Welcome to Coast to Coast. Thank you so much for joining us. My name is Lily Weinberg. I'm here joined by my colleague, Lillian Corral. We are both program directors of the Community and National Initiatives at Knight Foundation, and we are thrilled to have you join us. Lillian, I'm going to kick it off to you if you can tell us a little bit about what we are doing with Coast to Coast. Hi, Lillian. Well, as you know, Knight's mission is to foster more informed and engaged communities because we feel that they're essential to a healthy democracy, and our national strategy focuses on two areas, public spaces and the role of technology in communities. So, Coast to Coast is going to be a weekly show that's going to take a deep dive into cities and explore all the ideas and insights that are emerging, especially during this time of rapid change. I'm really excited to be partnering with you on this, Lillian, and we have a few things in common. We are both on the Coast, right? Opposite Coast. Miami to LA, we'll be covering everything in between, and we love cities, and there's a lot to talk about in this dynamic time, and on top of that, we are quarantined with a toddler. So, what can go wrong, right? But I'm really excited to be co-hosting this with you, and let's just dive right in. Yeah. So, Eric, Eric Kleinenberg is our first guest, and we are thrilled to have you, Eric. So, I'm going to take a second to introduce Eric, and we'll dive right in. So, Eric is Professor of Sociology and the Director of the Institute of Public Knowledge at NYU. He served as a Research Director of Rebuild by Design after the Superstore in Sandy. He has many books, but most recently, Palaces for the People, a book about the essential role of social infrastructure, like libraries, playgrounds, and parks, which many of you in the audience lead a work-around public space. And he's really looking at revitalizing civic life. I'm really excited, Eric, because you're going to be launching a new series, The Shift, Looking at the Shifts in Public Life during COVID-19. Tonight is the first episode of The Shift at 5 p.m. Eastern, and you guys will be doing a deep dive on public space. So, hopefully, this will wet your appetite for that. Last but not least, he is the inaugural Night Public Spaces Fellow, and we're thrilled to have you, Eric. So, welcome. Great. It's great to be here. Thank you for doing this. I'm just really happy to have another excuse to be on Zoom today, my favorite public space. You can't believe how much time I'm spending on Zoom. It's the place to be. I know. It's pretty crazy. And I know people are going to be asking about the wallpaper and your back. So, we'll get it out there. And so, for anybody, you can put your questions in the Q&A box, and then we also will be streaming live on Facebook, hashtag Night Live. And so, Eric, the way that we're going to structure this is going to be short and sweet. We have about 30 minutes together. For the first 15, it's going to be a conversation between you and me. I have a few questions to ask you. It's going to go by really quickly. And for the audience, we really encourage you to ask questions. My co-host, Lillian Corral, will be looking at those questions on Facebook Live and then also in the Q&A function. And she'll be elevating those themes. So, she'll be jumping in and asking you those questions, and then we'll close it. So, let's just dive right in, Eric. Let's do it. So, first, there's a lot that we can talk about because you are so uniquely situated to discuss pandemics with your background and studying living alone and crises and disasters and, of course, social infrastructure. For this conversation, we're really going to go in deeper into place and how that's a driver of social connections. So, first, if you could start with defining for our audience, what does social infrastructure mean and why does it matter for crises? Why does it matter for a pandemic? Yeah. So, I use this concept of social infrastructure in Palaces for the People, the book that came out about a year and a half ago. And it's a concept we don't use very often in the United States. It has had a little bit more traction in Europe. The way I use it is specific, though, and different. And so, when I say social infrastructure, I'm referring to the physical places which can include organizations as places that shape our interactions. And the argument I make in the book is that when we invest in social infrastructure, when we design it well, when we maintain it well, especially when we program it, we have tremendous capacity to improve the likelihood or increase the likelihood that people will engage one another in real time. So, think of the playground, for instance. Think of what it means to live in a neighborhood that's got a playground. If you're a parent, if you're a child, you're just so much more likely to have a shared gathering place from which all kinds of relationships and possibly even eventually community can develop. Whereas, if you live in a neighborhood that doesn't have a playground or I grew up in Chicago in the 1970s and 80s, we had some playgrounds because the city had invested a lot in public space, but then the city stopped spending money on maintaining them and they became problem areas and people avoided them. So, if you live in a context like that, you're just much less likely to engage one another. And how that affects us in daily life is it makes it more or less likely that we will be in a place that develops social support networks and something that feels like cohesion. If there's a crisis, that can make a big difference. So, the first book I wrote is a book about a heat wave in Chicago in 1995 that killed hundreds of people and people were much more likely to die in their apartments if they lived in a neighborhood that had a really weak social infrastructure. They just didn't have the same connected tissue that allowed for support. Now, this pandemic situation we're in is really different because obviously you don't want your neighbors coming into your apartment right now to take care of you. The way that we're supposed to stay safe is by physically distancing. I say physical distancing, not social distancing because I actually think social distancing is kind of a dangerous concept. We actually need social support. So, the question of the moment is, is it possible that the neighborhoods that built up strong solidarity, a strong sense of cohesion that had a robust social infrastructure before this have been able to maintain more virtual connections or continue to do things like provide food delivery service to older people or to sick people or to make sure that they get care? Are those protective bonds still working in the same way? That's an open question we're going to have to explore when it's safe to do that. And you'll be looking into that, I would say, right? Very much. We're already starting. I teach at New York University.  