Hello, everybody. Thank you for joining us. My name is Andy McAfee. I'm a scientist at MIT, and I am the moderator for this session on a deeply important topic, which is how are we going to accelerate this process of closing the skills gap that we see over and over again around the world? And our colleagues at the World Economic Forum have set up an interesting accelerator model in 23 countries around the world to do exactly that, to accelerate the process of giving people the right skills, the right training, and closing the skills gap. We have five panelists with us today who are in the middle of that transition, in the middle of that process, and we want to hear from all of them. They are Ms. Maria Jose Aboud, who is the vice minister of women and gender equality in Chile. Mr. Giyos Uden Khan, who is the president and chief executive officer of Angro Corporation in Pakistan. Ms. Zainab Bodor Okay, who is the chief executive officer of Kail Holdings, and the co-chair of the Turkey, closing the skills gap accelerator. Mr. Peter Hummelgard, who is the minister for employment in Denmark, and Dr. Hangchuan Naran, who is the minister of education, youth, and sports in Cambodia. Ms. Aboud, could we start with you? The accelerator in Chile has been up for a while. Can you tell us what steps and priorities are being set to ensure the continued success and the sustainability of this program? And I'm sorry, I think you're on mute still. I'm there. OK, so thank you, Andrew. Good morning and good evening to all the panelists. It's a pleasure to be here with you and to share the experience of this accelerator in Chile. Let me first quickly explain what does this accelerator do. It's called the Gender Parity Initiative, which is a community of organizations committed to reduce the gender gap in the labor market based on innovative public-private innovation. To be part of this community, we ask companies to go through a self-assessment to identify their biggest gender gaps. They measure the percentage of women in high management position, gender weight gap, protocols to address gender-based violence between other indicators. Then based on this self-assessment, we help them to develop an action plan tailored to their needs. These action plans include goals to reduce the gender gap in, for example, recruitment process, promotion of women in leadership positions, and how to life-work balance and share responsibilities between men and women. In the last five years, with the support of the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Economic Forum, this accelerator has become a powerful network of 109 member companies, which make it the largest gender parity initiative in the region and one of the largest in the world. Despite the challenge of the pandemic, we have continued growing. 25 new companies joined this initiative last year, and 16 have been recently certified with the highest standard of gender quality in the workplace. But going to your question, what has made this initiative so successful? First, we have ensured to speak the language of the private sector, outlining the right incentives. Join to this accelerator is not about justice or ethics, but have to be and have to be understood like a smart business move that benefits the company in the long run. And it goes beyond corporate social responsibility as the studies and the academic studies have shown that gender equality benefits productivity and innovation of companies. Also very important, this model is built on international best practices. And we create existing networks that bring concrete benefit to companies. They become part of a community where they have the opportunity to exchange information and work with relevant industry actors. In addition, being part of this accelerator is highly regarded by the community that increasingly demands our society a strong commitment towards gender equity. Just to show some concrete benefits, when we look to the indicators of companies that are part of this accelerator, we see that they are above the natural average in terms of some gender quality indicators. For example, companies of this accelerator have a higher proportion of women in leadership position. They have an average approximately 26% of female representation on boards. Meanwhile, our national average is around 10%. In the same sense, when we look to the gender weight gap, the average of these companies is 7%. Meanwhile, the national average is 27%. And just quickly, I would like to go through some lessons that can be very useful for other accelerators in terms of ensuring sustainable and continuous progress. First, we think it is very necessary to get the right incentives across. We believe that sustainable success lies in making sure that the accelerator model moves and goes beyond political will and becoming must do for companies. Not because they need to take the gender box, but because they see the benefit that brings the organizational, culture, employees' performance onto their bottom lines. This initiative cannot be part of a human resources strategy. It needs to be part of their business strategy model. And also, for the model to be sustainable, it needs to gain full organizational ownership from high executives. This is why we have been focused in the last time, last month on promoting territorial engagement and meetings with industry representatives and business associations from around the country because we need to engage the high executive in this accelerator. Also, we need to generate trust in our initiative. Many times, companies are afraid to look at themselves to do this self-assessment because they are scared of the gaps that they may find and also the use of the data. So we ensure confidentiality and the right use of the information. This data is only used to create their tailored action plan and to generate aggregate indicators never to show that at the company level. And lastly, we need to be creative to create a strategic partnership with key actors to increase the impact of this accelerator model. International collaboration is very crucial to make sure to have an active and dynamic cooperation with organizations such as the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Economic Forum, of course, but also with organizations as UN Women, with foreign timbers of commerce, and especially with other gender parity initiatives in the region in Latin America to share best practices and also to promote collaborative growth. So that is a very resume of what is our accelerator. Thank you very much for the organizer, for this event, for this invitation, and we look forward to promote this initiative and to exchange ideas with the international community. Thank you. Fascinating. Thank you very much. Mr. Khan, could we go to you? In Pakistan, your accelerator has identified more than 100 roles that need reskilling, upskilling, and new skilling. And I understand that you've created dedicated skills programs to help accomplish that task. Can you tell us a bit about that, what's been achieved so far and what you've learned? Yeah, greetings to everyone from Anglo and Pakistan, and thank you for giving me this opportunity. So the area that I'm gonna focus on in terms of the skills development program that we have undertaken as agriculture, and that is because of an importance that it holds not only for the region, but also for Pakistan. So even if you look at the South Asian region, the 23% of the world's population lives in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India. 17% of the GDP of these countries is contributed through agriculture. It employs about 39% of the population. But more importantly, more than 15% of the people living in these countries are undernourished. And there are essentially three reasons, three areas where investments are necessary, whether it's increase in farming practices, whether it is to efforts to improve agricultural yields, and at the same time to train the people so they're ready for skills that will be required for tomorrow. In Pakistan, the story is very, very similar to the region. We've got about 40% of our people who are involved in the agriculture sector. Unfortunately, in Pakistan, more than 20% of the people living here are undernourished. The number is even worse when it comes to children who've got stunted growth over 45%. And if we look at the overall productivity in the agriculture sector, our crop yields are roughly 25 to 60% worse off than some of the other developed countries. And essentially, there've been three problems that we've been able to identify. Number one is obviously sub-optimal resource utilization. That's mainly because of poor skill sets and absence of farm mechanization and very slow adoption to modern technologies.  It's only 0.24% of GDP. And there is tremendous lack of financial inclusion when it comes to access to credit to particularly our smaller farmers. And hence, what we've been able to identify, the three solutions that we've been able to identify are number one, using innovative farming techniques, higher level of mechanization and farm operations and use of modern technology. And clearly, what it requires us to do is to massively upskill, re-skill and introduce new skills to the entire labor force which is involved with the agriculture sector. And I must thank World Economic Forum over here because through the partnership with Punjab Skills Development Fund, Punjab being our largest province population wide, we've been able to set up the Skills Accelerator Program. It comprises of business leaders from different sectors, a company like Engro. We are focused mostly towards agriculture. We have been able to identify 24 roles which are now going to focus on skills which will be required for the future. Essentially, it is important not just from the perspective of future-proofing our workforce, but also keeping into perspective the requirements in terms of managing our food security. So thank you to the World Economic Forum. It has been a very positive start and we hope that it's gonna answer, it's gonna help us address some of the key problems that we are facing right now. Thank you. Fantastic, thank you so much. And I particularly wanna thank both of our opening speakers for keeping their remarks both fascinating and on time. As I say, we have a packed agenda and we really appreciate everybody helping us out to finish and accomplish all of our goals on time. Ms. Okiye, let me turn to you. You're working closely with both public and private partners in Turkey to close the skill gap. What have you learned? How has the Accelerator helped so far and what are your targets? What would you like to see accomplished in the next chunk of time? Thank you, Dr. Makafir. I would like to start by thanking the other panelists for the insights, first of all. Let me begin by answering the second part of the question first. What is the target of the Accelerator initiative? Our target is clear, create systems and structures that can sustain themselves, supported by public-private cooperation, whose main goals are identifying the needs, processes and solutions on re-skilling and upskilling in order to better equip the workforce for the future of the economy and the world. So these mechanisms must employ policies and practices that are built on the following three pillars, SDGs, digitalization and innovation. The Accelerator initiative kicked off in Turkey as of this year. So it is fair to say that we are at the beginning, just of a multi-year journey. Our goal is very challenging and not easy to achieve and I believe that the only way we can succeed is with a multi-stakeholder approach, as you mentioned, and a strong public-private cooperation. We are working diligently in the first phase where we are conducting a system analysis to identify the current shortcomings, barriers and