to recording so also welcome back for everyone on youtube um and on moodle of course if you can't watch it live yes stoker for all is still awake good good good so i'm not doing this just by myself so we'll go through the overview so um that's it for the whole lecture series most waiting for one of the most important parts of the lecture what's the most important part the the overview could be but uh it's just going through the old lectures and just highlighting what i think is important so all right let's go then so what do you need to study everything on the slides as well as the pdf um about the mixed models so of course there's a lot of slides and not everything is as important but remember that if i feel really sneaky i could come up with really difficult questions about some of the slides so if it's not on this slide it doesn't mention that it's it doesn't mean that it's not on the exam it's just less likely to be on the exam but everything on the slides is fair game so just read the slides and um read the pdf there will be at least one question about the pdf just to make sure that you guys read it um so lecture one um we had a short overview of history um there will definitely be a question about history i like history um so we talked about things like the ankytera mechanism about computers um about famous people in computer science like people like uh are a loveless um so know the people know what they did know what the first computer was um and these kinds of things there will probably be like one or two warm up questions um that just ask some history about computers or history about famous people in computer science uh why are there's a slide that mentions like seven different reasons why you want to use are right it's a it's a good programming language it has built in graphics it has built in linear models and statistics um it has a difference between factors and numeric values um and it it can deal with matrices and vectors very easily um so there will probably be a question like name three reasons why you should use are and again i can't stress this enough if i am asking for three reasons you can mention one reason two reasons or three reasons but not four reasons so there the number mentioned in the question is always the upper bound don't go over it because then the whole answer is wrong so just just to be extra clear about that um if we talked about using ours a calculator so be aware that something like euclidean division exists right euclidean division is just how many times does a number fit wholly into another number right so 22 and 7 7 fits three times in 22 and then there is one remainder left because three times seven is 21 and and then we still have one thing left so one item left which we could not distribute know about the built-in constants so you have months that abbreviation you have the the years and and these kinds of things so there's a lot of built-in constants in r so if there's a question like how is the built-in constant for pi call then you have to say well this is pi with a capital p we talked about data types and we did the little quiz in the first lecture right where you guys get to shout numeric character factor that will definitely be in the exam i like making questions like that where i try to trick you guys as much as i can and you have to kind of see through all of the things in the question and say well this is going to lead to a numeric value furthermore indexing of vectors and matrices happens by square brackets and in matrices the first element that you specify is the row and the second element is the column and this of course is very similar to the apply function where the margin of one means the rows and a margin of two means the column so it is very consistent we also talked a little bit about variables so know what a variable is and how you can use it lecture two we talked more about variables and then also we started talking about control structures so be able to write like a little if statement right if i say write an if statement to compare if a number is higher than 25 and lower than 75 and then you have to be able to write down saying if x smaller or larger than 25 and so ampersand ampersand x smaller than 75 know that the switch statement is a very similar statement to the if statement but that the switch allows you to switch on on multiple things right so if numeric if character if in in one statement furthermore we have the while loop and the for loop so both of them loop but the nice thing about the while loop is is that you don't have to know how often it loops the for loop you have to know beforehand how many rows of the matrix there are or how many columns there are right then you can use a for loop because you're starting from one to something or from a hundred to something but if you don't know how often something needs to occur then you're forced to use a while loop like we saw for example in the question with the with the Fibonacci numbers right we don't know when the Fibonacci numbers are going to be bigger than a million so we can't use a for loop we have to say while the number is smaller than a million continue otherwise stop right so the nice thing about a for loop is is that you can use it and it's very easy and it's easier to write than a while loop but the limitation of a for loop is that beforehand you need to know how often you are going to go through the loop well for a while loop you have no such restriction know what the difference is between a statement and an expression so an expression is something which assigns something to a variable while a statement is something that evaluates to true or false right it's if statement do expression right so if x smaller than a hundred yes so then x smaller than a hundred is the statement and then the expression might be well if it's smaller than a hundred add a hundred so x is x plus a hundred right and that is then an expression we talked about a little bit in lecture two already about advanced looping so know how to write an apply function and also know that apply one means apply to the rows and then apply two means apply to the columns so that the the margin the parameter called margin is specifying which dimension you want to apply to we have l apply for when we want to apply to a list for example select pad like we saw select the third element for each element of the list we talked about functions about a little bit about theory about functions and about scope and that you should not read and that everything which you need for a function to work should be an input parameter a function is only allowed to return one thing and some other things about scope where we said well if you have a big variable in your r-session then it is sometimes okay to refer to this directly from within the variable or from within the function but generally you don't want to do that generally you want to have a function being a self-contained unit meaning that you never reference a variable which is not an input variable of the function we talked about escaping so escaping is the process on which you use the backslash to print for example a backslash in a character right so if I have a character string then sometimes I need to use the the enter key which is slash n sometimes I want to include a tab which is slash t and these things always make for fun questions so there will definitely be a sentence that you guys need to escape so that you can write this to a file we talked a little bit about randomness in lecture number two so randomness know that I can use our UNIF for random numbers from a uniform distribution I can use our norm for random numbers from a normal distribution and I can use our poise for random numbers from a Poisson distribution and also know to give an example of a distribution right so if I ask you guys what is the classical example of a normal distribution then you guys have to say well it's when you throw darts at a dartboard right because if you throw darts at a dartboard you're always aiming for the middle but you're not always hitting the middle so you get kind of a normal distribution around the bullseye right most of the arrows will be relatively close to the bullseye but some of them will be spread further apart and of course if I'm randomly throwing a thousand arrows at a dartboard then these will kind of spread out in a normal distribution and for each of these we had an example in lecture number two lecture number three is about reading data so know that there is a function called read table also read comma separated file here the main thing is that you know most of the parameters right so how to set a separator how to set the decimal point how to specify that there's a header or that there are row names in column number three furthermore we have of course the read lines and the read bin function so read lines allows you to just read lines from a file so hey if you don't have a comma separated file but just something like laura ipsum yeah so just some text or some text from a book like the bible you can read that in using read lines if you want to read binary files like BMP files we had the example of how to use the read bin function to read binary file also in lecture three we have substating of data so know how to use the in statement and the which has all like selecting three columns from a matrix you can use column names of the matrix in and then you specify the three column names that you want also know how to use the subset function so that you can use subset of the matrix and then say column number five needs to be lower than four and then select column number one and 17 from the matrix yeah so the subset function allows you to make subsets of your data which can be really useful depending on what you want to do writing they can of course be done by the write table function but you can also use the cut function so the cut function directly prints to a file and allows you to put other data than matrices in in a in a file while the write table is really focused on writing a a table so a two-dimensional structure in lecture three we also talked about biomark so biomark is this connector tool which allows you to directly query biological databases from r and it has a certain amount of concepts like what is a mark so a mark is a connection to a database an attribute is something that you can retrieve from the database a filter is something that it allows you to specify what you are going to give to the database for searching and values are then elements that you are searching for right so an attribute that i might want to retrieve might be is this gene on the positive strand or on the negative strand the filter that i'm going to use might be gene name and then the value might be bbs7 as the gene that i want to search for so three different terms or terminology know the terminology and know what the difference is between an attribute a filter and a value in lecture number four we talked about universe variate versus bivariate analysis and we had a whole bunch of examples of a univariate more or less statistics or kentzal so have we talked about central tendencies what is the mean what is the median what is the mode when we are computing the mean know that there are three different types of mean like the the the arithmetic mean the subcontrary mean and and the harmonic mean we talked about dispersion so what is the range of the data what are the different quantiles we talked a little bit about spread like variance and standard deviation and we talked about shape especially in the context of a normal or a Gaussian distribution so and know when a when a normal distribution is skewed and that kurtosis is kind of the squeezing or the the pulling of the of the normal distribution right so if i have a normal distribution and i i i i press it down like that i'm i'm making a plotty kirtic normal distribution while if i'm pulling it up then it's it's lepto kirtic because then it has kind of positive it's it's too high in middle we also talked about plots here so how you can do a box plot a histogram or an image if you want to have a 2d plot like a heat map kind of plot and here also we talked about the par so par allows you to set all kinds of plotting options like the margin the text the font size and and the font family and these kinds of things furthermore in lecture number five we talked about the classes of objects and that you can define something which is called an s3 class and that you can have default functions when you make your own objects right so i can i can use this attribute or the attribute class of a variable to make this variable special right to to give this variable its own kind of summary function or its own print function or its own plot function and this is very useful when you are designing packages because then you generally make kind of a custom data structure where in for example you make a list and in the first element of the list you store the genotypes and then in the second element of the list you have all of the phenotypic values and then in item number three of the list there is a list or a matrix which has all of the different covariates right and then if this if you then assign a class to this object then you can use it to define a custom plot