Welcome to Clock Talk. I'm Crystal here, breaking boundaries, continuing to transcend conversations around gender, culture, race, everything. And, you know, today we're still celebrating kind of the International Transgender Day of Visibility and also kind of the ongoing lack of visibility or kind of just, I think we need to normalize conversations around gender in different ways that actually embrace cultural differences. And so, I have a wonderful guest here who is an athlete, a boundary breaker, an agenda fluid advocate, a TEDx speaker, scholar, poet, but I love the professional bodybuilder aspect of this. So, let me just welcome my wonderful guest, Siu-Fong Siu-Fong-Long. Welcome to Clock Talk. Yes, I'm so glad to be here. Hi, everyone. So, I understand you are at Emory right now. You're doing your PhD in the Women's Gender and Sexuality Program.  Yes, of course. So, I came to America three years ago in 2021. Yes, from Hong Kong to Emory. So, I'm in Atlanta right now in the south. And I take the program of Women's Gender Sexuality Studies because I've always been very interested in topics in relation to gender. I've been advocating on gender and gender fluidity in general when I was in Hong Kong and even when I'm in America right now. And so, I think this is a perfect program for me. And I take Emory because of very practical reasons because they gave me an offer. Okay, that's really it. It allowed me to work on things that I love. Right now, I'm in the process of preparing my prospectus for my oral defense. So, prospectus is more like a proposal for your research for my dissertation after two years of course work. So, I am interested in particular thinking with gender and sports and in particular thinking with, you know, now we call it a non-binary gender division in sports, especially in Asia because a lot of conversation has been focused in America, especially, you know, on, you know, banning trans woman athletes in sports and sports. And so, I'm interested in something else that I'm interested in community sports events that have a non-binary gender category and in the arena of Asia. So, in particular, I look into bodybuilding because this is a sport I love. This is a sport I play and this is a sport that I think has the potential to really transcend what we typically think of gender and gender boundaries. Okay. So, I want to talk about like the performance of the body in terms of, you know, your research and in terms of how the world perceives the body. Okay. So, let's talk about, so let me just give you a little bit of background too because I was at the University of Hawaii and I did my PhD in performance studies. And so, I was looking into in-between spaces like things, how do things perform? How does gender perform, right? How does the body perform and how does it embody history and culture?  And then you've got on top of that is bodybuilding world that is a very niche world that is not for everyone and it's a spectacle of the body and yet people are judging you based on your pure physical appearance and performance and poses which determines or maybe shapes the way we think about bodybuilders. I don't know. So, tell me a little bit about you in Hong Kong or in Asia generally. What are the kind of attitudes about bodybuilding? Is there kind of a growing trend in bodybuilding and what types of people tend to appreciate the sport? I think you asked the right person, really. I'm not only a bodybuilder myself, I'm also a posting coach myself. So, in fact, I was actually doing some posting section with some of my students in Hong Kong. So, we were doing Zoom basically.  So, that's why I'm particularly drawn to this sport because it's so visual in the sense that you cannot escape from that visual spectacle aspect of it. And I think, you know, if you ask me about the bodybuilding scene in general in Asia, it is definitely a growing market, especially in China and also in India. So, I think, you know, this are the two places where bodybuilding is growing very fast, especially with fans. So, in terms of competitors, I think, you know, in general, there is just an increasing number of people getting involved in bodybuilding. And a lot of them were like primarily interested in fitness, you know, going to the gym, get fit. And I think we have this, I mean, in Hong Kong or in Asia, in general, there's a growing trend of, you know, you know, taking care of your health, right? Taking care of your body. COVID, you know, there's an increasing awareness of the importance of health and fitness, right? Yes. I think, and especially, I think in Hong Kong, the most, you know, during COVID and slightly before COVID, there's also a changing, I would say, changing trend in terms of the fitness industry itself. So, previously, we have like large commercial gyms dominating the, and dominating the gyms, you know, membership, you know, in general. Do you remember California Fitness? Was that like one of the only gyms in Hong Kong? Yes. It was one of the only. And I had been, you know, my first gym was at California. And, you know, and then it went down, right? And then it was replaced by a few other hot breathes, but it doesn't really work well. And I think that also changes.  Especially for people who are gender non-conforming. It's a particular part. I had a lot of encounters, you know, because of my gender, because of how I look, basically. For example, what does that mean? Like, I mean, was there assault? Is there just kind of a verbal abuse? Or is it just feeling uncomfortable, making you feel like you shouldn't be here? Or what do you mean? Yeah, all of the about, I would say. Yeah. So, I mean, you mentioned about my TED Talk. My TED Talk actually did mention about some of these experiences in the changing room. Of course, like, I look into a more, like a more transformative, positive experience, but it was... Which changing room were you at at that time? Because I don't know your transition process. So kind of give me a little background of that. Yeah, of course. So I'm a signed female at birth, and then I do not... I didn't do any types of surgery, and I have no desire to do any surgeries. And I would say I identified as a non-binary person or gender fluid, meaning that I don't really particularly see myself within the gender binary of male and female, but I'm socially more, I would say, masculine. So, you know, on a daily social basis, people tend to perceive me as a man. But when I compete, I compete in the women's. So, yeah. So when I go through the change, so it's also very interesting because I was in Hong Kong mostly because of practical reasons, because the bodybuilding community knew about me as a female bodybuilder. So I would go to male changing rooms. But you can also imagine because of how I look, you know, in terms of my muscularity. Well, I didn't grow my beard at that time. So, you know, but still, you know, being very muscular and look like a guy, going to changing room is a disaster for me. Yeah. But especially like in the changing room, most people are, you know, but they are just typical, you know, gym goers, a lot of them are aunties. They have no... I have never seen... They're not in the bodybuilding scene. So they never see people like myself.  So I think that's the... That's when, you know, a lot of this stick must come in, you know, and when you ask me what are the... What were the experiences? All of the, you know, negative experiences that you can imagine, I had some sort of experience. Like people would shout at me, like women would shout at me, scream at me, call police. You know, they would open my curtain when I shower. To change who I am. Yeah. And when I wear a sports bra, they would say, your breast is not real. You have a man's chest, you know. Even when I was wearing, obviously, a sports bra in shorts. Yeah.  Yeah. And they know who I am, but they try to be mean. But sometimes they don't know about me at all. And I have been banned membership. There were ones that... Well, if you were banned a membership because of your gender, or because they thought you were abusing the rules of the club. Well, of course, they won't say very clearly. So this was this time when I was trying to go to a new gym. So I wanted to get a membership at a new gym, which I like it a lot. So I went there once, you know, I just wear...  Make sure people won't have a woman. It's when you have to use that to perform what you think, how you're going to fit into society, though, right? Yes, but it doesn't always work.  