Insha'Allah, for today's khutbah, I'm going to stay on a general theme that I've been talking about for the last month or so, and that is what does the Qur'an actually say with respect to the Holy Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. Many of Muslims in the West that are not familiar with the Arabic of the Qur'an or Muslims who even are familiar with the Arabic of the Qur'an do not engage at a very deep level with the words of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. There's a story from the Ulama, the Hadith, which we were told that a rabbi one time came to Sayyidina Umar, radiAllahu ta'ala anhu, and the rabbi said, Sifli Habibak, described to me, you're beloved. So the rabbi knew that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was beloved to Sayyidina Umar. He just knew that. So he didn't say Sifli Muhammadan sallallahu alayhi wa sallam or Sifli Rasulallah, Sifli Habibak. And Sayyidina Umar said, how can I possibly do that? And the rabbi was taken aback by that. What do you mean, describe it for me? He said, I can't do it. He said, Sifli khuluqa Habibak just described to me his khuluq, his character then, just describe his character. He said, I can't do that either. So the rabbi, he goes to Imam Ali, Karamallahu wajah. He said, Sifli khuluqa Habibak, describe for me the character of your beloved. And even Imam Ali said, I can't do that. How can I do that? What a tremendous task. He said, why can't you do it? So Imam Ali, he asked the rabbi, he said, Sifli ad dunya, describe the dunya to me. Describe to me the beauty of the dunya, the beauty this and that of the dunya, the pleasure of the dunya. And he said, that's going to take till next week. How can I sit here and describe to you the dunya? And Imam Ali said, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said, mata'ud dunya qaleel. He said, no, Allah says in the Qur'an, the pleasures of the dunya are small. But about the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, he says, wa innakala ala khuluqin azeem. He says, verily you.  Of course, there's no real translation of the Qur'an. But just to give a sense of what the Qur'an is saying here. Verily, verily you dominate vast character, magnificent character, the character of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. This is extremely important. Let's look at what Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says about the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam in the Qur'an. Allama iqbal, he said, that if you want to taste what the Qur'an actually teaches, approach the Qur'an like the Sahaba heard the Qur'an. How did the Sahaba hear the Qur'an? Like the first time that you hear the Qur'an. That's how you should approach the Qur'an so you can taste its meanings. So Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says, Verily, verily, laqad is a form of major emphasis in Arabic.  And you say, I went to the Masjid. He says, I don't believe you. So then he said, Qad thehabtu. Qad, yes indeed I went. And he says, no, I still don't believe you. Laqad thehabtu. And he says, okay, I believe you now. Take it easy. Double emphasis. It's laam of tawqeed, of emphasis. And this harf is called harf, tahqiq for actualization. Laqad kana lakum. And kana is a verb in Arabic, the verb to be. And when it's in reference to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and its attributes, it's trans chronic. It's beyond time. It transcends time. Inna hu kana tawaba. Verily, he was, is, and will always be, tawaba. In Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, he can honor a entity with the verb kana, which means that this entity is honored by Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala and is owned by Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Laqad kana lakum fi rasulillah. So here's the idafa. The rasul is owned by Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. This is idafa of tashrif or takreem, annexation of honor. Rasulullah, the messenger of God, fi rasulillah in the messenger of God. Why didn't Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala just say you have the messenger of God as uswa tunhasana? What is the significance of fi of this preposition? You have in the messenger of God, fi rasulillah. These are nuances in the Arabic that do not carry into the English or into any other language. The fi here, according to the exegits of the Quran, denotes exclusivity with the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, only in the messenger and immersion in the messenger. The Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam is immersed in khuluk hasan, that he's immersed in uswa tunhasana, in a character, a comportment, an example that is beautiful. And Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala oftentimes in the Quran, again something that's often missed in translation, is that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala describes the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam with indefinite nouns or adjectives, indefinite naqira. And according to Ibn Malik in the alfiyah, one of the meanings of the indefinite article, the tanween, is that this entity is unlimited, is unrestricted, is beyond comprehension, it's a way of praising. So Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says, and this statement by itself is amazing, and every Muslim should have this memorized. When I go to churches, I tell them this is the equivalent of John 316. We see 316 everywhere, go to a sports, watch a football game, you see it written everywhere. What does it mean? This is the essence of our belief about the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, 21107 of the Quran, وما أرسلناك إلا رحمة للعالمين. So we have, if that, which is for strong tokyid, you have an affirmation after a negation, like لا إله إلا الله. The translation, there is no deity worthy of worship, that's not what it says. It says no God, but God. It's very strong, it's very emphatic. وما أرسلناك. We did not send you, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala speaks to the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, in the second person in the Quran. He didn't say وما أرسلنا محمدا. كا كاف الخطاب. We did not send you, it's very personal, speaking directly to the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. إلا, an exception for strong emphasis رحمة ناكرة. It's indefinite, unlimited mercy, unfathomable mercy, mercy that is not restricted, mercy to everything. Interestingly enough too, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, the Urlima point out, he uses a noun here, he doesn't use a verb. He didn't say وما أرسلناك إلا أن ترحم العالمين or something like that. We didn't send you except that you show mercy to people. Allah says you are mercy. You are رحمة. This is your that, this is your essence, that you're mercy للعالمين to all of the worlds. So he uses the indefinite oracle. The mercy of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam is something that is unrestricted, something that is unbelievable. How he showed mercy. And we should study these examples from Seerah. We mentioned this the other day. It's very important that when we read the Seerah, sometimes we have to stop and we have to smell the roses as it were. We know the story of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam when he went to Ta'if and he was rejected from the city and stoned out of the city sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. And he had to pass by these two lines that were kicking people, kicking and punching him and spitting on him and throwing stones at him sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. And he sat under the tree and we know the story that the angel descended and said give the word and this city is destroyed. And the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam he said, He said, No I have hope in their descendants. Think about this. Think about this. Ajeeb mercy of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. This vast character, this vast rahmatan, this unlimited, undefinable mercy of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. The other day a brother brought me his son, make dua for my son. So I make dua for the son. But what if I make dua for the children of that son who I haven't even seen yet. They're going to come in the future and I make dua, make supplication for the children of the children of the children of my Muslim brother. But what about if I made dua for the children of the children of the children of my enemies who have just stoned me out of the city and have just humiliated me. What kind of character is that? This is what the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam did. This is rahmatan lil'alameen, an unlimited mercy to all the worlds. The Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, one