gaps in both the public policies, institutions and mechanisms, as well as those the private sector employees independently. In the months ahead, upon the completion of this analysis with our partners, we are going to discuss the path forward to bring forth a comprehensive agenda and expand our community by contacting other stakeholders to take part in the initiative under specific agenda items. Later, we will create a working group to focus on separate these specific agenda items. Upon the completion of the working groups, we will ask our partners and others to commit to actions that working group have suggested. So lastly, we will track these commitments and continue to monitor how these commitments have emulated the status quo. I also would like to share a few facts with you that might help explain the potential of the accelerated initiative in Turkey. So a study conducted last year revealed that 7.6 million jobs will be lost until 2030 in Turkey. But in return, there will be the 8.9 million new jobs created in the same period in similar fields. Moreover, the study further highlights that an additional 1.8 million jobs and in professions that do not exist currently will also be created. This puts out the net increase potential of 3.1 million jobs, most which will definitely require different set of skills than what the workforce in Turkey mainly possesses today. So digital literacy will be a key variable in this regard as the skills needed for these new professions will mostly include tech abilities. The role of entrepreneurship is also very critical, I believe, as a portion of the potential is likely to be employed by new companies operating in these yet to be seen spaces. This very significant potential coupled with Turkey's young population dictates that opportunity should not and cannot go uncaptured with the accelerated success. We can work to help realize these numbers and perhaps even more. As a private business owner, I'd like to underline that public policies on employment and the workforce must utilize AI and other digital tools, not just for increasing productivity in the workplace, must also for supporting social cohesion and social needs. Private sector must also support public policies with matching policies and actions of its own. And also a challenge, I also challenge my own colleagues toward this goal. Public policies must be built so that they can utilize real-time data to adapt to sudden changes and shocks to the workforce and the economy as we experience. The challenges and inequalities in access to education must be identified and resolved. This is crucial for closing the skills gap. We have to provide equal opportunity to every member of the society using new technologies, changes in curriculum and providing the needs needed infrastructure. Inclusions of women, particularly young women in the re-and upskilling processes will also be crucial element of addressing systemic change. Turkey has had experiences in the recent past with the initiatives to empower women in STEM and these efforts must strengthen, of obvious, the exponentially moving forward. So these are my thoughts and thank you for this invitation and listening. Thank you very much. Mr. Hummelgard, you're our representative from an educational ministry. Tell us what you have learned about the, what's what we need for a successful, a fruitful collaboration between the public and the private sector around this broad issue of re-skilling and training for the jobs of tomorrow. Well, thank you so much and also a very big thanks not only to the World Economic Forum but also to the other panelists for insightful remarks. First of all, just to add that I'm the minister of employment and not from an educational ministry. However, we do work a lot with the upskilling and re-skilling of especially not only employed but also unemployed people. And I think basically there's an old Chinese proverb that says that if you're planning for a year, so rise. If you're planning for a decade, plant trees. And if you're planning for a lifetime, educate people. So in other words, education and upskilling requires long-term commitment and also substantial funding. All to that, ensuring that our workers have the right skills is to me one of the most important tasks for politicians all around the world at this moment. And we really think from a Danish perspective that we have a unique opportunity, absolutely pandemic to invest in re-skilling. In Denmark, we have invested more than 260 million Euro since 2020 through a number of initiatives. And just to mention a few, we have invested in up to two years of vocational training on higher unemployment benefits. So that unskilled unemployed persons will get 110% in unemployment benefits if they commit themselves to a longer term educational program in one of the areas where we also have lack of employment at the moment. And we have seen a rise in vocational training after the possibility to receive higher benefits was introduced. Second of all, we have made massive investments in short vocational training through regional programs with the job focus. And during the pandemic, the Danish government has concluded 17 tripartite agreements with the social partners. And that is also an answer to your direct question because that is a direct partnership with both the employer side and the worker side in actually making investments in short vocational training and also making sure that we can assist businesses and workers through the crisis. And one of the important tripartite agreements concerns students and apprentices working at companies in a difficult situation. That aim is to give them essential education and training as the demand was low during the pandemic. We've also invested further in local public coordinators bringing together local job centers, education centers, social partners and local businesses in order to identify the needs in the work market. And the aim is to make it easier for companies to get qualified employees and make it easier for the job centers to get unemployed persons reskilled. And this is an excellent example of public private partnerships. And my experience is that we need to collaborate with the employers as well as the workers. So just let me conclude by saying that Denmark has a proud tradition for reskilling. And this has only been possible due to the committed engagement from the social partners and the state in a tripartite collaboration. And such partnerships are the necessary key, we believe to ensure that we provide workers with the needed skills and that we can actually at least try and plan for a lifetime. So thank you. Thank you. And I would like to remind all of our participants today and everybody who's listening that they have the opportunity to ask questions of our panelists via Slido. I think we're all familiar with how to do that. So please feel free, post your questions, please keep them short and please keep them relevant to the content of this session. But we would love to hear what's on your mind. Dr. Narona, if we could close out with you. I think our timing is excellent because I understand that Cambodia is launching its accelerator with the forum today. Could you talk a bit about what your goals for it are and what you think will be critical for its success in the future? Thank you. Greetings from Cambodia. I wish to thank all the panelists for the insights. And I think that for the successful initiative, I think we need to have an ecosystem of schools, universities, policies, private sector working together and also how to make education responsive to the, and training to the needs of the private sector. I would like to share some of the thoughts that what we are trying to do and how we can use that model together with the WAF initiative to make it works. I think firstly, government policy and school reform are necessary to develop soft skills needed by the private sector. So, sometimes it's very difficult to plan for skill development, but at least we have to build strong foundation of the skill, foundation skill for the young people and especially the soft skill. So, we embark on education reform by piloting the new children's schools, creating school environment for STEM education, use of new teaching methods such as collaborative learning, critical thinking to promote the meta cognitive skills and self-regulated capabilities using active learning students and approach. And especially for the student to become a lifelong learner and committed to relearn the skill. And I think it works and now we are gradually investing in order to roll it out. Secondly, I think we must have a flexible curriculum to link to career path which is the student, you know, provide opportunity to participate in study clubs and also to have extra curricular activities such as robotics, computer coding, creative writing so that they can develop specific skill which they have special purpose for. And secondary education must be linked to high education. The student should have opportunity to listen to expert, have access to career counseling so that they can make orientation toward the job market. Thirdly, school and universities as a hub within the entrepreneurial ecosystem, a platform for competition to link education to the real world. I think competition is crucial to develop grids and also the ability to compete in the real world. It also promotes inquiry, problem solving skill. Student learn by observing orders, build self-confidence and self-efficacy if they can do it. I also can do it. Fourthly, business model accelerator competition with the participation of the private sector is useful for students to learn how to solve the challenges facing Cambodia. This should include training session on leadership, key concept or entrepreneurship to young people with drive and determination to turn their innovative idea into viable business model and then the winning team can use funds to grow their ideas toward incubation which is to train students to create their own job. They don't need for other people to create their job but also to think how to solve problems facing society and especially to use digital technology. I think the young people, they are smart on that. So what they need is an ecosystem, also a platform. Fifthly, a university business sector linkages to promote joint projects and research. So we have that initiative too. I think it's a very well, it's a win-win and long-term collaboration for all in the present. And I think the private sector, they can contract our university and we invest in those that work well so that the university work help private sector because mostly our SME to solve their technology problem. And the private sector and university also benefit for using that fund to grow, to train people and to grow their research and also their capacity. And I believe that the national level partnership that we are trying to promote now because we just have joined it. I think number one is to establish public private data sharing initiative, to share data, to talk and find it out and how school and university address those skills that the private sector need sharing. I think the demand and supply side, they're not trying to balance that. Number two is to the capacity to respond, to develop upskilling policy to respond to the need. Thirdly, I think that continue to update the curriculum to address the changing nature of the workforce and also the evolving needs of the economy which need more and different skills of the STEM and other skills. We must also explore the private sector punish it to develop models of upskilling that works. Have to look at what works and try to invest more on what works and promote lifelong learning. And I think that it is important that the students themselves are committed but also supported by not just policy but also incentive. So incentive