function so when i call plot on my own object that i just created then instead of calling the standard plot functions it will call my plot function so that it it just looks better know that when we are plotting that we are following the artist palette model right so we start off with an empty canvas and then we add things to that canvas one by one so have we for example do some dots and then we do some lines and then we do some arrows but this all goes from the back to the front so everything is over plotted like someone painting right the you paint the background and then you you do a little bit in the foreground and then a little bit further in the foreground so it's very similar to the bob ross paintings going from the back all the way to the front and our works the same way in lecture number five we also talked about important plot parameters like cx pch and so for the magnification and the type of point that you're using we also talked about different functions that are related to plotting like adding lines and points and text and titles and axis we also talked very quickly about the width function so the width function allows you to take a matrix and then instead of having to say matrix square bracket open comma name of the column square bracket close you can say width matrix and then you can directly use the column name as if it were a variable we also talked a little bit about what makes a good plot so if you think about a plot then it should of course have a description on the x-axis and on the y-axis it should mention units every symbol in the plot needs to have an explanation there needs to be a main so a title to the plot has so there's a lot of kind of little rules when you make a plot for publication and remember that in R you generally make two plots you make one for publication on paper and you make a plot for lectures or PDFs and those have different requirements because things that you can do on a publication you can sometimes not do on a PowerPoint presentation just because of the colors not printing well or the other way around all right in lecture six we talked about the common microarray workflow right so that we had that we start off by extracting RNA then we make DNA from it and then we add colors like psi three and psi five then we put all of this into a machine that scans the intensities of the different colors and then we do steps like normalization and so where we then make sure that the average of every microarray is the same just so that we can compare between microarrays that have been done on different days and of course normalization is there to get rid of unwanted variants that might occur because of different temperatures or other little factors which change we talked about log ratios so a log ratios of course when you have an intensity of the green channel divided by the intensity of the red channel and then you take the log two of that to make sure that when you take a step of one unit up that that is the same step as going one unit down right because two divided by one is two and one divided by two is half and of course these are not symmetrical right going from one to two is a bigger step than going from one to half and you can take the log two to prevent this from happening so by taking the log two you go from one becomes zero half becomes minus one and two becomes positive one so now it's symmetrical again because now if you step from one to two so from zero to one you have a step of one and if you stop from a step from one to half you have a step of minus a half but in logarithmic terms you have a step of minus one so the log ratios allow you to have a symmetrical distribution on the top as well as on the bottom we talked about t-tests and the assumptions underlying a t-test right so that both distributions are a normal distribution and that both of the that both of the groups have the equal variance and I also showed you how to change this so hey if you don't have equal variance you can do well's t-test if you have equal variances then you can do the student t-test and that just works by specifying different parameters um next slide in dutch all right that will probably be one of the last slides I do in dutch so that's good uh we talked about correlation so what is correlation what is the difference between Pearson correlation and Spearman correlation and so Pearson correlation has the assumption that it is a normal distribution while Spearman correlation does not have the normal distribution assumption it just it uses the rank of the numbers to do the computation we talked about multiple testing so because we always want to be certain about the things that we stay in statistics or at least we want to be 95 percent certain we need to compensate for this fact when we do hundreds or tens of thousands of tests as is common in microarrays right with a microarray you measure 20 000 genes in a genome so when we do a standard t-test then of course we would have many false positives if we would not correct for multiple testing so we talked about type one errors um where you say that something is different uh no a type one errors when you say that something is not different but it is while a type two errors when you say that something is not different while it is anyway just look it up on the slides type one and type two errors know the difference type one errors can be uh prevented using Bonferroni correction type two errors can be prevented using Benjamini-Hochberg correction um and also there are two sources of free microarray data mentioned in in lecture six um so i might ask you guys about where you can get free microarray data in case you want to analyze some free data okay so uh collision number seven went over algorithms so uh algorithm is is a uh a coke recipe and you take out every step so and the nice thing about an algorithm is that you have a beginning and then you have a lot of steps and in the end you get into the end and you always get there so an algorithm is a coke recipe and if you follow the steps then you always get the answer and this answer is always valid um besides that we also talked about design patterns and design patterns are algorithms that are often used by a lot of people and that's why it kind of became the standard problem approach uh because for example how do i log in on a website uh that's something that has been done a hundred thousand times by ten thousand different programmers so we know in between exactly how you have to arrange the log in on a website uh besides that we also talked about functions so we talked about what recursion is so recursion is a function that is called itself if we have recursion we need an invariant and an invariant is something that uh continues to go up or continues to go down and in the end the invariant touches the base case so the base case is the is the situation where we know the answer directly um and besides with recursion we normally go into an iterative process uh where we say well if we know x is zero um what how do we get to x is zero if we have x plus one and if we have x plus two how do we get to x plus one so we always go with the invariant we always go from 100 down or go from 100 up um but we always step when we have the base case reached so the the the the the uh the precision where we know exactly oh now it's the answer one or two or three but that's a fixed answer indirect recursion we also talked about and indirect recursion is when you have a function that calls another function that calls the original function so then you still have the function that calls itself but that doesn't happen directly but it happens indirectly through another function all right so in in english so lecture seven we talked about algorithms so algorithms are a cooking recipe um and they start and so a cooking recipe is something to where you have a a starting position then you have a fixed amount of steps and then you end up in a final state and if you follow the algorithm you always end up in the same final state so you start off with the same beginning state and then you take the exact same step so it's just following a certain cooking recipe and there's a lot of these algorithms out there and when an algorithm is used by a lot of people then we call it the design pattern so a design pattern is nothing but a solved problem right so a solved problem can be how to log into a website there's been literally hundreds of thousands of people who thought about it and of course nowadays we just have a standard approach on how to log into a website and this is then called a design pattern so it's not a algorithm in the sense that it is written down in a programming language but it's more a systematic approach on how would you implement this in a programming language for example log into a website we also talked about functions like what is recursion so recursion is a function calling itself when we do recursion we have something which is called the recursion invariant and the recursion invariant is the thing that always goes up or goes down towards the base case so the base case is the case where for example x is zero so we directly know why right so we have an answer when this is our input and then recursion is nothing more than kind of an iterative process saying well if we know the answer to x how do we now go from x plus one back to x or how do we go from x plus two to x plus one to x right and that's this is what the invariant does the invariant always gradually increases towards the base case or it always gradually decreases from where we start down to the base case and as soon as it hits the base case it will kind of walk up the stack count up all of the things that we need and it will give us the answer indirect recursion is the same thing as recursion it's just when you have an intermediate function right we have function one calling function two and function two calls function one again so it is recursing right because we call the same function again but there's an indirect step because it doesn't directly call itself but indirect and that's why it's called indirect recursion so in lecture number eight we talked a lot about how to create your own R package I still think this is one of the most useful skills that you can have as an R programmer because it generally leads to a lot of kind of shared author pertinent publications and where you can just say well you wrote the code I will write the package and then we will publish a really nice software paper besides the analysis paper that you already published so what do you need to create a package well be aware that you need to have R and if you're on windows that you need R tools besides that everything is about structure right it it's just a folder where you have a certain name of the folder and then a certain type of file going in there right so you have the month folder for manuals you have the r folder for r scripts you have the data folder for data and the src folder for external scripts like c or c++ or forthrom know that there are two required files you have to have a description file describing your package right what is the name which version are you using and who are you who's the author and you have the namespace and the namespace file is kind of the file which tells R which functions are exported by my package so which functions and R is my package offering to the user besides that you have a couple of special files so you have the your package name minus package that are data which is kind of the global help file right the entry point to the help and then you have the internal file which lists all of the internal functions so those are functions which are required by your package but which you generally not be called by the user of the package so things which you use internally but the user should not use because the user should just use the provided functions in lecture nine we talked about regression we've been talking a lot about regression but have we talked about what is a regression model what are the different variables in this model so have what what regression is is getting an estimate for these unknown parameters also known as beta these betas belong to the independent variables right so if i have five independent variables x1 to x5 then i will be estimating five different betas as well so the x the predictor is called the independent variable and the response is called the dependent variable and the response is the phenotype or thing that we are interested in well the x are either nuisance variables in which we are not interested in but we need to compensate for it or it is the variables that we have measured and we now want to see if they are predictive of why so we talked about single linear regression and then i also showed you guys how you can calculate your confidence interval yourself and that you can use like the vis-rech package to do a visualization of the 95 confidence interval but we also talked about creating some plots showing regression ourselves where we do like the upline in the plot and also how to visualize things like residuals we also talked a little bit in lecture nine about multiple linear regression that is just when you have more than one x so you have x1 x2 and x3 measured and for example i want to compensate