time he came into the Masjid and he saw a man and he was broken hearted in the Masjid and tears. And the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said, what's wrong with you? And he said, oh I've done this and I've done that. He said, I don't want to hear it. Just come here. Just come over here. Let's sit, raise your hands, repeat after me. Pray this dua with me. Oh Allah, your forgiveness is more vast than my sins, my transgressions. Now stand up, your sins have been forgiven. The Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam had a deep concern for the ummah, not just for the ummah, a deep concern for all of humanity, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. When he was repeating that verse all night long, all night long, into adhibhum fa innahum, ibaduk wa in taqthilahum fa innaka anta al-aziz wal hakeem. Our mother Aisha said that he recited this verse the whole night. Qamur Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, the ayah min al-Quran layla, the entire night, he's reciting this verse. If you punish them, they are your servants, but if you forgive them, if you forgive them, then you are great and wise. And then she said he collapsed into sajda, collapsed, and she heard him say Allahumma umma ti, Allahumma umma ti. Praying for the ummah, Allahumma, what does it mean? It's a vocative address. The ulama say, when you say Allahumma, it means you're calling Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala by all of his names and attributes, the ones you don't, the ones you know, the ones you don't know. It's very troubling these days. We turn on the satellite television and we see these anti-Muslim shows. They're Christians, they have Jesus or Muhammad behind them. Let's talk about both. Let's compare the two. And as a Muslim watching Christians do this, it's very strange because that's not an equal comparison. Isa alayhi salam, according to them, is God. The Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam, we don't believe he's God. He's a messenger of God. He's the best of creation. They should say Jesus or Allah. Right? But nonetheless, people like to make comparisons. Obviously Isa alayhi salam is rahmatan. There's no doubt about it. But there's a story in a Christian source, the Gospel of Matthew chapter 10. Isa alayhi salam tells us, according to a Christian source, he says, when he sends them out on preaching and healing for Dawah, for Khuruj, fisi bilillah. And he tells them that when you go to a city, if you should be rejected by that city, shake the dust of that city off your heels for the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah will fare better on the day of judgment than that city.  The cities of the plains, Sodom and Gomorrah, the Qomalut, will have a better time on the day of judgment than those people. You want to compare? Look at the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam in Taif, who's not only rejected by the people. He's stoned out of the city, abused and reviled. His feet are soaking in his own blood. He loses consciousness. Sallallahu alayhi salam. Baal arujoo. No, I have hope in their descendants. This is khuluq and azeem, sallallahu alayhi salam. There's very interesting, beautiful books that we need to read about the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam. A certain type of literature called khasa'is or khususiyat al-nabuwa, the specialities or special properties of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam. It's a book by Imam Izzuddin Ibn Abdul Salam, Rahimahullahu ta'ala, in which he lists the tafdeal of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam, enumerating how the Prophet's greatness is greater than any other Prophet. And this is interesting because his son approached him one day and said, tell me about the greatness of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam. And just off the top of his head, he was able to name these 42 things. How many things can we name? One of the things he mentioned were the miracles, the mu'ajizat of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam. The mu'ajizat which we believe in, no doubt about it, we believe in them. And he says, look at the mu'ajizat of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam because they're adhar and they're akbar. They're more apparent and they're greater than the miracles of those who came before him, sallallahu alayhi salam. So Isa alayhi salam could raise the dead. And as the poet said, yes Isa alayhi salam bi ibnillah raised the dead. But the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam, he raised nations, nations that were spiritually dead that did not have the zikr of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in their hearts. He said sallallahu alayhi salam, he said that the difference between one who is alive and dead is like the difference between the one who remembers his Lord and the one who doesn't, being spiritually dead, people walking around in their own coffins not remembering Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.  Only Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, if they remembered him, he raised nations sallallahu alayhi salam. Now there are some hadith, if you read Kitab al-Shifaq al Qadi iyyad, there's hadith Imam Bayi Haqi mentions, these are weak, some of them are weak, but there's hadith in these books. Hassan al-Basri relates, Rahimullah wa ta'ala, that a man came to the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam and he said, my daughter has died in a certain wadi. She has died. Can you help her? The Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam goes there and he says, and she comes out. This is mentioned in our books, it's not a strong senate, but these things are mentioned. But the real miracle is seeing the transformation of societies in 23 years. This is unparallel in history that in 23 years, the way people think is different. It's not just the way people do business, the way people interact with each other, the way people think was transformed by the message of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam, the way you eat, the way you sleep, the way you talk to your neighbor, the way you deal in politics, economics, all of these things have been changed in 23 years, raising the world from the dark ages into the light. This is a true Mu'adji that is everlasting of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam. And he said, Jesus alayhi salam, he can heal the blind. And Imam Izzuddin Ibn Abdu As-Salam, he mentions this. Yes, it's mentioned in the Qur'an as well. But he mentions the miracle of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam is more apparent than that. How is it more apparent? He says that Sa'ad ibn Abi Waqas relates that at the battle of Uhud, a companion in Qatada, his eye had actually been taken out of its socket and was resting on his cheek. And the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam not only did he restore the eyesight, but he actually put the eye back and it worked fine. And he had 20-20 vision. It's mentioned by Al-Uqayli in Qadi Ayyad Ashifah.   He said, I saw my father at 80 years old threading a needle. At 80 years old, he was threading a needle. This is the mu'jizah of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam. He mentions Musa alayhi salam who struck the rock with his staff and springs gushed forth. A mu'jizah of Musa alayhi salam. But the miracle of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam is adhar. It's even more apparent than that. Because somebody might say, well, sometimes rivers gushed through rocks and so on and so forth. It was mentioned in the hadith, Adnas ibn Malik in Bukhari and Muslim, rigorously authenticated in hadith that once the Sahaba had a shortage of water, the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam said, bring me a vessel. They brought him a vessel and he put his hand into the vessel. And he removed his hand.  That water came through his fingers. Sallallahu alayhi salam. So the Fouqaha, they mentioned in the books of Feeq, they say, what is the greatest water in the universe? Oh, the Nile River. No, no, no, no. Zum, zum. Zum, zum is the greatest. No, there's fountains, springs and paradise. Salsabil, Tasneem. These are greater. The poet said, Afdalul miyayi ma'unqad naba'a bayna asabi'in nabi'in muttaba'a. He said, the greatest water, the most exalted, the holiest type of water is the water that gushed forth from the fingers of the obeyed Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa la alihi wa salam. His miracles were adhar. Another example. Fata ja'akum nurun wa kitabun mubeen. An indefinite article again. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala doesn't say to nawiru or something like that. He doesn't use a verb. He says, you are nur, a nur that is naqira, undefined, unrestricted. This is how Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala speaks about the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa salam. The indefinite article. When you start reading the Qur'an, you should notice these things. That the mushrikin and the kufar meaning ahlil kitab, Jews and Christians and mushrikin, they're not going to break away from their kufr until al-bayna comes to them. Clear evidence. Why is there a definite article here according to the exeggents? Because this is ahdiyah, meaning that they were already expecting someone to come. There was an expectation for al-bayna to come. This is why there's a definite article. But who is al-bayna? Rasulun min Allah. Rasulun, not Rasulullah. Right? Rasulun min Allah. It's naqira, it's indefinite. Meaning such a great messenger, undefined, unlimited, beyond comprehension. A great messenger, an unrestricted messenger, a universal messenger from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. This is the meaning. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala uses this in the Qur'an many, many times in reference to the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. We're not noticing these things when we read the Qur'an. The speech of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, not sometimes in da'awa. And I've done this myself. When we're speaking to like a Christian audience, we want to stress the importance of Isa alayhi salam. It's very important for us, for Christians and non-Muslims in general, even Muslims, to know that we love Isa alayhi salam. So one time I was on stage in an interfaith dialogue and I said, you know the Qur'an mentions the name of Isa alayhi salam five times more than the name of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam. This is true. 25 times Isa alayhi salam is mentioned and five times the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam is mentioned. Four times as Muhammad and once as Ahmed sallallahu alayhi salam. But we have to remember that this might put a negative effect or an incorrect effect in the mind of the listener that we value Isa alayhi salam. We believe that Isa alayhi salam is greater or five times greater than the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam. So that might give the impression to someone that I can just believe in Isa alayhi salam as I do and I'm fine. And they become complacent in their kufr. No, of course not. Why is the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam only mentioned a few times in the Qur'an? Because the Qur'an is being revealed to the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam. Allah SWT is speaking to him directly. If you take a short surah in the Qur'an. There's 11 references in this short surah to the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam. And how does Allah SWT speak to the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam? This hamsa here is hamsa of taqreer. The hamsa of a rhetorical question. A rhetorical question. There's no there's no answer to be expected. Allah SWT wants to remind you of something. Don't you remember what happened to them? Everyone knows it's established. It's to remind the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam. Alam nashrah. Nashrah is plural. First common. Plural. It's jam'un. This is nunu ta'zim. Allah SWT uses the plural when addressing the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam in the second person. Because this shows that the object that's being addressed is also ta'zim. It's also tafdil. It's also great. And that's the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam. Alam nashrah laka sadrak. And this lam is lam uta'leel. That's brought forward to create tashweekh and anticipation. What is the maf'ul bihi? What is the direct object here? Have we not expanded because of you, your chest? Allah SWT expanded the chest, the sadr, the heart of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam. And the earlier I point out Musa alayhi salam made dua. What did he say? Oh my Lord expand for me my breast, my courage, my heart. But Allah SWT did this for the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam? Bilal talab without even requesting. Allah SWT did that. This shows the greatness of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam, the magnificence of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam. The Musa alayhi salam was at the edge of the Red Sea and the army of Fir'an was coming and in the Bani Israel they said we're about to be overwhelmed. We're going to be killed. We're going to be slaughtered. Kalla inna ma'ya rabbi sayahdeen. No way. With me is my Lord, ma'ya. He mentioned himself first, ma'ya rabbi, then his Lord. But when the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam was in the cave with Abu Bakr Sadiq and Abu Bakr Sadiq had fear, what did he say? Inna laha ma'na. He mentions Allah SWT first. Allah is with us. This shows, these are subtleties in the Arabic that pass by us many times. Very interesting, very beautiful. Allah SWT says in Surah Tawbah, والله ورسوله أحق أن يردوا هو that Allah and His Messenger, it is more befitting that you please Him. What is Him? Allah and His Messenger are two entities. Why is there a مفرد الغائب? Why is there a third person masculine singular, uh, phenomenal suffix? Allah mentions two, والله ورسوله أحق أن يردوا هو. Why who? Why not who ma? This is a grammatical error, a stoff that Allah, what does this mean? That means that there's an intimate relationship between Allah SWT and the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. He's not just a delivery man. He's not someone who delivers the Risala and goes away, you never see him again, you never contact him again. There's an intimate relationship between Allah SWT and the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam and between us and the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam. He said it himself, what did to, لو أنني رأيتوا إخواني. I wish I could have seen my إخوان. I wish I could have seen them. Not I wish, what did to. I would have loved to have seen them, loved, would, مودة. I would have loved to have seen them. أولسنا, they said أولسنا إخوانك يا رسول الله, aren't we your إخوان? The Sahaba said, he said no, you're my companions, as Habi. Who are the إخوان? Those who come after, who never saw me, but are willing to sacrifice their wealth and their families just to lay eyes on me one time. I wish I would, I would have loved to have seen them. Allah SWT uses a singular pronoun when speaking about himself and the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam. A singular pronoun because he says, مَا يُتِعَ الرَّسُول فَقَدْ أَطَاءَ اللَّا whoever obeys the Messenger is obeying Allah. This is a subtlety that's lost in translation. This is a subtlety that's lost by the people of أهل الكتاب. Aisa alayhi salam makes a similar statement. The father and I are one. They say he's claiming to be Allah SWT. Astaghfirullah. He's not talking about اتحاد or حلول تجسد these types of things, mingling or union or divine incarnation. No, he's talking about a relational unity that the obedience to the Messenger is the same obedience to Allah SWT. You cannot obey Allah and disobey the Messenger. It's impossible. You cannot obey the Messenger and disobey Allah. Their obedience is the same. This is according to Imam Al-Qurtubi in his تفسير of this ayah. Why is there a singular pronoun used in this verse? This is what he says. Allah SWT, he takes an oath by the life of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam. An oath by the life. There are people who read the Qur'an. This is what is aijib to me. There are people who read the Qur'an and they say the Qur'an says that the Prophet is only a delivery man. And all of these other things you say about him, this is a bid'a and it's kufr and it's haram and it's developed later. Do you know what the Qur'an says about the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam? Allah SWT says لعمركة. He takes an oath by the life of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam. And رضي الله تعالى عنه who said that Allah does not take an oath by anything except that it's exalted. By your life. By your life. And ibn Abbas said I did not hear Allah SWT. They can oath by the life of any other person. Allah says وَلَيْلِ إِذَا سَجَةَ. What is duha? لَامُ قَسَمْ وَعُلْ قَسَمْ. What duha? I swear by the duha. وَلَيْلِ إِذَا سَجَةَ. And by the night when it is still. Imam At-Tabari said وَلَيْلِ إِذَا سَجَةَ is the face of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam. وَلَيْلِ إِذَا سَجَةَ is the heart of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam. Allah SWT is taking an oath by the life, the face, and the heart of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam. مَا وَدْعَكَرَ بُقُوا وَمَا قَلَى Because what is the what is the sababun nuzul of this ayah? There was a fatra in the revelation. There was a break in the revelation. And the mushrikine were making fun of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam.  