[washadjeffmad]

There's a relatively thin layer between the papers and implementations, which is another way of saying this stuff is still for researchers and assumes a requisite level of background with them. It sounds like you'd benefit from seeking out the first party sources.

This is where video demonstrations come in handy. Since many concepts are novel, it's uncommon to find anyone who deeply understands them, but it's very easy to find people who have picked up on some tricks of the interfaces, which they're happy to click through. I think gradio/automatic1111 makes learning harder than it needs to be by hiding what it's doing behind its UI, while eg- comfyui has a higher initial learning curve but provides a more representational view of process and pipelines.