So, the world has been talking about why South Korea done so well and the United States done so badly or why has San Francisco done so well in New York City where I am done so badly. But we also want to look at neighborhoods and one of the things that I did in my Chicago project is I tried to look at neighborhoods that were demographically very similar. Places that looked on paper like they should have had about the same income or same outcomes during the heat wave but in fact did really differently. And we're trying to identify those kinds of cases within cities in the US right now. So, can we find sets of places that are demographically very similar within the same urban area but that have different outcomes and try to understand why that's the case? And obviously, a contagious virus is different as a mechanism then because the heat hits you more or less uniformly. The virus could have different vectors in but we think there's a lot that we can learn from this situation and hopefully we can learn things in time too. Yeah. No, I think you touched upon this a little bit, Eric. I mean there are definitely, there's clearly parallels from the heat wave and but there are differences and you touched upon that with the pandemic. We are supposed to stay inside and we can't be going door to door like you talked about in heat wave and so I guess I want to dig in a little bit deeper. I want to understand what does social infrastructure look like in a time of social distancing and I know you hate that word social distancing so but I want to tease that out a bit so please. Well, first of all if we say physical distancing, very comfortable with that because after all it's physical proximity that puts us at risk. Physical proximity is what creates capacity to spread the virus. Social connections don't have to be face to face. We don't actually need social distancing. I think we need to be looking out for each other like never before because a lot of people are very vulnerable. A lot of people are only going to get through if we extend a helping hand and that doesn't happen with social distancing. Social distancing tells us to stay inside. So social infrastructure right now, I mean in ordinary times the models of social infrastructure that I've written a lot about include places like libraries which are great physical places that are also programmed right. So you have people these like librarians who help to bring people together and create you know structured activities in different spaces that accommodate a lot of people or like a playground, a park, a schoolyard, even places in the private sector obviously like diners and coffee shops. There's a lot of different kinds of social infrastructures. Right now we need to be physically distant. So the infrastructure we're using to engage one another is largely the screen and in the book I write about how I think that you know our kind of digital communication system is better seen as a communications infrastructure than a social infrastructure. I think that's you know generally the case because the truth is that things work best when they are in ordinary times, they work best when there are supplements to our face interactions not substitutes. And one of the dangers we sometimes get is that too many people are substituting you know FaceTime or Skype or you know Instagram and Facebook for actual interactions in real life and I don't think that they're generally speaking as they're filling. Now they're all we have like we couldn't be having this conversation with a thousand people participating you know with any other technology. I'm continuing to teach my classes at NYU because Zoom lets me do that. There's a lot of things that the technologies are affording us but I still find them to be inadequate. And so here as I think it's important you ask this question as we're entering into summer because we're going to have to get out into the world even with physical distancing. It's we're going to go crazy and we're going to get very sick when the extreme heat comes. You know you've got you know infants and toddlers. There's a lot of children who are older than that too who just can't be you don't want to be inside when it's 90 to 100 degrees in urban areas. A lot of parents who can't there's a lot of older people who can't. So we're going to have to find we're going to need parks more than ever because we're going to be out in the world but physically distant. I would like to see us be able to open up beaches in a safe way. I'd like to see us be able to use you know libraries potentially if we can find safe ways to do it. We're hopefully going to find a way to keep playgrounds and certain athletic facilities open so people can exercise at least and be active. The next phase for us is going to be figuring out how to re-enter the social world safely and we're going to have to do things differently than we've done before and I think having a generous social infrastructure is going to make all the difference. If you live in a place where there's not a lot of physical places that's going to result in crowding and stress and heightened danger. So here's an area again where I think places that have made investments in more generous spaces that are designed well that are maintained well could potentially have some more success. And so that is really important and we're figuring out as it goes. We have a lot of practitioners you know on this and the audience that are that are rapidly trying to figure out how to open up how to rebuild and thinking that through. I do want to tease out before we get questions from the audience the idea around social solidarity because that's going to be an important role for our leaders and communities to really you know have social solidarity and to lead with social solidarity. I think we could have a really robust conversation around social solidarity at a national level. I'm going to steer us away from that though and talk about at a local level. What is what does that look like for our leaders who are managing parks libraries you know how can they lead with social solidarity. Well you know look we are clearly in a moment where we can see the extent to which our fates are linked to the fates of our neighbors like never before. It's if we're not respecting some basic guidelines about how to look after each other we're in big trouble here. That's I think what for me is so threatening and dangerous about people who are saying you know I want to be out in public without a mask doing my regular activities no matter what is they're not just putting themselves at risk they're putting everyone else at risk. So we only get through this period if we are if we have enough recognition of our linked fates of our mutual interdependence that we can respect each other and get and support one another's efforts to stay alive and so we can think about solidarity at just the most basic level you know if I'm feeling sick do I you know should I stay home or go outside if my child's feeling sick do I keep them home or do I you know they send they send them out we can think of it at the policy level you know do we want to live in a society where if you skip work you're going to get fired or you won't get paid even if you're sick so we have people working in the food industry who are showing up you know with a contagious virus because they have you know they need to get paid that you know they don't have that kind of insurance so there's it scales up as well I think at this moment our capacity to get through this hinges on how much we decide to take each other's well-being into account the most fundamental level we are being challenged to take each other's well-being into account and you know we see this kind of these mantras like you know freedom or you know freedom or death you know freedom or life you know give me liberty or give me what that's the question for how much is how much is my personal freedom worth putting at risk I want liberty at what expense and I think we are facing a crisis in this country because I think we we're currently seeing so much self-seeking behavior and not enough behavior that is focused on the collective and so as we head into the summer you know if you're running a park system we're thinking about how to keep a neighborhood safe you know how do you how do you make sure you're getting the physical distancing that you need while also giving people a chance to be in a public place it's a park or a playground or a beach those are going to be very tough questions for us to address and I mean that is so critical as we're thinking about opening up public spaces that that piece that you're highlighting I mean thinking about others too because because that cooperation is going to be critical for for the success of these phases that are going to be occurring I just want to in the in the chat function we've put up a few links I do want to link to Eric's op-ed too on social solidarity I I love that because it really challenged us to think about you