Then I was there for a trial. And then I was like, I love the gym. I want to, you know, I want to be a member of it. And then, you know, some of these staff were like, you know, they tell me under the table. They don't even tell me in the face. So they tell me... So Chinese though, right? Yeah. Yeah. So they told my coach that if I want to sign up for this gym, I need to wear long sleeves. I need to pull everything long sleeves. That would not go down. Yeah. Everything is so discriminating. Yeah. They would be in so much trouble. Exactly.  Okay. A gender reason. Because, you know, obviously a gender discrimination. Yeah. Right.  So I would just go to a gym that welcomes me. And fortunately, I had another gym at that time. And he was, you know, the gym, I told the gym owner the first time I went there, all my situation. I look, I know I look like a guy, but I go to the female changing room. Are you okay with that? You know, like, And then he put it out in the front. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Then he was, you know, he is also, he doesn't compete, but he's a bodybuilder himself. And so it was like, of course, you know, everywhere from you. And a lot of times he defend me when people were, you know, pan about my, my, my presence in the changing room. So it's always down to being able to find a place that welcomes you and respects you, you know, as an athlete. There's a lot of blurry space with that because then it's not everybody who has these certain binary, very specific black and white views. Can I go back to the idea of the performance space?  And I don't know, I'm sure you're aware of that film, Change in the Games, which came out in 2019 about these high school sports athletes. And they follow three different high school trends kids who compete in sports and the whole controversy. And of course, this is the US, right? So you mentioned earlier that in the US, there's a lot of talk about who can compete where if you were assigned that gender, you should be competing in that. But so here's the blurriness, right? You are technically female with female body parts. So you can enter in the female category. But is there any pushback with all those competing, you know, requirements about where the hormones take place? Because, you know, even in like Olympic sports, hormone does not something that is accepted, right? Yeah, that's a really good question. So first of all, I would say bodybuilding is such a different sport. So I think it's one of the reasons why it is not an Olympic sport. It tried to be an Olympic sport. It never really succeeded because basically everyone even, you know, elite women bodybuilders, they all use steroids to a certain extent. That's so we know female bodybuilders, you know, in order to get to that competitive level, everyone uses testosterone and steroids to a different extent. And I think more recently, the whole bodybuilding community, the elite bodybuilding community are much more open with really talking about steroids, especially men.   So we don't love, we don't no longer have those fat tissues around our brain, right? So they would do like breast implants so that they would look more feminine. They would always, you know, they would do nails like I never do nails when I get to the gym because it would just break off. But I didn't know how they can do it. But they did heavy with their own nails. So all things, right? And they were make up, make sure they weren't make up. Yeah. That's a lot of like performance and I think anxiety around muscularity because muscularity is often seen as, you know, a virtual of like masculinity. And I think female boxers are actually breaking that boundaries itself, even though they try to perform femininity, right? They're trying to break that, you know, that stereotype that, you know, muscularity has to be associated with masculinity. That's a great point. And I think how do we break those? So who defines why, how the feminine is feminine and the masculine is the masculine, right? You know, who built these structures that we're trying to work our lives within? And how do we break those boundaries? And you're saying that, you know, bodybuilding is that space that really kind of transcends the defining categories in a very strange way. Yeah, but I mean, I think my also my research, I'm also not looking into what transcends. I think it's always very, it's very contradictory. I feel sport itself is very contradictory. On one hand, you know, it really allows women to be muscular, that our sport allows women to be muscular and really break through kind of the human limits of what we think a female body could do. But at the same time, our bodybuilding competition itself is very regulatory, right? It has a very straight, like women have to wear bikini, women has to wear bikini, women has to showcase their what we call femininity age. So do you think that sexist in itself, those regulatory established roles, do you think there's sexist? That's a very good question. I don't, I didn't see it from a sexist perspective. I see it as more of, for me, as an experiment, like, you know, I have been a very, I've seen, I mean, I see myself as a pretty masculine person, like I'm more, even though I don't necessarily see myself as a man in general. But I know people perceive me as a man in, in a daily, on the daily life basis. So why, I'm sorry, why do you compete in the woman's category then and not the man? That's because I don't identify as a man as well. Okay. All right. So, but I know I look like a man because of my muscles. Right. And because I don't necessarily like to wear makeup every day. Right. For the performance of that competition, right? I mean, I love, but I really enjoy performing femininity on stage. I think that is something that really, I mean, once I experienced that, at first I didn't know whether I like it enough, but once I experienced that, I was like, I really enjoyed that, but it doesn't mean that I wanted to do, I want to do it every day. But that's ironic. You're saying performing femininity on stage and yet it's through a bodybuilding competition, which is kind of really contradicting. Like you said, the masculinity and the muscularity, that kind of relationship is really on display. But yeah, I think it's much more complicated, right? So I mean, even scholars actually look into female bodybuilding, they would always say, it's very paradoxical, it's a very paradoxical sport. It's a sport where women can be however big they are and kind of defy that the notion that muscularity has to associate with masculinity. But at the same time, we are also contradicting ourselves by performing femininity. So I think that, but I think the contradiction itself is actually the best thing. Yeah, I love it. It's not gonna be just always towards liberation. We're not always moving from a very liberal, progressive way. We move back and forth, right? It's the validity you're talking about, right? Yes, that movement. I think it's like really moving back and forth, this and that. And I think that is the beauty of it. Yeah, and resisting binaries. And that's the whole thing about gender, women, and sexuality studies is acknowledging that we have a multiple perspective and multi-layers in our existence that we don't have to reduce ourselves to one or the other, right? Which is something that society has kind of bought us wrongly, I think. Yeah, I entirely embrace the notion that we are very multiple. And then we are very contextual, right? From a very practical concern, you know, especially for example, in the US, I feel safer being seen as an Asian man than an Asian woman, right? And to say an Asian mask to the woman, right? That would even create even more, you know, danger for me. So, you know, it's a very practical concern on, you know, how white men should look like, how I look like, right? So I think it's very contextual, right? So it's not just like, okay, it's not just, I think, you know, sometimes our idea about gender identity that I feel like I am something is a little bit too simplistic, right? I think we are more multiple and there are a lot of practical concerns, right? The practical concerns about safety, about being especially, I think, in the, you know, in the US, you know, being seen as an Asian woman, you know, an Asian muscular woman is that could be very dangerous, especially with point because you're bringing out the kind of the existing reality of the violence against trans bodies in the US, which is, you know, increasing, but also bringing the attention to the idea of performing gender that, you know, we put on clothes, not just for who we identify with, but your point is we actually have to kind of be aware and conscious of how we're being perceived in certain societies, really just for the safety reason too, and acceptance. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for acceptance, right? So for me, because I look muscular and I think, you know, there's an also this aspect of like, you know, where we talk about intersectionality, right? This aspect of East was never really an issue when I was in Hong Kong because, you know, that was not really something that, you know, we're concerned about. But then when I'm in America, like there's always a famous saying to say, you only become a person of color when you enter America. I didn't feel that way when I was in Hong Kong until I was fat, yeah. Yeah, it's, you know, and I have more concerns, right?  The whole COVID. Oh, and all that, yeah. How people see Asian bodies and Asian people in general. And so I think, you know, there is this, you know, very practical concern here about safety, about survival. And, you know, I mean, honestly, in a gym setting, which is very masculine and hetero masculine space, if you are seen, if you are being perceived as a man, it's easy. I mean, I think at least it erases a lot of, you can say hetero sexes cases from. Because I can see, you know, some of these Asian woman friends of mine that, you know, when they're at the gym, you know, they're very conscious of them being women because, you know, being a woman, you know, and surrounded in a very masculine space, they have to perfect in a certain way. But, you know, because I can be very comfortable being, you know, seen as a man.  And that is just easier because I'm like liberating. Yeah. Yeah. And so for that, you know, it actually, you know, takes me or takes away that kind of anxiety that I repeat gym, you know, being gays as a woman, right? I can just work out much more concentrate, much more focused through my training itself. That's great. Can we go back? Sorry. I mean, because I know we're not, we're going to run out of time in a few minutes, but going back to your Hong Kong time, when you were bodybuilding there, can you also discuss or share a little bit more about your family context, like how did your family treat you and what your transition process and how much the Hong Kong society or cultural stigmas with the rooted patriarchal Chinese kind of system kind of informed how you had to navigate, you know, your process. Yeah. So my parents were very against me when I first started bodybuilding. When was that? That was around like 2014, so around 10 years ago, when I first started bodybuilding. And so, at that time, I never, okay, so I never came out as a trans or as a non-binary person at all. I mean, in fact, I never really came out as a lesbian when I was younger too. Like, is that, why are you girls when you were growing up? I mostly did. Yeah. So, but I'm sexual. So in Hong Kong, I usually date women.  Yeah. So, but then it never really come out. So I think, you know, the coming out story, the coming out context, a lot of time for me is very Western. It's a very Western idea. I think in a context, a lot of times, you know, people just, you know, your parents just slowly know, and they don't necessarily have to say that out and never really say that out. So they see, they saw news and stuff about me and they start to get it, what's going on with me. And so my mom at the very beginning, she was very against me doing bodybuilding. She always tell me that, you know, muscles on women are very ugly.   And so, but, but then my mom was actually my first family member who actually came to my competition. And after the competition, she actually, I mean, I get fourth in that competition. And I still remember, you know, very vividly, like the first thing she saw me and told me backstage was like, I think you should win because you are the most muscular woman on stage. So I think she accepted me, you know, after she saw me on ageing compete. I should never really complain about my muscles anymore. She kind of needed a change, you know, she just, you know, make sure, you know, I eat well and my parents and my family there. A parent wants to be healthy and happy. But were you taking hormones for your gender identity? Or were you taking on top of steroids? Like, how does that, are they similar? Or are they, you know, how does that work? Yeah, that's a really good question. I started with like steroids and testosterone because of bodybuilding.  So, you know, I also do it in there. So I would say a lot of times like trans people, if they take, if they transition from female to male, a lot of times they take testosterone and they usually take even testosterone, there are multiple types. There's lasting, long lasting ones. It means how long is they're going to stay in your body.  So the last thing one that usually for once to, you know, to bulk and build muscle for a long term, the shorter, shorter kind of testosterone will be used for cutting, where we are cutting and ready to get on, ready to get on stage. And on top of that, that bodybuilding has different types of other steroids. Some help you to make you more vascular. Some help you to make your muscle look farther.  So that different combination requires really, you know, knowledge about that. You need to have a code who really understand the most, especially women's body because women's and men's, even though we are trying to talk about gender fluidity, biologically, we also have slightly different structure, right? Men and women or whatever bodies. And so you have to have someone who is knowledgeable enough to be able to help you with, you know, you are not using the same dose age for one else. You should be able to. So how did it affect you in your, I guess, female physical body? Like, did you, when did you stop menstruating at a certain point because of even the steroids? Or is that the more the testosterone things that affect that? I think both, right? So a lot of like women competitors who never use testosterone, some never use testosterone, but they would use other types of fat losing, whatever chemicals, whatever that is. And when your body and also when they're even if they're natural, meaning that they don't use any steroids, at a certain point when your body fat is very low, your body stop menstruating. It's almost like a fight of like mode where your body stopped working anything extra for that. So it would also happen. So, you know, the menstruation and basically, yes, the menstruation itself, it will actually, you know, happen in all types of women, whether they use testosterone or not. But typically if you have been using testosterone continuously for a short period of time, few ones usually then a lot of people would actually start menstruating. Hmm. Okay. So that's a lot of like scientific kind of physical things, but to just bring it back to really the there are beginning conversation about the performance of the body, the spectacle of bodybuilding. What would you have to say to our listeners about, you know, breaking boundaries in their own sense? Like, you know, a lot of people maybe are deprived of certain activities because of social pressures or maybe feeling not comfortable in their own body. You know, what are some of your tips or suggestions and how to embrace your body and to go for what it is that you're meant to do? I think there are two things, right? First of all, is to trust your instinct. You know, if you see something, if you see like I was first inspired by a female power lifter when I was 15. I saw randomly on the news and I was like, that's it. I want to be like her one day. And I trust my instinct, you know, even though it takes me almost five, five more years before I really stop bodybuilding, I always wanted to do bodybuilding. There are different stuff happening that I cannot. So I do marathon running. I do rowing. I do dragonboating. I realized that my passion was really on bodybuilding. So if I trust my instinct 10 years later, it would be a very different story. So I think, you know, trust your instinct is always very useful. The other thing, the other point is a little bit cliche, but I would say, you know, Billy, once you know who you are, just be yourself.  So there will all be people who will be for you or has been, you know, suffering in a much more, you know, bad conditions. And yeah, they were able to flourish. So you will be able to do that too. So I think that are the two, you know, models for me when I'm down. We needed to hear that. And I think, you know, from an Asian context, struggling with a lot of kind of cultural stigmas and pressures from family, we needed to hear that from you because you're, you are living that, that success now, you know, and we wish you all the luck in your, the pursuit of your PhD, your continual advocacy for gender fluidity and just everything about how you embrace life and bringing in the creative, the physical, the academic, the poetic, everything that you embody. So thank you so much. This is the Siu Fung Law, chiming in all the way from Atlanta and until, yeah, right? Yes. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me here. Thank you. That was amazing.