provided to the business, incentive provided to the workers to make a need. And more importantly, I think that do we need long degree, sometimes students spend a lot of time studying, but we have to maybe look at innovative flexible micro-condential model. So you don't need big degree but you need small part and like a credit base. So I think that training and focus on including online, micro low cost but knowledge intensive credential model that respond better to the changing needs of the economy. Basically, and I think that online would be great. Now we online can have a lot of access and also good for the young people but the problem also for the rural area that they don't have access to the internet and also technology. Basically, I think those are what we have tried to respond, I think it's not easy. It's not easy to respond to the needs of big friends because the economy changing fast and the question lag behind. So how to make that? And I think that the student themselves must be smart. Train them to be smart and then so that they can also help to address that problem. So thank you. And I believe that with sharing this idea we can learn a lot from all of you. Thank you. Thank you very much. We have a question that's come in for Mr. Khan. The question is how important is the role of the private sector in tackling challenges that are traditionally associated with government and what initiatives are you seeing in Pakistan that are working here? So the role of the private sector is extremely important because at the end of the day, so even if you look at the accelerator program that we currently working in six different sectors whether it's financial services, information and communication technology, manufacturing, hospitality and retail services, textile, agriculture. What you see over here is that it's the private sector which will be the biggest beneficiary or will have the biggest loss if they don't invest in upskilling people at the right time. So for example, for us because we are focusing on agriculture, we've picked up about 24 roles and out of that we are doing pilots on about three of them. Let me share an example with you of a crop advisor who's a skilled professional who provides customized solutions, technical advisory and related marketing services to farmers who can and help them improve their yields. And this service is targeted to be provided to all small farmers which are about 90% of the total farmer population in Pakistan. So to expect government to do this work alone, it's A, I don't think it would be possible. I think the biggest beneficiaries off-skill development apart from the country itself is the private sector and hence a very, very active role is required from all of us. So yeah, that one is pretty clear. Fantastic, thank you. Vice-minister Aboud, a question for you. Were there any policy changes that the government did in Chile to accompany the efforts of the private sector in closing the economic gender gap? Well, thank you, Andrew. Well, we always say that as a minister of women and gender equality, we need to work with the private sector. The closing the gender gaps, it's so important that if we don't have the commitment of the private sector, we cannot achieve the goals that we really need to achieve and in this pandemic, we have seen that there have been of course a negative impact on employment on women and men, but we have seen that the impact have been bigger on employment of women. So what we have been doing is a series of different policies to recover the loss of employment and here the accelerator model have a crucial role because we need that commitment of companies. Now our society demands for companies to be involved in gender issues and to have different results, we need different ways to do things on organizations. So what we have been doing is working on different plans, especially to increase the participation rate of employment of women in sectors that they traditionally haven't been and they are crucial in this reactivation state of economy like electricity, steams areas that until we have a low rate participation as in all the region of Latin America and the Caribbean. So we have been doing like special plans for sectors that are important for the recovery that we have a low participation of women and that we need to have women in that places. And for that is very important accelerator because what we do is to work with action plans, specifics for each organization of how they looking at their gender gaps can have realistic plans of how they can increase women participation and also to improve the opportunities and the environment in the organization that helps women to be part of the workforce. And that includes of course to have more flexibility and to be able to have some tools that are important to women to come to the workplace like a tiger and that is what we have been working with their private sector. Thank you very much. Vice Minister Aboud, you brought up the pandemic and that leads to a question that's been on my mind. We are all acutely aware that for the past year and a half we have been dealing with a devastating global pandemic that has shifted and changed the skill base probably a great deal in all of your countries. So let me ask an open question and I'd love a volunteer for this one. What have the main insights been from this really challenging period that we've been living through and how has the pandemic changed your view of what we need to do, the skills that are necessary and how we're going to close that skills gap? How are we thinking about that differently than we were a year and a half ago? And I'd love to hear from any of our panelists. Please don't be shy. May I? You may please. Yes, I think that the pandemic forced us to learn new technology, such as digital technology. Our teacher, they were hard to embrace that change. And I think that digital skill is more important now. And I think that if business after COVID, it will take a longer time. It would mean that reduce traveling, but more technology-based businesses will be promoted. And I think that it will change the way we are doing things before and after. It means that it will focus on maybe more distant exchange, but we're safe. It's more efficient, like we don't have to travel. So it will impact travel industry. It will impact the tourist industry. But you will see that businesses with digital technology, with online technology, will prosper. And it will change the way a business model operating in all over the world. And I think that we have to prepare for that change. Thank you. Very good. Thank you for that. Any of our other panelists on this topic? Yeah, just a few remarks. Please. That's okay. Yeah. Well, just two points. I would say in Denmark for many years, also after the financial crisis, we have had very high employment rates also among many of our unskilled workers. And we've been trying for several years to see how can we make sure that they have the skills that are needed in the labor market within the next five, 10, and maybe even 20 years.  So what we tried to do during the pandemic was to combine two problems at the same time. We saw that a lot of especially unskilled workers lost their jobs during the pandemic. And so we made this scheme, which I talked about before, the 110% unemployment benefits for actually taking on a longer vocational training program in some of the key areas where we know we lack trained people at the moment. And that being industrial technicians, that being plumbers, electricians, and you name it. So we made a short list of I think around 40 to 50 types of educations where we said that if you start this education now, you will receive 110% unemployment benefit for taking on that education and during the education. So that has made some progress. And then I would say the second thing that we have learned during the pandemic is that it has accelerated our need for educated and trained people. We can see now when we look at how the structures in labor market are placing itself after the pandemic, that the need for skilled people are now even stronger than it was two or three years ago. And it will increasingly become stronger, especially among the vocational trained workers, because in Denmark we have set a very high target of limiting our green grass emissions. And until 2030 where we're gonna limit our emissions by 70%. So we really have a hard drive on for the green transition and to make the green transition work, you need electricians, you need plumbers, you need industrial technicians and so forth. So we are really trying to accelerate the demands in our labor market, which we knew we had, but we just ever more evident after the pandemic that we have. Fantastic, thank you. I think we have time to hear from one more of our panelists on this question. If anybody has a final contribution, they would like to know. I would like to comment if it's possible. Please. The most important aspect that the pandemic showed was the fact that much more can be achieved to work from a distance also within the education. This is valid. But as I mentioned before, challenges and inequalities in access to education must be identified and resolved. The ones who were prepared, they did quite well in Turkey. The ones had the problem infrastructure problem, especially had difficult time to adapt. But overall, in education, in mega cities, in big cities, both in business and schools, we were quite adaptive and everything was working well and it was effective. Another problem is manufacturing. I'm working in the manufacturing industry and manufacturing was also highly impacted during the crisis. We had to find innovative ways to keep the factories open. We had supply chain problems during COVID and we had other issues. And we were trained to work in a certain manner, lean operations, et cetera. So everything has to change. So either through arranging worker schedules or automating processes was a difficult process for all industries and especially manufacturing. This led to a need increase in the number of skilled workers but also in some cases an increase in number of workers overall. Because some workers who were in quarantine couldn't work, for example. So it was very difficult. So to be adaptive was the key issue. And that at the beginning was very difficult but on the course of the pandemic, everybody learned how to react and when to react. So it is a process but it wasn't really easy for companies who are really doing big scale productions, et cetera. So that was a big challenge. Fantastic. Thank you so much. And I would like to thank all of our panelists for being so clear and so informative and for helping us stay on time with this session. I think this might be a record for a World Economic Forum session that we're actually going to end exactly on time. I'm grateful to all of our panelists for that and for the insights they shared with us. I would like to remind all of our panelists and all of our audience members here today that they should feel free to share their insights and their learnings from this session and from all the other ones this week on social channels on top link. And please keep in mind that we have a fantastic array of programming ahead thanks to our colleagues at the forum for the coming week. So please carve out some time, feel free, drop in, participate in these sessions, ask questions. The world that we are creating is changing very quickly and we need to stay on top of it. And I can't think of an area that's more important than making sure that our people have the skills that they need to be successful and to create thriving economies in this world that we're all building so quickly. So again, thank you to our panelists. Thank you to our hosts. And I would like to draw this session to a close. Thanks for being part of this.