know what was greater than just ourselves it certainly challenged myself and my husband and and I think that it was it was it was a fantastic piece so so Lily and I'm going to invite you to to hop in I know that you've been getting questions from from the audience and let's elevate some of the themes that we're hearing and and continue this conversation with Eric yeah this fascinating talk Eric so if we can see if we can try and squeeze the squeeze in a couple of questions so the first one just as a starter is can you talk a little bit about the difference between social infrastructure and social capital if there's a difference I do see a difference so social capital you know as social scientists see it as the refers to the number of connections that you have with other people so you know it can be the strength of your ties or the number of your ties social infrastructure is like the thing that comes underneath that it's the thing that it's the conditions that make social capital possible so that the argument I make in palaces for the people is that when you invest in social infrastructure you know the physical places the public spaces the the libraries the playgrounds the parks the athletic fields commercial corridors that you know encourage people to come together investing in social infrastructure is what promotes social capital it's not you can't you can't really build social capital by just telling people that they should have more friends you know by just telling people to connect it doesn't work but you can change the way you design a city or a suburb or a neighborhood to encourage it and so that's what social infrastructure does so that's a perfect segue into the next set of questions we have a couple of folks asking about libraries and parks and what are your ideas for how do you actually design these spaces in a way where we can keep that physical distance but as you know like there you know a lot of the work that night and others um that are listening in have really focused on is how do we design these spaces to create connection and cohesion and so when we're six four six feet apart like what does that design look like do you have any thoughts on that um yeah so I don't know we're going to redesign uh our parks and playgrounds and libraries in a durable way you know to get through the period the period that we have in front of us right now but there's there's things that we're going to have to do differently the first thing we're going to have to do so let me just say we want to create beautiful places we want to create places that are inviting and then encourage people to come and participate in face-to-face interactions even if the faces are six feet apart you know we continue to want to do that I know there are a lot of people who are concerned that the facilities that they manage are going to be overrun right like you have a you have a city and you run the parks department and you have a basketball court up maybe you're okay with a one or two people in a family being together on a court but you don't want full on pick up basketball right now it's too early for that so I've talked to city parks commissioners by to take the hoops down to promote public health which is not ordinarily what you want to do but we're going to get to a point where we're going to need to have facilities open and then I think we're going to need to do things like message better so for instance instead of saying to everyone social distance social distance we need to say things like you know we need physical distance social solidarity and that's what gets us to a healthy city you know physical distance social solidarity healthy cities we might need to do what New York City is starting to know which is let's hire a bunch of young people who would otherwise be out of work this summer and give them you know special shirts that you know that we're going to get through this shirt for the parks department and encourage them to help promote social physical distancing right so we don't want police officers separating people violently but we could have some young people with a nice hat on and a visible t-shirt who're just saying hey Lily you know please welcome to this parking and keep keep yourself a little bit distant so the messaging is really going to matter and I think at some point you know some facilities will it's possible we're going to have to have limits onto the number of people who can be in there at a time I don't I don't know how that works it's going to be tricky don't have long lines getting to the beach or the swimming pool but we're going to have to think about how to create conditions for access that make people feel safe and comfortable yeah that's a great point about young people another one of our great public spaces fellow Shalina Humbert who's giving me just some insights as to how the critical role that you play in really sharing messages across communities because of of the way that they see things happening in community and also the way that adults tend to receive the messages from young people so there's a couple of questions here around how do we deal with sort of the blue red divide in America especially if you have Americans visiting or traveling from areas that are in lockdown versus in these no rules areas or cities that are starting to open up do you have any thoughts about how we take each other into account when we have such a divisive political system you know it's this is really one of the deepest and most difficult questions we we have in this country right now you know how do we build solidarity in a time when our political leadership is dividing us we have we have been polarized for some time there's you know just blatant hostility from you know one part of the country to the other part of the country and so the you know the real question for us as a nation I think is what's our capacity to recognize our shared humanity and our common purpose at a moment like this you know I've been going back to the Great Depression and the New Deal and listening to some of FDR's fireside chats and it's really interesting the way he talked about the appeal of his message coming from this kind of basic Judeo-Christian value and the idea that you know I'm my brother's keeper and he felt like the message he was giving to Americans at that time was a message that we're all in it together you know my fellow Americans and it's just so striking to me that we seem unable to muster that kind of rhetoric right I think the absence of political leadership that is encouraging us to to seek come ground is a real danger it's worse than that of course we're I think we're being you know actively divided and made more hostile toward each other and so I hope we have better leadership and we're seeing leadership you know we're seeing governors and mayors step up and establish local leadership that is you know really extraordinary including in red states by the way yeah not a blue state red state thing because there are a lot of people who live in red states where someone will say it's we need to open up there'll be a protest movement but the overwhelming majority of of Americans say you know we'd rather stay home a little bit longer it's dangerous because a small number of people can do a lot of damage right now but this whole thing only works if we learn to take care of each other yeah it's it's dangerous to fall into that division between blue and red and it is you're totally right I mean for us one of our 26 communities includes Akron Ohio and I've had great conversations with the local leadership there and the governor there is doing an amazing job so it really doesn't have to be that distinction um all right just one quick question I'll turn it over to Lily to close close us out there is if we are to stay connected in this virtual world while we're all staying indoors and what do you think about the digital divide there's a question um on the q&a about whether you think um the internet should