Today we're going to talk a little bit about free body diagrams, what a free body diagram is, and give you some hints about how to go about drawing one. So why do we want to draw free body diagrams? Well let's consider first a condition called static equilibrium. Static equilibrium is a condition where forces on an object are balanced, in other words, they are equal, so that they don't change the motion of the object. In other words, they are static. Although this is a bit of a misnomer because the body could be in motion and still be in equilibrium. It doesn't have to necessarily be not moving. However, in civil engineering and in structures, we are most often going to be considering things that aren't moving or that we don't really want to move. If we can identify a body in static equilibrium, we can apply a balance of forces to determine the force values that we may want to know. And that's what free body diagrams are useful for. Down below we have a particular example of, well, this would be considered a free body in the fact that she does represent freedom, but that particular connotation aside, we're going to consider a body in its environment, in this case the Statue of Liberty. So first step in a free body diagram is to define the body of interest. And we're going to do so by drawing a boundary around it. Okay? So it doesn't have to be a real detailed boundary, but we're going to go ahead and draw a boundary here around the Statue of Liberty, separating her from the environment. Now that we've separated the body of interest from the environment, our next step is to identify body forces. There are a set of forces of certain type that act over a distance. These are forces like gravity as the primary one that we will use at the scale that we're talking about. Although electromagnetic forces are also part of the type of forces that can be identified as body forces. And if we were at a much, much smaller scale, atomic forces such as the strong or the weak force could also be considered as being body forces. These are forces that are acting over a distance and can be considered as acting on the entire body. Generally we are going to apply those body forces to the center of the body, something called the center of gravity or the center of electromagnetic force. These centers can be found in a multitude of different ways. We'll identify some center at which the gravity acts. Okay? And in this particular case with something like this, we call the action of gravity the weight of an object. So we've identified the body forces here. Here we have the weight of the Statue of Liberty. So once we've identified body forces, our next action is to identify boundary forces. And our goal here is to free the body by replacing all contact parts on the boundary with a force. And in fact a special kind of force, a distributed force. So we go around the entire body and try to think about what is actually touching or contacting the body at this point. In the case of the Statue of Liberty, we kind of have two types of boundaries here. First of all, we have all around the upper part of the Statue of Liberty, we have contact with the air. And this air is pushing on all the places where the air is touching the Statue of Liberty. And then along the bottom, we have a distributed force of the pedestal pushing on the bottom of the Statue. Notice that all boundaries will have some force upon them. However, in some of our problems, we may choose to neglect particular forces because they are either too small, unimportant, or somehow cancel out as part of our analysis. Once you've identified all these body forces with a distributed force, we usually simplify by representing this distributed force with a concentrated or point force. For example, all along the base of the pedestal, you have lots of little small forces, but those little small forces are acting over their all small areas. So really it's a form of pressure, it's force applied over an area. And instead of thinking about that as a whole bunch of small forces, we can consider it as being one large concentrated force acting on the center of that. For those of you in calculus class, we gather that by doing the integral of those small forces over the area. So in this case, we have the force represent this Fp, force Fp of the pedestal. In the case of something like air pressure, you'll notice that the air pressure is pushing both up and down and side to side in all different directions. It's actually pushing every direction around the body. And if you think about it, if we removed the Statue of Liberty, there would be air pressure that would have been would be pushing down on the pedestal. Well, when we measure the weight of something, we measure it within this air pressure. And so the air pressure is sort of ubiquitously pushing on everything in every direction. So usually, not always, but usually we are going to neglect air pressure or consider it to be a net force of zero because it's pushing in all directions around the body that we're concerned about. So in this case, we're not going to include it in our larger representation. All we really have here are the weight and the force. And we've recognized that the air pressure exists, but we are going to neglect it in this free body diagram. As long as you make the choice and recognize what's there, then you're good. So now that we've actually identified our boundary forces, our body forces and our boundary forces, let me sketch this again here. So now we have our Statue of Liberty here sketched a little less carefully with its weight and the force of the pedestal. We want to consider our force components. We're going to, we're going to consider our force components that are what are called normal to the surface. We'll call normal, which are perpendicular to the surface and tangential, which are parallel to the surface. In this case, we see that our force of our pedestal, it's easy to think about it pushing up, but there may also be something potentially because it's fixed to that pedestal that might be pushing sideways, parallel to the surface that's connecting the Statue of Liberty to the pedestal. So we want to break our boundary forces into two parts, the parts that are perpendicular and the parts that are parallel. Now it may turn out in this case that if there's nothing pushing side to side on the Statue of Liberty, that the tangential portion doesn't have any value, but we want to identify that it exists. This would be in what we consider a local basis or a local coordinate system that depends on what the surface looks like at that contact point. Once we've identified all the components of our forces, of our boundary forces, our last piece is to create a global basis. In other words, we're going to orient ourselves in a fashion that allows us to consider all of the forces in the same basis or the same coordinate system. In this case, it's pretty straightforward. We'll go ahead and orient ourselves so that in our two-dimension, we have a vertical dimension that's pointed directly up and we'll call positive as up. And although it's unimportant in this problem, we'll go ahead and create a horizontal component that's to the right and called to the right being positive, to the right as we face the Statue of Liberty as being positive. So there's our list of actions. Define the body of interest with the boundary, identify body forces, identify boundary forces, and simplify them with a concentrated force. Consider components of that force that are parallel and perpendicular to the surface, and then finally create a global basis that we can describe things in that gives us direction for the entire system. Let's apply this to another example here. Here's a picture of a horse and a cart. So let's follow our steps, shall we? Let's define the body by drawing a boundary around it. Now there are multiple ways that we can go about doing this. I've decided that my first system I want to consider are the horse and cart together. Then we need to go ahead and identify body forces, forces that act over a distance here, and the only one that we're going to be concerned about here, the forces that are due to gravity. In other words, the weight. I'm going to think about the horse and cart as being separate weights. We have the weight of the horse and the weight of the cart that are both part of the body forces within our system. We haven't separated them. They're both within the system, but they both contribute to the balance of forces in our system. And we try to locate these in what we consider to be the center of gravity of each of those components. Now that we've identified body forces, let's consider the boundary forces. Most of our boundary is going to consist of air pressure, which we're going to neglect. But we should also consider the other places that we have contact with something besides the air. And in this case, we have five different locations that are in contact with something. We have the location where the wheel is touching the ground. We have the location where each of the horses hooves are touching the ground. And along those little locations, there are forces acting. And it's hard to draw a distributed force here. So we're going to go ahead and just think about these as being concentrated forces at each of those contact points. But notice those forces don't necessarily just hold the horse up. If the horse decides that it wants to strain and push forward and start moving, then it's going to push against the ground in order to start moving the cart. If it does so, for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction, the ground must push upon the horse as well. So each of these particular locations may have components that are perpendicular to the surface, our normal components, and components that are parallel to the surface, our tangential components. So now we've identified each of those components, and we can give them names. We might call this the force on the cart. We call this force on hoof 1, force on hoof 2, force on hoof 3, and force on hoof 4. Notice we've represented this with two component forces. You could also represent this with a single force drawn in that direction, but almost always you're going to immediately want to break that down into parallel and perpendicular components. We notice that in this system almost all our forces are either acting vertically or perfectly horizontally, so it's wisest for us to create a global basis. That's also vertically and horizontally, and we're going to go ahead and call a positive direction as being up, and our positive direction as being right in our global