for the height the body weight the length of their ears and the number of tails that someone has and then we are doing multiple linear regression where we have multiple of these independent variables explaining or kind of combined predicting our dependent variable and i also talked how to do quadratic regression in r remember that you have to use the i the capital i identity function around quadratic and and other arguments right so if i have an argument time to the power of two so that i type time and then the roof the axiac and then two but i have to surround this with this capital i for making or telling the regression that this is a quadratic term and not just to do the things to power of two and then use that in lecture 10 we have the linear mixed effect analysis so know what a random effect is know why we should do mixed effect analysis this is of course because power in regression only comes from independent measurement so measuring the same individual 20 times does not give you additional statistical power so you can use a mixed effect model to kind of bring this structure into your analysis so if your analysis is having for example 10 individuals which are repeatedly measured about five times across different time points then you can then you have to use linear mixed effect analysis to tell the model that there is groups in your data so groups which are not independent from each other for example i have measured time series data or i have the same individual measure 10 times so i told you guys how to do that in r also how to get the significant and of course we talked a little bit about what the difference is between a random intercept model where each group is allowed to have their own intercept with the x-axis right so the x-axis where x is or to have their own intercept with the y-axis so at the position where x is zero every group is now allowed to have their own mean for example in mice i always think about when mice are born then the total amount of weight is more or less a constant right a mouse can give birth to around 10 grams of new mice but of course if it only gets five babies every baby will be two grams right so then every individual has an intercept of two at time point zero while if the mouse only got three babies then of course all of these three babies on average are like 3.3 grams so they are allowed to have their own intercept so at x equals zero the y's are allowed to vary we also talked about the random slope model and the random slope model is is different in that sense is that every group is allowed to have their own kind of own kind of beta right so not the intercept is different for each group but the beta for each group might be different for example have females might have a wider range of voice than males and of course that that that then leads to a different slope when you have multiple questions in different tones so know to know how these models are written down know what the idea behind a mixed effect analysis is and know that that the mixed effect analysis is there to tell the model that no i don't have a thousand measurements independent measurements i only have 200 measurements or 200 independent data points which are measured five times right and in the end i still have then a thousand measurements but there is a grouping so five measurements belong to a single individual and of course be aware that the pdf is part of this lecture and then the last lecture which we had today know the difference between linear models right so that's lecture nine lm er's that's lecture 10 and then today we had glms so a glm is a standard linear model but now the response doesn't have to be a continuous normal distribution so it can also be a binary variable saying healthy sick or pass fail right or we can use a Poisson distribution where we say we've measured the amount of bees on a flower yeah often there's zero also often there's one but then sometimes there's two sometimes there's three and almost never there's five bees on a single flower right so the glm function allows you to have response variables of a different type so continuous versus versus counter data versus binary zero one i told you about the vault test so the vault test in a glm allows you to summarize multiple effects into a single p value because if you do a glm then the factor variable gets treated more or less like in independent beta so every beta gets its own p value but often you want to know what is the combined effect of all of these different groups and then you can use a vault test to group multiple coefficients multiple beta coefficients together to get a single p value on how the group of measurements or how the group of or the levels combined influence the result i told you about melting versus costing so going from white format to long format and going from long format to white format going from white to long is called melting and going from long to white is called casting and be able to recognize a matrix as well right so if i give you a matrix with five columns no to recognize if it is in long format or if it is in white format and of course know the idioms that we talked about so hey if i if i ask you guys well here is a function which assigns season two months what is wrong with it then you have to say well this doesn't convert the months it converts the days so but be able to answer questions about the different idioms that we that i showed you guys today all right then for me there's only one thing left to say and that's good luck on the exam of course next week we will have the your own choice lecture which will be totally in the style of pandemic edition three so the way that we're going to do the lectures next year and i wish you all very very good luck on the exam like i'm hoping that everyone will pass in one go and that everyone gets a 1.3 or higher that would be the ideal situation for me because then i don't have to do any re-exams be aware the exam is long there will be 42 questions so make sure to just continue working if you don't know one of the answers just skip it for now and just go to the next questions because there will be a lot of questions also be aware that there will be a drawing question so there will always be a drawing question related to my birthday all right so any remarks feedback so far did you guys like the course did you hate the course do you feel that you've learned something are you feeling more confident about programming in r like any and all feedback is welcome if you say don't stream from holland again because the audio is just horrible then that's also feedback so it's up to you guys what you want to say all right one question are we going to write the exam on a paper or on a computer so you are going to write the exam on paper you are going to photograph the papers and then send them to me when the exam is over and then you will take your papers put them in an envelope and send them to me physically because i do need to have the physical exams in the end so but yeah the idea is that you guys will be monitored via zoom and i will put the exam questions online and then do you need to see my fingers on the cam well no i i i don't know do i need to see your fingers on cam i'm not sure about that but i enjoyed your refreshing teaching style the assignments were too challenging for me maybe solving them together in a computer room and you need to solve this problem yeah that i think is the main problem of the uh online lectures normally what we would do right is we would be on uh on on thursday we would start at two i would do my lecture like two hours and then we would have two hours of sitting together um and working on the assignments so generally hey you guys would split up into groups of two or three people and then you can also discuss with each other and that's the thing i think that is really uh missing because now you're home alone and you have to do the assignments alone you can't directly ask for help um which i think is is a drawback to the digital system but it's something that i can't really solve right you're not allowed yet to enter the university although it might be now but um it it's one of these things that i don't i don't like like the doing the assignments together um no is referring to the question by my name is mausie i don't know perhaps she has very beautiful fingers and that's why she wants to show them on cam like it's it's not illegal to show them what is the reason for writing on paper i need to have a physical copy that's the only reason it's germany so i need to be able to have a physical thing so that in two years when people ask me like did this student really do the exam that i can pick up the physical piece of paper and show yes my name is mausie did the exam and here is the exam so that is why we're doing it on paper right any more questions um last year we actually did a mock exam um if people really want to have like a mock exam or we try it in my uni they are using shiny formula thing for our exam yeah yeah you can do an programming exam in many different ways um this is just like the humble needs me to have a physical thing and if i don't have a physical thing then i need to have like uh because we we are allowed to do oral exams right so in theory we could have oral exams but then i need to have a second graduate who is in the room and i need to have someone who makes a protocol and then both me this second guy and the student need to sign the protocol for it to be it's just a humbled university they they're a little bit difficult when it comes to these things um but of course the nice thing about doing it on paper is you can also do the drawing and drawing is much nicer on paper than it is on computer uh this is laban Swissenschaft and of course this is physical in a certain way i guess yes yeah yeah yeah so i that's i that's the only requirement i think that they have is that in the end like i can give you your credit points when i have a physical proof that you did the exam and pass the exam um but yeah but if you guys want we can we can do a quick mock exam next week after the fishy data lecture um then we just hop on zoom for everyone who wants to kind of figure out how to do it and then we just have like two or three questions that you guys can do and i can supervise and watch my he-man things while you are doing the exam i don't think any of you guys know how who he-man is actually still sold sometimes anyway that's more or less how we're going to do it so and uh that's why you also have two right you have two chances to do the exam so we will also do the drawing by hand on paper but and not on r right yes yes it will just be pen and paper um you will just be sitting there answering the questions and then the last question will be a drawing question um so make a really really nice drawing for me to decide if you are worthy to get the additional points but yeah in theory it's just going to be a standard exam it's just that it's not going to be in person it's just i'm going to watch you guys via zoom instead of walking past your desks and looking sneakily if anyone does the cheating all right any more questions any more remarks any more feedback oh i had an additional question slide all right that's not the case then um thank you guys so much for being here and attending mostly of almost all of the 11 lectures like i see the same names come up a lot um i will be very interesting to see you guys because you've seen me a lot i think like probably like 40 hours in total already um so it will be interesting for me to see you guys um and like i said before i wish you the best of luck during the exam and um next week be sure to attend the fishy fishy data lecture because i spend a lot of time on it making making it look really really beautiful and probably something like this is going to be the third edition of the lecture so next year it will all be in this style i hope if i get all of the slides transformed from what i have now to these kinds so it will be drawing and and looking more beautiful i hope all right then 448 we're perfectly on time thank you for watching and we will see each other next week and otherwise i will see you guys on the exam so thanks for watching and see you soon


Welcome to English at the Movies, where we teach you American English heard at the movies. Today's phrase is cooked up from the movie Jurassic World. Let's take a look. We just went and made a new dinosaur? Probably not a good idea. Almost 40 feet high, really think she climbed out. It depends. On what? What kind of dinosaur they cooked up in that lab? So what does that mean, cooked up? Something you overcooked or something you planned to do? Let's listen again and see if you are correct. We just went and made a new dinosaur? Probably not a good idea. Almost 40 feet high, really think she climbed out. It depends. On what? What kind of dinosaur they cooked up in that lab? Cooked up means something you planned to do or something you made. If you are cooking up something, it usually is not something good. It could be illegal or at least dishonest. In this movie, they created a new dinosaur in the lab. A very dangerous one. And that is English at the Movies. I'm Ann Ball. I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.