be considered a utility does your work delve into that or what are what are your thoughts there pretty much does and I wrote a book my work with the night foundation uh started years ago because I wrote a book called fighting for air about the state of our nation's media system and uh I continue to believe that the internet must be a utility uh you know you can't like think of all the families uh who whose children are trying to do remote education right now you can't do remote education if you can't get online um obviously issues about who has access to a laptop or a tablet but there's even more fundamental issues about who has access to the internet and especially now we're entering into a moment where uh you know getting access to education doing the census uh potentially voting this year you know is going to registering to more and more of our activities uh cultural civic political social require an internet connection and if we don't have the internet as a utility that's accessible for everyone we are systematically excluding all of those people from our public life and our civic life and so I think now is there's a lot of things that we're able to see more clearly because of this crisis and a lot of my research has been about all the things that generally we can see more clearly uh during crises and this crisis has clearly highlighted our nation's glaring need for a better internet policy thanks Eric Lily you want to take it away yeah I'll jump in thank you Eric thank you Lillian um so so Eric I loved what you said you said physical distance social solidarity healthier cities that's what we're going to be thinking that's what practitioners can be thinking about you know as we're transitioning physical distance social solidarity healthier cities um and and with that I just I have a I have to ask the final question to you um because um because we have we have many practitioners that are dealing with serious budget cuts literally as we speak um with libraries and parks and and um and so any advice that you can give um as as our cities are navigating these these cuts I mean you know I'm a social scientist and I've never had the challenge of having to run a park system on a declining budget so I don't know if I'm the right person to give advice about how to do that right but I do think it's time for all of us who are advocates and believers in public spaces to do a better job of telling the story of why it's important for us to bail our institutions out too I mean we there's no idea you can't have an economic stimulus plan that that isn't affecting our social life and we're you know we're not just having an economic recession we're also experiencing a social recession a very painful one and we are going to need to make a massive investment in our social infrastructure to get through this and so I you know it's time for us at the policy level to think about you know not cutting the budget for parks and public spaces and libraries and athletic fields but doing what they want to do in the New Deal which is making a dramatic expansion uh in programming in all of those areas so I think the way we get through this is by making the bailout bill more expansive and making sure that you know people who are trying to build physical places that will allow Americans to stay healthy this summer have the resources they need that's something we're only going to get if we as a community I'm talking about the people who are on this zoom chat right now find a way to make that point and to raise our voices and to demand that there's a bailout for public spaces that we revive public life and civic life that that our our well-being depends on it because if we don't advocate for ourselves no one's going to hand out that money for us I guarantee you everybody on this call who's managing a system is facing budget cuts at the very time when we need this system to work more than ever yeah it's essential thank that was beautiful thank you um take a second though to to tell us um about the shift and and it's launching tonight at 5 p.m. um we also we circulated the link and that in the chat function yeah thank you thank you for doing that so uh at NYU I run a an institute called the Institute for Public Knowledge we do a lot of programming and research you know the issues that affect all of our well-being we partnered with the night foundation with civic signals with the social science research council and starting tonight at 5 p.m. we're going to run a series of panels that bring together people who are trying to make sense of the shift from our physical face-to-face world to our face-to-screen world here we are together and we're going to try to understand it in all of its implications we're going to talk tonight about public space but future conversations we will be about things like work and democracy equality and inequality around access so please join us um hopefully you've circulated the link um I'm really excited about this initiative and about our partnership so hopefully this this this wet everyone's appetite for to to learn a bit more about this and to and to go in deeper for public spaces um thank you so much Eric uh for joining us um I also I also want to flag that um every Tuesday we are doing this and um at 1 p.m. um and the next episode is on equity and public space what inequities is the current crisis amplifying and how can we address that in the recovery um we will be circulating our speaker our SPP for that and we're excited to to go into that topic next week uh 1 p.m. same time same place thanks a lot see you then Lily bye bye


This verse applies to Israel. This verse applies to the church. This verse applies to that king. This verse applies to that people. How do I know which parts of the Bible apply to me and which ones don't? There is a reason why God has given us all of his word for us to grow in. He says to grow in the grace and the knowledge of the Lord. As a matter of fact, Paul says that he says that all scripture is inspired. All scripture is inspired by God and possible for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness so that the men of God may be adequate equipped for every good work. But does it also say that all scripture applies equally? No, it does not. There are some passages that just do not apply to us. There are some times where he says something to let's say for a particular king. I'll give you 15 years. Well, we don't apply that to our lives, do we? There are times where the Bible tells someone to go and take these people and to utterly destroy them. Well, that's not for us either. How do I know then which passages apply to me that I could use, which one applies to someone else, and that I just simply learn from? How do I know? A couple of things need to be taken into account. Number one, all of what he's given, he's given for us to learn from, either if it's applied directly, primarily, or if there's a secondary application. For example, he says in Romans 15.4, he says, for whatever was written in earlier times, was written for our instruction so that through perseverance and encouragement of the scripture, we might have hope. That's just simply telling us that we can look back and see and have encouragement and hope, because one, what God has done, but then also two, to see what not to do. We have plenty of examples of men doing things on their own without God. Remember, Jesus makes a statement, apart from me, you can do nothing. And so we have an example, plenty of examples of people who go without God on their own, and we see the fate of that. That applies then, and we see that also even in our lives today. But what also needs to be remembered is that God does not change his work. We can take comfort in his promises that he has. He's not going to change his promise. If he's made a promise, it either has come to pass, or it will come to pass just as he says. As a matter of fact, he says that my covenant, I will not violate, nor, and this is