basis. Now we've created a free body diagram for the horse and the cart. However, let's say our problem asked us to determine how much the horse was pulling on the cart. Well, in this case, this free body diagram doesn't do us a lot of good because we've kept the horse and cart both inside the free body. If we were interested in how much the horse was pulling on the cart, what we might need to do instead is to separate the horse from the cart. So now let's say with our horse and cart problem that what we really wanted to know is the force between the horse and the cart, how much the horse was pulling on the cart, for example, as it's moving or as it's straining to move. In order to do that, it didn't help to have a free body diagram that has the horse and cart inside. What we need to do is separate them by our free body diagram. So I can now consider either of these possibilities. So let's go back and look at the blank screen again and redraw our free body diagram. We have two choices here. One choice is to draw our free body diagram around the cart. Another choice is to draw our free body diagram around the horse. In both of those cases, the forces we were considering before still come into play and we can still neglect the air pressure. However, there is now one more force that we need to consider. We need to look at this space, the place where the cart connects to the horse. And in that particular location there, we need to represent it with a force. Well, if we're thinking about the cart, we can think about it this way. The cart is being pulled by the horse. So there is a force by the horse, of course, on the cart. Notice, depending on how we actually drew the line, we might want to draw that line, that boundary, through the connector of the two. And in which case we can redraw that force in two components, basically as parallel. And, I mean, that's perpendicular to the surface and it's parallel to the surface, our normal and tangential components. Because notice, the horse is going to be pulling forward, but there might also be some component of the horse lifting and keeping the car vertical. So that force there, if we consider the balance of forces on the cart, you have the weight of the cart, our body force. You have the force on the wheels. And we call this the force of the cart, I believe. Two components of the force of the cart. And then you also have two components of, and now we have to determine what we want to call this. Do we want to call this force of the horse? Well, we already called the footprints on the ground the force of the horse. We could also call this the tension. Tension would be the pulling, the tension between the cart and the horse. And now we've drawn a free body diagram that includes just the cart, but would give us information about the relationship between the cart and the horse. Notice if we've chosen to do that in the other direction, because for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. If we have a tension T, and it's two components where the horse is pulling the cart, if we consider how the cart is pulling on the horse, we must have an equal and opposite reaction, T. And notice I draw the components equal and opposite to what we had before. That that same tension, but pointing in different directions, must be being applied on the horse. Now notice again this is useful that if we describe our global basis where up is positive and to the right is positive, you're going to get equal and opposite. Both of the values of the horse pulling on the cart are going to be positive, whereas the values of the cart pulling on the horse are going to both end up being negative. Well, that will conclude our example of free body diagrams. You'll have plenty of opportunity to practice this. The key idea is as you're trying to decide what free body diagrams you're drawing, is to think of if there are any forces that you're going to wish to identify and make sure that the boundary of your free body slices through something that would be supplying those forces.


A lot of times in life, we tend to focus on the exterior to determine our happiness. And the thing is, is like it's not our fault. It's just the way that we've been conditioned. It's the way that society runs. We say, oh, we'll be happy when we get that job or that house or that relationship or that money or fill in the freaking blank. And so we focus so freaking hard on those things that we actually give our power away to them. Everything that determines our life and our happiness is out of our control. The second that you start to understand and focus on yourself and that that will affect all areas of your life, you start to regain your power. And this is otherwise known as your self-concept. The way that you view yourself in every situation and every relationship and every scenario.


The short answer is, after you've done a lot of shooting. Hello everyone, Dylan Schumacher, Citadel Defense, and I want to talk today about when to mod your pistol, right? There are all kinds of different thoughts and theories and whatever on this whole deal and here's my input. By and large, for the most part, I have shot a stock Glock. I'm a reluctant Glock user just because they have the best aftermarket support and whenever I want to put a light on it or get a new holster or new sights or whatever, there's an option for that with Glock. With other guns, yeah, maybe not, just kind of depends. Also the fact that magazines are actually semi-reasonably priced compared to all other handguns where the magazines are not. If I can buy an AR mag for like $9 on sale, there's no reason I should be paying $50 for a metal pistol mag. It's just bent sheet metal. So that being said, even with Glock, there are all kinds of different mods you can do. You can go all the way to the agency arms, super Gucci expensive thing, right? You can buy different triggers and connectors and whatever. So where in there do you need to actually bother to mod your gun? I bring this up because this became apparent to me recently. I took the modern samurai project pistol class. It was a one-day appendix class with a two-day red dot class after. And within that class, Scott, the modern samurai project guy, the guy who runs it, right? He has a very high shooting standard. If you're not familiar with his black belt patch standards, go ahead and Google that, the modern samurai project black belt patch standards. They're very difficult to do. And if you look at them and you're like, ah, that's not that hard, then you need to shoot more because you should easily be able to tell it's extremely difficult. So in order to do that, you have to have a very high level of skill. And I think trying to shoot those and working through this class, which was a great class, by the way, highly recommend it, I think I realized, okay, at this point in my shooting, I would benefit with some gun mods, right? And here I'm mainly talking trigger. The sights on a Glock, the stock sights from the factory are absolute garbage.  You should change those every time. But when it comes to stuff like messing with triggers and spring pull weights and all this other stuff, or you know, having a really finely tuned, you know, 1911 or CZ or whatever, there are again infinite pistol mods here. If you want to go down that rabbit hole, which has no bottom, I think the place to start to do that is after you have shot, and this is a somewhat arbitrary number, like I don't know, 5 to 10,000 pistol rounds. And after you've really started to push a high degree of skill. I mean, if you haven't been able to successfully complete Reed Hendricks' pistol standards, which is a fantastic pistol standard set, then I wouldn't even bother, right?  And when you start to get to those upper reaches of your ability, I think that's when you'll start to understand, okay, I think a mod here would actually make sense because I'm going to get the performance out of the gun in order to allow me to apply my skill level to it. You have to get to a place where your skill level is starting to exceed that of which your equipment is capable of. And that's kind of a fuzzy place to be. It's a gray area. I don't know if there's any objective standard for that, but that's where you need to be before you need to start really worrying about mods. Until then, you should just spend your money on, you know, training and bullets and in order to continue to get better. ARs are, of course, a little bit different of an animal.  And then, of course, swapping in a trigger mod on an AR is both simpler and doesn't really cost you that much money or time wise. So I can understand how people can kind of do that. But the same principles apply, right? You're not going to be able to get the most out of your Gucci trigger until you reach a high level of skill. And once you're able to have that high level of skill where you're starting to be able to push past your equipment's ability to keep up, that's the time when it comes to mod your gun. I say pistols, and we talk about pistols because mods on pistols are going to make a bigger difference, right? A souped up race gun 2011 that has very high level of performance compared to like a stock, you know, $5, $600 Glock off the shelf. There's a large disparity in pistol performance there. But only the person who has an extremely high amount of skill is going to be able to necessarily, you know, unlock the performance of that pistol, right?  Well, absolutely not, right? Because their high level of skill is that much higher and they've been able to achieve that where a performance pistol makes sense, you know, and they're in sporting and shooting and competition and all that other stuff. But you get my main point.  So if you get to the point where you're trying to earn a fast card or you're trying to meet the black belt patch standards or you're trying to do these extreme shooting abilities and standards, and after you try those long enough and you work on those long enough, you're going to start to realize, okay, I am my skill is starting to push past the performance of my equipment and therefore I need to upgrade my equipment in order to allow my skills to keep growing. So that's kind of my general thoughts on gun mods, pistol mods, especially, and again, we're mostly talking about triggers and trigger weights and stuff like that. So I hope that was helpful for most of us, right? The answer is we just need to dry fire our guns more, you need to practice more and you need to continue to grow that level of skill because one, that's something that you will never regret having.  I hope that's helpful. Do brave deeds and endure.


