Al-Khumman Al-Raheem, let us join each other in da'a insha Allah, raise our hands. There are many people around the world who are very unwell, many of our family members and friends, and indeed two particular sisters of ours. One lady who is very unwell, and one young daughter of the community who is also very unwell. There are tragedies and trials going on around the world. Let us ask Allah SWT for his intercession, speedy recovery for all those who are unwell, and victory for all those who are fighting on behalf of Truth and Justice. In the name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful. In the name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful. In honor of Lady Khadija, please recite one line. In the name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful, the Gracious. In the name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful. As-salamu ala ashraf al-anbiya wal-mursanihin Khatam al-nabihin Sayyidin al-mumajjad bashirin al-musaddaq Al-Mustafa al-amjad Mahmood al-Ahmad Abul Qasim al-Muhammad Wa ala ahli baytah tayyamin Tahinina al-Masumihin Wa la'na Allah wa la'zalimina min al-awwalina wa al-akhalihin Amma ba'ad qalayma wal-hujj alayhi as-salam Al-hamdulillahi ala ilmihi ba'da ilmih Wa alhamdulillahi ala afwihi ba'da qudratih Wa alhamdulillahi ala tawli anatihi fi ghazabih Wahu wa qadirun ala ma yulid Al-hamdulillahi qalikil khalqa Bāsit al-rizqa Fālik al-isbāḥ Dhil n-jalāli wal-iqra'm Wal-fazli wal-in'a'am Al-lādi ba'udah fālā yurā Wa qarubah al-shahid an-najwāt Bārak wa ta'ā'a Imam of the age, Imam of the Zamanah My respect to teachers, elders, brothers and sisters As-salāmu alaykum jami'an wa-raḥmatullāhi wa-barakātuh We continue, inshā'u Llāh, in our discussion on the commentary of the A'if Titaq which has been provided to you and I by the master of our age Imam al-mahdi, A'jjal allāhu ta'ālā Fāluja al-shareef Over these last two previous sessions we have discussed this particular line from the A'if Titaq where inshā'u Llāh tonight we seek to bring it to its culmination The line that we have been exploring says, all praise belongs to Allah for he is the creator of everything in creation and hence we have been posing these questions as to why do I exist what is my purpose within existence? Fundamentally I have not asked to exist there was no time when I was asked question as to whether I want to come within this universe but as we begin to explore the greater depth of these questions we begin to really analyze also I have not been able to pick where I have been born into I had no say and no choice into which family I was born into into which era I was born into into which physical skin into which color into any part of my decision making process was never part of the consultation there was no choice for me and therefore we examined one particular verse that says to us وَلَقَادِ عَلِمْتَنَّشْأَتَلْؤُولَا فَلَولَ تَذَكْكُرُونَ that you will know the first period of your existence will you not then remember will you not then recall and this first realm of existence is the one in the womb it is speaking of the journey of the fetus in that as soon as the sperm meets the egg and Allah SWT begins the development of the fetus it is going in this one direction it is a uni-directional course towards the completion of the fetus so that it may be born into the physical realm of existence here and the idea is that the fetus is constantly growing it is growing in stature it is growing in cores Allah SWT makes it complete one stage of existence in order for it to achieve its next stage of existence in order for ultimately to achieve its own completion and if within the womb it does not complete its completion it is unable to fully develop when it comes into this realm of the existence it will be a shortcoming there will be a small deficiency within it rendering it less able to fully form and function within this physical existence similarly in this realm in the life that I have been given be I living for 40 years or 70 years or 80 years I am also replicating this same journey I am bound to journey from one stage of my existence to the next stage of existence to the next stage of existence until I complete that journey and then we posed further questions yesterday we said that this is a platform for us to understand the purpose of this journey we need to delve further into this concept what does it mean for me to journey from stage to stage of my existence and what is my completion we stated yesterday that for me to journey from existence to existence from one stage of my being to the next stage of my being is one whereby I need to see myself as the character that I am the question we posed is no longer why am I existing but who am I in existence am I my name, am I Jaffa the 27 year old person I am not Jaffa by name this is only one thing that identifies me whereas if you were to change my name and put my name as Muhammad put my name as Ali or as Hassan or as Hussain I would still be me as the character that I am and therefore the label itself does not provide me with a cause to understand me my character my weaknesses, my flaws, my shortcomings and indeed my strengths make me as to whom I really am if I want to see my own journey I must see how I am growing as a human being towards the completion of myself what is this completion of myself it is to stand at the peak of my own humanity to break the shackles that have bounded me as a human being whatever weaknesses I have in the 40 or 60 or 80 years of my lifespan when Allah Ta'ala decides to call me back into his proximity into his mercy when my soul is separated from my body I can stand before my Lord and say I am a complete human being before you I have returned to you without those deficiencies I started with I have built and built and built my character until I am a human being that is worthy of being titled as a human being we gave many examples we showed yesterday for example the Nabi Allah Musa A.S. went through his own journey he was challenged to the core of the human being that he was he had a physical defect whereby he couldn't speak as eloquently as another but look the very fact that he was weak in this manner Allah Ta'ala challenged him with this very weakness go towards Pharaoh stand in front of him and debate with him use your weakness to turn it into the completion of yourself use your weakness to burst forth from the being that you currently are break forth with full confidence in Allah Ta'ala look at how he challenged him with his own weaknesses and turned him into the complete prophet that he eventually became with this strength with this strength and confidence gave him the ability to stand in front of Banu Israel the very people of his own that would be bringing him down or trying to bring him down then we said yesterday there is the story of Nabi Allah Ibrahim A.S. he sought yakin he sought certainty in an increase whereby he could worship Allah Ta'ala better by virtue of Allah Ta'ala giving him this Allah Ta'ala tested him by this now that I've given you certainty in me I ask you to slaughter your own Ismail and here we state that the same way when I learn to stand in front of my own Firaun I become Musa in the same way when I learn to sacrifice I also become Ibrahim when I see the greatest sacrifice for me and I learn to slaughter my own Ismail be it my pride, be it my arrogance be it slaughtering my own laziness I am putting to the sword my own Ismail and I burst forth as the Ibrahim from within me that the Quran is speaking about and here we stated that when someone begins to see completion no matter what trial no matter what tribulation no matter what difficulty you see from them they burst forth at each stage of their existence and you will see that nothing short of noor comes from their face we highlighted that on the 10th of Muharram Abiyab Dillah was tasked with the most difficult task known to humanity to give one of his friends after another to give one of his children after another to give one of his family members after another and to know that eventually his sisters and daughters would be chained, slapped their earrings torn from their ears their veils snatched from them marched from one city to another in full parade but for a human being to sacrifice himself and at that point continued to realize the full glory of Allah SWT on the 10th of Muharram the enemies themselves testified to this very station of existence in stating that the more we strike Hussain ibn Ali the more we see his face shine with noor to the extent that we are unable to strike him down this is what it means to come to the fore of your own completion that despite me being challenged to the very core of who I am you will see me shining gloriously in front of Allah SWT hence the one verse that we state is unique for Abiyab Dillah Ya ayyatuhan nafsal matma inna ilji'i ira rabbi kiral ziyatan rabbiya because he was this soul that was so content that despite all that was going on around him despite every single arrow striking him despite every single sword striking him he was going through one stage of noor to the next stage of noor to the next stage of noor until when his head was separated from his body that is when you can see the completion of his own existence coming into shape this is what we are talking about our own journey in life my journey cannot be your journey and your journey cannot be my journey my tests are mine and yours are yours the things that I go through in life I can never express to you fully and the things that you go through in life no matter how eloquent a tongue you have you will never truly be able to express to me but the heart that beholds each of those trials raises its hands and says ya rabbi it turns towards him and that is what we mean by this completion of self where there is nothing other than you and your Lord where it is you and your Lord only and you are annihilating yourself in front of Him every other person in existence may exist but all of them exist in order for me to serve you my Lord I am coming to the very fore of my completion as a human being and that is why you have created me so that I may achieve my own completion however I feel I can in front of you here we need to continue to build and we want to do this and this particular building and this particular understanding of the culmination of this subject of my purpose, my existence in light of this grand lady by the name of Lady Khadija Salawatullahu Salamu Alaihem and we want to understand the stages of spirituality and we want to understand the stages of existence as we go towards our own completion and see this in light of this grand and supreme personality and through the examples that she has set for us as we come to this point of existence