important, will I alter the utterance of my lips. Meaning he will not change. That's literally what the word for alter means. He's not going to change. He's not going to differ in any sort of way. He's not going to make it fit to where it doesn't fit originally, but he's put someone else in his place, or he's changed it. God knows the end as well as the beginning and everything in the middle, and even what could happen. This is God we're speaking of. And so when he declares something, it is going to come to be exactly how he says. So he's not in the ballpark, closest good enough, sort of God. No, he is precise. So when he gives us his word, he intends for us to follow his word. As the word says, your word have I hidden in my heart? Why? So I may not sin against it. The question is though, how then do we know which passages are for primary application? Which one are for secondary applications? Which ones are descriptive? Which ones are prescriptive? Meaning that which ones are we told to do? Before I give you a couple of rules to kind of live by, let me give an example. Someone asked, what about Eve? Eve was told that her desire would be after her husband. But how do we know then though, that's only for Eve and not for all women? Well, God does say in Genesis 316 to the woman, he said, I will greatly multiply your pain and childbirth in pain.  Question. Here's how we can see some things even without seeing other verses. Do we see this happening now? Do we see women bringing forth children in pain and childbirth? We do see that. That's not the most pleasant activity that a woman can think of. It's joyful, the experience of what comes after, but the process, not so great. But it's that last point that is the issue, yet your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you. The issue is though, is this reiterated anywhere else in the Bible? Well, sure, there are plenty of passages that we see that this order that God has ordained for men and women, we see that reiterated over and over again. We see that as it relates to running the church in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. We also see this in 1 Timothy 2, 1 Corinthians 11, and then certainly in the passages like Ephesians 5, 22, 23. And so we see this being reiterated. So if the Bible reiterates something that previously would not have been known if it had not been reiterated, we can understand, we can take for sure that that passage is to be applied evenly across the board to all people, especially if it's not stated specifically to a certain group. In other words, if God is not saying, the right is not saying to you or sometimes to you only, this is for you, we can get an indication just by context and who and what is writing and who's been written to, which takes us into some of the rules that we need to look at. First of all, who was writing? Who was speaking? Who's been written to? Who's been spoken to? And then why are they writing and why are they being spoken to? And then also, this is important, when is this happening? It's vitally important to understand that if something is being stated, when it's being stated and what was stated previously. Because here's the question. Did the writer or the speaker intend for the audience to understand it? How did he understand it? How did he take anything that was given to him, either by God or from someone else, and how does he intend for anyone else to take it? Did the audience understand what was being spoken of? When Moses states that in six days you shall work and on the seventh day you shall rest. And then he equates that to the six-day creation. How do these people understand six days? Well, they understand what a day is and they understand what the number six is. And so they understood that six literal 24-hour cycles would have been it if someone were to say, well, no, he didn't mean that. Then it would have been up to them to explain how then would these people have understood six days. Remember, we are given languages as a form to communicate. We communicate with the full expectation of people to understand what we're saying and then to treat our words as though they have meanings. Words do have meanings, whether it's English, whether it's Greek, whether it's Hebrew, even figures of speeches are given for meaning. If we say it is scorching outside, it's burning up. We understand it's not literally on fire outside, it's just hot and temperature. If we say, hey, that's cool, we understand that we're not necessarily speaking of the temperature, but that's pretty cool, that's pretty nice. We like that. And so since our words have meaning and God is speaking to us in our words using languages, he intends for us to understand those things and to apply them. But the issue again is how do we apply them? Well, again, oftentimes we need to look at context. Who is speaking? Who has been spoken to? Why have they been spoken to? What's happened previous? Is this part of some sort of culmination of a prophecy? Is this a fulfillment of something? Which is why we bring in though? When? When are these things happening? When the children of Israel are being put out of the land in Jeremiah, he's telling them about it. Where does that come from? Is that a culmination of something? Well, sure. God has stated before, even previous to them, entering the land that He's going to put them out. And why? And then we can go and see. They did exactly what God said they would do and would be the cause for them to be put out. And so it makes sense when we read Jeremiah, we understand what's happening. Now I want to give you guys something, a tool that I think is vitally helpful so that you can understand what's happening when it's happening. Two different timelines that I think will really help you. One, an Old Testament timeline and a New Testament timeline. Notice in the Old Testament timeline, we have things divided up between the chronological books and then we have the complementary books. The chronological books being Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Joshua, and so forth. These are kind of the history, the order of how things are written, even the approximate date. And then we have complementary books to them. So for example, the Book of Exodus, we have complementary books to it, such as Leviticus and Deuteronomy. They also complement Numbers as well. Then we see we have the prophets, which is also important, because sometimes we have divided our prophets into major and minor prophets. We should not do that. What we should in fact do, divide them up or to see who the prophet is prophesying to. So for example, in the Old Testament, we have those two prophets who prophesy to the northern kingdom when the kingdom is divided, that being Amos and Hosea. But then we've got the majority of, or a larger portion, of prophets prophesying to the southern kingdom, to Judah, that being Joel, Micah, Isaiah, Zephaniah, Bacchus, and Jeremiah. What could they possibly be in prophesying to? And then also when were they prophesying to the southern kingdom? Continuing on, we've got those that are prophesying during the exile, those that are prophesying during the restoration. And then we also have those prophets who prophesied to the nations, to the Gentile nations. Nahum, Obadiah, Jonah, that are prophesying or bringing word to God, of God to Jews, but to Gentiles. And then similarly we have the Old Testament timeline. We also have a New Testament timeline that kind of gives us an understanding of when they were written and some of the major events that happened at that time. We see also there's here Paul's, the Pauling Epistles, and we can also see here which doctrinal issues are covered in certain books. I think that's also vitally helpful. We have the General Epistles, the Pauling Epistles, and so forth. And so this helps to understand why. Well, when someone makes a statement that you might see someone who's kind of more progressive who will say that Paul evolved in his