This paper reviews the current state of the art for additively manufactured LC-10MG alas using selective laser melting, SLM, focusing on the effects of various process parameters on the resulting microstructure and mechanical properties. It was found that the powder size distribution, laser power, scanning speed, and layer thickness all have significant impacts on the resulting microstructure and mechanical properties. Additionally, it was observed that certain heat treatments can further improve the mechanical properties of the SLM parts. This article was authored by Francesco Treveson, Flaviena Calagnano, Massimo LaRusso, and others.


I'm Abena Mungi. I'm director of innovation at Barclays and I look after Rise, which is our platform that we have created to enable us to interact with financial services technology firms. So what is Fintech and what does it do? So Fintech is as simple as where technology meets financial services. It's a really important industry. Last year alone $23 billion was invested into Fintech and that is growing. Here at Barclays we know that you guys are going to be really interested in understanding what it is that is out there, what are the different technologies that are out there and how can they be applied. You're going to learn the fundamentals of Fintech. What are the things that are being looked at? Which technologies are being brought into financial services? How are we going to use them? What is the future going to hold?


But is that anything that you all can look at in the last game that you definitely know you've got to be better this time against them? Yeah, for sure. I mean, there's a couple clips in that game of plays where we had opportunities in the red area, turn the football all over in the red area. That makes it difficult to overcome when you're going against really good defense. And we just need to play cleaner and play better. But it's a good defense, I think statistically. They're up there at the top or near the top in most categories. And so really solid front seven, good players in the back end. It's going to be a good challenge for us. And for you, how does it feel to have a running game showing some life here against a team that's second in the league with Sacks and pretty can get out for passes? Yeah, I think we've made strides the last couple of weeks and hopefully that's something we can continue to hang our hat on. It helps, it does. You mentioned trying to slow down pass rush, trying to do different things to keep them off balance when you can get the running game going. It definitely helps in that regard. So we're going to keep trying to improve there, keep trying to do better. And I think we've set a standard for ourselves the last couple of weeks of what we're capable of. And just in the middle of all that, Shaq Thompson seems to be a guy that we've watched him grow into that old Thomas Davis road. Yeah, he's a great player. Has been for a long time and I think has developed into one of the better backers in the league. He's physical against the run, plays with great speed, very good pass rusher, and excellent in coverage. Early in his career, they'd use him kind of in nickel spots and he could cover wide receivers and tight ends and be really good in that space. So he can do it all and he's playing at a high level right now.  I don't know, I think you just, as part of the game, it's part of this profession, it's tough. And so mentally for me, it's always bounce up and go to the next play. What do we got to do next? And I think whether it's positive or negative, I think you always have to have that approach. Even after you throw a touchdown pass or you take a Saq or throw a pick or whatever, you've got to focus on the next play. And keeping that mindset, I have always found for me, helps. I ask that too, because obviously you've taken a lot of Saqs over the last few years, but you've seen young quarterbacks really get hit. Like it can derail their entire career. So I was just wondering if there was something you'd learn maybe earlier in your career to deal with it, or if that's something that kind of could lead to your career just like? Yeah, I think, I just, I don't know. I think for me, I can't speak for other people, but for me, I've always just thought that's part of it, that's part of playing the position, is that there's gonna be plays like that that happen. And trying to always have that mindset of not letting the previous play affect what your next play is gonna be about, or how you're gonna operate. For whatever reason, that's the mindset I've taken since I was young, and it's worked for me. Do you remember the first time you got Saqs, like ever, and what that thought was then? Because then, that's a different thing that you actually experienced. It's a long time ago, man. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.  No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You gotta be able to delete information. I think, honestly, I think that's a huge part of playing. This position is being able to kind of wash some of those things out, and you just go back to, all right, you gotta trust that we're gonna operate, or we're gonna stay in skiing, we're gonna do the things we need to do on the very next play, and really just trying to get into that mindset. But as far as we're calling it, no, I don't know. Do you feel physically like the guy who's been hit more than any quarterback at the league this year, since it's starting to? I feel good, you know, I really do. My body feels good. I feel like I've gotten into a space later in my career where I've really learned what I need to do in terms of taking care of myself and making sure that I'm as fresh as I can possibly be week to week. I think I'm much better at that at this point in my career than I was earlier. And so, you know, I do, I feel good for being in December, being in the middle of it. My body feels great. Did you watch the Monday night game? I did. Do you feel the need to text Arthur to the fourth quarter and say, you know, don't get any ideas? I don't know, work for him, you know what I mean? It worked out pretty well. The conditions looked tough. You know, it really did. I mean, not being there, but watching from the outside in. Looked like those guests were pretty strong. And so, you know, credit to them. I don't know what the record for the least amount of pass attempts is, but. Two? Two? They missed it. They were close, man. They were close. I think they had three, right? That's the first, this is the. 74, I think I've got that right. Well, there you go. 74 is a long time ago. Do you start screaming back at the sideline all on the throat? I mean, you know. Oh man, I've never been a part of anything like that. So, I don't know. I think if it's working, you know, at that point, you got to do what you got to do to win.  I mean, it doesn't matter compared to winning football games and, you know, getting the job done. And so, we all play different roles every week. And sometimes, you know, your number's called more often. And sometimes it's called less often, but, you know, whatever the number is, you got to go out there and do your job.  I remember after the game, Cal Pimps was talking about how this is like his welcome to the NFL moment when he was playing against Defonter Gilmore. Like, how do you, as a veteran, leave it a scene? Like, how do you help him kind of like learn from that and kind of bring it along so he can, you know, maybe possibly have a better performance this time?  That's just the nature of this league. It's so competitive, you know, but I think the biggest thing you go back to is the basics, you know, in those kind of situations, your attention to detail has to be spot on. And you really have to, you know, trust your footwork, trust your release, work your technique. I think those are the things that, you know, at this level in this league, they have to be on point, you know, every week. And if they're not, you know, guys can get after you. And so that's for all of us. It's definitely a defense, you know, and Gilmore's a player that you have to be on it. You have to be on top of what you're doing. And I think Kyle's done a great job of that though, you know, as the year's gone on and it's gonna be important for him this week to have a great week of practice, to get himself ready to go, feeling great. And then, you know, trust his technique and trust his ability to go out there and make plays. So, all right, I just had a little, I don't know if it's like pink eye or, but I've been putting the drops in there the last couple of days. It's looking a little better. Glad you didn't see me Monday. Yeah, I'm glad you didn't see me Monday. And you never, like, will come up to us. What's that? We're a little emotional company in town. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I just teared up. I've never seen anything like that. Yeah, that's right. That's right. I had a tearful ride down here. The line, the stuff outside the building with a higher line, not protecting you, taking a lot of hits, a lot of rushes out of knockdowns. Where is your message to them that this isn't over, don't worry about what's going on outside? What is the positive that you send them and say, hey, we just got to keep working? Yeah, keep working. You know, that's it. I think, you know, always trying to limit external noise and stay focused on the voices that matter inside the building and day to day and accentuate the positives. I mean, there's been a lot of good in the last couple of weeks too, getting the run game going, creating gaps for our guys. You know, we're a team that all plays together and we're all dependent on one another. And I love those guys up front. They work hard. They get themselves, you know, prepared, you know, really well, week in and week out. It's one of the hardest working groups we got and, you know, I'd encourage them to stay the course. I think they're gonna do a good job for us as we move forward. The yards and targets and completions to Russell Gage have been over the last three games. I know sometimes the coverage dictates where the ball goes, but have you seen him do anything better or something that has improved to increase that chemistry and efficiency? Well, I think missing some time, you know, stretch kind of early in the season and then kind of getting back into that, you know, football shape and feel and playing. I think, you know, that always takes a little bit of time coming off those kind of things. But I just think, you know, he's done a great job of staying in the scheme, you know, doing exactly what we're asking him to do, not trying to do too much, trying to be open in the timing of the play. We talk about that all the time. You know, we love you to get awesome separations, but it's gotta be within the timing of the scheme. And, you know, I think the last couple of weeks, he's really done a nice job of staying on time, staying in the right space and, you know, making plays when the ball comes his way. The last time that he spoke to the press, he was talking about like sticking with the plant, staying with it and not overreacting or panicking it at all. Is that something that you've seen from him, not only over the course of the season, but as you've gotten to know him and how important is it when maybe things aren't going right to not freaking out? Yeah, I think, you know, it's part of the maturation process. And, you know, he's grown a lot since he got here. And I think he's improved in all those areas. And I think, you know, sometimes he has such great athletic ability and, you know, such, you know, good change of direction that you fall in love with making people fall or whatever. But we got to do it, you know, like he's saying, you know, not panicking or anything, not trying to do too much, you know, just staying in scheme and doing a great job of that.  And I think he's, you know, he's definitely improved in that area throughout his career. And I think he's done a good job the last couple of weeks. Did you get to pick out new kids? No, my kids don't have it. I don't know where it came from. I can see fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It just looks. I feel like we should not ask these things an important scale. No, yeah, my vision's fine, you know, but it just, it just, it looks worse than it feels. The way he's performed, is this about the good that you could have theoretically envisioned? But you've heard kind of what the plan was for him?  Yeah, I think, you know, I think from what they've asked him to do, I think he's done that. And I've been really pleased, you know, with him. He's a great teammate. He's awesome in the locker room, awesome in practices. He's the kind of guy, you know, you want in the locker room, the guy you want to be around, and the guy you want in critical situations of games, it's not scary to go make a play. It seems like over the last couple of weeks, in the third and seventh plus range, and that's third and long stuff, that you guys have done pretty well. Now you obviously don't want to be in those spots, but what's the key to converting when you're in an adverse third down situation? Yeah, you definitely don't want to be there, but when you are there, you know, you got to find a way. And I think number one, you know, is it's about timing, spacing, and trust, you know, in the passing game, and guys being in the right spots, and, you know, trying to space out the field really well. I think the coaches have done a good job of, you know, putting in certain concepts to attack certain coverages that we're seeing in those spots. I think they've done a great job with that. Protection's been good.  And, you know, if you can get one or two of those a game, they're huge.  And we've done a nice job of that the last couple of weeks. You talked about playing against Gilmore. Panthers have nothing in the corners, CJ Anderson. What do you see kind of when you look at their corners and the things that they could do? I think they're aggressive. You know, I think they do a good job, you know, trusting the front seven to get after it. And they're aggressive with how they play. They make it difficult for you. You know, you have to be accurate.  And, you know, I think both those guys are playing well. Where does Arthur Reich on the paranoia scale coach as you play forward? No, he's not bad. You know, really, no. Yeah, no, he's, I mean, at least not to me. I don't know about with you guys. He may be a little bit more, but no, he's not bad. I think that's just his style, you know, and I think he just plays it close to the vest. And, you know, that's all I can say. I mean, everybody, I think there's varying levels, you know, there's varying levels of paranoia. I won't throw anybody under the bus, but no, that's not me. It's not me. No, no, I think it gets increasingly worse, you know, the older you get, but not nothing too bad. I mean, honestly, probably the Super Bowl was probably the biggest thing when there was a drone or something at one of the practices. That's the only thing I can remember. There was a drone or something going on during one of our practices that they tried to correct. So that would be it. That's as far as I'll go with the story. Can a paranoid coach make a paranoid quarterback? I'll coach him.  I can only see this one, I'm seeing this one. Can a more paranoid, can an interparanoid coach make a, can that mess with the quarterback? I can only speak for myself, you know, I think I stay in my space, you know, and have learned to do that pretty well. All right, that's good. Good, one more. Any comment on the Kirk Warriors who's picked us up on what Kirk Warriors said? Have you read any of that? I haven't seen it. Okay, I'll let you. Okay. He was on this morning and he was talking about you quarterback, I didn't understand some of the stuff he was going to say. I haven't seen it. I haven't seen it. And I like her. Yeah, I do. Yeah, I've got a good relationship with her, but I haven't seen what he said, no. Yeah, thank you guys. Appreciate it.


In this video, we provide the solution to question number nine for practice exam number one for math 1220. We have to evaluate the indefinite integral of 3 minus 2x over x squared minus 3x to the one-third power with respect to x.  My thought process is I have this x squared minus 3x in the denominator. It's raised to the power of one-third. It'd be really nice and hunky-dory if its derivative is on top.  That would be my dream come true right now. U is x squared minus 3x. Then du would equal 2x minus 3 dx. As I come over here and analyze this, that's almost what I have. The numerator is 3 minus 2x. That's the function I'm looking for. Just times it by negative one. What that does for us is then we can rewrite this integral here. If I take out the negative sign, you get negative 2x minus 3 dx sitting on top of the x squared minus 3x to the one-third power. That's then perfect for what we need. We're going to get negative the integral. The top then became that negative du. I already brought the negative sign out. The denominator is u to the one-third power. Instead, I think of this as negative the integral of u to the negative one-third power du. I can then apply the power rule to the u for which we're going to increase the power by one. We take u negative one-third plus one. That's going to give us a positive two-thirds. We then divide by two-thirds. Don't forget your arbitrary constant now. Then rewriting that if you divide by two-thirds, that's the same thing as times in by three-halves. We get negative three-halves times u to the two-thirds plus a constant. Now the anti-derivative is computed. We just need to plug back in the original value for u. We end up with an anti-derivative of negative three-halves times x squared minus 3x raised to the two-thirds power plus an arbitrary constant. Do remember the constant there. It's not full credit if you don't have that plus c.