Welcome to the evening sessions at NO, and we have a first speaker that is Willowbrew here. She is talking about weaponized social. Willowbrew is currently working with Vulpine Blue, where she helps coordinate distributed teams, and she's previously worked with humanitarian and digital response and has a vast experience in those fields. What you'll be talking about today is something very interesting. We've always talked about protocols for code. We've always talked about what are the ethics for code, but have we talked about interactions? No. Now she's going to talk about weaponized social, a way for social interactions to be protocolized. Hey, thanks. Oh, a big round of applause before she begins. I'm especially excited because Meredith is here, and she's the other, actually probably lifted even more on this project than I did, so I'm excited that you're here. So stick figures. I posted the link to the Prezi, which is what we'll be using here on my Twitter, so if you want to follow along later, you can. I like stick figures. So I'm interested in this question of what does equality look like? And as we do more and more things on the internet, we can look at more and more of our interactions. And we've always had access to some data, but there are questions of is equality in our access to resources? Is equality in the incidence of violence or lack thereof towards people? See, there's a little bruise on this one now. Is it in the way that we speak to each other? And it's in all of these things, but how do we know if we're getting there? So right now we know we have a lot of inequality in the world, and it's in things like where the gap in gender wages comes from. And I just read a fascinating book. If you or anyone you know is of the mindset of women do different sorts of work and it's not worth the same amount or whatever else, the history of marriage talks about how people used to get married as a business transaction, and you could love a lot of different people, but love inside the marriage was actually not a super good thing to do. And then in those business transactions, the women did certain kinds of work most of the time, but as we shifted into capitalism, the roles of the man going outside of the house were the ones that got more and more paid, and so the work of the women was less and less valued in this new system of economy. So it's really interesting, but if you want to know about the history of inequality, we should read more history. There's also inequality in where violence happens. So this might be on an individual level, or it might be at a more systemic level. I'm bringing these up because there are patterns in inequality, which is what we need to start looking at in order to address them, right? We need to know where to focus our energies in order to have the positive impacts on the world that we would like. So this is intimate partner violence. It's one person against another, but we also have systemic violence. This is the... I don't like this graph for a number of reasons. One is that they have named Latino as a race, Hispanic as a race, and that's your ability to speak Spanish, you're of a Spanish-speaking people, but that's fine. But we have this over-representation of non-whites in the prison system, right? And liberals built the prison system as it is now, and now it is systemically affecting some people more than others. We need to address that, right? We need to think about the patterns that we're a part of. So, how do we measure and increase and maintain equality? Lesig talks about four fulcrums for social change, markets, laws, social norms, and architecture. We like to talk a lot about markets. If it's good for us, they'll buy it, right? One of the difficulties of open-source software and Libre is dealing with markets and how we fit in, also how we pay ourselves as activists. Laws are not something I'm really going to get into here. I'm a terrible anarchist because I like law as the externalization of values of society. We expect people to adhere to certain ways of interacting. It's the enforcement part I'm not super keen on. But the thing that I want to get into here are the social norms and architecture. And while we can measure markets pretty easily because we know what people are buying and where money is going, we can track that more and more, and laws we're able to externalize and document, architecture and its effects on us and social norms are really difficult to measure. How would you do that? So while we have ways of measuring violence in some ways, not always, and we have ways of measuring income disparity as two examples, we don't have a way of really figuring out how social interactions are going. So there are these things called social scripts, which dates back in sociology to the study of human sexuality and the way that we know how to woo someone of our preferred gender if we're into wooing people is we've been surrounded by media and our parents and our friends, and we know that at least in the U.S. you might flirt a little bit and you try to get a phone number and you go out for coffee and then you hold hands and then you might kiss and there's this progression that we know about, right? But it's not the same in every culture in what is considered the most intimate changes. And so that's a script that we're following. So weaponized social, I'll get to that in just a second. Meredith put it incredibly well, so I'm just going to read this to you because that's terrible, is the existing harms of social scripts we ran while in smaller geographically constrained groups are being amplified due to network effects. Tiny unchecked errors scale become large harms as people find ways to exploit them in life just as in software. Does this make sense? Mesh, tiny nods? Okay. So we have a wiki, of course, because wikis, and there's a heart for Meredith because she's great. Okay, so we don't even have ways of understanding social interactions at the scale that we have now. We're running into all of these ethical issues around Facebook and other things because social scientists have never had data sets this big. Our sample sizes have always been so small that we struggle with statistical significance. And so our field has not progressed that much. So we don't have a lot of research or frameworks to work from in how to deal with things like d-dossing and doxing and other things in the social dynamics of that. Here's a proposed framework. It pulled it from a disaster and humanitarian response work, which is what I do most of the time. And there's a four-part cycle, which is preparedness. I live in San Francisco, so I have a go bag that waits by the door, so when there's the next earthquake, I have a decent pair of shoes and some extra clothes and some snacks and things like that. I am prepared, I have water. Response is what's going to happen after the earthquake or after the rubble or being pulled out myself. Recovery is after all of the aftershocks have passed, then we start rebuilding, right? And then mitigation is retrofitting buildings such that they don't collapse in the same way during an earthquake. It's changing the actual infrastructure so that the damage that is caused is different. So this is the framework that we've applied to this. I'll explain some more. So first, we have this thing where the extreme event in online space is not an earthquake. It's not the planet coming after us or us building in terrible places that we shouldn't live but are lovely like San Francisco. Hello, tiny spider. So on the wiki, we've broken down into these different components of what does the extreme event even look like. Then we get into preparedness and this is what a lot of InfoZack is based around, is how do you lock down your accounts, et cetera. So this was our first event in New York. It's Meredith and TQ on the laptop. Super fun. And so this is in how do you prepare against it? So how do you try to make safe space if that's a thing you want to do? How do you support people who are being activists? Do we even want to use codes of conduct? Like questions like that and if they're doing the work that we think that they should be doing. And also a personal reflection of how to critique me. Then we get into response. So the second event hosted was in Nairobi and we started thinking about how do people respond to online attacks or to large-scale social incidents online? So self-aware checklists, something bad is happening. I'm going to pause and think about if I'm actually making this worse or better, et cetera. Then we get into recovery. So what happens after social aspects have been weaponized? There's nothing here. We did a fair amount of research in a lot of different spaces and countries, et cetera. And if your online reputation gets sacked for something, there's no coming back from it. Like you change your name, right? And this is really concerning. If something goes poorly, we're not taking care of our people after the fact. We should fix that. And then we have mitigation. We also had a session in San Francisco that focused on mitigation. We hadn't planned that it was going to follow this cycle. It just kind of happened that way, which I find really fascinating. But we didn't take any pictures in San Francisco because we were so excited to build things. And I'm really proud of this work because it starts getting into how do we change the ways that we interact online such that these social harms are reduced but are not quashing anyone's ability or desire to speak. Does that make sense? Because it's not a choice between what you can say and who you can say it to. You should be able to say what you want to say. The freedom of expression does not have to be at odds with people's sense of safety