we need to return back and of course we need to start at the very beginning of existence or at least the very beginning of our own physical existences and thus we look always towards the story of Nabilullah Adam Alaihissalam now we have stated in a very philosophical sense in a term that allows us to think differently when I see the story of Musa Alaihissalam I want to see myself in light of his character I want to judge his character and see whether I can ascend to that lofty character as close as I may be able to become I live his story when I fight oppression and when I see my own Firaun I become the Musa and when I see I must sacrifice I become the Ibrahim and I live the story of Ibrahim and thus in the same line of philosophical thinking when I see the story of Nabilullah Adam Alaihissalam I am also obliged to look at him and say indeed he is the Prophet there was the Prophet Musa there was the Prophet Ibrahim there was the Prophet Adam but when I look at their stories I must replace their stories with my stories I must understand that I am also in thinking I am also in line with that story and as much as it is about the individual Adam I am also Adam Alaihissalam and therefore I mirror that story with my own story in order to understand my own purpose we go back towards the story that Alaihissalam begins this with a discussion towards the angels I am going to place on earth a caliph now here when we look at this particular discussion it is an inspiring discussion we need to look at why the angels took the tone took the specific response that they took and understand it in line of who Nabilullah Adam vis-a-vis you and I are what it really means the response as we know from the angels is what are you going to create someone who is going to cause mischief and bloodshed whilst we are the ones who sing your praises and glorify you Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala responds with an insightful statement I know what you know not I know about Adam what you know not now there are a number of different ways we can interpret and discuss this particular sequence of verses however I want to come to one particular point when it comes to the complaint of the angels we notice a number of things we find that in regards to their complaint they are very specific what are you going to create someone who is going to cause mischief and bloodshed now what do I understand of mischief and what do I understand of bloodshed when I understand mischief for example on earth I can think of mischief in a number of ways normally I might include bloodshed within mischief but the fact that the angels separated the two must mean that they were discussing two separate issues to them mischief was one thing and bloodshed was another thing of course whatever mischief they had supposed us to be performing or bloodshed that we were going to perform they had thought that we would perform these actions and indeed we see around the world there are people who are performing these actions the point here is is mischief and bloodshed the single biggest sin that Adam, mankind, vis-a-vis you and me can perform what's the biggest sin what's the unforgivable sin according to Holy Quran shirk Allah says that this is the one sin I will not forgive why do we need to intertwine the whole discussion the question we pose is Ya Allah, why will you not forgive shirk why would you forgive murder but you would not forgive shirk why would you forgive stealing but you would not forgive shirk what is it about shirk that you will not forgive but what is it about murder that you will forgive shirk from the perspective of you and I when we understand it from the perspective of the Shia 12 and the Muslims who try to believe in one God this God that is omnipotent this God that is omniscient this God that has no partners you and I, we tend not to think that you and I are performing shirk I don't believe he has a partner I did not put anyone in partnership with Allah therefore how does this verse affect me do I think that this verse is only in regards to someone who is a Sikh or a Hindu or a Christian why do I think that this verse is not also about me here we find that we need to understand shirk at our level and also understand it in accordance with how the complain to the angels were and also the understanding of my own growth and completion shirk at this level does not just mean adding a partner towards God because you and I will say that we don't perform this therefore shirk is actually something which stops your own spiritual development shirk is that factor which is a limiting factor it is a factor which stops your own spiritual development if I am the one who is praying my Salah and I am the one who goes down into Sajda and my Sajda is the purpose so that I may have a mark of prostration upon my forehead is that not the biggest shirk that one can perform if I am going into Sajda and on my mind is I wonder what is for iftar or I wonder what is on TV or I wonder who I will see at the mosque and all those things that sometimes enter into my head is that not the biggest shirk that I can perform I am going into Sajda and in my heart and in my mind is something other than Allah this is the act of shirk for you and I it is this limiting factor it is this action which stops inhibits prohibits growth within the self here we need to again qualify what we mean by certain terms when we talk about huna and when we talk about thawab what do we understand by thawab and what do we understand by huna when I perform a good deed I am told that I get thawab and we tell our children that when they perform a bad deed they get huna, they have a sin indeed this is very correct the question we pose is how does this manifest itself in the next world I think that huna will manifest itself in the pitfalls of hell there will be scorpions, there will be snakes there will be chains, there will be rows of fire there will be these things which I drink in boiling water and this is how huna will manifest itself in the next world how will thawab reward manifest itself in the next world in the next world it will manifest itself by virtue of giving me carpets to sit on or giving me hollard-ein in presence or giving me grand palaces and waterfalls and rivers of honey and milk the problem again is that we are limiting ourselves in our own growth capacity my own stage by stage growth process that we are speaking of towards my own completion is being limited by my own thinking process the fact is thawab is not just for the next world and huna is not just for the next world thawab and huna is here in play at every second every moment of my own existence how do we mean this the holy quran it talks about this as a growth capacity when I perform a good deed it is supposed to manifest within me within my character there and then it is supposed to break the chains of who I am so I burst forth to the next stage of my own existence towards that end goal of completion when we come and pray our Salah Allah SWT says that there should be a resulting factor from my Salah inna Salata tanha anil fahshaa wal munkar surely Salah is supposed to keep you away from fahshaa and munkar meaning that when I come and pray my maghrib Salah when I begin my takbirat al ahram when I approach the musallah I am bound, constricted by certain spiritual weaknesses maybe I am lazy maybe I tell lies maybe I look at someone who I should not be looking at maybe I am someone who is somebody who causes mischief within the community but by virtue of a true, dignified, genuine prostration towards Allah SWT at the end of my Salah when I finish my three takbirs I am supposed to become a new individual a human being that has grown that when he began his Salah he came with certain weaknesses by the end of the Salah he has left without those weaknesses hence inna Salata tanha anil fahshaa wal munkar the Salah is supposed to grow me as a character from within hence I know that my Salah has been accepted because it has caused a chain reaction within myself where I am no longer the same weak individual I have burst forth as a new human being to become the person I am supposed to become this is thawab thawab as a reward is constantly manifesting itself within you it is that growth cycle it is that seed that you water and it will spring forth into that huge beautiful blossoming tree that is the character that I am supposed to have now again go back towards the statement of the angels my lord are you going to cause someone who is going to cause mischief and bloodshed why didn't they shirk why didn't they assess and say that you are going to perform shirk because to the angels if they are going to complain about a human being that is going to perform bloodshed and shirk surely they would have complained to Allah about the greatest sin that would be performed surely they would have said my lord why are you going to create a caliph on earth when he is only going to perform shirk when he is going to create a partner to you because we are the ones that can break that cycle they saw us as performing mischief and bloodshed but they saw an action so one-sided that they assumed it to be evil whereas when you see human beings we are capable of performing one action to someone else it is evil but to you and I when we understand the value and the depth of it it is the true service of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala if the angels were to have seen the tenth of Muharram one side was causing bloodshed and indeed another side was causing bloodshed one side was Yazid's army and one side was Hussain ibn Ali's army from one side indeed they were causing mischief and bloodshed but from the other side the same action was for the sake of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala defended the religion and helped it create such a movement that has not been measured until today that is what we are capable of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says I know what you know not about these creatures I know what they can achieve you are looking at them in such a one-dimensional manner this creature of mine can achieve so much if only you understood and then in the next stage of this story Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala teaches Adam all of the names what does he mean all of the names we are told within Ahadith that these were the names of the Ahl al-Bayt peace be upon them all and indeed it was or maybe some other traditions might say that these were the names of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala however when you look at another tradition it really allows us to understand our own purpose within existence our own capability our tools to measure ourselves with there is a tradition where some