As Um Jummil said astaghfirullah. So the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam he he took all of this abuse. Allah SWT says it takes an oath by your face by your heart. Your Lord has not left you nor is he angry period. It's very interesting. قَلَى is في المتعدي This is a transitive verb which means it takes an object just like ودع is a transitive verb. There is an object مَا وَدْعَكَرَ Why? Because Allah SWT will never say will never even suggest that he hates the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam even when he's negating the statement. قَلَى means to hate to abhor something. So translations they don't do with justice. The Lord has not forsaken you nor is he angry with you. There is no you. Your Lord has not forsaken you nor is he angry period. He's not even going to suggest that he hates the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam. It's indefinite again. It's unrestricted. It's unfathomable that the khayr of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam in the next world you can't even think about it. It's indefinite. And soon will thy Lord give you something and immediately you'll be pleased by it. Immediately you'll be pleased by it. Soon will thy Lord give you something and immediately you're going to be pleased. But Imam Sayyuti says when this is revealed to the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam he said I will never be pleased. While one person for my ummah is in the fire this is someone who has deep concern for the ummah.  This is someone who has a connection with the ummah. This is someone that we have to have a connection with. It's very very important. Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala says Inna insana la fi khusr. What is asr? There's difference of opinion. If we study tafsir some say asr means the time of asr because this is when people come home and they start reflecting about their lives. Very reflective time of the day. Some say this is salat al asr which is the middle prayer according to many of the ulama. Some say fajr. The majority the jumhur say this is asr. The middle prayer. It's a reference to salat al asr. Some say it's asr in general. Time from the beginning of time. The creation of Adam alayhi salam until the end of time. Ibn Abbas says or I'm sorry Fakhradina Ghrazi. He says that this refers to the time of the messenger. The Zaman of Muhammad sallallahu alayhi salam. The best time in the time thereafter. So Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala he takes an oath in the Quran by the life of the prophet, by the face of the prophet, by the heart of the prophet, by the Zaman the time of the prophet, and by the Makan of the prophet. When he says la'uqsimu bihaathal balad wa anta hillun bihaathal balad wa waladin wa ma walad. So the ulama they ask the question why does this surah begin with a negation? La'uqsimu. Why la'uqsimu? I don't swear or I do swear. So the ulama say Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is saying that this city is so great. This is a sense of the of the meaning just to give a sense of it. This city is so great I don't even have to swear by this city. You Quresh you already know the greatness of this city. You know the the walad the walad and the walad Ibrahim and Ismail alayhi salam. You know what they did here? wa anta hillun and this is a hal according to one opinion of the first verse. Meaning you know the greatness of this city. You know the history of this city.   This is the whole reason why you've been preserved. La'uqsimu bihaathal balad wa waladin wa ma waladin wa ma waladin. Why do you think that is? You have security, perennial security. Why? Because you're so great. Why do you have this security? Because of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam who is going to be raised amongst them. This is why. There's many other examples we can give. We're running out of time. Surah Teen Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says wa teeni wa zaitoon. Wa teeni wa zaitoon. So what is Teen? The fig. So many of the ulama. Abdullah ibn Abbas who is called the exeget of the Qur'an. The founder of the exegesis of the Qur'an. It says the Teen is a reference to Jabal Judi. Jabal Judi is the mountain, one of the lower peaks of the Ararat mountain system in Turkey. In Anatolia. And the Safina of Nuh alaihi sallam, that's where it stopped. And apparently there's a lot of figs in that area. So ibn Abbas says this is a reference to the Shari'a of Nuh alaihi sallam. Zaitoon. What is Zaitoon? A reference to Ibrahim alaihi sallam. Because in Jerusalem, and around that Palestine, specifically in Jerusalem, there are a lot of olives. There's a mountain just away from the Temple Mount called the Mount of Olives. Where apparently Isa alaihi sallam used to pray there. Jabal is Zaitoon. What's Teeni wa Zaitoon? Wa toori sinin. What is toori sinin? Mount Sinai. Where Musa alaihi sallam received the Shari'a. The Torah. So Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, again taking an oath by great things. I swear by the Shari'a of Nuh alaihi sallam, of Ibrahim alaihi sallam, and the Israelite prophets after him. Musa alaihi sallam and those after him. Wa haathal baladil ameen. And by this city, laqad khalaqna l-insana fi ahsani taqweem. We have created al-insan, which most of the exegetes take as something that's general. The human being in general has the best form. But some of the Mufasilin say this is a direct reference to the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. Meaning the previous Shari'a, the previous Shari'as of the messengers. They all bore witness to the greatness of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. These are tafasir that's in our tradition. Nobody's making these things up. This is not some weird Sufi-Gufi type of tafseer. It's not some weird type of bid'a tafseer. This is in our tradition. We have to embrace our tradition. Our tradition has three aspects. Islam, Iman and Ihsan. This is what we have to implement as Muslims. Unfortunately, there's a polarization amongst many Muslims that are formalists or those who are... We have to take lessons from the Qur'an. We have to be balanced as the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam was balanced. As al-Fatiha tells us to be a balanced nation. Balance. Where is this ayah? Right in the middle of Baqarah verse 143 out of 286. Right in the middle is not not an accident. We take our tradition. We love our tradition. And we follow the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. This is called it-tibaa. And I mentioned this many times in the past. It-tibaa is to follow the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam in his outward and inward manifestations. To follow him. Not just outwardly, not just inwardly. Both of these are false. Both of these are dalala. We're talking about outward and inward. It-tibaa of the Prophet. And it-tisam wa atasimu bihabillillah. It-tisam is the word that's used for a man who's drowning in the ocean. And they throw him a line. And he holds on to that line. That grip that he's holding that rope. That's called it-tisam. This is how we should hold on to the sunnah of the Messenger sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. The Prophet says, Hold on to my sunnah. And the righteous khulafa after me. Like you're biding on to it with your molars. This is a very interesting-yani majazi istiara. It's a metaphor. This is where you rip meat when you eat jerky. You know? It's very strong. Look at the metaphor he's using. Biding on to my sunnah. And it's inward and outward manifestations. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala give us a tawfiq. He is the Forgiving, the Merciful. All praise is due to Allah, Lord of all the worlds. As-salatu wa s-salamu ala Rasulillah. As-salatu wa s-salamu ala s-salam wa ala s-sadatina wa immatina. Abu Bakr, Omar, Arthman and Ali. And may Allah be pleased with us, the companions of the Messenger sallallahu alaihi wa s-salam. He says, He says, Subhanahu wa ta'ala, in the Book of the Exalted, after we say, We seek refuge with Allah from Satan, the accursed. From Allah and His angels, We pray to the Prophet.  Rabbana la tuzib, Qulubana ba'dah idh hadaytana wahab lana milladunka rahma. Innaka anta al wahab. Rabbana a'atina fid dunya, Hasanatun wa fil aakhirat, Hasana waqina a'adha b'n'ar. La ilaha illa anta subhanaka, Innakunna min al-zalimin. La ilaha illa anta subhanaka, Innakunna min al-zalimin. La ilaha illa anta subhanaka, Innakunna min al-zalimin. Ya muqaliba l-kuluba al-Absa'a, Fabadqluban al-Aadinik.