What is up you guys welcome back to another one if you are new to the channel I am Goldpony and today we are in a new 2020 Kia Sportage courtesy of Fredbean's Kia in Mechanicsburg PA. I have yet to review a Sportage in the past so I thought it would be fun to check one out here so as always let's start with pricing. And so there will be several different trim levels for the 2020 Sportage, first one being the LX starting at $23,990 then the S for $25,990, EX for $27,190 and lastly the SX Turbo the one we have today starting at $33,490. And by the way that was pricing for the front wheel drive variant if you wanted to go with all wheel drive simply add $1500 to any of those prices unless you go with the S trim level and that one is going to add $1700 if you wanted all wheel drive interestingly enough. But there are actually two different engine setups for the Sportage and they are going to each correspond with different trim levels of the Sportage, first one being a 2.4 liter naturally aspirated inline 4 cylinder. That one is going to belong to the LX, S and EX trim levels giving you 181 horsepower at 6000 RPM, 175 pound-feet of torque available at 4000 RPM, powers sent to front wheels or all wheels through a six-speed automatic giving you MPG numbers coming in at 23 in the city, 30 on the highway for the front wheel drive, 22 city 26 highway if you want with the all wheel drive version. But then there is the other one, the one that we have today belonging to the SX Turbo and I think the Turbo hints at the engine setup there. Being a 2 liter turbocharged inline 4 cylinder pointing out 240 horsepower for the front wheel drive, 237 for the all wheel drive and 260 pound-feet of torque sent to front wheels or all wheels through a six-speed automatic giving you MPG numbers 20 in the city, 28 highway for the front wheel drive and 19 city 24 highway for the all wheel drive. And by the way with either engine setup the Kia Sportage will take regular unleaded fuel so you don't have to splurge for the high test to premium unleaded. So that's always a nice thing as well. But so next before we do any kind of acceleration I did what I mentioned there is a drive mode button directly behind the shifter there giving you normal eco and sport and I just put it in sport mode and like wanted to take off on me there. It did automatically downshift holding the RPMs at a higher level giving you more power on demand. It's also going to adjust throttle response as well actually. And so but now having said that I think it's time let's do a quick little acceleration in this turbocharged 4 cylinder and let's see how quickly we can get the 2020 Sportage here up to speed. Okay. Yeah! Definitely no issues with merging onto the highway. This turbocharged engine setup and it's a smaller SUV I guess you could say but there's quite a bit of pickup there. Definitely no issues with merging onto the highway in this one but to go along with that acceleration as always braking is equally important. And so there will actually be a slightly different braking setup depending on the engine setup that you go with. Either way you will get four wheel disc brakes but if you want with the naturally aspirated engine you will get 12 inch ventilated front discs.  In the back 11.9 inch solid rear discs regardless of which engine setup that you go with there. And as far as the braking fuel goes I've had absolutely no issues. Definitely brings the Sportage to a quick stop on this one. Touching on suspension a little bit there is a McPherson strut front suspension with gas filled shock absorbers. And in the back you will find an independent multi-link rear suspension with high performance dampers. As far as the ride quality goes I'm actually quite impressed so definitely no issues there. Soaking up Pennsylvania's road imperfections quite nicely. When it comes to steering feel I suppose it is as expected not the heaviest weight in the world but not the loosest either. So definitely feels nice in the Sportage. Touching on cabin noise I'm getting a little bit of exterior wind noise coming into the cabin but it's definitely not that bad. And when it comes to visibility I can see perfectly fine. Usually smaller SUVs you're not going to have any issues there but I can see perfectly fine out the back. And so with now enough of the driving dynamics let's check out the exterior of this new slightly refreshed 2020 Kia Sportage. So to start there's actually going to be many subtle changes for the 2020 Sportage up front. Projector beam headlights will come standard for the LXS and EX trim levels. If you want with the SX Turbo that you're looking at right now you will find LED headlights. And all trim levels are actually going to give you LED daytime running lights as well. And just below all of that projector beam fog lights for the S and EX trim levels and LED fog lights for the SX Turbo trim level. And as I had alluded to there is a new front fascia for the 2020 Sportage along with a new front skid plate actually as well. But so then make your way to the side you will find body colored power adjustable side mirrors for all trim levels. If you want with the S trim level and up you will find heated side mirrors with LED integrated turn signals as well. And again with the S trim level and up there's roof rails up top. And there's also several different wheel changes for the 2020 Sportage as well. For the LX trim level you will find 17 inch alloy wheels. If you go with the S or EX trim levels you will find 18 inch alloy wheels. And when it comes to the SX Turbo bumped up once again to 19 inch alloy wheels. But then make your way to the back body color rear spoiler with integrated brake light will come standard on all trim levels. Just below that a rear window wiper also LED tail lights will come with the SX Turbo. That's what you're looking at right now of course. And just below it all there's going to be a single exhaust outlet with the LX, S and EX trim levels. But then dual exhaust outlets with chrome tips for the SX Turbo. So having said that you guys know what we have to do next as always here is that exhaust clip. And so but now since we all round back when it comes to opening that rear trunk there actually is a button on the key fob. So I'm just simply going to press that. If you wanted to power liftgate by the way go with the EX or SX Turbo trim levels. That is how you're going to get that. Once opened up cargo capacity is going to come in at 30.7 cubic feet behind that second row. However if that was not enough space for you simply fold that second row down. That is going to bump that up to 60.1 cubic feet. Then make your way to the rear leg room that's coming in at 38.2 inches. So for reference I'm an even six feet tall. This is how much space I had back there. Also there's your passengers will find a rear center armrest with cup holders along with rear air vents as well. Then make your way to the front seats. You will find manually adjustable claw seats for the LX. You will find leatherette seating if you go with the S or EX trim levels. That EX trim level and up is actually going to give you heated front seats as well. And if you went with the SX Turbo they are power adjustable full leather seats with ventilation as well for their super hot days. Then take a look up front there is a tilt and telescoping steering wheel. It will come leather wrapped for the S trim level and up. And you will actually get a flat bottom steering wheel if you go with the S or SX trim levels. When it comes to the startup let me first start by showing you guys the key here. It is kind of a heavy duty key kind of surprised me. They're definitely impressed. You will find the key logo on the one side end when you flip it over lock unlock. And of course that button to pop the rear hatch. But so if you wanted to push button start simply go with the EX or SX Turbo trim level. And so since we do have that today that is going to be located just by the driver's right knee. So all I am going to do is simply put my foot in the brake and press that engine start button there. And so once started up tachometer is going to be on your left speedometer is on your right. There is a small digital display front and center and that digital display is customizable by the way. There are steering wheel mounted controls on the right side there. So they just going to display different things like your driving mode of course but also your safety information. There is a digital speedometer if you wanted it. How many miles per gallon you are getting at any given time. How many miles you have left until you hit empty actually as well. And of course the outside temperature telling us that it is a perfect 71 degrees out today. But now let's make our way to overall interior quality because with the SX Turbo there is actually quite a bit. But EX trim level is going to give you dual zone climate control. SX Turbo is going to give you things like homeland controls, LED interior lighting. All trims are actually going to give you an overhead sunglass holder. And the SX Turbo is also going to give you a panoramic sunroof with the power sunshade. So that is definitely quite nice letting in so much more light for this video so much appreciated. Also that one is going to give you wireless phone charger and alloy sport pedals which is actually also going to come with the S trim level. Again S meaning the sportier side of things. But it gets better on the interior because up front for all trim levels actually you will get an 8 inch color touchscreen display. And this is good because this is going to give you Bluetooth and audio streaming as well as Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. Meaning if you have a smartphone simply hook it up to the Sportage and you now have free navigation for all trim levels. As well as the ability to like and dislike your Pandora songs up on that screen as well. So definitely quite nice there. If you wanted factory navigation you can go with the SX Turbo trim level. And of course you can check out your radio settings up there. And so if you want with the LXS or EX trim levels you will get a 6 speaker sound system. And if you want with the SX Turbo you're going to get an 8 speaker Harman Kardon surround sound system with 320 watts. And by the way that sound system is available for the EX trim level if you wanted it. But guys know what we have to do next. Let me go ahead and pull over here. Let's see what we got on the radio this morning. And let's test out the clarity of this one. Definitely more than enough of a sound system for the Sportage that's for sure. Good bit of bass plenty of loudness and absolutely no complaints from me on that one. But the last thing on the tech display I wanted to mention to you guys is when you do put the Sportage in reverse let's do that. That is going to give you a rear view camera for all trim levels letting you know who or what is behind you which is always is going to lead me into safety. And so to start there are front side and side curtain airbags. Also in the back there is latch aka lower anchors and tethers for children for the rear car seats. Also standard a tire pressure monitoring system along with forward collision avoidance assist with pedestrian detection. Lane keep assist driver attention warning. And the S trim is actually also going to add a blind spot monitor with rear cross traffic alert. And lastly if you want with the SX Turbo that is going to give you a front and rear park assist system. Smart cruise control with stop and go. And an electronic parking brake with auto hold. And so but that is about it for this one you guys.  Feel free to follow me on social media at the bottom of the screen there. And I will see you guys in the next video. I'm, I'm being so weird today. I'm sorry. Stay Gold.