understanding of women, and so he would say that I do not permit a woman to teach or have authority over man, but then he'll come back later and say that in a later book that men and women are equal, there's no, there's no difference between or distinction between male or female. And they'll say, see Paul has evolved. The problem is, though, when we look at the chronology of the books when they were written, we'll see that, wait a second, Paul makes a statement about men and women and there being no distinction before he makes the statement that women should not have or could not have authority or a man to teach. And so that would help to nullify some of these spurious arguments that someone might bring up. And so one question needs to be how would the audience have understood this? How did they receive it? Did the writer or the speaker expect them to understand? Well, God had not given a spirit of stupor or had veiled himself in his words or his writings to the people prior to him speaking parables, and so there'd be no reason to believe that God expected them to not believe or to heed his word. He, as a matter of fact, he commanded them to listen to his words. Something else we want to look at and see is, because there is a distinction between Israel and the church, well, which things are for Israel, which things are for the church, which are for both. One way to see is, is there any sort of iteration of this statement after the cross? Meaning, is there a specific command after the cross that's given to everyone? Previous to the cross, tithing was required. Previous to the cross, obeying the Sabbath was required. Previous to the cross, a lot of other things were required. The issue is, were they reiterated, were they spoken to the people after the cross? The reason why that's important is because if these people who had not heard of what was spoken before the cross, how would they have known how to follow God's rules, his ordinances, if they weren't specifically spoken? So the Church of Corinth, the Church of Ephesus, the Church of Philippi, how would they have known to do certain things if they weren't told? And that's the issue. If we see some of the Old Testament commands given, being reiterated in the New Testament, then we can safely say we should go ahead and obey those. For example, have one God that's spoken of in the Old Testament, but it's certainly spoken of in the New Testament. Now, there can be some issues in terms of which one should be applied directly to us. Wouldn't which ones have a secondary application? Which ones we don't apply at all, but we can learn from who's being spoken to. For example, the book of Hebrews is clearly written to Hebrews to Jews, and you'll see a clear Jewish theme from the beginning to the end. It's speaking about how Jews have placed their faith in Christ, but their concern is towards the Old Covenant. Because remember, the majority of their existence has been the Old Covenant and living under the law. And so to move away from that will be difficult. And so he is writing. The writer is writing to comfort them, to let them know that you do not have to go back and worry about what was done in the Old Covenant, because something new has been done. Now he's writing to Jews, but can Gentiles also learn from that? And are there some truths that are given there that are also truths universally? Sure there are. And how we know so is because what's being reiterated as a truth, as a fact, it's also been stated in other books.   Why? Because they were called unclean. The issue is, can we also eat those animals? Or is there a prohibition for us? Well, remember, if we go back and look, the Bible says they are unclean to you. So they couldn't eat certain things because they were unclean to the Jews. However, we see later, specifically with Peter, that he says, do not call what I've cling unclean, or call it uncommon. And then he also adds, if there is prayer or thanksgiving over the food, to which we get our modern day prayer from, saying grace over the food. So we see that that particular prohibition then is no longer in play, at least for us Gentiles. A passage that gets brought up a lot, I bring it up a lot and folks will ask, is this passage just for Israel, such as Ezekiel 36, where he says, I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you will be careful to observe my ordinances. Well, Corey, how does that apply to us as Gentiles? Does it apply? And I would say yes, even though he's speaking specifically to Israel, the issue is, is this reiterated elsewhere? Well, all throughout the Old Testament, it's still reiterated, but it's still about Israel. Jeremiah 32, 39, and 40, him putting his spirit in them, and those who he puts his spirit in, they won't turn away from him, nor would God turn away from them. Well, how then does that apply to us? Well, Jesus brings the same thing up, the same two elements that are brought up in Ezekiel 36, water and spirit are brought up in John 3, about someone being born again. The issues of someone being born and the word that's used, there is also a scribe to Gentiles. Jesus makes his point in John 1, and so whatever he's speaking of, about a person being born of the spirit in John 3, he says, so it is to everyone who has been born of God or born of the spirit. And he speaks about this in John 1, that it's to whoever, those that are believing happens to be those that are born. And we get this John reiterated, he says in John 1, John 5, 1, he says, all the ones that are believing or whoever believes in the Greek, it's the pasta, the pisto, one. So all the ones that are believing that Jesus Christ is born of God. He's the same word being born. And so from there, we can see that even though he's speaking specifically to Israel in Ezekiel and in Jeremiah and in Deuteronomy and other places, he also makes us apply to Gentiles. And so to get an understanding as to how we apply these, we want to see if these things are reiterated. That's one thing we want to look for. How does the writer, who's the writer or who the speaker, who are they speaking to? What's the context? What did he tell them to do? Did he tell them not to do anything? If it's a prohibition, is this prohibition reiterated after or later on to other people? Is this something that was given during the law? If this is an aspect of the law, well then obviously it would not be a tenant going forward unless it is reiterated. And so the question is, does the writer intend for the person that's hearing it, the reader or the audience to understand it? And if so, how so? How did they take it? Because if they took it one way, but then we come back and give an abstract or obscure understanding of it, though we weren't there, now we are imposing ourselves on the text and making ourselves the intended audience when that was not the case. It's true that both of us can gain understanding those who were there originally as well as us. And if there's a difference, we might want to work to reconcile the differences because you and I would agree, it's possible to be in a room full of people, in a world full of billions and speak specifically to one person or to one group and have the other group not being involved or I could speak to one person and have it for everyone. I can speak a universal truth but be saying it to everyone. But it's also possible to have it only intended for that one person even though everyone else hears. And so guys, I hope this helps. All the passages are there for our benefit, for our growth, but all of them are not there for our application for us to use. Now, as we say, there can only be one interpretation. There can be many applications and make sure though that the application that you use is what the Bible is after. If the passage is not for you, well then the only application could be is just to learn from someone else's either growth or someone else's failures. And as Paul tells us, to teach what accords would sound doctrine. Amen.