and ability to participate. So we're talking about shifting social norms through architecture. Oh, I'm going to tell you about one of my favorite Slack channels that I'm a part of, which this is the graph of users added. So female-identified people are on the bottom, and so we've pushed to have gender equity and we've done a little bit better over time. So this is another version of that graph. But even though it's still slightly overrepresented for men, they do most of the talking. And so we notice this pattern. Like, what can we change about the expectations of communication in order to get these a little bit better? And we have... We're working on a couple of different options, but I want to tell you a story about how... No, I'm going to get there in a second. So here are things that we could be measuring in order to see if equality is happening in our communities. What does that mean? And are these the numbers that we want to be tracking? So we have the number of connections that someone can have, the threading model that you end up in, how different aspects of a thread are prioritized. Oh, no, it disappeared. Privacy control. So like, who can see what it is you're saying? Scope control. There are a lot of different aspects of this. Q, I think this was your part of the project that was amazing. And so we started outlining what are all of these different aspects of communication, and do we want to tweak these? Like, do we want to take a scientific approach to reaching equality where if we don't have representation happening the way we want it to, can we change our infrastructure in an explicit way and see if it actually impacts the way people are participating or not? Does that make sense?  So I'm going to tell you a story, though, about something that isn't measurable right now. My favorite channel in that Slack group that I told you about is called Awkward Silence. And someone created it in October of, like, last year and invited a bunch of people and no one said anything in it for, like, four months. And it was my favorite. And then one day I was like, oh, do you know what's going to be so good? And I posted the elephant emoji in it, and someone else immediately deleted it and changed it to the subject of the channel. And, like, that's how I like to participate in those spaces. It's not in typing messages, which is the thing that Slack tracks right now. You can track who says how much stuff, but I really like emojis and I really like moving text around and posting pictures and things like that. And so what we choose to measure is what we get is one of the systems theory things. So what are we choosing to measure in trying to reach more equality? Does that make sense? But making explicit choices in the things that you build so that people can play. So I was talking to Jonathan Stray about this talk and he brought up this excellent point that idealist design systems and pragmatists find paths. And I really like designing systems, but I'm also a person who posts the elephant emoji, right? And so even the systems that we design and that we're so pleased with and excited about to share, if they're not having the desired impact, we need to reassess, like find your path as other people also find their paths through your system. So this is me. I really didn't talk for very long. We should have a conversation. Do people have questions? I hope you have questions. All right. So this is me on Twitter. This is me on Mastodon. I hope it works. It's only going to work if we all use it. And major hearts again. And there are other people doing excellent work in this space. Sorry, I'll get there in just a second. So these are all wonderful. And again, this has already been posted to the internet. And if you want any help in designing and finding paths for this sort of thing, I am working with various groups on how to do that. Question, yeah. Does it work? Yeah, it works. Thanks first off for sharing your insights. I was wondering if what you and we are looking for, if there is a universal way to solve this, or if there should be multiple answers. I'm not even sure if answers is the right word. But to address this, is there one silver bullet? That's an excellent question. So this is one of the... We did this work in 2014 and 2015 mostly. And I had... And I think everyone did. But I had a really rough time because I was spending a lot of energy in online harassment groups. Just like how do we stop online harassment? And most of the women that I was working with there thought that it was a gender problem. Like it was a gender-based problem. It was violence against women. Not their social patterns. We run into the same sorts of attacks against religions, against races, et cetera, in other countries and in other cultures. I don't think there's a silver bullet. I think that there are going to be patterns that we find as we go through this space. I would love to do a large-scale analysis of what are the different parameters of interaction across different social platforms? How happy are their communities? And are they reaching representation? If representation is something that they care about. And basically offering a scientifically backed toolkit to people to make choices. Thank you. So I could imagine that what is universal is awareness, right? Awareness of challenges that are out there. But if you're talking about a framework, are we not already in advance to make some boundaries that other people in other cultures might misinterpret or be offended by? How could we address this sort of bootstrapping problem? Because people in other countries have been involved in the process of this project, I'm a little bit less concerned about that. And this is also not authoritarian at all. It's like, hey, we're taking this approach and you might find some use in it. But I have no desire to tell people how to interact or what to say or how to design their platforms. If you also share the goal of equality, maybe you should be taking deliberate steps towards reaching that. And here are some potential ways to get there. Thanks. So for the audience, I think I heard you as... Meredith's goal has always been exploratory. That list of knobs that you can twiddle in these online discussions, is it public anywhere? Yeah, it's on the wiki. Which wiki? The classic phrase. It's at weaponizesocial.aspirationtech.org. I'll post a link to it on both Mastodon and Twitter. Or you can email me. And we'll probably be migrating it to its own home soon, but we'll leave up redirects, etc. Thank you. Yeah. Hi. Hello. Can you... Lean into the mic. Can you comment whether moderation and evaluation of comments type functions have any impact on the quality and equality of the conversation? Yeah, so Nate Matias is actually the person who is the expert in that. He looks at community-based moderation. So not having an outside party be your moderator, but someone within your group. And his research points to it absolutely having an impact on it, but it has various impacts depending on how you're approaching it. He just polishes dissertation and it's under open access, so it's worth checking out. Thanks for that and always enjoy your presentation slides and the way you go about doing that. I was a little sad to see and hear that there's nothing really to do on the response side. And I guess there's so many different ways to go there, but maybe just because we're here from a technological or sort of architectural, you know, pie in the sky, are there things that you would sort of say are either traits or principles or even maybe specific examples such as like mastodon or other platforms that already do exist where you think a response is possible, or is that just not ever going to happen? I think that it must happen, so we'll figure it out. The only thing that has really come to mind so far is very pragmatic, which is a form of insurance. And so like what does it look like to have more resources at your disposal if something does happen to you? It's one of the reasons why I am one of the few people who actually saw some value in the right to forget thing and I know that it's abused in all sorts of ways and it's terribly executed and like I'm not saying that it's good as it is right now, but we don't have a mechanism for group forgiveness right now and it used to be that if you were, which happened rarely, ostracized from a small town, you could move to a different small town and now it's the internet and there is no other place to move to. And so our patterns of mass shaming are not sustainable and I am worried about how that's going to play out in the long run. Mike and then Merida, please. I was wondering, I mean, what are the representation of suppressed groups? Have you thought about engaging them because some of, let's say, even the open discussion in some cultures could be limiting? Yeah. Because it's not part of the culture or there's actually repression? Yeah, absolutely. But those are the same sorts of patterns of what we're reliving on the internet now. And so having, as I do my other work in helping affected populations, populations affected by a disaster or a humanitarian crisis, organize themselves and decide whether or not to interact with state actors or other agencies or international aid of some kind. This framework has provided useful, but there are definitely different assumptions about privacy and scope and of other things that are in that long list. And so having a baseline understanding of those tools and how it might impact a group or having them design their own tools I think would be key. I'm thinking about the risk of this project talking about these people rather than with them. But I have talked with them. How do you, for instance, address people who are