What's good y'all support Ross back again with another video. So we're gonna check out WWE announced table compilation 2019 through 2021 by Baron Clash, and we always love some announced table spots We love to hit it on WWE 2k 22 when we're live streaming you love you guys love when we hit the table spots So let's check out some table spots from 2019 all the way to 2021 fortunately WWE doesn't have no flaming table spots It's okay.  Oh my god, that's a lot of weight gotta be kidding This was a cool spot to Know Was really one of the highlights WrestleMania that year the COVID WrestleMania at the arena WrestleMania. That was such a cool spot Yeah, this is when she just can't get put to the table like every week it was she was really getting bullied Thrown through some old drop through This is a fun match to Great match here mania great match Even the cameraman fail This was a cool match very good match to between Roman and John Michael Cole on commentary Man Great moments these table moments brought back some great memories of some fantastic matches man So comment down below. Let me know what was your favorite favorite table spot from this compilation, but I appreciate all love support road to Honey can't appreciate y'all kicking me see our next


So my name is Skyler. I'm with the DevCon team, and I'm here to say to you all today Bienvenidos a bogota and welcome back to DevCon We've wanted to be insane. We wanted to say that for a long time a long time It's been three years three years since last DevCon Three years since we last met in Osaka, Japan in 2019 Three years of planning this DevCon post boning planning again post boning again, and I must say it feels great to be here with you all today we're here to celebrate a little bit of what we've done over the last three years and What we still have yet to do and to make progress towards a lot of the outstanding items We still need to do into the future and we're excited for this reunion to take place here in Latin America And what's even cooler? Yeah round of applause for that. No What's even cooler though is that there's representation from almost every single Latin American country here right now Let's give it up for those from Latin America. Kinika is they Latin America? Yeah super For three years, we've continuously communicated to all of them the same thing Our goal was to bring DevCon not just to Colombia not just to Bogota, but to the Latin American region as a whole and We emphasize this with our road to DevCon We're just in the past year. We've seen 10 plus events organized around Latam everything from Ethereum Rio If that's am Buenos Aires to Mexico City to Lima to Santiago to Ethereum South Paulo to Quito To Bogota where we are now and soon to be Medellin and Panama Coming up in the next couple weeks and this is just talking about major events This isn't talking about the meet-ups the many meet-ups that have happened along the way and important to note Is that all of these events are community organized events? DevCon is the only one organized by the Ethereum Foundation the rest done by volunteers in their free time Because they care about Ethereum. They believe in what it's capable of and they want to improve this world Not many communities have this much passion and soul But even still some of you've been asking but why Latin America? I've seen some doubts and criticisms some of you on Twitter probably as well. It's dangerous They say it's underdeveloped. They say why bring our precious community to a risky Developing region when we could stay close to home in our well-developed comfortable countries and Quite honestly, I think that's the wrong idea Ethereum is a coordination mechanism for all of us. It allows things like greater financial inclusion power over your digital assets stopping unjust censorship Sovereign control of your identity and many more and in my opinion of here Ethereum can be most impactful today in Developing regions around the world places where serious censorship really does exist Where many don't have access to the basic financial systems where your identity is not guaranteed Nor owned by the individual where coordination failures are rampant in the form of corruption or even in the lack of public goods funding and As much as it might be more comfortable to stay in developed regions of the world. That's not what we're here for We're here to use Ethereum to make the world a better place and the world exists outside the comfortable bubbles Many of us live in in fact most of the world lives in these developing regions And this is why we are excited to be here in Latam with you all To one expose the region to Ethereum and the incredible community that composes it and To to remind the Ethereum community about the types of problems We really are trying to solve with Ethereum, which is not what's the hottest NFT Nor where the best DeFi yield is or other similar distractions But rather how can we provide greater financial inclusion a more accessible network with lower fees? higher censorship resistance identity systems that are more accessible and Sovereign payment systems for the masses true digital ownership and Much much more these are the problems that we need to focus on and we need to continue Focusing on improving the world and continuing to improve Ethereum to be able to do so and on that note I'd like to introduce someone who's actively been helping with just that someone who helps heard one of the largest Coordination challenges in tech history also known as the merch Yes That someone is Tim bago coordinator for all core devs. So let's give Tim a big warm welcome


في بيته الطيبين الطاهرين المعصومين لا سيما بقيّة الله روحي وأرواح العالمين لتراب مقدمه الفداب بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم رب الشرح لي الصدري ويسر لي أنري وحل الأقدة من لساني يفقه قولي أقول الله في محكم كتابه الكريم بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم وجتي نبقول الزور الأüne ب weighed is on حول صلاوات محمد room Shebe the Qาม ع事ه العلم of the greatest lady to walk this earth and the third with yourilled This person is an on owner أمام صاحب العصري والزمائم الأسئلة الأولى يريد أن نتحدث about a very vital aspect in the western society and a very vital aspect that we can relate to nowadays even in the countries that we were brought up in our backgrounds and the topic for tonight is إن شاء الله we will be discussing which will be very infiltrative of the concept of music first and foremost many people have asked the question and have requested that we talk more about the aspect of music because on a 21st century level we know that our fathers and our forefathers have told us what music is haram music is unacceptable in Islam however we haven't heard many lectures about why music is haram what is the jurisprudence behind the fact that music may be unacceptable within the school of thought of Ahle Al-Bait and indeed the Islamic principles so إن شاء الله tonight we will be looking at particular aspects in which we will be able to look at why music is haram through jurisprudential arguments through the Quran and through the Ahadith first we will be discussing how it's taking a large part of our lives and the western culture how it's infiltrated many aspects in which we live in whether it be work whether it be universities whether it be study even primary school and so much so to go even further and say even before that people are always acquaint with the aspect of music every time they open the TV there may be something that's not necessarily PG and that person doesn't have a particular age that we can say that you know what this is PG when you open the TV he sees what he sees and that's imprinted into him and that's why we have to look at during the lecture tonight إن شاء الله how that has an effect on the youth how that has an effect on us as adults and how that may be effective of our belief so maybe questioning yes we understand it's haram but how can it have an effect of how you may think your عقيد your particular inclination towards one person whether it be rightly guided or not and that's all we discussed tonight إن شاء الله the effect of music in all these particular parameters but before we start إن شاء الله request a loud Salawat على محمد و آل محمد when we open the TV nowadays amongst the many things that are being looked at to be very famous very trendy things that you may be discussing at schools at universities and in the workforce are particular shows of popularity namely to do with obviously the topic of music namely especially in the Australian society stuff such as the X Factor in which people come forth and produce let's say arts that they have mastered over the years whether it be instrumental or vocal and they either are embarrassed by saying that you're not very good or if they are good they'll go on to the next stage eventually going up for the title other shows such as The Voice such as Australian Has Talent Australians Got Talent so these shows we find are very popular within our Western culture however they've actually formed a very large portion of the lives of Muslims and it's sad to say that many of our Muslim brothers and sisters do accompany these ideologies within their daily lives watching the shows learning from the shows and having a lot of pleasure when watching these particular shows and listening to particular sounds or vocals or music in that sense now someone may come forth and ask the question and it's very familiar why is it that music is haram in Islam what are the main factors that make it haram where in the Quran does it say that music is haram the first of which I want to look at before we'll discuss the Islamic principle to do with music first and foremost I want to look at a particular doctor we find that the sad thing is that if you bring forth Quran to the normal