companion comes to our sixth imam and asks him this question yabne rasoolillah what were these names that were taught to Nabi Allah Adam alayhi salam our sixth imam responds and says Adam alayhi salam was taught the names of everything in existence he was taught the names of the mountains and he was taught the names of the materials he was named, he was taught everything in existence to the extent of this carpet that I am sitting on right now think about this tradition what does it mean to you and I let us go back to our philosophy when I stand in front of the Firaun of my time if I am the Shi'a within Atif and I am standing in al-Sa'ud I am Musa and I am standing against the Firaun of my time and when I have to slaughter sacrifice something of myself in the way of Allah I am manifesting that verse of Quran that makes Nabi Allah Ibrahim and when I see this story I am Adam alayhi salam when Adam alayhi salam is taught all the names and our sixth Imam says that he is taught the name of everything in existence including this carpet that I am sitting on now what does it mean for you and I it means that Adam alayhi salam as the Prophet vis-a-vis you and I as the individual Adam we are vested with such knowledge that we are the ones who can understand everything in this universe we are the ones who Allah SWT has vested with such knowledge and such trust that we are the ones that can make sense of this universe look outside go and stare into the night sky for just two minutes think about the grandiosity of this universe there are 850 billion galaxies within this universe we as Adam have been vested with the authority and the capability to understand it all oh gathering of the jinn in mankind if you wish to break forth burst forth into the if you wish to break forth into the countries of the skies then do it who is stopping you have you not realized your own potential human beings and yet you want to quibble over the most petty of things yet you want to fight over the most petty of things you want to slaughter each other over the most petty of things have you not realized your capability as an individual when I say to you if you want to traverse to the heights of these heavens do it but you will only be able to do it with my Sultana when I assess my existence in this way when I see what I am capable of do I really assess my 60 or 70 years of my life in the same light why am I lazy why am I wasting my time why am I allowing these weaknesses to hold me down why am I allowing a petty argument with my brother in the Iman Barghah to hold me down why have I not gone and said forgive me I was at wrong even if I wasn't at wrong and I know you were at wrong I come and say I was wrong because I break my pride which is holding me down to the next stage of my own existence do you not realize the capability that we have vested within you and these petty things in your life you want to allow holding you down you want them to chain you look at what we have become brothers and sisters every single challenge that has become in front of our way we have devastated it we are physically bound to here we said no problem I want to go and traverse to the depths of the oceans I am physically bound whereby I cannot do it we said no problem I will build a submarine and I will come and I will see the depths of these oceans it's no problem I want to go and traverse the skies no problem we will build an aircraft and we will send you to 30,000 feet 60,000 feet nay will allow you to walk on the moon nay right now there are probes that are landing on the moons of Saturn gathering the dust of Saturn Saturn imagine where we will reach in 500 years time imagine the capability that we have within our own existence there is no boundary that we are not supposed to break there is no thought process that we are not able to challenge there is nothing except Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala there in front of us when you approach your own existence why am I here why am I here am I really going to allow myself to be bogged down by these petty issues within my existence oh when I say my lord you have given me 40 years Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says in hadith qudsi your breaths have been numbered I know how many breaths you will take I know whether you will live to 40 or 50 or 80 and the reason why I give you that specific number of years within your life is because within that period of your life I will allow you to go and reach your own completion as a human being if I have given you 70 years and you 40 because within your 70 you will achieve and within your 40 you should be able to achieve but can I risk it all can I allow my time to go wastefully can I allow every single day to wake up and be the same and be the same we quoted this tradition from our seventh imam imam mousa al qadim where he says he whose two days are the same he is in a state of loss and he who goes backwards the laanah of Allah is upon him it doesn't mean laanah curse like a lightning bolt strikes you we need to break forth of these little petty ideas it means that you are far from the mercy of Allah the proximity of Allah if you are going backwards where are you going in life every day you should achieve more and more every day you are learning more every day in existence when you turn on the news you are learning more when you open a new book you are learning more your growth spiritually should be inclined by this everything is unidirectional except me how can that be I should be following the trend of this universe and growing every single day the beauty of this scenario is as much as I am in control of closing my own self and slowing down my own progress and causing this own shirk and partnering to God I am the one who can speed up my growth as quickly as I want it to be and the beauty is brothers and sisters you are in the month whereby you are able to press the fast forward button not just fast forward you can actually skip chapters it's like you have that DVD controller in your hand and you are pressing click forward click forward click forward you are able to progress so much in this month if only we recognize how much this month meant to us when we understand it this way when we understand existence life within this way we find that there are certain verses of the Holy Quran that are calling us inclining us towards growth and they specify techniques, methodologies of how to assess oneself and how to burst forth into the next stage of your own existence the verse I want to present to you today which is in line with the life and the giving of this grand lady of light is the verse that comes to us from verse number 92 of Surah al-Imran Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Raheem لَنْ تَنَالُ الْبَرْرَ حَتَّى تُنْفِقُ مِمْ مَا تُحَبُّونَ you will by no means achieve a state of righteousness until you spend from that which you love you will not be able to achieve a state of righteousness until you achieve that which you, until you spend that which you love now here we need to pose a number of preliminary questions what is this righteousness and what stage in my own growth is it am I at the stage of righteousness is it the highest stage of human being or is there something more that I can achieve by it righteousness is the word ber when it comes to the word al-ber there are other words that describe the spiritual levels that a human being can exist you break forth from one stage to another to another till you reach the station of being al-ber righteous till you move forward to a higher stage according to His Eminence Ayatollah Muhammad Jawad Mughniya may Allah bless his soul he has a tradition where he looks at these stages within the Holy Qur'an and he states that the very highest station a human being can reach is that of istiqama istiqama one of the verse he cites from the Holy Qur'an in Surat Al-Hud fastaqim kama omilt istiqama is translated as upstanding meaning fastaqim kama omilt be upstanding as you have been commanded to be be in the way your character you have been commanded to be in your character fastaqim the reason why they use this word so often is because we ask for this station within our Salah every single day Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Raheem Alhamdulillah ar-Rabbi al-Alamin Allah ar-Rahman ar-Raheem Malik yawm ad-din Iyaka na'budu wa iyaka nasta'een Ehd nasir aqal mustaqim guide me or keep me guided on the straight path the straight path actually isn't just an ordinary path when we recite this in our Salah we are asking for the actual highest station within ourselves we are asking my lord grant me istiqama help me reach to this highest stage of existence within myself below this stage is the stage of Birol what is the word Birol mean? the roots word from Birol comes to the word al-barl al-barl is a land it's a very large piece of land the reason why it is a very large piece of land is because a very large piece of land includes a lot within it imagine now a very large piece of land for example let us take the United States of America from the east coast to the west coast it's a very large piece of land from LA to New York what will you find from one side of the coast to the other side of the coast? you will find everything you will find the beauty of the hillside you will find mountainous regions you will find natural minerals you may find oil you will find gas and therefore the word al-barl denotes a very large piece of land because it encompasses so much within it hence the word al-barl righteousness is a large station of righteousness where it includes all kinds of goodness within you you are truthful you are kind you are merciful you are generous hence when Allah SWT says you will not achieve this grand high station of righteousness it is a high station of righteousness that we should want to achieve because it accepts it beholds so much of goodness for me within this having told me that I can't reach this height of station within spirituality unless I do something I'm inclined to know what it is you will not achieve this high station of righteousness until you spend that which you love one day commander of the faithful Ali ibn Abi iqalb SAW was in a state of huge poverty this was at the time when Rasulullah was alive he was in a huge state of poverty and he saved for a number of days to buy himself a new shirt wanted to buy himself a new jubba whatever we might call it he wanted to buy himself a new shirt he saved for a number of days in order to get it because his own shirt was tattered he goes to the market and he gives the money and he buys that shirt and he goes home as he's on his way home he comes across a man that is destitute and poor a person who is more in need than him Alhamdulillah