Thanks very much for having me here today. I want to talk about revelation in data visualization today. Visual storytelling is my trade, and I've found just in the past couple of years that what I've been really interested in is trying to use the storytelling to reveal information to users, because I'm very focused on the people who are using the journalism that I'm producing. And I try to really start with building blocks. And one of our favorite building blocks looks like this. Leigh and I did this for you. You know, I try to think sometimes about information as pieces of Legos, right? Just how you take one and you build it. And one thing that's interesting about Legos is that it's actually, to me, not very much fun to go to a Lego museum and see what somebody else built. I want to build it myself, or I want to see the process of it being built. And so this is sort of one of my Lego building blocks. This came from a project that we published this fall on oil exploration in North Dakota, where I was actually fortunate to live for just a couple of years when I was a teenager. And so we're looking at the landscape here, and that's a very plain satellite image. And we've coded, we've color coded those yellows, which are all of the oil wells that have been built since 2006. And I wanted to be able to reveal those oil wells. So we're looking at the surface of the landscape. But I also want to be able to reveal the infrastructure that is underneath the surface of the landscape. And those are the fracking drilling lines that are actually underneath the surface. So we're kind of making the invisible, you know, what you can't see when you're standing right on the surface of the earth. I want to be able to make that also visible. One of my colleagues, Greg Arash, who I really enjoy working with said, you know, this is so fascinating, but we're really only being able to see it in two dimensions.  And so he said, I wonder if there would be a possibility of doing something a little bit different. So we're constantly thinking about building where we want to go, where we want to take our readers. And Greg Arash came up with this. So this is a three-dimensional of those fracking lines that I showed you flat, and it's to scale, so you can get a really good sense of how big these things are and how much they take over the whole landscape. And I feel like the tools that we have, a lot of the tools that we've seen yesterday and just this morning, you know, I work with my colleagues to use those tools as many as we possibly can to be able to reveal this kind of information to readers. You'll always have crazy ideas. It's part of the joy of being a journalist is being able to come up with crazy ideas, sometimes hypotheses, and it's really fun to be able to test them. So another example I have here looks at the Harvard Business School, a friend of mine, Jody Cantor, did a big piece on the Harvard Business School and how they were having some gender issues. A lot of the faculty members were male, and a lot of the female students felt that the classroom tensions had some real gender bias with it. And so with Jody, I decided to see what kind of data that we could get out of the Harvard Business School to be able to shed some light to reveal something about this. Harvard was not super excited about sharing a lot of the data that they have, so I thought, all right, well, what's available, what's publicly available that I could use to begin to sort of test this hypothesis that the deans were telling me that in fact there is a real gender disparity in the faculty at Harvard, but the reason can be blamed on a single reason, and that single reason is the tenure process. It's very difficult to get tenure. It's a tenure process, and so there's this immense lag in being able to recruit good people, and then 10 years later, that sort of once the tenure pipeline has been sort of filled, then you begin to sort of solve this gender disparity problem. And I said, great, that's a testable hypothesis. Let's test that baby. So I got all the CVs of all the professors who currently teach here and what you're looking at right now. It is how long those tenured male professors have been teaching. So you've got one guy who's been teaching there for 51 years. He's tenured, he's doing a great job. And then you have the one super lucky guy who earned tenure when he'd only taught for six years, which is really kind of unusual, it usually takes about nine, 10, 11 years. I thought, all right, so then now we'll look at women. Okay, like everybody knows they don't have that many women tenured professors. We've got that here. But if we test the hypothesis that in fact the tenure pipeline will be eradicating this gap, then let's see what happens. So that is the tenure pipeline. So that is male professors without tenure right now. And I thought, okay, so here's the reveal moment, right? If the deans are telling me that the pipeline, the pipeline is set up so that in about 10 years we'll have at least a lot closer to the gender equality in professorships there, then we should be all set. But in fact, the tenure pipeline for women is significantly smaller. So even in 10 years, they're still gonna be looking at some gender disparity there. And that was something that I was able just to pull out of the CVs. I worked closely with Jody. I did not work super closely with the deans at the Harvard Business School. But we had some good conversations about this afterwards. Digging around in the data, something I really like to do. I think it's something that probably we all really like to do. And we saw some great tools yesterday that help us dig around in the data. Sometimes a clean hypothesis doesn't just hand itself to you. And sometimes you get an interesting data set and you know there's good stuff in there. Sometimes it's through reporting or maybe a client hands it to you and you say, I wanna find the best thing in here. And Jeff talked a lot yesterday in our first keynote about using some of their tools to be able to sort of really look at those trends, look at outlier, see what's rich and interesting inside of it. This is a piece that looks at auto fatalities. And I had a data set that I've actually used several times. It's a government data set called FARs. And it's on auto fatalities. Anytime someone dies in an auto accident in the United States the government takes about 100 pieces of data about that accident. Where it was, who was driving, what their blood alcohol level was, who was sitting where, all kinds of things like that. And it's a very big, very interesting data set. And I wanted to look at it when the National Transportation Safety Board came out and said, we'd like to change the legal blood alcohol level. So right now it's at 0.08, that's legal. So it's binary, if you're above that, it's not okay. If you're below that, it's fine. They wanted to change it to 0.05. And I thought, all right, this might be an interesting moment in time to do a little bit of data acceleration to say, if you change that law, now the states have to do it, the National Government can only make recommendations. But if states start to change that law, who is affected the most? And I didn't know, I didn't have a hypothesis. So I started sketching and playing around and looking at the data and diving into it. And Aleister, Dan and I worked on this. And once we sort of started to work with the data, we realized that there was a real correlation to age. And so what this shows is along the horizontal, you've got age, you've got 16, all the way up, all the way up to age 60. And then you've got on your vertical is your blood alcohol level. So the first group is the very low blood alcohol level. And then where you get into all of the dark reds, that's where the blood alcohol level is really high. And then that middle part, that middle part is the levels and proposals. So right now that middle part is paired with the top, but under the new proposed regulations, it would then move down to the bottom. And it's very clear to see right now that younger people, that younger people are the ones where driving an alcohol is a really incredibly dangerous mix. And so really in the under 26 crowd is where, if this legislation were to go into effect in states, that's the population that would be most affected. And it was an interesting project to me because I didn't come to it with a very clear thought. But I do feel like I was able to reveal something interesting in this big data set that was very newsy and on point and really were able to show people the affected population. And I got some good feedback from readers that said, you know, this was a really good conversation starter with my teenager. Choosing form, form for the win. I think getting to play with form is something that is one of the great joys of being a visual journalist and being in this field. Finding the right form is like singing, right? I mean, it's just finding the right form to match your data is kind of the most magnificent thing in the world. And it's also sometimes the hardest. This is a piece that now you've seen three times. So I'm not really gonna talk about it. But what I wanna talk about is actually the sort of father of this piece, the piece that actually came before. And incidentally, the data for this piece also came from that far as data set that I just talked about. So that really related, very interesting. But this actual connected scatter plot was the first one that I did for the times a couple of years before I did the one that you've already seen three times now. And this one was for a business column that I had called Metrics. And I really wanted to look at the relationship between driving the price of gas. And that's kind of interesting right now because we're in, you know, we've got some pretty low gas prices right now. But this was actually published in early 2010. And like the other connected scatter plot that you've seen already several times, it actually has the same horizontal axis that is miles driven per capita every year. Because wow, Americans love to drive. So in the 1970s, an average