person even a Muslim when we tell him this is the hadith he says I want more proof as to say that it's not enough proof from the Quran the word of Allah سبحانه وتعالى the person that created everything and their hand picked messengers and the imams that Allah has hand chosen they say no that's not enough give me more so I start off by saying first and foremost let's look at a doctor and this doctor was a professor at Columbia University and he had a study to do with how music or the famous music clips may have an effect on the human body is it a positive effect is it a negative effect what exactly is this effect so he says after my research my lengthy research I have deciphered that music especially the popular music nowadays and he refers to particular two particular aspects or genres of music one of which being the aspect that they call the genre such as hip hop and the other known as R&B otherwise known as rhythms and blues he says these particular genres of popularity have such a significant aspect of deteriorating the human body that the nervous system will go up to a state where it will be deteriorating he says well I've even discussed this with the senators of the time he says people actually wanted to vote against having music to the general public because it has such a negative effect on the human body and the deteriorating of their nervous system that's number one if that's not enough proof that music may be haram because it has a negative impact on your body let's move on towards the Islamic principles that teach us why music is haram why is it that it may be affecting my life without even knowing it how does it subconsciously find its path within my thought process and what I lean towards and who I hold onto and who I let go of we look at a particular principle which is from the fourth Imam Imam Ali ibn al-Hussain which he writes a treatise of rites 50 rites in a book and arguably the best rites will ever read he gives everything a rite in that book starting from Allah every single aspect in your lives your hands your tongue your ease your sight your stomach your feet your companions your mother your father 50 rites he named in that book and he teaches us what Islam says about each and every rite and how it has a rite on us and he mentions in reference to the aspect of music he says even your e has a rite over you what is that rite he says the rite of your e over you is that you know for a fact that your e is a gateway to your heart now listen carefully to this one he says your e is a direct pathway to your heart so whatever you he especially at a young age will be instilled and cultivated in your heart then he says it's your rite to ensure that only that which is noble enters your heart and anything that's ignoble should not find its way in that particular path to your heart when Ali ibn Abi Talib teaches us and he tells his son Imam Hassan he says I tried to cultivate your heart before it heartened I want to cultivate your heart he says to him before it heartens at an older age it begins to hearten and hearten once the trials and tribulations have come forth once you've already made up your character it's hard to teach someone something new after he's already made up his character that's why Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib says I tried to cultivate your heart at a young age Imam Zain el-Aabidin teaches us this when he sees the rite of the e he says it's a direct path to your heart if you listen towards that which is ignoble that which doesn't necessarily have the best language doesn't necessarily teach us the best morality stuff that the Ahl al-Bait would look down upon stuff that when you listen and you cultivate your heart Imam Sahib el-Asr Imam al-Zaman would look down upon Imam says it has a rite over you this e that you hear with when you listen when you're backbiting your heart craves towards that when you listen towards that which is pure your heart will levitate towards that when you listen towards Quran your heart will crave Quran when you listen to the words of Ahl al-Bait your heart will crave the words of Ahl al-Bait when you listen to the tragedy of Imam Hussain your heart pulsate towards that but when you listen to music instilling in the fact that it teaches within its particular rhymes and rhythms not the most noble of characters not the most noble of teachings that cultivates your heart that finds its path towards your heart and that's how your heart will pulsate that's what's content within your heart within your heart and that's why when علامة writes a book تستغيب الشراز he writes a book instilling 50 of the greatest sins people come and I say it's in that particular book listening to music is in that book and would you believe it he ranks each and every particular sin in order of the greatest sin and he moves downwards do you know which one is music number 15 in that book he writes as music one of the greatest sins music why he says we have a hadith and we'll get to them very shortly of how it may affect us our lives the verse in question which we stated when the Holy Quran states to us in صورة الحج chapter 22 ayah 30 he says do not and beware make sure you move from قولة الزور what's قولة الزور he says what does that mean make sure you remove yourself from that particular قول what is that when you look at that hadith the first informer says to us قولة الزور and many other traditions he says قولة الزور refers to the words of the musicians number one the words of the musicians in the Quran yes it says make sure you stay away from that words make sure you stay away from music why why do you stay away in other narrations the prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم states he says الله سبحانه وتعالى has brought me as a mercy to mankind and part and partial of that mercy is that I came to eradicate the idea of music being part and parcel of your lives the prophet of Islam وما ينطق عن الهواء إن هو إلا وحيون you are doesn't speak of his own accord therefore when we find that people come forth and say that music why is it haram let me listen to this it doesn't affect me in any negative manner عليب نبي طالب states he says know very well that any household that has music in it or plays music in it what's the effect he says make sure and know very very certainly that no angels will come around that household and he says do not be surprised if your prayers look at the look at the particular calamity which is playing music in your households he says don't be surprised if you pray your prayers are not accepted because if you have music playing some people come and say well it's just a small sin أستغيب الشراز puts us at the 15th 15th most or the 15th greatest sin that you may commit ممزين العبدين has a beautiful statement beautiful statement if we apply just that statement in our lives look how much we will change he says never look at the size of this sin someone says I'm listening to this particular music this particular genre it may not be vulgar mannerisms ignoble words and it's instilling within our hearts because it makes itself in our pathway a mom says do not look at the size of this sin rather look at who you're sinning against which is الله سبحانه وتعالى and on the positive side when he says when you do a good deed don't look at the size of it look at who's judging that particular good deed when we move on and we have a very beautiful story in reference to Imam Al-Qadim it's a very famous story but we don't look at it in the depth that we should he goes past the house this house has music in it playing and when he hears the music there was a servant that comes outside to throw the trash as she's about to throw the trash Imam Al-Qadim asks her a question he says what is it he says is the owner of this house a slave or a free man which one is it he says he's of the aristocrats of course he's a free man so the Imam nods he says you're correct if he was a slave he would not do that which he is doing so he's strange and the Imam walks off she comes back a person by the name of Bishop looks at her and says why did you take so long to throw the trash out she says I had a meeting or I collided an acquaintance with a man outside he says what did he say to you he said he asked me about you he says what did he ask you about me he says is your master a free man or a slave and what did you reply he says I replied by saying obviously he's a free man you're of the aristocrats he says what did he say he says you're right he said if your master was a slave he would not do that which he is doing so Bishop asks that servant he says what did the man look like so she begins to tell him the characteristics physically of Imam Al-Kawam in which Bishop drops everything that he's doing on the floor and he runs outside the narration said he didn't even have a chance to put on his sandals that's why he's known as Bishr Al-Haafi why Haafi means he doesn't wear isn't it any sandals or any footwear if we wanted to look at it in our context runs outside bare foot looking for the Imam when he finds him he throws himself and narration says at his feet other narration say on his lap when he throws himself on the Imam he begins to ask or seek forgiveness he says oh Imam I know I have done wrong straight away what did the Imam say two words is he a free man or a slave us we listen and listen and listen year in year out we hear the call of Imam Hussein but how many of us follow what he teaches us Bishr one word he ran towards the Imam of his time how many of us follow away from the Imam of our time by the actions that we're committing Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib he says this he says be sure and do not be surprised that if a music or if music is played in your house that the angels will not come furthermore your prayers may not be accepted look at