I have a house he doesn't Alhamdulillah I may have a shirt that's ripped but his is in a worse state than mine as much as I have saved and saved and saved for my own shirt I recognize that this man is in more need than my own he loved this shirt it was for him he had strived hard to get the shirt what did he do? he went and gave that shirt away to the other man You will not achieve this high station of righteousness until you are able to give and spend from that which you love you see when we give charity often we give charity in those things that are easy for me to give for example if I'm very rich and Allah SWT has blessed me with wealth it shouldn't be so difficult for me to give wealth it's not my money in the first place it's an Amanat from Allah SWT and I have a lot of money in the first place it's an Amanat from Allah SWT hence if I have a million and I spend 500,000 in way of community it's not difficult or rather it shouldn't be difficult it's not a test I'm not spending it from that which I love because it's not mine in the first place or if I look sometimes I have seen we can give an example sometimes a youth will go away go away to university go away to boarding school or he'll go away in such and such a place he'll move home child will get married son and daughter will get married it's time to move they pack all the boxes up and they decide what they want to keep and what they don't want to keep all the new things that they have bought they want to keep all the new lovely Nike trainers that's cost 100 dollars I will keep but my old trainers that don't fit me I'll give away to charity Masha Allah, aren't I so pious isn't it easy to give away the old trainers that have been scuffed isn't it easy to give away the old shirt that I'm never going to wear you know what, it was 3 years old you know what, it's 10 years old you know what, it's a hand me down I'll give it away to charity I'll send it to Palestine Masha Allah, Alhamdulillah, it's good believe me, you're getting thawab you are getting growth but the challenge is not to give away that which is easy for you to give away anyone can give away that which is easy to give away Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says you want to test yourself you want to break forth from the inhibitions that you have placed from those weaknesses from those chains that bound you give away from that which you love go and work and get those trainers that are 100 dollars trainers and then before you wear them give them to someone else if you can do that that is when you have broken that chain that is when you can say I am truly generous that is the test that is being put here can you see the difference I can give that which is easy for me to give it's good but if you want to break that chain if you want to see how generous you really are spend from that which you love spend from that thing that you want for yourself the beauty of this is is that there is no limit to this concept as we have been pondering upon the Holy Qur'an we can ponder upon this verse when it says spend does it mean literally spend am I confining the words of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala to the literal one sided meaning isn't his words so beautiful aren't his words oceans upon oceans does he mean literally spend or does he mean give what is precious to me precious to me might be my time you will not achieve that grand station of righteousness until you can spend that which you love most if your time is precious let's see you organize yourself so that you can spend it in the way of Jamaat or let's say my position is important to me you know what it's important that I have such and such a title but I know that there is person X who is more suitable for this position than me he is better than me but if I want to keep it it's my pride it's my arrogance my name should be on that notice board my name should be on the website I want it's me it's mine Lantana Al Berra Hatta Tunfiqu Mimmatu Habbun you will not achieve that grand station of righteousness until you can break that which you love most that inhibition that is placed upon you that is holding you down until you can break forth that chain and you can give away that thing which is most meaningful to you that is when you will have achieved that high station of righteousness the concept is whatever is holding me down I assess it and I snip that chain I say I am stronger than that chain Allah has made me so strong has made me so great which challenge am I not able to overcome and when I look at my life in this light I will then be able to really assess where I am going towards for the rest of my life look at this grand lady who is Ummul Mu'mineen who in the time of the Holy Prophet of Islam he as As-Sadiq and Al-Ameen relied upon this grand lady you know there is this tradition that talks about the battle of Ahad battle of Ahad we have spoken about on the first night when we talked about the word Tamhees purging your soul imagine the battle of Ahad now you are on the battlefield and you are defeating the enemies one by one and certain companions do not fulfill their obligation as is expected of them and because of this the enemy who are fleeing all of a sudden turn around and they begin to slaughter the Muslims one by one striking them from the left and from the right the commander of the faithful the commander of the faithful who is this man this man who lifted the gates of Khaybar with one hand this man that is not scared of anything this man that is the lion of Allah SWT says in the battle of Ahad the war raged so ferociously that we took refuge behind Rasul Allah and yet Rasul Allah when his own life was taking such a difficult turn when he was the one fighting his own battle in Makkah he took refuge behind lady Khadija salawatullahu as-salamu alaykum look at the lofty rank that is this woman lady Khadija we don't mean literally on the battlefield he took refuge behind her we mean look at how this lady looked after how Rasul Allah went to her how such confidence was put into this particular individual how much she had given to him how much Rasul Allah trusted her and how much of a human being she really was this is the character of this grand lady and we see this verse and we see this grand station of righteousness from the one who would give that which they love the most there is no person in history who can ever come close to this like lady Khadija she was the richest woman in Arabia if you need my wealth oh Rasul Allah take it it is at your entire disposal it didn't end there if you need my position I will give you my position Rasul Allah what do we mean by this the hadith that is related about the birth of the lady of light as lady Zahra salamu alaykum was about to be given birth to lady Khadija came out of her house within Makkah she came out and she called the women folk of Quraish oh women folk of Quraish Khadija is in the pangs of labor please come and aid her is there any midwife that come imagine lady Khadija who had all the wealth in the world everything at her disposal when it came to the birth of the lady of light she didn't have the money to pay for a midwife to aid her in the birth of lady Fatima to Zahra this is how much she had given in the way of Allah SWT the hadith says no one they responded the women of Quraish responded and said no you are the wife of Muhammad we will not come to aid you in your time of need she went back into her house all alone the hadith narrates as she entered into her house she saw four lights in front of her the first one said oh Khadija I am your grandmother Hawa I have come to aid you in the birth of Fatima the second one says I am Asya the wife of Firaun I have come to aid you in the birth of your daughter Fatima the next one says I am Mariam I am here to aid you in the birth of your daughter Fatima and the next one says I am lady Umkulthum the sister of Musa I have come to aid you in the birth of your daughter Fatima look at the way that lady Khadija had given everything for Allah to the extent that she couldn't even have a midwife her position as being the senior most woman within the Quraish she had given this up for the sake of Rasulullah's mission it doesn't stop there lady Khadija gave so much of that which she loved she even gave her physical existence for Rasulullah in which way Rasulullah would be sitting on a gharahira lady Khadija as an elderly woman would walk up those very steps of the mountain every single day go and give Rasulullah food come down again go up and give food and come down when you and I go to Makkah today it is so easy for you and I to walk up on those steps by Allah it is easy today but it was 1400 years ago to see an elderly lady coming and serving Rasulullah in this way she would have taken such a physical battering upon her own body until you give that which you love until you give every single part of your body in the way of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala this is what it means to break forth there is no boundary I am not lazy I am not proud I am not arrogant I am not the one who causes fitna I break all of these chains so that I may break forth into the culmination of the human being that I am lady Khadija as an Allah had given so much in her way and maybe we would suggest maybe we would say that it was this striving for the sake of Rasulullah the lack of food within the house the amount of effort she put in establishing Islam that might have caused that illness that eventually took her from this world we hear from the Dhakirin and in the books of Musaiba that when she passed away from this world she did not even have a coffin she did not even have one a coffin for her to cover that blessed body of hers can you imagine what Rasulullah must have been saying Ya Allah she has given everything in the way can you not now send down one thing for her can you not give us one piece of cloth and indeed Jibra'il Ameen descended with those five cloths which cloths are these four oh Jibra'il this first cloth is for your wife Khadija this second cloth is for you this third cloth is for Fatima al-Zahra the fourth cloth is for Ali ibn Abi Qalib and the fifth cloth is for Hassan al-Mustabaa oh Jibra'il Ameen tell me where is this fifth cloth where is the fifth cloth that we can place for Hussain ibn Ali oh Muhammad your grandson the one that sits on your lap the one that you kiss on the neck the one that you smell his cloth the cloth that he will have on the tent of Muharram will be the crying sands of Karbala it will be the horses hooves on the day of Ashura it will be the swords that strike his body on the tent of Muharram this will be the coffin that closes the body of Abi Abdullah al-Hussain we see on the tent of Muharram that