women who are oppressed through sexual violence which is part of the culture to open up and to be part of the discussion? So, for instance, we use the same list of parameters when setting up a, even though we hadn't listed them out yet, we're reflecting back for a call center for victims of gender-based violence in Port-au-Prince. The same sorts of things apply to who should be able to look at this information, who is providing it, are they making connections to each other, all those parameters of interaction, and it's similar to helping design the SMS platform for women in Afghanistan to self-organize to tell stories. It's still the same sorts of things, but you have to work with the people who are going to use the tool, just like always. Okay. Thanks. Meredith. Going back to the topic of recovery for a second, one of the things that I used to fight with Casper Bowden about all the time was the right to be forgotten. He was in favor of it, I was against it. Until Andrea pointed out to me that it's basically digital exit. Talking about how online you can basically never hide from your reputation again, but that's one of the things that the right to be forgotten I think is intended to try to re-establish, although the teeth it actually has seem to be pretty limited. Yeah, I absolutely agree. To get to the earlier question about is there a silver bullet? There isn't. We need to be approaching this from multiple vectors at the same time, and so we should all be more forgiving, and we should all not escalate quite so quickly, but when there is a persistent problem, maybe we should try to get that person help and, like, what does justice look like and what does restorative justice look like, et cetera. But at the same time, until we have all of that sorted out, we also need to be thinking about how do we help people who have gone through hell, whether they deserved it or not. Like, they're still a human being and they need to be able to make a living after this sort of thing has happened to them. Right, and, you know, they still need to be recognized as a human being. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, I mean, somebody else take it. That's good. I've been crunching a bit further on what my takeaways would be, and I was wondering, perhaps if Mark Zuckerberg were here and you were to give him one advice which he promised to follow up on, what would that be? I don't know that it would be a change in design in Facebook. To change the design in Facebook, I think it would be to give more autonomy to the users in what choices they make and the associated transparency to the algorithms necessary to make those choices. So having access to all of these toggles, but also being able to see the effects of changing those toggles on the algorithms, but being able to see it for yourself. Off the cuff, that's what I would ask. So more autonomy to individual users? Yeah, so there was the Facebook algorithm talk this morning that was fascinating. One of the questions was, if Facebook is running algorithmic analysis of images for nudity, why can't they do it for snakes, for someone who has a snake phobia? I do believe that we should be able to create our own experiences, but one of the things that's over here, I'm not sure where on the list it is, that did not do what I wanted to do. One of these over here is randomization slash serendipity slash enforced bubble popping. And this is something that is... So the word homophily is birds of a feather flock together. That's what it means. And people really like being with people that are like them. We're at a conference right now because it's so much easier to be around people that we don't have to explain everything to.  And it gets just like, oh, okay, this is much better. But at the same time, that's not stimulating. It turns into a sort of... It breeds creativity in one way, while also inhibiting it in other ways.  And so that's why it's in this list, is because people should at least be making a conscious choice that they are hiding from people, or that they are not wanting to interact with those unlike them. Because maybe their focus isn't equal representation and equal voice, et cetera. And then I don't share values with them and I'm not going to help them, but they're a human being and they should be able to do that. I think I would agree with that. Next step, would you go as far as saying they should be legally obliged? No. Why? One, because Facebook is a platform. They're not a government. So, well... Are they legally obliged to pop bubbles, or are they legally obliged to do what? No, pop bubbles or implements in the architecture measures that force people or let people see outside their bubble. I don't think that that falls under the rule of law in any way, shape, or form. No, it doesn't, I guess, but do you think it ought to be? Because if we're saying that this is a priority, the question is how should we implement it? We as the builders of platforms can do this. I don't want to just get into this, this is fascinating and we can keep doing more later, but... Yeah, I think you can have an offline chat with her. Do we have any other questions? Okay. Okay, let's do a hypothetical example. So maybe that gives you the opportunity or not to illustrate how you would do things and how you would do things differently. There was just a Google engineer who threw a curveball into the general consensus of how things work. And I'm just seeing the shitstorm unfolding. How would things under your proposed infrastructure go and how would they go different from how they're going right now? So one thing would be that as... Google would have needed to be transparent about their current gender ratios and hiring, et cetera, and also what sorts of pay scales people are on to show whether or not they... Even if you don't start off in a really equitable place, you can show that you're moving there. And so that is one thing that would have happened and then the point that this person is making would either be moot or not, because it would be obvious if Google was working towards equality or if they were not. And the other aspect of it would be that has the person's name come out? Okay, so right now he's probably getting shamed and pedestaled by all sorts of people, right? And so if Twitter had changed some of the way that information propagates on it, this would have been a much more calm thing and maybe the name would not have spread quite so much. And this then gets into like how do we spread really bad information that needs to get out really fast, right? And I don't know how to balance these things. But maybe he... And after all of this blows over, the shitstorm blows over, he would have a way to be like, hey, everyone, ends up I was super wrong. I finally read all the research or even a small amount of the research and how different people's brains works or don't work and ends up I was wrong and the crowd would go, oh, cool, we're glad you learned a valuable lesson and then it would be done and he would still be employable. Okay, you're implying two things here. That he's unemployable afterwards. And second, it's apparently a foregone conclusion to you that he is completely wrong and the counter-question to that would be the first and the last sentences that that guy wrote is basically, he's not sure if he's right, but he wants to basically pop a bubble and he wants to question a few articles of faith. Okay. And that part of the message got kind of de-emphasized and the message that's contrary to the common way things are seen is very overemphasized and everybody goes down on that and for example, things like the Norwegian model where everybody in the country has their salary information online, that is, that's completely not discussed. Okay. I don't understand what, it's fine. Do we have any other questions or comments? Okay. Thank you, Willow. Thanks. Thank you.


ونستغفره ونتوه إليه ونعود بله من شهور أنفسنا ومن سيئات أعمالنا من يحديه الله فلا مدل له ومن يدل فلا هار له وأشهد أن لا إله إلا الله وحده لا شريك له وأشهد أن سيدنا محمد عبده ورسول يا أيها الذين آملوا اتقوا الله حقا تقاته ولا تبوتون إلا وأنتم مسلمون يا أيها الناس اتقوا ربكم الذي خلقكم من نفسه واحدة خلق منها زوجها وبث منهما رجالا كثيرا ونساء والتقوا الله الذي تساءدون به والأرحام إن الله كان عليكم رقيبا يا أيها الذين آملوا اتقوا الله وقولوا قولا سديدا يصلح لكم أعمالكم ويوفيلكم ذلوباكم ومن يتع إله ورسوله فقد فاز فوزا عظيما أما بعد فإن أصدق الحديث كتاب الله وخير الحديه هديو محمد صلى الله عليه وسلم وشر الأمور محدثاتها فكل محدثة بلعة وكل بلعة ضلالة وكل ضلالة في النار الحمد لله الحمد لله الذي أنزل على عبده الكتاب ولم يجعله إواجاء الحمد لله الذي هدانا لهذا وما كنا دنه تريى لو لا أن هدان الله الحمد لله رب العالمين Our praise is due to Allah The Lord of all the worlds Our praise is due to Allah Who has blessed us with this great great religion As we mentioned previously The saying of Imam Ali رضي الله عنه إن من نعم الدنيا يكفيك الإسلام نعمة From the blessings of this world is that Islam suffices as a blessing الحمد لله during this month ربي الأول The Muslims are reflecting commemorating renewing their attachment to our Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم Our Prophet is the embodiment of human virtue صلى الله عليه وسلم And for that we love him People love and they are attracted to that which reflects perfection And in human terms Our Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم is that embodiment However We understand that the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم is the gate to the epitome of perfection And that is Allah SWT The epitome of knowledge The epitome of beauty إن الله الجميل يحبه الجمال The epitome of mercy And the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم reflected that