the position and the greatness of such a sin Imam رضع عليه وسلام once the Ma'amoon spread a rumor he said the Imam believes that music isn't haram so when the rumor comes towards Imam رضع he begins to ask a question where did you get this rumor from he says well he never said anything about music people play it openly and Imam رضع comes to him and he says I want to ask you a question and this is the question each and every individual should ask themselves Imam رضع begins to question that person he says let me ask you if you had a balance and you were in charge of that balance each and every one of us in ourselves if we had a balance one balance is heaven goodness purity and the other balance is hellfire impurity he says where would you put music which side of the balance so the man straight away he replies he says I would put it in the side of hellfire the side of impurity he says therefore even in yourself without asking you know that this may be a wrong act why is it that you have to question it time and time again and the problem with our society is what is when particular acts in religion are acceptable by us we take it it fits into our roster it fits into our daily routine it fits in with our cultural perspectives but when Islam comes in a clash with our cultural perspectives the western influence we put it aside when a wedding comes people go as far as to say if I don't have music in my wedding I'm not getting married altogether and the problem starts why about a particular act of haram let's put it onto ourselves how may this affect our religion and when I say our religion I mean the religion that we instill when we follow Ali ibn Abi Talib and pride ourselves in saying we are the followers of Ali ibn Abi Talib how can music have an effect on us now everything I've said may be a little bit dry we have to get our head across the Quranic verses the Ahadith and there's many many more but I'm trying to to restrain myself within the time commitments when the Quran in other verses when we look at chapter 23 verse 1 2 & 3 and it states to us about the mu'minoon it says victorious are the believers which believers the people that are or have concentration in prayers which ones it says when they hear music or words of music they stay away another one and there's many more to come but the one I want to look at tonight before I end and the gist of it the importance that we can apply to our lives now when Imam Sadaq says ever so beautifully in Bihar al Anwar he says that listening to music what's its effect and one of the greatest effects in a negative manner on us the followers of Ahli al Bayt in Bihar al Anwar he states it says listening to music promotes the growth of hypocrisy how does it promote it says it promotes it in such a way that water promotes growth within vegetation imagine that listening to music promotes hypocrisy in a manner of which water promotes growth in vegetation I just want you to envision this some of you may be asking why is hypocrisy such a big thing why is it saying that this may affect us the school of thought of Ahli al Bayt why because we need to join the dots when we have a hadith yes it promotes hypocrisy why is it a danger when we have the hadith of the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم he says in reference he says about Ahli a statement which we will know from tonight that we will try our best to stay away from hypocrisy and music what's the statement Oh Ahli only a believer loves you and the only one that hates you or has hatred towards you is a what a hypocrite the one that has hatred towards you is a hypocrite when we listen towards music and Imam Sadiq says that it promotes the growth of hypocrisy what does that mean for us the followers of Ahli al Bayt the Quran states they cannot be two hearts in one body we can't say we listen to music but we love Ali ibn Abi Talib when Ali comes with all these statements against music we love Imam Ali we love Ahli al Bayt and we are not going to take their teachings hypocrisy that's its effect when listening to music one of the effects of hypocrisy and if not the greatest one and that's why we've overlooked it time and time again overlooked this particular aspect seeing that it may be a small sin when in actual fact it may be one of the greatest why about Fawla al-Abbah which we will be discussing on the 7th night and especially in reference to the speech that he had when Imam Hussein was chased from one place to another Imam Hussein was driven out of Makkah Abu Fawla al-Abbah stands on the top of the Ka'bah what does he say in his speech he reminds us the position of Imam Hussein and the position of Yazid the enemy of Imam Hussein he mentions many things Insha'Allah we'll get to that in the upcoming nights one of which and the most important to our topic tonight he says no and remember in whose house or in whose palaces music is being played and dances are dancing and in whose houses the revelation of the Holy Quran came that in its fact should tell us brothers and sisters that in the time of Imam Hussein when we try to differentiate ourselves every day is Ashura and every land is Karbala what does that mean it means Karbala is happening every single day how? when we put ourselves in the balance whether we'd be on the side of Imam Hussein or on the opposition look at it nowadays do we do things that the imams would love or hate on the 10th of Muharram when Imam Hussein comes and he asks the question what's the question he says why is it that you fight me is it because of a sunnah that I have changed is it a particular thing that I have done in hatred towards you have I done injustice look at the reply to tell you that we need to stay away from music and come back towards the school of thought of Ahl al-Bayt the reply that came from the opposition army we have nothing to do with you then what he says we fight you بغضا لأبي isn't it in hatred to your father who? أمير المؤمنين who was أمير المؤمنين when the prophet of Islam says علي ابن أبي طالب if he takes one valley and the entire world takes another valley follow علي ابن أبي طالب into that valley he says about علي ابن أبي طالب that he is with the truth and the truth is with him when the person comes to him after Jamal asks him which side were you on he says it was very unclear for me he says why he says on one side I saw particular personalities that were known to be prestigious at the time of the prophet and on the other side which is your army علي ابن أبي طالب I also saw prestigious figures I was very confused look at the reply of علي ابن أبي طالب and it's a lesson to be learnt علي ابن أبي طالب says look and seek the truth once you seek the truth you will know it's people look at that valuable statement that we need to apply to our lives علي ابن أبي طالب which the prophet says about look at the rank of علي and insha'Allah on the 10th night we want to look at the ranks in the eyes of Allah of our Imam especially Imam صاحب العصر و الزمان when the prophet of Islam says about him he says what do I say about علي ابن أبي طالب he says about him he says لو لأ if I was not afraid لو لأ أن أخاف أن تقول فيك طائفة من أمتي if I was not afraid that apportion of my umma will say about you what the Christian said about Jesus son of Mary لو لأ أن أخاف أن تقول فيك طائفة من أمتي ما قالته النصار في عيس ابن مريم he says I would have said a statement about you that people will take from the dust of your feet and your ablution that which will they find blessing in أخذوا من ترابن عليك و من طهورك ما يستشفون به he says but what is sufficed he says حسبك أنك مني و أنا منك و اشيعتك على منابر من نور مبيضة وجوههم حولي في الجنة وهم جيراني we want to pray to Allah إن شاء الله على هذه المنطقة تعرف جيدا أن تفعل أن الموسيقى يكون علينا we want to pray to Allah على هذه المنطقة لماذا؟ لأن إمام حسين هو أشياء أكثر أنك يمكنك أن تصل و أنك يمكنك أن تصل إلى الله سبحانه وتعالى و أنا أتكلم أولاً و I pray to Allah و نحن جميعا و نحن نتكلم على الطريق right الطريق أهل البيت و إن شاء الله يمكننا أن نتكلم و نتكلم و لا تذهب لك في أي منة و فقط تفعل ذلك و يسعهم في كل منة و أريد أن أقوم بقى الله أن يمكنك أن تقوم بقى هذا من هذه المنطقة و بركة الصلاة على محمد و أولي محمد


So, very quick background, okay. I'm pretty old, I work on a lot of things, including mathematical areas that have nothing to do with computational, with social sciences. And I've been here since the beginning, given lots of talks, those have been to all of them, which will be nobody here would see some similarities, but there's also some new stuff. So, starting with the sort of general idea of voting or aggregation of preferences, let's say, there's a huge number of rules, which that word cloud on the left is supposed to show, that have been named in the literature, that's probably not all of them, and there's a huge number of axiomatic properties that they satisfy, and it's really difficult to navigate through this jungle of them all. So, one important unifying principle is something which Arkady Piotr and Edith Elkin have worked a lot on, the idea of distance rationalization. More generally, you think about having a profile of preferences in some format, that's the input, you have an outcome, which is the result of your rule, it could be a social choice, or it could be a multi-winner setup, you can have many different possibilities. And there are often, in many applications, there are some very easy outcomes that you can decide. If everyone has exactly the same preference order and you're voting for a president, then it's relatively easy to work out who you should choose. In general, what we do is come up with a distance measure to these so-called consensus sets, and we use this standard sort of Voronoi idea of looking at what is the closest consensus result, and those different colored regions there correspond to inputs, preferences, profiles, which