lady Zaynab s.a.w. comes and she comes and she embraces her brother for one final time why are you embracing me in this way oh my dear brother Hussain would you like me to tell you what my mother has told me for you she has told me to kiss you on the neck because it will be this neck that is struck and severed from your shoulders which children of yours will be captured oh Hussain Sakina will be struck Lady Fatima will be struck all of your daughters will be struck there is one tradition that says that when it comes to Shahm when Lady Sakina she was asleep within the dungeons of Damascus she saw a dream which dream did she see she saw four lights in front of her the first light introduced herself and said that I am your grandmother Hawa the next one said that I am Mariam the third said I am your grandmother Khadija and the fourth one this light introduced herself and said I am your grandmother Fatima Tazahra Sakina she walks towards this light Fatima she crawls and says oh my dear grandmother Fatima what is it that you are holding in your hand she says in my hand is the shirt of my son Hussain this shirt has been struck and struck and struck I will present this shirt on the day of judgement to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala and I will ask Allah to take revenge for what has happened Sakina wakes up from this dream she cries out for her father oh my dear father Hussain Sakina wishes at one final time Sakina wishes to be embraced by you one final time Yazid he is sleeping so comfortably in his palace whilst little Sakina is sleeping on the floor of the dungeon Yazid wakes up what is this cry I am hearing this is the daughter of Hussain ibn Ali she misses the embrace of her father he says send the head of Hussain towards this girl this head of Hussain is placed upon a plate and it has a cloth upon it oh Hussain they did not give you a cloth on the tent of Muharram but they place a cloth upon your head they bring this plate they knock they open this dungeon Sakina says what is this they lift that cloth and this is the head of Hussain she takes this head into her arms she runs into the corner of that grave she cries out for the final time As-salamu Alaikum Allah Allah Allah to the corrupt people and those who believe in Allah Allah Allah Allah please raise your hands and let us join each other in the ah We pray to Ya Allah Ya Allah Ya Allah through the wasseel of Lady Sakina Salam Allah Alaihah and through the wasseel of Lady Khadija Salam Allah Alaihah Ya Allah hasten the reappearance of the awaited saviour. Allow us to be alongside him at all times in our life and in our death. We ask you Ya Allah, there are so many problems around the world. The people of Syria, the people of Bahrain, the people of Saudi Arabia, the people of Palestine, the people of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, the people of Yemen, the people of Egypt, the people of North Africa, the people of Mexico, Ya Allah, we run them safety, security, victory in the name of Muhammad in Ali Muhammad. We ask you Ya Allah, forgive our sins, the sins of our parents, all those whom we love, all those that love us, all of our marhuneen, all of our ulema, all of our leaders.   And we ask you Ya Allah, in the final moments of our life, we die in the love of Muhammad in Ali Muhammad. Copyright© OSHO International Foundation www.OSHO.com


Appalachian Wireless offers the easy way to pay with forward pay, and now it's even easier with unlimited talk text with three gigs for just $44.99. No credit check, no contract, no problem. That's today's Appalachian Wireless. Get to Know is brought to you by Dr. Tiffany Todd Duncan, DMD, located on Mall Road in South Williamson. Several palsy is a group of permanent movement disorders that include symptoms such as poor coordination, stiff or weak muscles, and tremors. However, one Floyd County man does not let several palsy slow him down. In fact, it makes him better. Adam Williamson learned what he could do at a young age and stuck with it, letting him now get paid for something he thought would only be a hobby. It's my surprise, people, but I was an athletic star, so music allowed me to put all my interest into one basket. I like telling stories, reading stories, and music was a way for me to express that, particularly blues. I'm going into blues, I'm going into jazz, there's just something about blues that allowed me to say what I wanted to say without having to talk. Now, for half a decade, Williamson has been a regular at the Mountain Arts Center, performing in the summer and Christmas shows. He also teaches music, film theory, and theater at the David School in Floyd County. When I first moved back here, I made Keith's call, he was the director of the Mac, and he found out that I played in a monitor and he asked me to show up and do some stuff on, from Port Spicken, and then that led to the offer and now I play with the offer, so I just thought it was a cool hobby, you know, I thought it was, it was just something to pass time and, you know, I was in band in high school, so it was kind of a place for me to belong to, but no, I never thought that I'd be able to do it professionally and have this much fun doing it. Williamson says he's been a lot of places throughout his life, but Prestonsburg will always be a place he calls home. It's hard to find a parking space in here, but no, it's one of the reasons I like Prestonsburg so much, small towns are where I can thrive and Prestonsburg is built for me to do that, but no, it's a life. You can watch Williamson perform at the Mountain Art Center during its seasonal shows or throughout the year during Prestonsburg tourism events. Reporting in Prestonsburg for EKB News, I'm Shelby Steele.


Coming up on DTNS, good news for ride hailing companies, the right to repair and people who like water. This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, November 4th, 2020 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. In Salt Lake City, I'm Scott Johnson. And producing the show today from the Arctic Tundra, I'm Amos. Yes, Amos in for Roger Chang who's off this week. Thank you, Amos. Good to have you along. Good to have all of you listening or watching along as well. We were just talking about how we got through last night and our admiration for the data nerds out there that help us interpret all this stuff. That was on Good Day Internet. Become a member of Patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Spotify's Apple Watch app can now stream without connecting to an iPhone. The feature is in beta and rolling out to some users. The watch will need its own Wi-Fi or cellular connection, offline listening not yet enabled. Google patched two zero-day vulnerabilities in Chrome being actively exploited. One was a remote code execution bug in Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine. The second was a heap-based buffer overflowing Chrome for Android that would let attackers escape the sandbox. If you haven't updated yet, go do it now. These government has fined Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Periscope, and TikTok each the equivalent of 1.2 million US dollars for missing a November 2 deadline to appoint a Turkish representative. According to a law adopted this summer, social media companies must have a permanent representative in Turkey or store Turkish user data in the country and execute court-ordered takedowns. Yep, they have to do all three of those. Alright, let's talk a little more about a potential partnership. Who's hooking up, Scott? Well, the Wall Street Journal has got the scoop. They say Comcast and Walmart are in talks to develop a smart television. Comcast would provide the smart TV software, which would run on TVs made by a third party and promoted and sold by Walmart and possibly carry Walmart branding on the television. That's not for sure, though. Comcast software would work nationwide and not be tied to its cable service, though it might encourage growth of Comcast, Peacock, and Zoom-O products. Walmart has an existing partnership to sell TVs running Roku under the on-brand or ONN brand. But this could change and you might see Comcast and Walmart selling you a TV or trying to soon. Yeah, it might not change. They might still do the Roku, too. It'll be interesting to see what effect it has on that Roku partnership. But super smart for Comcast, if you think about it. Comcast knows that cable television revenue is not going to increase for them. It's going to decrease over time. The way they take advantage of what they have built for cable and turn it into a revenue-generating business in the future is to take that software. They've done a lot of work developing software for their Xfinity boxes. If you're not a Comcast customer, you may think, like, yeah, you're set cable set top box. What good is that? But they have set top boxes that run Netflix, run Disney Plus. They're essentially like a Roku, but they just also give you your cable. And in fact, they even have a service called Flex that is meant to run just on a box, an Android TV box, rather than have to have a cable box. So they're taking all the work that had been doing that. If you heard years ago, like, Comcast is adding Netflix to its cable box, how weird is that? This is why they did it. So they could take that software and now use it for other things like embedding it in a smart TV, which then people walk into Walmart. They don't care about Comcast. They care about cheap TV, Walmart's promoting it. It's got a cool interface. I'll buy it. And then once they get it home, not only does it have Netflix, Hulu, et cetera, but it also will probably put Peacock nice and up in front, which will also help Comcast, because Comcast owns Peacock. Zoom-O is very similar to Pluto.tv. It's a leanback free interface. It's ad supported. I can't imagine they wouldn't put that front and center as well. So this all makes sense to me as a way for Comcast to pivot into the new world that we're moving into. Yeah, I mean, listen, if we're talking about, like, a 45-inch TV versus an 80-inch TV, obviously, those prices will be different. Otherwise, what do we think of something like this would cost? Because clearly, if Comcast and Walmart are getting into the business of selling a bunch of TVs together, they want to undercut some of the competition. Oh, yeah. I'm sure they're aiming for lower price points. I mean, if I had to guess, we're talking $900 basic 4K LEDs. Oh, I think even less. They might go that TCL price level, right? They might even get TCL to make it for them. Yeah, they totally could. And one thing that I should point out, because I had this question earlier and I did a little digging, their X1 boxes that Comcast already makes integrates