Just a brief example of how the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم reflected the perfection of Allah SWT الله سبحانه وتعالى يتكلم أو يجب أن يتكلم أن الله سبحانه وتعالى أن الله سبحانه وتعالى has divided his mercy into 100 portions One portion of that mercy He distributes through all of the creation from the beginning to its end The mercy of the mother for her child The mercy of the strong towards the weak That we see every day embodied all around us And certainly there are strong who exploit the weak But we see manifestations of mercy in this world In incredible and amazing ways But all of that mercy from the beginning of the creation to the end of the creation is just one portion of Allah's mercy The other 99 portions Allah has held back to be reserved to be dispensed amongst us when our account is taken يوم القيام In other words Allah has held back most of his mercy for the next life So that that mercy can envelop us and can shower us and can be an aid for us to enter into paradise 99 out of 100 parts The Prophet ﷺ Reflects that concern for us Every Prophet ﷺ The peace and blessings of Allah upon them were given a prayer All of them used their prayer in this world The Prophet ﷺ Despite the suffering he saw amongst his companions Despite the suffering he knew would befall the ummah after his parting ﷺ In spite of that he held back his prayer for the Day of Judgment so that he could pray for our salvation ﷺ This shows how the compassion and mercy that Allah has for us وقانب المؤمنين رحمة and Allah is merciful to the believers that the Prophet ﷺ was a perfect human reflection of that And he is also described بالمؤمنين رأوف رحيم He is compassionate and merciful to the believers So if we understand that and if we understand the other great virtues of the Prophet ﷺ We love him And if we love him we follow him Because love a function of love is obedience A function of love is longing and desire So المحبة cannot be separated from إرادة And محبة can be separated from طاعة These concepts they are linked So if we love the Prophet we follow him ﷺ But in following him we are demonstrating Our love for Allah ﷺ So Allah ﷺ He links love And he links obedience When he says in the Qur'an قُد Say to them او محمد قُد فتبعوني يحببكم الله يوفيركم ومباكم والله غفر رحيم So he links Three things Love In two manifestations And obedience So he links The love His love إن كنتم تحبون الله Our love For Allah ﷺ قل إن كنتم تحبون الله This is linked To the following Or obedience to the Prophet ﷺ فتبعوني Say to them If indeed you love Allah Then follow me And then that following Of the Prophet ﷺ Is linked to something greater So Our love for Allah ﷺ Leads to something greater Our following The Prophet ﷺ Why do we say something greater Because this is a proof Of our love for Allah So the proof is greater Than the claim We can say I love Allah Just like some of us say To our wives Or our husbands Or I love you I love you I love you What's the proof You love her But you treat her In despicable ways You love him But you never cook for him You love him But the house is dirty When he comes home That's called a Dawah Not Dawah تأمربوته with ألف ألف مقصورة دعوة Which is just a claim It has no real validity And it is usually used in a negative sense It's a claim That's not accompanied with action It's just empty words I love you I love you So Allah تعالى He demands proof كل إن كنتم تغيبون الله And this was said To a group of hypocrites And a group of those who disbelieved قابل الأشراف وعطباؤ The followers of قابل الأشراف They said as Allah recording in the Quran نحنو أولياء الله أولياء الله وحباؤ We are the beloved of Allah And we are the friends of Allah نحنو أولياء الله وحباؤ And we are those who love Allah And so the Prophet ﷺ was instructed To tell them If this is true for them, follow me Otherwise it's an empty claim And so we should ask ourselves Are we true in our claim of love For Allah سبحانه وتعالى And the answer is easy Are we following the Prophet ﷺ Ask yourself Do you want to smell like the Prophet ﷺ Or do you want to smell like something produced by Brut Or Revlon or Max Factor or who knows what Do you want to dress like the Prophet ﷺ And not necessarily in the style That was prevalent amongst the Arabs The Izara and the Redaq The upper and lower cloth That they covered their nakedness with But the standards introduced by the Prophet ﷺ Lose clothing Beautifying clothing Form-fitting clothing Dignified clothing Or do you want to dress based on the standards Set by Hollywood And we know who controls Hollywood Undignified clothing Coating that reveals the aura of people Coating that Imitates poverty But you have to be rich to buy it Like ripped up blue jeans And it's not sufficient This is how sheath on And it's all the act they exploit And make fools of us It's not sufficient to wear your own blue jeans Until they wear out And then you have a pair of ripped up blue jeans You have to pay $150 or $200 To buy some fake ripped up blue jeans It's the epitome of insanity But is that your model Is that the tight fitting skinny jeans Is that your model If it is, ask yourself Ask yourself Where is your love for Muhammad? Say to them If indeed you love Allah then follow me Follow me And so The following of the Prophet ﷺ Is higher than the claim of love And the reward for following the Prophet ﷺ Is higher Than following the Prophet ﷺ And that's the love of Allah For you For us قول إن كنتم تهبون الله هفت تبيعوني يحببكم الله و يأفيركم بنوبك And so that leads to the love of Allah For us And the forgiveness of our sins And these are two separate things So we all know A young man A young lady From we were young women And we were young women From we were had puppy love So we loved somebody For the first time We knew our love was worthless And our love could even be a source of torment If they didn't love us We tormented I love her so much For right now You'll all grow it in six months But right now I love her so much But I'm tormented That love isn't a source Of elevation It's not a source of bliss It's not a source of felicity It's a source of torment Because she doesn't love me She won't write back When I send her these notes She won't even look at me When I pass her in the hallway So What is the value of love If it's not reciprocated But if she loved you Oh boy I love you You're on cloud nine If Allah loves us We're beyond the clouds There's no number of the clouds You're beyond the clouds You love Allah And then What does Allah do A lot of people They don't notice this They love you And forgive you And forgive you Allah loves you And forgives you sins And what is the virtue of that Besides the obvious The obvious We won't have to carry these sins When we're judged But the sin When we sin It stays our heart And when it stays our hearts Our hearts are darkened over And when our hearts are darkened over We can't perceive Allah And the purity of His splendor So when Allah forgives our sins Then as the stain Is removed from our heart And then our hearts are sensitive And receptive To Allah سبحانه وتعالى And we can behold Allah The basira Of our hearts is pure And then the purity Of Allah's love Can penetrate to our hearts Because they're not darkened By the stain of sin Our love is elevated That's that much higher Our love is that much pure Our love is that much powerful In terms of its impact On our heart On our soul On our very being يَوْ فِيرَكُمْ ذُنُوبَكُمْ وَاللَّهُ أَفُرْ رَحِيمْ And Allah is forgiving and merciful That and Allah So Our following, our messenger And our messenger Is opening up the gateway For us to Allah صلى الله عليه و سلم This is the value of the moment We say What do we say? يَا إِمَمَا وُسْلِ يَا سَنَدِ يَا اَنتَرْ بَعَبُو اللَّهِ مُ Queen ofим You are the gate leading to Allah سبحانه وتعالى He's the gate, leading to Allah Of the Love of Allah سبحانه وتعالى هذه هي الأفرقات التي الله يعطينا. وهم يفرقون ويقرأون في هذه السنة. أخيين ومأخيين لا تتبعون هذه السنة بحيث تفكير على المفتاح في العالم المساعدة. سلطة الله وعليه السلام. لا تتبعون هذه السنة بحيث تفكير على المفتاح عن أحباء الله سبحانه وتعالى. الله تعالى يحبنا نتكلمنا. يحب and إرادا. هؤلاء المحب والإرادا. عند الله تعالى يحبنا. يحببكم الله يريدون جيد لنا. يردون بنا الخير والخيرات. الله يريدون جيد لنا. الله يريدون سمواتنا. الله يريدون تفكير على المفتاح. This is the implication of Allah's love for us. And if Allah wants to go for us, there's no one who can deny it. Allah wants guidance for us. This is an implication of His love. There's no one who can lead us astray. When Allah is there astray, there's no one to guide. And whoever Allah has guided, there's no one. And whoever Allah guides, there's no one to lead astray. We need the guidance of Allah. We live in a time where the forces attempting to lead us astray are probably stronger than they've ever been in the history of humanity. Those forces of materialism are stronger than they've ever been. The forces of consumerism are stronger than they've ever been. And we mentioned an example of that. I don't think you can find in human history a time where people would spend money to buy fake ripped up clothes. They just wear their own ripped up clothes before the industrial revolution, most people have one or two garments. The industrial revolution made all of this possible. They ripped up, they just wear it, put a patch on it. Now we pay money for ripped up clothing. We pay money for clothing with patches on it. And our own ripped up clothing will throw away, will discard. And we won't even put a patch on the ripped up clothing. We'll go buy a blazer with patches on the elbows when our own elbows that we've worn out over the last 5, 6, 10 years we won't even put a patch on it and wear that. We'll throw it in the garbage and go to the store to buy a brand new blazer with patches on the elbows for fashion. I don't think you can find a time in human history when people behave like this. The forces of Shaytan are stronger than they've ever been.  