American was driving 5,000 miles every year. And now, it's twice that. Now we all drive, each one of us drives more than 10,000 miles every year. And so that makes, that means that the, that metric means it's really kind of clean and good for a connected scatter plot. But my vertical is the price of gas. And so what I wanted to look at is this sort of historical relationship between those two. So in the, in the 50s and 60s, cheap gas, long commutes, people were fleeing urban areas, but they were still working in urban areas. And so commutes got really long, but it was all fine because gas was totally cheap, no problem. And then Kaboom, Big Spike, 70s and 80s, energy crisis, Sarah Boyle embargo, you've got a lot of stuff happening there. And visually you can see that. Your eye goes right to that peak and you say, ooh, what went on? And there was an energy crisis. And then it fell, it fell in just a couple of years and then we started to have some record lows again. People started to drive a ton more. You'll notice during that peak in the energy crisis, a lot of people stopped driving quite as much. So you just didn't get that incredible pace of increasing your driving every year. But then in the 80s and 90s, you did again and then we started to see another big climb. And for the first time, you actually saw Americans driving less in 2009. Then they had before. What happened in 2009? Economic recession, a big one. A lot of people lost their jobs. People who don't have jobs don't drive as much. There's less merchandise on the road. There's less trucks out there. And so that number actually swung backwards. And I thought that was a really interesting moment in time to be able to say, hey, look at this. For the first time, we're actually swinging backwards in this metric. So choosing that form, I thought, was a little bit playful, a little bit interesting. I've actually been wanting to update it, but I haven't had time to update it. But I thought it would kind of be an interesting thing here. Along the bottom, you can see that I've got some small multiples. So it's the exact same chart shape. I'm just highlighting a few different little pieces and kind of giving you some analysis on the bottom. What's in there is basically what I just told you, so you don't need to read it. But I remember when we published this, somebody that I respect a lot in the community sent me an email saying, wow, having the only color on a whole color page, this was a printed version, the only color on the whole printed page were in those tiny, little, reddish-brown arrows. And that email was from Nigel. He said, that show is an incredible constraint. Hannah, I applaud that. So layering information, especially now that we are looking at so much design on mobile, layering information is really important. And I really feel that it can set the pathway for discovery because I want my reader to be the one who is discovering this information as well. And the piece that I just showed you, I put the small multiples on the bottom so that the reader could discover those annotations and be able to dive into it to get the big impression of the big data visualization, but also be able to discover those pieces of information. This is a piece that we did in the fall. I worked with Albert Sun on it. Albert had gotten his hands on the CDC model that looks at the relationship between international intervention in the countries that were stricken with Ebola and the number of cases that were actually counted. And it was a model. So it's got, obviously, inputs and it's got outputs. So this shows what the model says about the number of cases if intervention began in August 2014. That was fairly close to reality. It was toward the end of August and early September that the international community was really gearing up. I'm really helping, but this is pretty close. And counting those cases was pretty tricky business because there were so many that were unreported. So what we've got here is an estimate. So the light beige there on the chart is your high estimate and then your darker orange-ish is your low estimate. The black line is reality. So the black line's not the model. The black line is the actual number of reported cases. So what I wanted the reader to be able to do is to look and see what would have happened if maybe international intervention had happened in June. So if it had been in June, the number of those cases would have been significantly lower. Even we're just talking about a couple of months of getting money and resources and people, experts into there. But if intervention had happened in October, just two months later, that's what the chart would have looked like. And when the CDC came out with our estimates showing what this would have been, we did a couple of daily charts showing what it would look like. But I felt like readers saw that, but they didn't really understand kind of the impact or the import of this. And when Albert got this data, I worked with him very closely to be able to really work with the reader to be able to let them explore and discover what could have happened. I'd like being able to relinquish some of the control, some of the editorial control and let the readers discover that for themselves. And it's a slider, so you can move back and forth and see a bunch of different months. Always beware, always beware, the false reveal. In my field, things move incredibly quickly. I mean, we do projects within hours. Sometimes we have the luxury of doing them for weeks or even in the case of snowfall months. But we need to be incredibly careful about the false reveal. So not to pick on the BBC at all, but there's something just slightly off perhaps about the slope of this line going from unemployment 7.8 down to 6.5. That just doesn't quite sit with me and you can see they've got a little bit of a broken axis. But fortunately, this community also has a good number of people who are always on guard for this kind of false reveal. We're pretty good at quickly peer reviewing each other. Next thing I wanna talk about is mobile because a lot of my interest in energy and focus in the past year or so has really been moving to mobile and how we can start to tell complex, wonderful, rich, revealing data visualizations on teeny, tiny little screens. And Jim got into this yesterday and I think his presentation was magnificent. But he didn't talk about how hard it is. It's so incredibly hard. This is the one that Jim showed very briefly. This is one we published pretty recently. It was on the end game in Ukraine. So there's, we've written dozens, hundreds perhaps of stories about the machinations within the Ukraine. And I really wanted to be able to distill it down to something that you could see and understand on your phone. And we used swipe rather than scroll for this and sort of give first one. I worked very closely with Tim Wallace and Derek Watkins on this. And there's actually, I think there ended up being about 14 or 15 of these different panels. I'm just gonna show you a couple of them. But we distilled the information down to just the most sort of minute nuggets. So one of Russia's goals is for the two oblasts to become fully autonomous. I can show you that and I can give you a map. During the war, when the separatists were failing a little bit, they got a lot of help from Russia. And so the border was incredibly important. One of Russia's really important pieces in this is that they wanna keep that border as porous as possible so that they can send whatever they need from Russia to Ukraine. And then lastly, one thing that they're really focused on is being able to have a land connection to Crimea, which is one of the things that started all of this because Crimea has some amazing natural resources, but Russia right now doesn't have any way, any way over land to be able to sort of get the equipment that it needs to be able to enjoy those natural resources. So being able to distill all of that down into something that somebody can have on their phone and swipe through took longer than I would actually like to admit. This is a piece that came, it was probably 18 months ago or so, and this is next to the motorcycle and helmet piece which some of you have seen and Jim also showed. I decided to show this one, which wasn't quite as popular, but this was me trying to figure out what we can do on mobile. Is it gonna be scroll, is it gonna be swipe, are we gonna use animations, how tight can I get the text? And when Obamacare was passed, I thought, all right, well this is exciting. This is certainly historical and momentous, and eventually, who knows, maybe 10 years down the line, we'll actually wanna see not just sort of economically, was it a good idea, but health wise, was it a really good idea? So what metrics are available for me to be able to measure it? I can't measure it now, I don't have any results, but I'm gonna keep my eye on it and I wanna be able to look at what metrics are available. So there's a metric called amenable mortality, who knew? And what it does is it takes the deaths from diseases that researchers have decided could have been prevented if the patient had access to good healthcare. And it's a metric that you can compare across countries. Fantastic. So I looked at the United States in 97 and then 2007. 