things like Netflix and other services. One would assume, but they don't get explicit about this. So one would assume that these TVs would also support other mainstream services that aren't Peacock, as an example. But we don't know that, for sure. I would hope so, though, because if you're going to tell me on a TV, yeah, if you're going to tell me on that TV and say, well, it's just got Peacock, but you're going to pay a lot less money for it, I might still say, I think I'll get this LG, because it'll run everything. Yeah, and actually, GPAC84 in our Twitch chat points out, it's about your data, too, right? Because Comcast can also leverage what data they're allowed to collect from an operating system like this into delivering advertising, not just through the software. I'm sure they'll do that. They're going to sell advertising on the software the way Roku does, but also help inform selling advertising across all of their other properties, which includes a lot of NBC Universal properties, as well, including Zoom-O. Yeah, it's just a tip, here's a whole side thing that's just about marketing, and it's hard. Companies like this, where they're established brands, we know them from their service, whether it be internet or cable. And then while they're busy doing their business model, a whole bunch of other weird things happen. Netflix happens, Hulu happens, HBO Max happens, all these things happen, and they all feel right and good coming from the directions they're coming from. But then you hear, oh yeah, hey, we here at Comcast have an idea too, and we're going to put it in TVs and sell it at Walmart. And part of me goes, oh, well, that seems like Johnny come lately kind of boring, and you're just sort of barely making up for not really being on top of this trend. And I don't know how I get away from feeling that way unless they just blow my mind. You get away from it by not knowing it's them. I think that's the key. That's the key, I agree. As you walk into Walmart, and Walmart says, we've got this amazing new TV, the Flexstar. Check it out, cool new interface, got all your favorites, Netflix, Hulu, Peacock, Disney Plus, it's all there, and it's only $199 for a 42 inch, little more for the bigger ones, and you're like, man, that's a nice looking TV. I think I'll pick that up because I'm the regular Walmart shopper always looking for a deal, and then you take it home, and you don't ever really know that it's Comcast because I don't think, I mean, they don't even brand cable as Comcast anymore, they branded it as Xfinity, so, you know. Yeah, I think I totally agree with that. I would be much more excited about the price point and getting it home and saying, well, it's got all these features and functions and not really care that Comcast has had anything to do with it. Not that it doesn't necessarily tarnish it to know that as an aside, but it's not the selling point for me, and it just makes it feel cheap to me, and I don't know why, I don't know why I feel that way. Yeah, because you know, right? But if you don't, you'll just think like, oh, it's a new Walmart house brand, I mean, you won't, but somebody will. Right, the other thing is too, if they're aiming just for price, you know this thing's not gonna be the latest OLED freaking, you know, whatever. It's not gonna be high-end. Yeah, and that's okay, nothing wrong with that.  Exactly, probably not AK, those sorts of things, but it'll be enough, I think, for a lot of people who are just still sitting on some 1080Ps that are gathering dust in their basements. Well, OLED 4K TVs, you can get them for like 500 bucks now, so I wouldn't be surprised if it dropped in that range somewhere, right? Yeah, something happened recently, by the way, with OLED, and I don't know what it was, but I'm sure glad about it, because everything with OLED got cheaper, and I don't know who's responsible, was it phone makers, and they just made it cheaper because of the production got better? Like, when that happened, I don't know, but before all this, I'm old enough to remember when anything that said OLED or OLED, I went, oh, well, I won't be affording that for the next 10 years. Oh, they led me out because I couldn't afford it is what it used to be, but yeah, no, I think they just hit scale. You know, the big panels hit scale, and maybe I think that brought the price down. Yep. Well, Scott, before we get to our next story, when's the last time you watched Waterworld starring Kiven Koster? I watch, I try to watch it yearly, the last time I watched it was April of this year, I watched Waterworld again. Okay, so not that long ago. Well, you might find this next story interesting then, because at some point, many of us who watch something like Waterworld say, isn't it weird to have a water shortage because most of the planet is 70%, 71% water, right? Like, what's going on here? The problem is salt, not just in sea water areas. Some natural sources called hypersaline have 10 times as much salt content as oceans. It's often a side effect of industrial processes like oil and gas production. Hypersaline water is expensive to salinate, expensive to dispose of, and scientists at Rice University are using boron nitrate, also sometimes called white graphene, which is often used in electronics and advanced solar cells. The Rice University team coded a heating element with boron nitrate that can force water vapor through a membrane, leaving the salt behind. The boron nitrate not only protects the heating element from corrosion, but also uses solar energy to power the heating itself. Tests produced fresh water at 42 kilograms per square meter, about 10 times the capacity of current solar membranes, and a professor of civil and environmental engineering, Rice University, quellently says that the team's ready to pursue commercial applications, but need external support to scale up. This thing's ready to leave the lab. This isn't one of those like, wow, it's just in the lab right now and we need to work out the kinks. They're like, we get somebody in the industry that can help us make this bigger. We can put this out in the field and start using it. And an oil and gas industry does have a cost problem with disposing of its wastewater because it is hyper saline. It's really been expensive to desalinate, but it's also just as expensive to get rid of in a responsible manner. So this could fix that and provide extra water at places that are doing this sort of thing. It doesn't have to just be used for oil and gas. It can be used for any hyper saline resource. And so yeah, I love this because it's not just a really cool solution to a problem. It's not the only solution to hyper saline. They mentioned in the new Atlas story here, a Columbia University project that's adding an additive to the water that can desalinate cheaply and efficiently. So there's a few of these. It feels like this may be one of those advances where we're not going, gosh, it will be nice when this is finally practical. It feels like we've got several approaches to desalinate water, which has been something that could solve water shortages for a long time. We just haven't been able to make it efficient. It'll also avoid all those water wars that Tom and I predict on shows like that we've had in the past where that's always seems to be a prediction on forecast and other stuff. And I always wondered like one of these days we're gonna get to a place where it's cost efficient. We figure it out. And then all that water is there for us. And then there's new questions though. Like if it gets super cheap to do that, well then how flippant are we with water use? Again, are we using too much of it? We affecting ecosystems that are part of the ocean. Like I have a lot of questions about the longterm stuff and just good stewardship of this sort of thing. But as an exciting almost there technology like ready to go, like this is great news. This is great news. And if our water world happens and we still have this technology, that'll be a little easier to take it off. Exactly. Like who doesn't want to live in the water? You know, you just drink it up. Yeah. Great. If you can get a handheld one of these, actually they do think they can make it transportable. They think they can make it so that you could actually bring it out into the field. You wouldn't have to have it be a fixed location. I don't know if it's handheld for when you're floating around. But you know. Well there's probably some other like an archeological agricultural uses right now. I always hear about how it takes two gallons of water for every single almond that you produce to then make it into almond milk. It's like a really water-expensive process to make almond milk.  Water like that now suddenly has a new life potentially. It's not, we're talking about salt. Yeah, you could provide another source of water. And basically if you make water and not be scarce, fresh water and not be scarce, then you don't have to worry about feeling guilty when you drink your almond milk. Yeah, there you go. Hey folks, if you wanna join in the conversation in our Discord, you can talk about almond milk in there. There's folks in there that'll talk about anything with you. Join it, link to it, Patreon account. Get a Patreon account, patreon.com slash DTNS. Now, we're not going to talk about most of the kind of election coverage you're hearing everywhere but there were some technology related propositions on the ballot. There's a whole special episode along with politics, politics, politics about Proposition 22, the ride hailing one. So we'll start with that, but there's a few other things like right to repair and privacy laws that were passed around the United States. Now, these only affect the states that they're in but a lot of times other states will copy propositions if they're successful and sometimes even other countries will copy these. So even if you don't live in the United States you might find these interesting to compare to your own laws or look at maybe something that your government might be looking at putting into place soon. Let's start with Proposition 22 because this is likely to be one used across the United States and possibly elsewhere. Voters in California passed Prop 22 which exempts what they call app-based drivers. It's basically defined as somebody using an app to coordinate ride hailing or to coordinate food delivery. So I'm an independent contractor and I use Uber or Lyft to go pick people up and drive them around or I use Uber, eats, DoorDash, Postmates, et cetera to go grab food and bring it to people. There will now be an exception to the state law AB5 in California that would otherwise have required app-based drivers to be full-time employees. AB5 was passed mostly to make app-based drivers