Check Out My Multiplayer Survival Game Course:https://smartpoly.teachable.comSupport Me on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/smartpolyHello guys welcome back to another video. In this video I wanted to talk about how Quixel Bridge Will now be PAID in 2025. The other day Epic announced that they will be making Quixel Megascans Assets PAID in 2025. You only have till October till the end of the year to claim all assets, otherwise you will have to pay to use them next year. Let me know your guys thoughts down in the comments below!The Script: https://x.com/tjatomica/status/1836213808299467191?s=46LINKS:---------------------------------------------------------------------------My Courses: https://smartpoly.teachable.com Survival Game Course: https://smartpoly.teachable.com/p/ue5-multiplayer-steam-survival-game-course-remasteredChannel Membership: https://www.youtube.com/@SmartPoly/joinSupport Me on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/smartpolyBuy My Complete Projects: https://smartpoly.gumroad.comDonate: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/smartpoly---------------------------------------------------------------------------MY PC SPECS & AFFILIATE LINKS---------------------------------------------------------------------------Mouse: https://amzn.to/46WMdjNKeyboard: https://amzn.to/3M11SpVLaptop: https://amzn.to/3M7kjJQCPU: https://amzn.to/3tKTK6ERAM: https://amzn.to/45yvWjWGPU: https://amzn.to/3rUGMmmSSD 2TB: https://amzn.to/46QcGPSSSD 4TB: https://amzn.to/46T10f9Primary Monitor 4K: https://amzn.to/3RZxqk5Secondary Monitor 1080p: https://amzn.to/3M6X16VMicrophone: https://amzn.to/3S0aLnxAudio: https://amzn.to/3S5z5VmHeadset: https://amzn.to/45BeWJP

RTRob TuytelBlending materials with vertex painting in UE5, this and so much more in the new snow environment course, available tomorrow! #b3d

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Donald Trumps polarizing political rise in the past decade has driven many groupsand some familiesapart.But a long-running pickup basketball game that I play in, made up of people with various political leanings, including Trump supporters, remains intact. I explored the groups dynamics in my 2020 memoir. In March 2025, we will celebrate its 50th anniversary.As a former psychology professor who has written about the impact of participation in team sports, I think one of the secrets to our longevity is simple: We dont talk politics.Evolution of the gameOur semiweekly pickup game has seen several transformations. It started in 1975 as a faculty-student game at Guilford College, a small Quaker school in Greensboro, North Carolina. And we played in an old gym, known as the Crackerbox, once the home court of former NBA players Bob Kauffman, M.L. Carr, and World B. Free.Over the next 35 years, the game moved to a newer gym, went from half court to full court, and back to half court. Students and faculty moved on, while others joined the game, including many people from the Greensboro community.As we aged, our game came to be known as the geezer game. These days, the average age of players is 64, with an age range from 32 to 79.Since 1975, besides an 18-month stretch when we didnt meet due to COVID-19 restrictions, the game took place three times a week before COVID-19 and has taken place twice a week since pandemic restrictions were lifted.Everyone playsI believe weve lasted this long for several reasons.From 1975 until about 2013, the game was co-ed, though usually with only one woman, a former colleague in the psychology department. With a PhD from Yale, she was 6-feet-tall, athletic, and competitive.More importantly, she brought a civilizing influence onto the court. It discouraged the guys from letting their macho tendencies take over. Because of her presence, and the occasional presence of other women, I think we were all less likely to behave abominably.This phenomenon is well documented. As the scholar Gerard J. DeGroot has shown, womens social skills have a calming effect on groups of men. He told the New York Times the following regarding men in the military: When female soldiers are present, the situation is closer to real life, and as a result men tend to behave. Any conflict where you have an all-male army, its like a holiday from reality. If you inject women into that situation, they do have a civilizing effect.Another secret to our longevity is bound to be the fact that everyone plays.Many other pickup games keep winning groups of teams on the court and losers sit on the sidelines. But when we have extra people, we rotate them in every 10 points. If we have 14 players, we break into two games, one 4-on-4 and one 3-on-3. Because we dont have to win to keep playing, this reduces the likelihood and intensity of disputes.The author Thomas Beller has touched on this in his book Lost in the Game: A Book About Basketball. In it he writes: The thing about these street games is that if you win, you play again. If you lose, you watch. Considering the time and effort involved in getting to the playground in the first place, there was a lot at stake in winning.Heres another way we reduce conflict: Whenever we do have a disputewas that a foul or a charge?we call a jump ball and rotate possession. No need for long arguments that are never resolved.We have not completely eliminated conflictsweve had some skirmishesbut they are very rare. We have had our share of injuries, but very few have been caused by overly aggressive play.A few months before we took our 18-month hiatus due to COVID-19, I wrote the book Geezerball: North Carolina Basketball at its Eldest based on what sociologists call a participant observation study of the game. Some people, especially my female colleague, served as important role models, I wrote in the book. And some rules that we implemented, like those that determined when new players entered the game and how we dealt with disputes, turned out to be important.PoliticsThe game has survived the past decade because we dont talk politics.Whereas in other settings, and perhaps especially on college campuses, it might reduce