas, or jewelry fans.

Flying UFO Helicopter Toy

Bracelets for Couples

Cozy Blankets

With the winter weather raging outdoors, there’s nothing better than wrapping up warm, which is why blankets are a great choice for Christmas products.

Foil Rose

Sure, receiving a bunch of flowers from your partner is nice, but what about a colorful rose whose bloom will never die? Now that’s next level.

These foil flowers are a hot product right now and we can see them remaining popular over the shopping season, when many people are searching for gifts for significant others.

Additionally, many of the suppliers available on Oberlo know that presentation is important and each rose comes in a pretty box that protects the item during shipping and looks good.

Women’s Bags

As we can see on Google Trends, interest in handbags seems to peak every winter.

Men’s Watches

Don’t forget to advertise to those who will be purchasing a watch as a gift. Targeting women who have boyfriends, sons, or brothers could be a good place to start.

Ionic and Heated Hair Brushes

Don’t be fooled, these aren’t your run-of-the-mill hair brushes, these bad boys are something else entirely.

Reusable Stretchy Silicone Lids

Mini Projectors

Mini projectors are the perfect gift for movie junkies or gamers, and best of all, you can easily bundle it with a projector screen for the ultimate cross-sell.

Start Dropshipping for Christmas Today

And there we have it, our list of products we think have high potential this Christmas season.

Hopefully, it has inspired and motivated you to start thinking about your store and how you can capture a piece of the lucrative holiday shopping season market.

If you’re searching for more hot products to stock your store with, check out the articles below.

Want to Learn More?

What Should You Sell Online?

Best Dropshipping Products to Sell in Fall 2019

8 Ways to Find Winning Products Every Time

6 Best-Selling Dropshipping Products Around the World

The post 10 Best Products to Sell at Christmas 2019 appeared first on Oberlo.

from Oberlo

The weather might be cooling down, but shopping season is about to heat up. And if you’re beginning to wonder what dropshipping products you should sell for Christmas 2019, we’ve got you covered.

Join us as we explore why it’s important to start preparing for Christmas early, what products you should consider, and how you can market them.

Forward Thinking: Preparing for the Holiday Shopping Season

Although Black Friday has traditionally been an American event, in recent years it has gained traction worldwide – as has its online equivalent, Cyber Monday.

So with all this cash just waiting to be spent, here are some products that could help you get a slice of the Christmas turkey.

Personalized Necklaces

Everyone loves gifts that feel intimate and unique, so it’s no wonder personalized necklaces are a favorite with shoppers.

Another incredibly popular personalized necklace variety is a custom pet necklace.

These necklaces let you order a pendant or keychain engraved with a picture of your animal – perfect for pet lovers.

As this is such a visual product it lends itself to being advertised on image-sharing sites such as Instagram, where you could target pet lovers, fashionistas, or jewelry fans.

Flying UFO Helicopter Toy

Bracelets for Couples

Cozy Blankets

With the winter weather raging outdoors, there’s nothing better than wrapping up warm, which is why blankets are a great choice for Christmas products.

Foil Rose

Sure, receiving a bunch of flowers from your partner is nice, but what about a colorful rose whose bloom will never die? Now that’s next level.

These foil flowers are a hot product right now and we can see them remaining popular over the shopping season, when many people are searching for gifts for significant others.

Additionally, many of the suppliers available on Oberlo know that presentation is important and each rose comes in a pretty box that protects the item during shipping and looks good.

Women’s Bags

As we can see on Google Trends, interest in handbags seems to peak every winter.

Men’s Watches

Don’t forget to advertise to those who will be purchasing a watch as a gift. Targeting women who have boyfriends, sons, or brothers could be a good place to start.

Ionic and Heated Hair Brushes

Don’t be fooled, these aren’t your run-of-the-mill hair brushes, these bad boys are something else entirely.

Reusable Stretchy Silicone Lids

Mini Projectors

Mini projectors are the perfect gift for movie junkies or gamers, and best of all, you can easily bundle it with a projector screen for the ultimate cross-sell.

Start Dropshipping for Christmas Today

And there we have it, our list of products we think have high potential this Christmas season.

Hopefully, it has inspired and motivated you to start thinking about your store and how you can capture a piece of the lucrative holiday shopping season market.

If you’re searching for more hot products to stock your store with, check out the articles below.

Want to Learn More?

What Should You Sell Online?

Best Dropshipping Products to Sell in Fall 2019

8 Ways to Find Winning Products Every Time

6 Best-Selling Dropshipping Products Around the World

The post 10 Best Products to Sell at Christmas 2019 appeared first on Oberlo.

https://ift.tt/2l0kJbH September 24, 2019 at 07:15AM https://ift.tt/2mJcBN9

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