full-time employees but Uber and Lyft and Postmates and DoorDash spent millions of dollars on Prop 22 and it passed. The new law will leave drivers as independent contractors but it does give them a little more than they have now under the law. There's a minimum wage, there's a limit on how many hours you can drive only 12 hours out of every 24. For certain drivers that drive enough you can get some health insurance and accident insurance subsidies. So they're not giving all the benefits you would get as a full-time employee but they are trying to appear as if like well we're actually adding benefits to what an independent contractor otherwise would get. Oh man, I mean, this is, if you live in California this was a big one and the voters have spoken. I just, my kind of takeaway is like, listen if somebody is working 12 hours a day and they have no benefits. Yes, it's great that they're getting minimum wage. They deserve more. Well, they're not getting minimum wage. They're getting a minimum wage. The wage, the minimum of Prop 22 is actually higher than the California minimum wage. Right, but still. Yeah, sure. But we're still, it's independent contractor stuff and it's funny, you think well if you wouldn't you of course want to be an employee because then you get all the benefits that an employee would get. Not every person who drives for any of these companies actually wants that. Some do, some do not. So it's been a very divisive measure and I will be interested to see how things go over the next let's call it six months. Yeah, the other thing I wondered about is how much does this spreads to other cities? Like, are we gonna have something on the you know at the polls in four years or two years here in Salt Lake City where we have a lot of Uber and Lyft Sturridge or we did before the pandemic? I know all that stuff slowed down for a lot of places. You do a lot of food delivery, I bet. We do a lot of food delivery out here. And this covers that too. Yeah, yeah. Right, sorry about ride ailing. Cause that's how this stuff goes, right? Something successful in some cities makes sense somewhere else before you know we're all voting on it. So yeah, I'm really curious about it. And it feels like the right thing for you guys. I mean, I don't know a ton about that prop but other than what Tom's taught me and a few people have always said, oh yeah, this thing, we're voting it down. It's, this is a terrible attempt to, you know really mess with gig workers and whatever. So it seems like you guys got the right thing but we'll see if it spreads from there. Here's the thing before we move off of this one to keep in mind. I talked about this with Justin Robert Young on his live coverage of the election yesterday. This was supposed to fail. A month ago, this looked like it was going to fail. And these companies spent, as I mentioned millions and millions of dollars advertising it. You couldn't turn on anything in California including like your toaster without getting a Prop 22 ad it felt like. But one of the things they did is they put it on cars and they put it in the apps. I know there's going to be a backlash against that. They don't, they won't even bother to try to find out of putting it in the apps or putting it in cars was effective. They're going to say that was unfair. It was unfair for Uber to have a pop-up saying you should vote yes on Prop 22 every time you ordered some chicken in Uber Eats. So that's the next thing to keep an eye out is there will be a movement to restrict how companies can advocate for propositions they are behind in their own products specifically doing pop-ups in apps or asking drivers to put out signs in their cars which a lot of them were doing as well. Yeah. Massachusetts voters, let's hear from you. You passed question one which will prevent car manufacturers from locking up cloud-based advanced telematics data that is collected by driver assistance tools. This is an extension of the right to repair law that was passed a couple of years ago in Massachusetts. They have a law in the books already that says you can't lock up the data in the car but a lot of these companies are storing their data in the cloud and saying, well, now it's in the cloud. We can't let you into our cloud. That would be a security problem. Well, now you got to let them into the cloud. When the revised law comes into effect in 2022 car owners will be able to authorize third-party repair shops to access remote diagnostic systems through an open data platform that will be administered by a third party. So they're trying to make it secure by putting that third party in there. I fix it founder Kaveen's called it the most advanced right to repair law in the world opening wireless automotive diagnostics and unleashing a world of possible apps. I tend to agree with that. Score one for the car owners. Yeah, right? Like all of us who bought a car we should be thrilled about this but also I don't like this logic that it somehow puts a burden on the car manufacturers to give people access to this cloud data. When we have an entire cloud business world that is interested in giving us ways of accessing our data on the cloud. So I don't think you can have it both ways guys either you can get people can either access this data and pretend it's just a virtual hard drive or not. And the answer is yes, you can and it's not a huge burden. This is totally a good thing for car owners and for repair shops for that matter. And for hackers and by hackers I don't mean malicious attackers. I mean hackers somebody just wants to mess around with their car and they're like I need this data to see how my car acts. And I think I fix it is right. This is going to allow app makers to say well let me do some cool apps that will be able to access your car data securely and tell you things about your car or help you improve your driving help give you preventative maintenance. Who knows like the point is now that anyone can do this we'll get apps we wouldn't have been able to imagine otherwise cause people will try different stuff. Yeah, I think it's cool. My dad would love this he's no longer with us but he was all about the future of computers in our cars. He had no idea it would be like this but he would love this concept that this stuff would be accessible by like you said fiddlers hackers people want to mess with the thing they bought. That's good. Fiddlers on the trunk. There you go. California voters approved Proposition 24 which will replace California's Consumer Privacy Act. If you remember CCPA was passed in 2018 it's kind of like GDPR for California. But don't worry folks if you're like wait they're getting rid of that I don't want that to go away. The new proposition keeps all the protections of that original act but it now because it's a proposition passed by the voters will require a super majority of the legislature or a new proposition to overturn it if you want to change it. The people who passed this proposition were worried that companies were gonna keep lobbying to weaken the California Consumer Privacy Act. So this makes it harder to change. It adds the ability for California citizens to require companies to limit the use of sensitive personal information. It creates a brand new government agency to handle privacy law enforcement. And it says that companies that violate the data privacy rights of minors could be penalized up to $7,500. So it's trying to put in more protections for children. In fact, that new agency is charged with protecting the data of children. California businesses will now have until January of 2023 to comply with the new provisions. So it's giving them plenty of time to get used to what is not that big of a change? Cause the main point of this was really to make it harder to change that law. Makes sense. California got all the good ones this year by the way. You got well done. Yeah, well, you seem good. Well, you say that Scott, but you know, things happen in Maine as well. Yeah. I mean, just one last thing on this. I don't know if it's such a great thing to make this unchangeable because technology moves fast and suddenly we'll have a new situation that this law doesn't cover. It'll be really hard to change it. So I'm not sure I love that. I also don't love adding new agencies, but all right. Voters in Portland, Maine. Portland, Maine, not Portland, Oregon, Portland, Maine made an ordinance against the use of facial recognition by city employees fixed for five years. The measure lets citizens sue to receive $100 per violation or a total of $1,000. It requires the city to suppress any illegally obtained evidence and be grounds for a city official's termination. So the Portland, Maine is now joining Portland, Oregon and many other cities, San Francisco, Oakland and others that are saying the city can't use facial recognition until we figured out how to best use facial recognition without trampling on people's rights. You were quick to clarify on the EMS today during our segment that this is not about your ring doorbell doing facial recognition or Facebook on your phone recognizing that your sister's in this photograph. We're not talking about that at all. It's just the government slash state city, that sort of stuff. Well, the city, I guess. Yeah, yeah. It's usually that's the case. This is for city employees. And Michigan voters approved proposal two that amends the state's constitution to require law enforcement officers to get a warrant before searching a suspect's electronic data. The amendment prohibits unreasonable search and seizure, but that effectively means you got to get a warrant. It's unreasonable if you don't get a warrant. And it defines it as electronic data and electronic communications, which is much broader than what the courts were doing piece by piece. So this just says, you know, instead of waiting for the courts to try to litigate on everything, let's just say you got to get a warrant for electronic data and electronic communications in Michigan. And Michigan is now the 13th U.S. state to include privacy protections in its constitution. Seems like a great thing to do. If anybody needs, you know, a bit of calm, right? Maybe you do. If so, behold, we have a live stream of democracy and action, everybody. This is actually a live stream from Philadelphia, who the Philadelphia city commission, who is providing a live stream of votes being tallied in the area. And TechCrunch says that TechCrunch is where we got the live stream from. It's calm, it's patient, and results oriented. The above video is what you write on your yearly self-assessment. It's the inverse of social media. This is great. If you, like many around the world, are glued to your TV, wondering when the United States is finally gonna have a decision