divisions to share conflicting political viewpoints with others, we are there to play ball, not educate one another.In the fall of 2016, there was some talk about the presidential campaign. One geezer, a die-hard Republican, admitted he didnt like Trump. But, as he put it, I could live with him.Another Republican player proudly proclaimed that he planned to spend Election Day driving Trump supporters to the polls.Of course, Trump won, but many players, probably most, did not reveal their political views.Because of COVID-19, we did not play during the 2020 election.This past fall, unlike in 2016, there was virtually no talk about the election. But as someone who sees Trump as an authoritarian threat to democracy, to be honest, I dont want to know if the guys I play with voted for him.Avoiding politics, and specifically Trump, has allowed the game to continue without the animosity it might engender.But the political climate has had its effects on the group off the court.Before 2016, we had periodic geezer gatherings, sometimes with our spouses. We ate pizza, drank beer, gave out joke awards, and celebrated birthdays. We enjoyed each others company. Though some smaller groups have continued to meet for lunch or to drink beer since, we are now less likely to gather socially.It appears, then, that the larger communal spirit has been diminished by the polarized political world we now live in.But the game goes on.Richie Zweigenhaft is a professor of psychology, emeritus at Guilford College.This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Dana Miranda is a financial educator, journalist, and creator of theHealthy Richnewsletter, where she writes about money for misfits. She has contributed toForbes,Business Insider,The New York Times, CNBC, andThe Motley Fool, among many other outlets.Whats the big idea?The personal finance industry has been teaching ineffective wealth habits for decades. The dominant advice is that budgeting is of absolute importance, but emerging research is dismantling this approach to money management. A life of prosperity does not emerge from restrictive rules and a scarcity mindsetit starts with intuition and generosity.Below, Dana shares five key insights from her new book,You Dont Need a Budget: Stop Worrying about Debt, Spend without Shame, and Manage Money with Ease.Listen to the audio versionread by Dana herselfin the Next Big Idea App.1. Budgeting doesnt workBasically, every piece of financial advicewhether youre trying to pay off debt, save for a big purchase, or start investingstarts with make a budget. This sounds a lot like what we see in healthcare, where every piece of health and wellness advice goes back to losing weight. In both cases, were defaulting torestriction.Decades of research in the medical field shows that weight loss doesnt always yield the health outcomes people want. Dieting doesnt work well for weight loss or health improvement. So, I wondered what the research would say about budgeting. The most surprising thing I found was how little research exists about the effectiveness of budgeting. Almost no one is asking whether the practice effectively improves a financial situation. However, I did find a few researchers trying to determine the effectiveness of budgeting. The truth about budgeting contradicts everything the personal finance industry has been teaching.A 2018 study at the University of Minnesota found that budgets are unsustainable and dont reduce spending. Through one experiment, they found participants got less enjoyment out of spending when they tracked their budgets closely, and this effect was stronger for people with less money. That lower enjoyment meant people were less likely to continue budgeting in the future. Researchers wrote, Tracking a budget may reduce the enjoyment associated with spending by increasing pain of paying through a tightened link between costs and benefits.In another experiment, the same researchers found budgeting encourages a splurge-and-restrict cycle exactly like the binge-and-restrict cycles we see with diets. People may use perceived progress as an excuse to take a break and may splurge a little, the authors wrote, giving budgeters little net benefit.Another report from the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada in 2019 shows how ineffective admonitions to make a budget can be, and that budgeting doesnt improve well-being. The agency led a pilot to encourage people to make a budget, and they followed up 18 months later. Despite the programs sole purpose being to get people to start budgeting, only about one-third of participants who left with the program with the intention of making a budget followed through and developed a budgeting habit. Then, the study asked budgeters whether the habit helped reduce their financial stress. Just 8% of budgeters said budgeting reduced financial stress.2. Budget culture is like diet culture for your moneyOur cultural relationship with money is based on a set of rules meant to help us get rich, like paying off debt, investing, starting a side hustle, and making a budget. Financial advice and education tend to boil down to three tactics:Restricthow you use money, whether by spending less, saving more, or buying different things.Shameyourself for financial moves, including spending, accumulating debt, and lack of investment or savings.Greedilyhoard wealth by avoiding taxes, accumulating property, and opposing social safety nets.I call this approachbudget culture: a set of values that, like diet culture, is based on restriction, shame, and greed. The practice of budgeting is the centerpiece of budget culture. But budget culture is much more than making a budget. You dont have to engage in budgeting to be engulfed in the beliefs around it. These beliefs pervade most conversations about money. In the same way diet culture has us constantly critiquing our bodies and seeking the perfect regimen, our culture of money has us convinced we can find the perfect way to manage money if we work hard enough.Despite several systemic barriers, if your finances dont look like you want them to, budget