2007, although it feels ages ago, it was one that we had a lot of country by country data on. So within the United States, we have more recent stuff, but country by country, the comparable year was 2007. So I said, okay, well, we're looking better than in 1997, but wow, the slope of that line, compared to Britain or Germany, the slope of that line is not so good. So all right, well how do we stack up to other countries, maybe non-European countries? If you look at that and you look at the slope of Poland or Mexico, I mean they, their amenable mortality rates in 1997 were really high, but wow, they have made some incredible improvements in that decade. In the US, that slope doesn't look too great to us. It looks like we were really sort of beginning to lag a little bit. So those are, that's the metric itself. And then the next question that I wanna ask, and probably all of you are asking, what's in that amenable mortality metric? What diseases are we talking about specifically? Circulatory diseases take up almost half of it. And you can see that circulatory diseases deaths by population in the US, not so good. We're pretty much on the high side. We're right up there with Korea and Mexico, while a lot of our other counterparts like France is doing enormously well. So that's very interesting. I'd like to be able to see next time I look at this. I kinda wonder if the US ball's gonna move a little bit. Infectious diseases is also another metric that goes into this. And this was particularly revealing at least to me this fall because of the measles outbreak. So our vaccination rates are significantly lower than a lot of other highly developed countries. And you can see that in this chart. And that histogram, we're really not doing so great. Because we're newspaper, we get to do a lot of this live. There is nothing quite like elections and Olympics to get your adrenaline pumping. And one lovely thing about elections and Olympics is that readers come to us. Readers are super excited to read and digest and discover and explore anything we wanna give them. And they're really fun times in newsrooms. So I wanted to give you an example from the Olympics. And this is one where an American, McKayla Schifrin, I wanna reveal to you how she won the slalom. Ski races are fast. They're like a minute and a half.  I can't even see anything on that live video. You look at the time and they cheer and that's it. But how do I really begin to explain to somebody how she won? So this is the standing after the first run. She was drawing really well, but they've got a second run. And in the start of the second run, an Austrian actually had a better time than she did. So she really had to up her game. And there were a few of us working on this together, driving it, doing some reporting. And we had an expert, a state-side expert on the phone watching it and as we're watching it together again, like it's a minute and a half, we're doing the live video. I don't remember what time of day or night it was. You tend to sort of work at night if you need to for these things. We had him on the phone and he said, oh my goodness, she made this terrible mistake. And we said, I didn't see anything. She didn't fall down. And he said, that's it, it's over. And it was really interesting to be able to go back and take the stills and actually have him say, here at this very second, you can see she's skiing on one ski. There's no way she's not gonna fall over, but she doesn't. She regains her balance. And you can see where we've marked mistake and recovery. She actually is able to regain her balance and then she is actually able to pick up speed. So it was Will Brandenburg, the state-side that we had on the phone. And he says, it's amazing she was able to do that. And she gets right back on it. And then he tells us the points during the race where she's doing incredibly well. There was a problematic place that a lot of people were having to slow down. And she didn't. And he says, she's basically making it around the gate. She's just rolling her ankles. I mean, it's just like butter. And then so at the end, here she is, she makes the win. So really fun to be able to dissect something like that. In real time, she just raced and boom, we just put that up on the web where you can see right now more clearly than just the live video how exactly she was able to win the race. I like goofy. I think goofy's good. I think having fun is good. One thing that's awesome about this conference is that everybody seems like they're having a really good time. And I love that. And this is a piece that the Times did for the World Cup. Some of you may have seen it. It was a game called Spot the Ball. And you got a photograph like this and you picked where the ball was. I wasn't very good at spot the ball. That's me in the red, not any really near where the ball was. But really fun. And we had, there were a ton of iterations of this. It was sort of, I don't remember how many, but we do for any game. There'd be six or seven of these. People had so much fun with them. It was just like, it was endless good times. Goofy's good. But I think goofy and thinky is even better. So similar technique when New York City came out to say that New York City cab drivers no longer are being tested on their knowledge of the geography. We thought, oh, well, that might be fun. Like you could do a kind of similar spot the ball, only do it for landmarks in New York City. So I lived in Queens in New York for a long time. Now I live in Washington, D.C. But I thought, I'm pretty good at 12 years in New York City. I'm pretty good with New York geography. The Unisphere is in Queens. I almost nailed it. I was very proud of it. The next one starts to get a little bit harder. The next one, Central Park Zoo. I thought I had been there a lot. They have a polar bear, which is sort of sad, but also I grew up in Alaska and I think that anything Arctic is awesome. So I would go and visit the polar bear, although it was sad. And I thought, all right, I know exactly where the Central Park Zoo is. And I was very, very close. However, I was less good at finding New York City. So be it. One thing that is really much more powerful than any reveal is this community. And I'm really, really happy that I was invited to be here. And I really feel like it's an amazingly special place. So thank you all for inviting me, people.


Hi, everyone. Joe for Jaspy's casebreaks.com coming at you with a pack of 2019-2020 Panini Mosaic basketball. Hobby pack break number 35. It last filler we got to do to unlock that obsidian break. That basketball break is in my locker, I think. It's coming up in the next video. Big thanks to this group for getting in on it. And all 30 teams are in right there. Let's roll it, let's randomize it. Three and a four, seven times for names and teams and then different dice roll for the giveaway part. Remember, this is part of tonight's special promo today that you saw in the break schedule. All right, so good luck, seven times. One, two, three, four, and seventh and final time. Three and a four, seven times for the teams. Two, seventh and final time. All right, there's the first half of the list right over here and the second half right there. All right, Husky Dolphin, what's going on? Yeah, not much here, just doing the usual. Watching the little hoops, seeing LeBron James become the all-time scoring leader. Trying to sell some breaks, move some breaks, open some boxes, hopefully we'll see some nice stuff. So nothing too crazy in this pack, but that's not the point of this break. The point of this break is who's gonna get those obsidian spots. Let's gather everybody's names one through 30. New dice, new list, top five after seven. And a two, seven times. One, two, three, four, five, six, and seventh and final time. So after seven, it's just the top five. So from six through 30, sad times. But I appreciate everybody giving this a shot. Top five though, you're happy because you're in the next break. And that's gonna be Josh, Daniel, Daniel, Evan, and Josh. Congrats to the top five. We'll see you in the next video for the break itself, Jaspy's CaseBreaks.com. Bye bye.


We've reached the period of time in the offseason where we're in prediction mode. How many touchdowns is this quarterback going to throw for? How many interceptions? How many rush yards is this back going to get? How many receiving yards is this wide receiver or tight end going to catch? What's going to happen? How many games is your team going to win and so on and so forth? The predictions, as y'all know, they go super, super crazy. And it's fun because it's always nice to look back and be like, oh yeah, I was right about that. Or in my case, oh man, I was wrong about that. And Bleacher Report, be our great iron. They are no different because I was scrolling on Instagram this morning. And this was a post that they did about 2022 breakout candidates. And of course, the headline was Trevor Lawrence. Number one overall pick from a year ago from the Jacksonville Jaguars. And they, of course, they got a couple of receivers. They spent some crazy money on them and they really reset that receiver market. But hey, Jacksonville with their team, with the situation that they're in and the lack of success that they've had. If you want people to come, you are going to have to pay extra money. You're going to have to pay more than the average. You're going to have to pay more than what the market is saying. So with them giving out the crazy contracts, initially it was a surprise. But then when you think about it, it's like, oh, okay, I get white. Now, another person that they had as a breakout candidate will be 49ers quarterback, Trey Lance. And with Trey Lance, he's expected to be the starting quarterback. We, of course, keep hearing all these rumors about Jimmy Garoppolo and where he could possibly be traded to. But it's been dry. It's been real dry. It's been real dry on Jimmy Garoppolo. It's been real dry on Baker Mayfield.  