in this presidential election, this is a nice antidote. This is a nice way to take a break and still feel like you're watching the process, because you literally are, but it's just- Totally, and I've been watching this all day because I was like, oh, let's check it out. There's not a lot going on from the actual camera angle that we've got, but there are people there, there's stuff happening, and it is somewhat calming in a weird way. It seems like they're all off on a break. Right now it's like five o'clock, so I think a lot of them may have gone home. Guy couldn't get in with the garbage. But it's got kind of a sea span. Yeah, a sea span, just sit back and let it happen kind of vibe, and I don't know how I'm gonna like it. Yeah, exactly. It is somehow calming. An antidote for our times. Look at that, internet. Sometimes we watch penguins, sometimes we watch people in Pennsylvania counting votes, it's amazing. Just depends on the day. Yeah. All right, let's check out the mailbag. Let's do it. Gary writes, and this is actually in response to conversation we were having yesterday about time zones and standard time and daily savings time and 24 hour clocks. And Gary says- This was on good day internet, not on DTMS. Yeah, good day internet. Gary says, I have as many clocks as I can, set to 24 hour time because that's what Disneyland uses for scheduling. My phone, my Fitbit, my Apple TV, my Echo Show, all use the 24 hour clock. I also like the idea of ditching daily savings time forever and using UTC worldwide. I know, we know Gary. Yeah, yeah. Gary says, I have friends all over the world and it would be wonderful to be able to set a Pazume or Discord session using UTC so everybody just shows up at the same time no matter where they are. Plus, OS developers, database admins, sys admins would no longer need to worry about keeping the ever more complicated time zone tables up to date. I'm speaking from experience. Wow. I mean, yeah, I've been arguing for a long time. Give me a standard time zone that we're all in.  I'm tired of time zones, I've had it.  I'll get asked to whatever system you have. I totally will do it. I'll do the work it needs to change my brain to adhere to it, I'm fine. Yeah, and as we were, it was the Po Show yesterday, our GDI Po Show, it was like, well, if 4 a.m. means that it's sunny where you are, what does it matter? You'll stop thinking of it as being 4 a.m. Yeah, I'll think of it that time of day. Well, thank you, Gary, for lending your support to this campaign. I know someone who may not love it is Alison Sheridan because one of her projects on Taming the Terminal has been to create a, or Programming by Stealth has been to create a time zone app, which would be useless in this future world.  Yeah, I think Alison's got a few years left. All right, let us know, Alison. If you have feedback for us, if you have questions, comments, anything that we've talked about on the show, we would love to hear it. Feedback at DailyTechNewShow.com is where to send that email. We'd also like to shout out our patrons at our master and grand master levels, including Paul Boyer, Phillip Shane, and Irwin Sturm. Also, extra, extra special thanks to Scott Johnson. What have you been doing last week? Well, you know, outside of all this stuff going on, I have been planning a launch of a new Kickstarter coming out roughly on the 9th. That's what we're aiming for. I'm launching a card game called Rock Runners. I've been working on it for about a year and a half. It's finally time to put it out into the world. If you would like details on what it is and why you might want it, go check it out, frogpants.com slash rockrunners. Indeed, and by the way, when we say Alison has a few years left, we mean to use her time zone app. I think she has many, many years left. Oh gosh, yeah, no, I meant the time zone app. We're not gonna go in UTC tomorrow. Hey, Patrons, did you know your ad-free RSSV can have just DTNS or just Good Day Internet or both? Check your tier on Patreon to see if it says DTNS, GDI or all. And if you wanna change that, just change the tier at dailytechnewshow.com slash Patreon. Hey y'all, we're live Monday through Friday for 30 p.m. Eastern, 2130 UTC. And you can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. We will be back tomorrow with Justin Robert Young. Talk to you then. I hope you have enjoyed this program.


Hello everyone in this tutorial. We're going to be looking at how to create a cumulative calculation using DAX in Power BI So currently if we look at our data We've just got the single table called sales data and within that as you can see on the left We've simply got two columns one is every all the date in the last year And then also a sales amount for that particular date If we go back into our report you can see we're currently able to put that on month So we can see for each month. What was the total sales and what we really want to do is to Present this in a cumulative chart So on the far right of the chart we can see our current total and then obviously for everything else We can see how that has been accumulated over those those period of months. So to do that We just now need to add a few more Tables and we're going to just jump straight in so if you're going to model in and do new table We're going to create a calendar table. So this is allows us to use this as our central table It's not only important for this scenario But it's a great good really good practice and useful in all of your reports Especially if you're trying to join multiple data sets based on date So you can use two options. So we've got calendar or calendar auto calendar auto We'll just automatically generate your calendar based on the dates within your report But I like to have a bit more control and use calendar you can Provide static start and end dates But for us, we're simply going to drive these off of the date column in our sales data So our start date will be the min date within the date column So let's go to sales data and then the end date will be the opposite Which is going to be the max but again of that same column. So sales data there Close our brackets and enter and then what we'll now have is our calendar table Which is basically a replica of our date table here, but for the starting. We've got this is what we need The next thing we need to do because we've now got more than one table is to make sure we identify that relationship in the model So if you go into your model tab down here, all we simply need to do is just connect the date from calendar to the date in sales data And we can see that those two have now identified that relationship So let's go back into report and we can now continue with building our actual measure So if you've seen our previous videos before you'll see we like to capture all of our measures in a separate table Just for easy way to organize so all I'm going to do is create a new table and I'm going to call this underscore measure and The reason for adding an underscore at the start there is just to ensure that alphabetically It will appear at the top of our tables list in our fields pain down the side here So I've called it measure but actually want to call it measures. I know it's not really a big difference But it will help just to make things clearer So we've got measures there So what we need to do is as soon as we add our measure We'll be able to delete this column and it'll convert this to a measures table But for the time being let's just go new measure and we can crack on with doing our calculation So for us, this is going to be a mount and it's going to I'm going to call it C U ML for cumulative and We'll be using the calculate function that's too bad to do this so the first thing to do of course is add the word calculate and Then the expression that we want to do is a sum of our field amounts or sales data amount and In order to do this community over the period of time We need the following filter expression which is based on our newly added calendar table So for us, that's going to be date and making sure we select it from our calendar date, which is now appearing at the top here less than or equal to the max Calendar date Okay, and if you close brackets and that completes our function So what this is doing here is it's basically saying when we do our cumulative calculation We want each month or date period. We want to calculate everything that has less than or and up to our Max kind of date. So when it comes to working on a chart if you're into say in March 2022 what it would do is do the cumulative sum of everything that was less than or equal to March 2022 Likewise when it gets to April it'll do the same But now it'll go up until April 2022 to give you that cumulative picture all the way until the end Which will give us our final max value. So now that we've got our calculation of the right-hand side here We can now delete this column number one just to tidy up this table simply be going delete from model and You'll see this table icon here has now changed to a measures icon So again just makes it all nice and tidy and keeps everything together. So what we can do here is we'll simply copy this Chart we've got here Actually, no, this let's start a new one So what we'll simply do is add a line chart Just so we can do this from the start and line that with our current existing one So this time I'm going to take our date field from our calendar column and put it into our x-axis and Then I'll take our amount cumulative and put it into our y-axis and there you go You can now see how this looks like we're using our cumulative Calculation and we can see that this is doing exactly what it should do as we can see cumulatively We've got a sum all the way up here until March when they've got until February, sorry And then we know that in March there was zero amount So we expect to see a flat line there and then from April we start to see a gradual uptick Now the data we've used to do this is all randomly generated Hence why you see this more or less straight line But of course if you're using real data you'd expect to see more of a sort of maybe a stare stare pattern as your data Gradually builds up over time So I hope that answered your question if that's what you're searching for or you've just learned something new An available functionality you have using DAX in Power BI if you did enjoy the video Please don't forget to hit that like button and if this is your first time watching one of our videos Or you've seen in the past and still yet to subscribe Could I please ask you to hit that subscribe button and also that Bell notification button? So you are notified of all of our videos as they come out in the future So thanks again for watching and we'll see you in the next video