What's up, everyone? Takedown here. Welcome back to another video. It is that time of year again for some amazing sales. This past Friday was Black Friday. So today I'm going to share with you my Black Friday haul. Now it might not be as much as previous years. A lot of stores this year had a problem getting enough inventory for Black Friday because of COVID-19, which is fully understandable. So I was not able to get as much as I normally do, but regardless, I do have a lot of things to share with you. Now, as far as physical items, there's only one physical item this year. Everything else is digital on the PlayStation Store. Like I said, not as much as I usually get for previous years for Black Friday, but still enough to share with you guys for this video. Let's get started. So the first game I got from the PlayStation Store for part of the Black Friday sale, it actually started on sale on the Sunday before Black Friday. And that is Fast and the Furious Cross Roads. This game here was on sale for $27. It was regular $53. So this is a game that's when it came out earlier this year. Since I'm a huge fan of the Fast and Furious movie franchise, I definitely wanted to get this game. It looks like it was a lot of fun. I watched the gameplay and the official trailer. It looks like it's going to be a blast. Now, I'm not sure if it's going to be more focused on the street racing aspects as were the first movies were, or if it's just based on the current Fast and the Furious, where it's based more on action, but it does look like a great game. And it was on sale for a great price. The next game here is SpongeBob SquarePants Battle for Bikini Bottom Rehydrated. Now, yes, as you guys can imagine, this is a more of a kids game, but this is a remaster of a game that was on the PlayStation 2 that back then this SpongeBob basically was part of my childhood. And back then on the PlayStation 2, I never got a chance to play this game. So since it was basically remastered, I definitely want to give it a chance and try it out because it looks like a lot of fun whenever I seen some of the gameplay for this remaster and it's an easy platinum to get. And you guys know I'm a trophy hunter. So not only is it nostalgic so I get to relive, I guess, part of my childhood, but I'll definitely earn a trophy and a platinum out of it. The next game here is World War Z. This is a game that I've had my eye on for a while. Now, I never watched the movie. A lot of people and a lot of things that I see about it say that the movie was a complete flop. However, the gameplay looks like it's going to be interesting. And this game here was on sale for eleven dollars. Now, back whenever I was going to purchase it, I think maybe a year ago when it was on sale Black Friday, it was only on sale for eighteen dollars. And at the time I was going to purchase it, but I'm glad I waited because this game was only eleven dollars. I thought that's a great deal.   And if you guys are interested on any of these games, I might stream them on the channel as well. The next game that I got is Spyro Reignited Trilogy. This game here looks like it's going to be a lot of fun. I had a lot of people recommend it to me. Now, I really would have rather have a physical copy for this game. But there is a twenty dollar price difference because this game was not on sale physically for Black Friday, only on the PlayStation Store. So instead of paying twenty dollars more for a physical copy, I decided to get the digital version for that reason alone. The digital version was on sale for eighteen dollars. I'm not sure what the regular price is for this game on the PlayStation Store. But it definitely is a lot of fun. And you're paying for three games. It is a trilogy of, I'm not sure if it's the original three Spyro games. But regardless, the Spyro games that I never played. I only started playing the Spyro games on the PlayStation 2. I never played any of the PlayStation 1 games. So it looks like it's a lot of fun. The trailer looked amazing. And it's Spyro, which was part of my childhood when I was on the PlayStation 2. So I'm definitely excited to see and basically, again, relive part of my childhood and play this game for nostalgic reasons. And it is three games. So for eighteen dollars for three games, I thought that's a steal. Why not pick it up? And the last game that I got digitally was Destroy All Humans. This is the new one that came out earlier this year based on the game that came out in 2005. Basically a remaster of the 2005 game. And back on the PlayStation 2, I actually never got a chance to play this game. I looked up the trailer, I looked up some of the trophies and it looks like it's going to be a lot of fun and I can't wait to dive into it. And it definitely looks like a game that I'll be able to platinum. So I am definitely really excited. This game here, I'm not sure what the regular price is, but it was on sale for $37. So I'm assuming that was on 50% off since it is a new game. Now those are the games that I got on sale on the PlayStation Store. And I'm really glad I did so, but instead of me just using my credit card and having to pay off my credit card, I decided to use the cash, Christmas money and birthday money that I had in my room from previous years and go to EB Games and purchase PlayStation Store cards and that way I'd still earn some EB Game Points and then I just took those cards, redeemed them and then purchased the sales that were on the PlayStation Store because this year there was more sales and better sales on the PlayStation Store than there was in EB Games. However, I still managed to get one physical game and that game is Avengers for the PlayStation 4. I'm definitely really excited to get into it. It has some mixed reviews right now and apparently the company did lose money on making it but you also have to consider there is a pandemic ongoing right now. That's why probably people don't have the money to go and purchase a new game. This game for Black Friday was actually on sale 50% off so instead of $80 Canadian, it was on sale for $40 so I decided to get it. Not only do you get the PlayStation 4 copy, you can also do a free upgrade whenever I get the PlayStation 5 for the PlayStation 5 version. So basically for $40 getting this game on Black Friday, it's not just this version of the game, it's also the PlayStation 5 version as well and apparently there's no limit. So in another year when I plan on getting it a year from now, the PlayStation 5, I'll be able to put this desk in the PlayStation 5 and redeem the PlayStation 5 version on my actual PlayStation 5. So two versions, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 versions and that means I get to play this game twice and earn two sets of trophies and potentially two Platinum's because these games are a lot of fun to get the Platinum for them. Now, this is everything that I managed to pick up for Black Friday. Now you guys know I do collect hockey cards and the Upper Deck 2020-21 Series 1 Mega Box was on sale Black Friday. However, because of the pandemic, or at least that's my thinking of it, they did not have many in stock on store. Instead of paying $55 for the box, it was on sale for $25 like they do every year for the Mega Box which the Mega Box has a lot of great young guns this year and some very interesting inserts that are only in the Mega Box. However, they're not available anywhere. I've looked, I've tried, I cannot get them. All of Walmart's were sold out. The sale for Walmart actually started for these on the Thursday before Black Friday, the day before and all the Walmart's sold out almost immediately. So I wasn't able to get that.  Some Marvel movies as well, those ones were $8. But those ones I gave to people basically to give to me for Christmas. So unfortunately I do not have them to show because I did not purchase them for myself. I picked them out for people basically to give them to me as gifts because this year it's definitely really hard for people to think of gifts for other people. So I decided and they recommended me just picking out some things. So I picked out some great movies for me to get for Christmas basically. So yeah, this year the only thing that I managed to pick up for Black Friday was video games. And all of these games, the ones that I got on the PlayStation Store and the physical copy for Avengers, I actually picked up the Sunday before Black Friday. The actual day of Black Friday sales this year for me here in Canada did not seem to be the greatest. However, I still got some great deals and I'm definitely going to be able to get a lot of trophies and have a lot of fun with these games. So thank you all for watching my Black Friday haul 2020. I hope you all found at least some deals and everybody is staying safe. I'll leave this video here. Please take care. Comment down below what you guys got for Black Friday and I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace. .


There's not something special about me. There's someone special about me. When you begin to live in the awareness of His presence under the influence of His divine guidance and you walk in obedience and surrender to His will, you begin to see the favor of God at work in your life. See, you already have that favor. God has already given you guidance. God's already given you protection. God's already given you the companionship that is His presence. Now, whether or not you make use of that is determined by how you live.