Here, you can just go over to S-Fan and... over at Rissy. You got it? The dream's over.    Who's this that you're linking up with the S-Man? S-Fan. S-Fan. Hey, Emma. Hey. Do we know an S-Fan? S- E-S-F-A-N-D. TV. I know, it's hard. E-S-S-F-A-N-D. Some people don't know me. E-S-F-A-N-D. S-F-A-N. Yeah. Also, I don't know if you want to be on camera, but I was just like... I don't care. Oh, you don't care? It doesn't matter. Oh, no, we're perfect. Yeah. No, he's good, he's good. Thank you. No. Why do they kick him out? I don't know.  They were literally cool. I don't blame them. Send S-Man clips. S-Man. Wait, what are you guys typing? Why do you guys keep typing S-Man? I don't know who that is. Dude, that's so funny, dude. Dude, why does this always happen to me at TwitchCon? Okay, Chad, we're here at TwitchCon Las Vegas. We're at TwitchCon NA 2023. And I have no idea where my own booth is. The booth I literally own. I have no idea where it is. Does me as have a streamer a Zeus S-Man? This is me. Imagine OTK streamers streaming. Hello? The only consistency we have is NMP in the morning. It's okay. Okay. Are you guys ever going to assume an OTK streamer is going to stream? No. I'm a huge fan. Hey. Can I get a picture? No, can I get a picture? No, can I get a picture? No, but I want a picture of you taking a picture of me getting a picture. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. Yo, I didn't know you were going to be here. I didn't know you were going to be here. I was when you never traveled. Yo, guys. I just want to leave my annex for once. It's great. I was just watching that steak and eggs video of this house tour. It was amazing. It was crazy, dude. It was crazy. Yeah, hey. What's up, dude? Thank you. Come on. Thank you. Wendy, we'll catch up. We'll catch up. It's been Elliott, right? It's been Elliott. There it is. All right. I'll see you guys later. Yeah. Of course. I'll see you later. That's hilarious and terrible. But this is like, there's like four people that will find this funny. Let's go. Okay. I got it. Do whatever pose you want.  Yeah, of course. Chad, look. It's a hammer. Your God is here. We got to go meet with your God. Oh, hey. What's your name? Chad. We're at TwitchCon. We've been at TwitchCon all day. We're in Las Vegas. Yeah, it's crazy. Like my freaking, I'm like kind of fried. But I think what we're going to do is later we're going to hire like about like 20 escorts and we're going to go have a Mario Party tournament. Yeah, it'll be great. And that's it. Actually, that's a great idea. Hire a bunch of escorts, but do like totally normal things with them. It's a great idea. I probably won't do it. Yeah. Chad, I doesn't know my name. So by the way, you'll notice I do this every convention. The first day of every convention I go to, I wear like this shirt with red shorts. And I've done it for years. Hey. So if you look at pictures of me throughout the years, I'm always wearing the same clothes and almost every con picture that I have. Wash tomorrow. Dude, I'm going to bring this back. Dude, this is the OG merch from like six years ago. I'm going to bring it back. Re-release. Okay. I'm opening up the vault. 3D alerts? Wait, 3D alerts? What? It went behind us. Yeah. Wait, that's sick. You can make the elements of your room like really stand out. Oh, sick. And make stuff of it. Because this is same technology, but this is like just custom made. Oh, that's sick. Oh, so what you're doing is okay. So you're doing the same thing that you do with like, for example, like NVIDIA broadcast or whatever where it screens you out. Exactly. Where you're doing that, but you're keeping two images. Exactly. You keep both sides and then place something in between. Yeah. Sick.  I'm about it. Thanks. Hey, chat. We got IRL streams all weekend. BlizzCon in two weeks. BlizzCon IRLs. I'm trying to build something to where we can react to the panels at BlizzCon live. Like, I can sit here, one camera on me, one camera on the screen at BlizzCon or something like that and do like live in person reacts to the panels would be amazing. Yo, deck down there. Hey, yo! That's sick. You got like a hundred of points. What's up, bro? How are you, man? I'm good. I'm good, man. Nice to meet you, bro. Walk around a little bit. Let's get a picture real quick. Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah. Of course, of course. You've been good, man. Yeah, I've been excellent. Yeah, this is my first car. Yeah, yeah. I'm finally happy to see you. Yeah, man. Definitely. Yeah, yeah. How's it been? It's been cool. It's been cool. It's been an experience. When's the last time you've been doing it, man? To BlizzCon? Like any event. 2019. 2019. It's been a while. I've been in the house for a long time. Yeah, yeah. But it's time to get out. Yeah. So I came over here and seen your gamer stuff. So I said, wait a minute.  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I had to see where you were at. Yeah, we're doing stuff with gamer stuffs. Like we're, because we're OTK sponsored by them. And we got like a whole OTK booth. Yeah. So we were out over there for a little bit. Like, I mean, that's like, it's like an OTK umbrella booth. It's like nothing crazy. But like, because we got like mythic talent. We got like a whole bunch of stuff. We got a lot of PCs. I got a question. Yeah. How much caffeine is in the gamer stuffs? It's not that much. I need 300. We'll just take more. I need 300? Just take more. So it's 125 for school? I think it's like 125. Yeah, I need double school. Yeah. I want for a workout fee. Yeah, I just said, because I used to never drink caffeine at all. Except for pre-workout. Like so I would only think I'd go and explode. And I'd think I'd have caffeine. And then over the years, like I'll just like crank Red Bulls and gamer stuffs. And it's mad. Red Bulls put me to sleep, bro. I had to stop drinking when they put me to sleep. Really? When it was sugar. Yeah, so I switched over to um, maybe I could try your stuff. But I switched over to Buck Duff. They have one called Gamer or something. Yeah. But it's got like 330 in it. She's made it out of 9 in it. Yeah. It's not like a deal. So yeah. I'm gonna try it though. Yeah. The gamer stuffs is good. Because like it's good that it's not too much caffeine. Because it's the scoop. So you just take more so you get like a adjustment. That's what I think. And it's a small scoop. So I think they're good. I like them. But yeah. What are you doing? What are you playing?  I'm just kind of lingering. I went up to the market and I should check it out. It's in there. It's my first time. Yeah. Just enjoy it. Let me get your number. Got you. Yeah. I'll see you later. Have a good one. Yeah, see you. I wanted EBA. My friend has a request. Okay. It's a bit of an odd request. We've been going around. He's got Mizkib to do it. XUC to do it. He's on an Austin show and the rest of them. So can you sit on him? Sit on you? Yeah.  No. Well done. Well, he might. If he does, you're not liable. Okay. Okay. Are you not gonna break? Okay. I'm about 300 pounds. Let's get it. Okay. Three. Three. Two. One. Nice. That was nice. You want longer or is that good? I felt like you were bugging me. Can you put your foot on him? Like step on him? Like step on him? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like step on him. Get your whole back. He's got shoot prints on him. Beautiful, beautiful. Definitely. You want to give me a sample? You want to just give me a sound of this guy? I'll be on the other side. Sorry, yeah. Wait, where's the mic?  Okay, ready? I'm gonna go for it. Break. Thanks, dude. Yeah. They come out good. Let's hear it. All right. Break. Break, break, break. Sounds like you're saying dig. Break. Break. Does this mean sale off? Yeah, they freak all the time. What the freak, man? Break. Here, just stand. Just stand so it's right in his face. Yeah. No one knows who I am. No one cares. I see so many people from behind. Yeah. Is this sick? Break. Break. This is true.  Huh? Are there other floors? I don't know, there are, but I don't know how they're doing TwitchCon So like, he's gay? I've been here, I've been here I'm just in this area in this region All of them? Yeah Dude, that was sick Oh yeah That was so good, that's Ari at home YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Twitch, everything is SFanTV So YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Twitch, Discord, Reddit, Xthreads The whole thing, everything is SFanTV Thanks a ton for watching today guys, I hope you guys had a great time We might try and find the party tonight, very good We might, and if I do, I'll go live again What happens?