And I think with the situation that both of those quarterbacks, and I think is a lot has to do with that salary. Jimmy Garoppolo, Garoppolo, why do I keep calling him Garoppolo? Whose name is Garoppolo? Oh, Mike Garoppolo, the reporter. But Jimmy Garoppolo, he, I think he would get paid like 22 meals, something like that. But if 49ers cut him, I believe there is either no or a very, very minimal amount of dead money. So they can cut him, get out of the deal, and they would gain like 20-something meal in cap space. So we feel like it's just a matter of time, but they seem to be waiting this out till somebody takes the bait on a trade or whatnot. And I'm sure like, I think they would take something really low for Jimmy Garoppolo just to get him off the team so they can move forward with Trey Lance. And that'll be that. I don't see him being on the team, just sitting there being a $20 million backup. But hey, we'll see. Another candidate, Dolphins wide receiver Jalen Waddle. Oh yeah, Ravens fans, they know about him. We remember him from last year, and at that Ravens Dolphins game, he showed himself. But now I can see why they have him listed as a breakout candidate because of his, one of his newest teammates, that being Tyreek Hill. And you got two receivers with crazy speed on the field. At the same time, you know Tyreek Hill is going to be getting a lot of attention. And with him getting all that attention, Jalen Waddle, it should put him in more favorable situations and more favorable matchups. So I can definitely see why he would be a candidate for breaking out. Another one. It's a good one. It's an interesting one right here. Broncos wide receiver, Jerry Judy. South Florida zone, by the way. And with him, I think the reason why they have him as a breakout candidate is not because the situation changed. They added another receiver. They added another, no, it's because they added a quarterback. And they added a legitimate quarterback with Russell Wilson, who's going to get Jerry Judy that ball. They made a serious upgrade at the QB position. And when you make a serious upgrade at the QB position, it affects everybody on that offense. And then of course, it affects the defense too. Because if you're quarterbacking your offense and moving the ball to scoring points, then that makes it easier for the defense. And Broncos, they already had a good defense. But now if you could have a good offense too, they could be one of those sleeper teams in the AFC. So we'll see what happens with that. Another one. Cowboys running back, Tony Pollard. Now, this is an interesting one because you know with Ezekiel Elliott, they paid him a lot of money. A lot of people feel like they shouldn't have paid him all that money. A lot of people feel like they definitely regret paying him all that money. But hey, it happened. And he was one of the better backs in the league and he was doing his thing. Ezekiel Elliott was. Injuries kind of slowed him down and then Tony Pollard, he's been speeding up. So a lot of people feel like he could break out. And he's been looking good for the Cowboys last couple of years. There's some people say, hey, he's better than Ezek. I've heard that a lot from people. So I can see why they would have him listed as a breakout candidate. Another guy. Chargers cornerback, Asante Samuel Jr. And I think the biggest reason that they may have him as a breakout candidate, obviously you got there when James behind you. But and they just signed the cornerback from the Patriots, who I wish we could have signed, but I understand it is big money right there. JC Jackson, there we go. JC Jackson, who catch like a million picks a season.  So let's throw to the other side. So this will give Asante Samuel Jr. a chance to really evolve and emerge. And another thing that goes in his favor, Khalil Mack and Joey Bosa. Same field, same time, same team. Yeah, that's trouble. Even though Khalil Mack over the past couple of years, he's been a little down. He was hurt too in a little brief period of time. But still, Khalil Mack and Joey Bosa. We've seen it before where some players, it'll be like, man, this player is starting to fall off a little bit, but sometimes they just on the wrong team. Sometimes all people need is a fresh start and they just feel rejuvenated. Jets, wide receiver, Elijah Moore. And I think he could be a breakout candidate because maybe Joe Flacco starts. No, I'm just playing. But another guy that they had on here that a lot of us are pretty familiar with, Raven's wide receiver, Rashad Bateman. They have him as a breakout candidate for the 2022 season. And I think if you ask really any Ravens fan, like really think about it, if you ask any Ravens fan, who's a breakout candidate for the Baltimore Ravens this year? I feel like 99% of them would also say Rashad Bateman. Why? Because of opportunity. Opportunity is probably the biggest thing right here. Hollywood Brown got traded to the Cardinals. So now Rashad Bateman, he elevates to sort of that number one receiver role. He of course has to take it and make it happen and earn it. But that's what the expectation is that he becomes Lamar Jackson's number one receiver. And I know a lot of people say, oh no, no, Lamar Jackson's number one receiver is the Titan Mark Andrews. But we're talking about the receiver position. The Ravens, they showed last year how much they loved Rashad Bateman and how much they really valued Rashad Bateman. Now there were times throughout the season when the way that they showed how much they valued him and got a little murky because I remember in his very first game, very first game, because he had missed the first five, six games with injury. He came back in his very first game.  I thought maybe like, oh, 50, 60%. But no, he was out there a lot. Very first game, him and Lamar Jackson had chemistry. They had him out there like the whole game. But then a couple of games later, I remember the Dolphins game and it was so confusing. It was frustrating. Rashad Bateman and Lamar Jackson, they won the sideline, frustrated. But in that Dolphins game, it's like, man, Hollywood is struggling. Sammy Watkins struggling. Why we, where's Rashad Bateman at? And he was on the sideline. He was healthy, nothing wrong. Standing up, walking around. We saw that number 12 pacing because we sat, where we sat at that game, it was on the Raven sideline. Not on the sideline, but on their side of the field. And we kept seeing Rashad Bateman going back and forth, back and forth. I'm like, why is he not on the field? Especially when you're playing with an injured Sammy Watkins. So hopefully Ravens this year, they will right a lot of their wrongs. Because that's, yeah, that's stuff like that is unacceptable. And then in that same game, guess what happened when they start throwing Rashad Bateman the ball? When they start having him on the field, and Lamar is throwing on the ball. Oh, oh, he was moving that thing. Oh, oh, he was making plays happen. Oh yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah, I remember. So with Rashad Bateman, but now with, with there being no Hollywood, with there being no Sammy Watkins, that really, and with them having not drafted a wide receiver that really elevates him. It puts him in a real good position to be a breakout candidate. And I don't think any Ravens fans will be like, Oh no, Rashad Bateman, he wouldn't be breaking. No, everybody would agree. Everybody would expect it. And last year, I think Rashad Bateman had about a little over 500 yards. And but this, the thing with Rashad Bateman that you got to remember, he only played in, I think, 12 games. He had 500 yards, but a lot of those games will not play with Lamar Jackson. So I'm going to play with Tyler Huntley. There was a little bit of Josh Johnson in there, but a lot of it was not with Lamar Jackson. So that's something to think about too. And that's something to consider when you talk about Rashad Bateman being a breakout candidate. And why it just makes so much sense. Ravens upgraded their offensive line. That would lead to more and better and more quality protection for one Lamar Jackson to where it could give him more quality and better time to make his throws. A lot of times last year, Lamar Jackson had to make those on the run. Had to make those while some of the pocket was collapsing. Just had to make a lot of Superman stuff happen. But now we hope that the Superman stuff ends up being far and few. We hope that that offensive line could do its thing. And what that offensive line does, it helps out Mark Andrews. And if it helps Mark Andrews, you know there's going to be a lot of attention on him. He could have Rashad Bateman too. So Mark Andrews, the attention that he draws, it could end up freeing up Rashad Bateman a bit. But then what if teams are taking out Mark Andrews and Rashad Bateman? What if they double in both of them? Who's going to be that guy to step up? Well, that's a whole nother conversation. But I can understand why Rashad Bateman is looking like he is going to break out this year. Because if I had to pick somebody to break out this year from the Ravens, especially on offense, it would be him all day. All day. So, B.R. Great iron. This is one of the better posts that y'all had recently. Where the Ravens were involved at least. Because I remember last week, we went over one of the posts where they were talking about trading Marcus Peters to the Colts. Yuck. Gross. That's so disgusting.  But in that same post, they talked about trading Chuck Clark to the Cowboys, trading Nick Boyle to the Giants in exchange for Kenny Galladay.  So anyway, this was a much better post from y'all, which I appreciate it. I love y'all team. Keep it clean. I appreciate y'all so much. Thank you for everything that y'all do. We out.


Three or four years ago, we were building prefab homes and a client came to us and said will you build me something with a shipping container? And we were like heck, yeah, and we haven't stopped since My name is Gales Aldoando, and I'm one of the founders of Little River box company we repurposed shipping containers into buildings and structures from a bar to a restaurant to a retail space as well as compact homes We see where the needs are in our culture and we want to create really tangible solutions for them People talk about the need for affordable housing. I think that these are perfect products Not just from a sustainable standpoint, but if we're going to build communities and we're going to build houses They've got to be beautiful. The idea here is not to have to live in a shipping container It's to want to live in a shipping container The vision for Little River box company is creating change Shipping containers just as they've changed our world and with globalization can change our world again It actually has the the possibility to create an empty lot Into an active part of our community what we're sitting in right now. This is a full-service restaurant. It's a dining room It's a kitchen. It's a community and that is really exciting to me.