There was a time when only prostitutes dress like prostitutes. Now it's fashionable for most women to dress like prostitutes advertising their bodies.  And you combine all of this at the same time, the assault of Shaytan, the four great enemies of the human of Ben An-Nish at Dunya, Al-Hawa, when Nafs was Shaytan, Nafs الشحواني البهيني is appealed to like it's never been appealed to. The Hawa, just follow whatever is suggested to you.  Surrender to your desires. Just follow your Hawa. If it says to spend all your money gambling, forget about your bills. Forget about your children's tuition. Just follow, surrender to your desires. The Dunya and the materialism, Shaytan, the Nafs, the Hawa, they're all calling the person a stranger. And in a time like this, we need to buttress and strengthen ourselves to hold on to our religion. And to do that, we have to follow the way of our Prophet, صلى الله عليه وسلم. Here's our fortress against these forces that have been unleashed against us. Here's the protection and the barrier, the shield rather, to ward them off. Here's the way to Allah, سبحانه وتعالى, This is the ultimate source of protection. We need our Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم like we've never needed him. We need the protection of our Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم like we've never needed him. We need to follow and adhere to and cling doggedly to the way of our Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم as he instructed us. عليكم بسنة والسنة الخلفاء رحشدين المهتيين عدو علي هبنواجه It's incumbent upon you to follow my way in the way of my rightly guided predecessors or successors. Biden to them with your Haiti. عدو علي هبنواجه Claim doggedly to them. Hold on to them with all of your might. Biden to them. Don't let anyone rip it away from you. ملللا جبا ستوفيك. مللا ألفي لس. ملللا بلسس to realize the value and the virtue of this Prophet he sent to us صلى الله عليه وسلم He is the gate to Allah. He is the key to Allah. تحالس love. He is the passport we need to enter in. We need to enter into the fortress that Allah Taala provides for us. ملللا تعالى جبا ستوفيك. أقولوا قولوا قولي هالا وستغفر معه فيه ولكم ولسائر المؤمنين يقولوا يستغفروا الله. بللله ربنا هالمين وسلاد والسلام على سيد المجسنين سيدنا وحبيبنا محمد وعلى آله وصحبه وسلم تسليم كثيرة إن الله ملائك تهو يسالون على النبي يا أي وهل الذين آمنوا سدوا عليه وسلموا تسليمه ما الله مصلي وسلم وبارك على سيد وحبيبنا محمد وعلى آله وصحبه وسلم تسليم كثيرة. الحمد لله. لذلك نتكلم في هذه الخطب love of the Prophet and the love of Allah but our love as a believer is completed by a third love. So we love Allah والذين آمنوا وشدوا حبا لله and we love the messenger of Allah صلى الله عليه وسلم لا يؤمنوا أحدكم حتى أكون أحب إليه من ولاده ووالده ومن والده ووالده والناس يجمعون. No one will truly believe until I'm more beloved to him than his father, his son and all of humanity and the magnitude of this love. These two loves are emphasized or illustrated when the desert Arab came to the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم جان عربي إلى رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم فساله يا رسول الله فقال صلى الله عليه وسلم ما عددت لها قال ما عددت كفرة صلاة وصيام ولا صيام إلا إني رحب الله ورسوله قال صلى الله عليه وسلم المره مع من أحبب وانت مع من أحبب ومره مع من أحبب لذا the desert Arab came to the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم and he said to him when is the hour and the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم what have you done to prepare for it it doesn't matter when the time is what matters is that you're ready whenever it comes and he said I've been prepared an abundance of prayer and fasting but I do love Allah and his messenger and he said صلى الله عليه وسلم you will be the one you love you will be the one you love so this illustrates to us the weightiness of the love of Allah and his messenger but there's a third love that all of us should concern ourselves with Allah تعالى mentions in the Quran and again to emphasize the weightiness of what he says he introduces it by instructing his Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم and he says you love Allah say to them and another verse where the love of Allah is mentioned Allah تعالى mentions باقوك وأبناغك وأخوانك وأزواجك وعشرةكم وأمأموان نقترافتموها وتجارة تخشون كسادها ومساكن تردونها أحب إليكم من الله و رسولي و جهاد في سبيل فتربصوا حتى يتي الله بأمر و الله لا يهدي القومة الفاسقين سريتنا محمد if it be that your parents mentioned the fathers specifically or your children mentioned the sons specifically or your siblings mentioned the brothers specifically or your spouses mentioned the wives specifically or your kin folks the business the wealth what you had in Fisa Bili for the glory of Allah and the glory of the messenger of Allah and we don't want anything from the people for the glory of Allah و يتعيمون الطعام على حبيه مسكينة و يتيما و أسيرة إنما نتعيمكم لوجه الله لا نريد منكم جزاء ولا شكورة إنها نخافم الربنا يوم و حبوسا قبطة ريرا we don't want any thanks or appreciation we're doing it for Allah but we have to strive في سبيل الله what you had in Fisa Bili what you had in Fisa Bili so just as we asked ourselves is our love true let us ask ourselves am I using this life the skills, the talent the ability, the time that Allah has given me to do something positive for Islam and if we find the answer is not what it should be we should do everything in our power to rectify it so that we can meet Allah SWT and the fullness of his love is radiating from us the love of Allah and the love of the messenger of Allah who is striving in his cause اللهم اغفروا المسلمين والمسلمات والمؤمنين والمؤمنات الأحياء منهم ولا موت ربنا لا تذكروا بنا بعد ذهبتنا و هبلنا باللدونقة رحمة إنك انت الوحاب ربنا افرق علينا الصبر والثبت اقدامنا ونصرنا على القوم الكافرين ربنا افرق علينا الصبر وثبت اقدامنا وتوفنا المسلمين ورحمنا انت مولانا تنصرنا على القوم الكافرين اللهم انا نعوذ بك من الهم والحزن ونعوذ بك من العجز والكسل ونعوذ بك من الجبن والبخل ونعوذ بك من غلب الدين وقهر الرجال اللهم اقسم لنا من خشية كما تعوذ به بيننا و بينما عصيك ومن طاعتك متبلغونا بها جنة ومن أن يقين ما يهون وعلينا مصعب الدنيا ومتعنا بأسمائنا وأقصارنا وقواتنا ما احيتنا وجعه الورث مننا وجعه ثقرنا على منظلمنا ونصرنا على منعداننا ولا تجعل مصعبةنا في ديننا ولا تجعل الدنيا اكبر رحمنا ولا مبلغ عمنا وعلينا بذنوبنا من لا يخفك ولا يرحمنا يا أحم الراحمين وعفو عنا وافتلانا ورحمنا أنت مولانا فانصرنا على القوم الكافرين سبحان ربك رب العزة أما يصفون والسلام علي المرسلين والحمد لده ربنا لبين والصلى الله عليه وسلم سيدنا محمد وعلى آله وصحبه وسلم أقيم السفلات يا رحمي


We decided as a team that walking around the tidal basin would be a field trip. It's not a field trip. We've ever done before So it was a new experiment But our students often don't get into Washington DC in spite of the fact that we live 10 miles south of the city Many of our kids don't ever cross the Potomac River So it's a goal of ours every year to somehow take them into the city and see the monuments the memorials Anthony What does it say? It's explaining about his wheelchair He didn't want people to know that he was in a wheelchair So he didn't want a wheelchair that looked like a regular wheelchair Eddie This is called braille For people who are blind and they can't see each of these collections of dots shows a letter So this shows the letter L this shows the letter I So they would feel it with their fingers To read it because they can't people who can't see can you imagine reading with your fingers instead of your eyes? So we did a little bit of preparation before we went Looking at a map and making our own map and looking at pictures of the three different memorials. We would be visiting To sort of give the kids some background knowledge before we got there and we spent some time practicing with the cameras We've used the cameras all year, but we've never taken them off-site. Okay when FDR was president You almost 100 years ago things in the United States were very rough a lot of people did not have jobs People who did have jobs often didn't have a lot of money. So you see people waiting in line here They're waiting for either a job or for food because people were having when he was president He had a big job of trying to make people's lives better in the United States They had the the mechanics of using the cameras, but I wanted them to really be thinking about We're gonna take these pictures back and make a movie with them You want to take pictures of things that are meaningful and not just random shots of your friends So we practice with that before we went and then on the field trip Between digital cameras and flip video cameras. I had enough cameras for about one out of every two students So they had to share them. They took mostly pretty meaningful pictures There are very few pictures of just the other kids in the class They're mostly pictures of the monuments There's pictures of the tidal basin and pictures of the ducks in the tidal basin But for my kids who don't get to get outside and certainly aren't just spending time at a park with ducks That's actually a pretty memorable piece of the field trip to them Cameras really kept them focused and engaged and made it easier for them not to feel a great urge to jump in to any of the fountains at the Franklin Delores Memorial or climb on the rocks there things that I think Would have held their interest more than the actual memorial without the cameras But looking through that lens and trying to think about what was important kept their focus on what they were seeing