Plato theory says that the value of a levered firm is equal to the value of a unlevered firm plus the present value of tax savings from debt less the present value of financial distress cost. This means that leverage has both costs as well as benefits. This means also that the leverage is an incentive for the firm to raise the amount of debt in order to exploit tax savings of debt. But it is important to note that the increasing amount of debt can put a firm under the riskiness of default and the firm may need to incur certain financial distress costs. So what are the determining factors of financial distress cost? The first is the probability of financial distress for a firm's inability to meet its debt obligations. This means that this probability increases with the firm's liabilities relative to the amount of firm's assets and this probability of default also increases due to the volatility of the firm's cash flows and its assets value. Now the firms with stable, reliable cash flows can use a higher amount of debt and may have a very low probability of default. The second factor is the magnitude of the distress cost that depends upon its relative importance. For example, the knowledge-based firms with specialized human capital may incur higher costs of financial distress when due to the potential for loss for customers and the need to hire and retain their skilled and key persons. The third factor is the discount rate that is used for distress costs and this discount rate depends upon the firm's market risk. The present value of distress cost will be higher for the firm that have higher beta. So what is the optimum level of leverage under the presence of financial distress cost? We have seen that the value of a levered firm is equal to the value of unlevered firm plus the present value of financial distress, present value of tax shields and less the present value of financial distress cost. This means that the value of levered firm varies with the level of the amount of permanent debt the firm has in its capital structure and with no debt the value of the firm is simply equal to the value of unlevered firm and for low level debt the default risk remains at the lower level. Rising leverage means that the interest rate, the amount of interest payment will be also higher and resulting tax shield from that higher amount of interest payments will be more higher to the firm. Assuming there is no financial distress cost then the firm value would continue to increase until the interest expense goes beyond the earnings before and tax of the firm. This means that the tax shield will no more be available to that particular firm. Financial distress cost reduces the value of the levered firm because this reduction increases with the probability of default that increases with the level of the debt the firm has in its capital structure. The trade off theory allows a firm to increase leverage to that level where the value of this particular firm is maximized. This means that at that particular point the tax savings from increasing leverage are just offset by the increased probability of increasing the financial distress cost. This means that the trade off theory allows a firm to increase leverage to a point where the present value of the tax shield of using debt are equal to the present value of the cost of financial distress. On the screen we are seeing a graph and that graph shows that increase in debt can increase the tax benefit means tax shield until the interest expense goes beyond the firm's habit. This increase in debt also increases the probability of default and the present value of financial distress cost. We see that at optimal level of debt these two effects balance out each other and the levered value is then maximized and if the firm has higher financial distress cost then it is better for the firm to keep its debt at lower level. Now to determine the optimal debt level we have an example we see that there is a company Greenleaf that is going to add 35 million amount as debt in its capital structure. The firm sees that the tax shield benefits may be exploited at the tax rate of 15%. The higher debt may expose to the risk of the financial distress of the firm. The firm has expected certain estimates of its future cash flows at certain debt level that reaches from 0 to 35 million so we have certain level of debt and we have corresponding level of present values of interest tax shields similarly we have the corresponding values of present value of financial distress cost in line with the debt levels. Now if we compute to determine this net benefit of that debt we need to deduct the present value of financial distress cost from the present value of interest tax shield. Now for all level of debt we have the net benefit and we see that for the debt level of 20 million dollars we have the higher amount of net benefit that is 2.62 million. So this is the level of debt that can be determined as the optimal debt choice for the firm because at this level of debt the firm has highest net benefit which is 2.62 million so in this particular case the optimal debt choice a firm can go for is the use of 20 million dollar as debt in its capital structure.


Oh, the weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful. You don't know where is it? Yeah. And since there's no place to go, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. There we go. There you go. Happy holidays. Happy holidays.


Abstract solar-driven interfacial evaporation is an emerging technology for water desalination. Vinyl trimethoxalane, VTMOS, was used to create a single molecular unit that could be combined with bacterial cellulose, BC, fibrous networks to form robust aerogel structures with distinct wetting properties. These aerogels were then used to construct a double-layered evaporator for water desalination. The evaporator achieved high water evaporation rates of 1.91 and 4.20 kg M2H1 under laboratory and outdoor solar conditions, respectively. Additionally, the aerogel evaporator demonstrated unprecedented lightweight, structural robustness, long-term stability under extreme conditions, and excellent salt resistance, making it an ideal solution for water desalination. This article was authored by Qingjian Su, Meng Yu Gao, Shao Shao Yu, and others.