have the same outcome under whatever your rule is. That's the general principle, so try to understand things. You decompose your rule somehow into a consensus notion and a distance notion, and then all you're arguing can be done at that level. And so I've been working a bit on this last year, well, for several years, but submitting last year, so a very systematic way of deriving properties of the rule from its components, and perhaps even more interestingly, in the case of anonymous rules, or rules that are homogeneous, which means that if you clone everyone the same number of times, you get the same result, you get to some interesting mathematical areas some buzzwords being Wasserstein or Kantorovich metric, optimal transport, finite-dimensional Bunnack spaces, things like that. So these are quite unusual mathematical ideas that haven't come up much in social choice before. So those are some of the things we're working at on, and the idea would be to move on next to different models, different output models. So the inputs are the same, usually there could be different inputs, you could have different types of ballots or preferences, but the same general unifying principle should be extended more generally. Not to say that no one has worked on this, but there's a lot more work that could be done. Right, next topic, I mentioned matching on the other slide. Another word for that might be resource allocation. You're trying to match items to agents, for example, lots of those things up there. Very important practical applications, school assignment, medical residence, these kinds of things. There's lots of, it's tricky because in the case of voting, if everyone has the same preferences, then it's easy because you know what's gonna happen. It's very easy to work out what to do. That's the hardest case in some sense for resource allocation. If everyone wants the same resource, it's not a single public good, it's the private one. It's more complicated. Recently, I've been working quite a bit and we've introduced some new algorithms for the so-called house allocation problem, which is also called one-sided matching. Those algorithms actually are quite competitive when you look at the welfare results even though their axiomatic properties are not fantastic. So here's an example from some simulation that did where the top one, higher is worse here, this is the welfare loss that you're getting under various assumptions. And the top one on top blue line is the standard random serial dictatorship which has lots of nice axiomatic properties. But it's welfare results are not very good and the purple one is the new one that we've introduced which actually was inspired by a Christmas party that I went to three years ago, interestingly enough. Now, electoral systems done quite a bit on electoral systems. These pictures are intended to talk about prediction and how hard it is. That's the left-hand picture and the right-hand picture is talking about evaluation of electoral systems in terms of multiple criteria. So there are two criteria here. You want to be kind of at the bottom left.  And the question is, which is better? Which is the best value of the parameter? Are we doing some kind of optimization by criterion optimization? So you want to find the Pareto Frontier that you have a whole lot of scatter in these points. So you've got distributions rather than single points. So I still haven't worked out exactly the methodology we're gonna use here but that's really the kind of picture we're talking about, give you a rough idea of the kind of things we're talking about. So we've done all sorts of stuff involving simulations, practical submissions to government, currently working on interesting models for artificial preference data using earned models and some predictions, some other political science applications involving swing and then we'll continue to talk about optimizing systems. So that's sort of that stream and the final stream I wanted to talk about was networks, starting a lot of stuff on networks because my PhD students are working in that area. For example, this network here, question is, is it balanced? Balance is a technical term which is not difficult to work out. Each edge is either plus or minus and a network is balanced if every cycle has an even number of negative edges in it. Friend or foe? Yeah, friend or foe, yeah, this one. This here would be an ally or an enemy. And you can have, so it's not hard to tell whether something is balanced or not because you really can apply a little breadth-first search basically, so well-known graph algorithms to do that but what's hard is if it's not balanced working out how to make it balanced with the minimum amount of change to the network, removing like flipping a minimum number of edges in order to make it balanced. That's a very well-known NP hard problem. I don't know. I haven't looked at everything there but these are all, so it's created by some. Are they both vertices? They're both vertices because they are all actors in some sense. So Germany was part, I guess, of this P5 plus one or whatever, wasn't it? It was one of those deals with Iran, for example. The interesting thing here is that, yeah, if you go through and trace everything through you see that Iran and the US, for example, here have quite positive relations in many ways. I guess the other thing that's clear is that everyone hates ISIS pretty much, yeah. It's based on, well, it's here. It's come from some source but it's based on formal alliances and so there are formal treaties and alliances and also news reports. So there's some judgment required there. Someone is making a judgment here. Yeah, this is not a complete graph but it's a graph that shows the various relations. There are some non-relations like Russia and China don't have a direct relation in this sense, right? Okay. But there might, there's no formal alliance, there's probably no formal alliance or enmity, yeah. At some point you get to the boundary of a network, right?  You could get rid of these external players if you like but they could be relevant. Some of them are not states either, right? Like here, for example. This is a few years old as well so it's not gonna be the same as now. This is an example of a signed network where you have plus or minus on the edges, right? So that's, I'm just giving you that as a sort of a taste of a problem. I'll zoom down to the second point because this idea of working out whether something is balanced or not, if it is or isn't, it's easy to determine but measuring partial balance, how close you are to being balanced is not something that's been properly analyzed so we've tried to axiomatize that and looked at it, performance on various real world networks. So that was one paper there. It might be a bad thing to have but in certain contexts it's a good thing. Social settings usually it's considered to be good. Otherwise you have a lot of tension. You have friends of friends who are enemies and things like that. But here it may or may not be a good thing because the perfect balance here would in fact be equivalent to a bipartisan of the network into two sort of Cold War alliances which may not necessarily be a good thing. But it is something which is used a lot in a lot of applications, not just here but in physics and it's a very basic concept, yeah. So whether we want to actually, yeah, so first of all we're trying to improve the theory, then we, if you look under the next there, we're trying to actually work out how to compute what we think of as the best performing overall measure of performance that unfortunately is, it's an NP hard problem to compute this thing, exactly. We also have some other problems in the networks area so Addison mentioned decide, we'd use that in some at length to experiment on undergraduates a few years ago and finally have submitted something based on that. A diffusion model in the network, sorry, a diffusion study, experimental study from which we hope to develop interesting models. We already have enough to know that the original model is not very good so we're trying to improve on that. Also looking at a completely different network which is a citation network of all New Zealand laws, laws cite other laws, usually for the purposes of definitions but sometimes for amendment for various other reasons. Trying to understand the structure and evolution of that as a complex network. Yeah, it's still, there's a lot of very interesting questions involved there. We've tried really hard to find let's say legal historians, people who are quantitative political scientists in New Zealand and we haven't done too well. We've had one, we've talked to a lot of people. We're intending to publish in the New Zealand law journal which will be your first thing first. And just to ask the legal community if there's any interesting questions that they can think of, we can use this network for. We have, there's a lot you can say from the network science point of view whether it has relevance in the application area is gonna be an interesting. So we're gonna work on that. One thing is very clear is that the law has become extremely more, much more complex. Not only are there more laws, there are more interrelations between the density has been increasing over time. It's hard to understand exactly why that is, but immediately, but you can look at various hypotheses. So those are the things there, very quick overview. And as I said, they're always looking for some new people to work with and I'm gonna be talking at least once this year in our seminar, so be based to some extent on feedback. Thanks. We can then, on demand we can ask Mark to talk more about one particular. Yeah, you can think about it. Have a think about it, it's all there and the slide will be up there. Yeah, catch up.