culture convinces you its becauseyourenot doing something right. The personal finance industry has contrived a fantasy world where its possible for regular people to overcome tremendous financial obstacles with just a few simple steps and make real progress toward being rich. Budget culture upholds that fantasy as an achievable ideal and the basis for understanding money. Even as individuals continue to fail to realize the fantasy, our approach to money feeds off the never-ending pursuit of that ideal.3. Debt isnt a moral failingIf youre not keeping a budget, how do you avoid spending money you dont have? This is the top question I get when I tell people they dont need a budget. A belief that you cant trust yourself not to overspend drives many people to start budgeting. The only way to spend money you dont have is to use credit or loans and take on debt. I argue thats not something you have to avoid.Debt is one of many available resources, like earned income, community resources, or assets. Using debt is a way to expand your resources to live your life when you cant or dont want to expand your income or other resources. Choosing when and how to use debt and how to deal with it are financial decisions, not moral or ethical ones. We use shame in budget culture to keep people from accessing debt, which only serves to perpetuate unequal access to the lifestyle those resources could buy. Carrying debt doesnt make you a bad or irresponsible person.Choosing when and how to use debt and how to deal with it are financial decisions, not moral or ethical ones.Carrying debt also wont destroy your life the way budget culture makes you believe. You can understand how debt products like credit cards and loans work and know the consequences tied to various ways you might deal with them. Having that knowledge lets you decide how to deal with debt in a way that supports your goals.4. Money is meant to be spentBudget culture trains you to believe spending is bad and that youre a failure for giving in to it. But spending money is often the right choice because its necessary for nourishment, connection, and fostering joy. Letting go of shame from spending is vital to overcoming budget culturebut so is letting go of self-satisfaction from restricting. Succeeding at restriction might make you feel like budgeting works for you, but its just the flip side of shaming yourself for spending.Letting go of the perceived control a budget gives you might feel scary because budget culture has taught you not to trust yourself around money. Once youve rejected the premise of budgeting, you must learn to trust yourself to spend money without destroying your life. Trusting yourself to use money without fear is what I callconscious spending.Setting restrictive limits on how to use money for things you love and value is impractical. My goal with money management isnt to create new restrictions or give you another difficult chore to manage. A budget-free approach is about being able to say yes more often when youre wondering whether to spend money.Budget cultures lionizing of restriction has probably messed with your ability to know how you truly want to use money. Trying to reject budgeting without a way to trust yourself could throw you right back into a cycle of splurging and restricting. To avoid that cycle, it is important to learn conscious spending practices that rely on trusting your gut.Practicing conscious spending is about yielding to your innate wisdom to guide your money moves, instead of looking at an outside set of rules to determine what you should do. Just about any mindfulness practice that speaks to you will hone your self-awareness toward conscious spending. Some strategies you can try include:Create checkpointsthat encourage you to reflect on spending decisions before making them, like a reminder note in your wallet.Use a spending diaryto temporarily note how youre spending money and what it adds to your life.Imagine your ideal dayand how you can use money to support it.Notice your hormone cyclesand how they impact your decision-making.Do somatic exercisesto learn to listen to your body.Practice meditationor prayer to become more mindful.5. What you own isnt truly yoursAdvice about money tends to focus on how to get more and give away less. Budget culture treats money as the end goal, so advice is focused on having money in the end. That misses the point of using money to live a life. It also ignores the fact that if youre tapping into your intuition and understanding your place in a community of humans, generosity with money is a must.Unfortunately, in our culture, thinking about giving money away can raise feelings of fear and scarcity. Budget culture messaging amplifies and reinforces those feelings through budgeting habits and an individualistic mindset. Budget culture makes generosity feel foolish.Ascarcity mindsetmakes you see lack and competition instead of abundance. Our cultural approach to money trains us to believe we never have what we need and theres not enough to go around. Our cultures focus on individual responsibility makes it hard to be generous and easy to ignore someone elses needs.You can begin to break down that belief by first understanding that nothing is truly yours to begin with. The difference between seeing scarcity in the world and seeing abundance is understanding that whatever you own isnt truly yours; its just in your care for now.Money is a tool to shape the world around you. When you hold it in your hands, you are responsible for contributing to that world in a life-giving way. Dont fear scarcity when you give money away or use it to benefit someone else. Their gain isnt your loss because there was never a difference between your money and their money in the first place. Look for opportunities to give money away, including through direct gifts, charities, and taxes. We can embrace joy, abundance, and generosity in our relationship with money by letting go of the scarcity mindset budget culture has instilled in us.Thisarticleoriginally appeared inNext Big Idea Clubmagazine and is reprinted with permission.