100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
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User ID: 2039
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
1hr ago
(Branching off the main debates about good shoot / bad shoot).
Viral Verbal Videography
I watched this entire video: https://x.com/JoshEakle/status/2008970977699639681.
The most relevant bits to the shooting are in the first thirty seconds. Then it is almost four additional minutes of nothing in terms of actual events, but a lot in terms of both literal and figurative background noise in the culture war context.
This is four minutes of high volume emotionalization and righteous indignation. The principal videographer here literally goes through cycles of yelling "What the fuck / what the actual fuck?", "Shame! Shame!" (I mean this literally), and "Do you have a conscience?"
Another common motif is someone, definitely male, elsewhere in the background doing a primal scream of "MURDERERS!" every so often. It's impressive in its sensationality.
I don't know just what to make of this. My immediate reaction to this was one of insufferability. When a person's vocalized response to these kind of events is "what the fuck? what the actual fuck?", it betrays a kind of chronic online-ness that I used to think was somewhat apocryphal. The origin of "what the actual fuck" is a bit obscure but we know that it definitely originated in a highly online context and was almost certainly intended to be sarcastically hilarious in its usage. I can remember videos of 9/11 where people are repeating, without full awareness, "oh my god" again and again. That kind of honest emotional reaction actually still hits me hard because, well, it's coming from somewhere genuine, isn't performative, and uses a vocabulary (religious) that really is mostly reserved - when earnest - for "big" moments. Turning "what the actual fuck" into a kind of emotional war cry cheapened the whole thing from the get go.
My nucleus of a theory is that this kind of outrage is some proportion of performativity and some proportion of a kind of programmed earnestness. The principal videographer knows that in this context she is not only permitted but expected to dial the histrionics up to 11. Maybe even 22 because she is recording everything with the foreknowledge that she'll post this to social media later. It seems to be she had a kind of emotional impact and righteous indignation checklist - shock and horror ("what the (actual) fuck"), public shaming ("shame! shame!" combined with off-screen guys "murderers!" yell), and finally moral grandstanding ("do you have a conscience?").
In the social media world, it isn't so much about you being present at an event so much as recording that you were present at an event and pre-rendering what you think should be your future reactions to that event in real time. The benign version of this is simply taking a video selfie and some concert or major sporting event with something like a caption reading "is this actually happening?" Your "disbelief" is actually a kind of self-effacing professional of modesty paired with a "highest of highs" in terms of transcendental enjoyment. But, on the dark side, you have videos like the one linked at the top of this post; Immediately turning the death of a human into an opportunity to demonstrate Right Think (at the loudest possible volume).
Part of me did think, at one point, that this is all in my own Turbo Autist head. I'm just over indexing on linguistic things because of a nerdy interest in that field. But the spell was broken just seconds before the video ends when the principal videographer says, to someone off camera;
"You okay, mami?" In a drastically different tone of voice. The spell was broken. She knew she had done her duty to The Cause and captured it on video, now, it was back to hanging out with her best girlies.
She just forgot to stop recording.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
2hr ago
"We should look to interactions with the mentally unwell as a gauge for our evaluation of police conduct" is a hell of an argument.
Certainly, for serious crimes like murder or even robbery, there's enough of a problem with a successful escape that the outcome preference should be capture > death > escape.
And then an explicit recommendation against due process. Huh.
So, okay. Take that situation and make me a better runner, so that I could outrun the police. Is it warranted for the police to shoot me?
No one is making this argument. Not even implicitly. This is strawman and conflation dialed up to 10.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
2hr ago
I don't think a lot of people understand how dangerous vehicles are due to being around cars all the time. Due to their size, even at a small speed it can do significant damage to the human body.
Yep.
Although it's rough to watch, you can check out videos of things like "trailer hitch fails" to see just how dangerous a "slow moving" SUV / truck can be. Knees folding like car tables, multiple surgeries type of things.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
2hr ago
I think that you will be hard-pressed to find a demographic less likely to shoot a person than middle-aged urban white women. Also
+1 for constant profiling by law enforcement. I am not being sarcastic.
Fuckwit B, having previously been hit by a car driven by another suspect in the line of duty, decided it would be a great idea to again stand in the path of a suspect's car, thereby turning any escape attempt into an assault with a deadly weapon. Rather than brandishing his weapon and making his threat explicit, he waited for her to move the car forward. At that point, he drew his gun and shot her, an act which would not have saved him if she had aimed for him. By the time he fired his shots, he was already out of danger.
Again, this falls into the trap of "why didn't the cop just have 100% perfect awareness of the entire situation, perfect emotional control, and ninja like reflexes!"
When someone fails to obey repeated police commands, police have to default to treating them as hostile. When that same person them, immediately and without hesitation, engages in dangerous behavior, lethal force is now on the table. When all of this happens within ~ 5 seconds, it's just a dice roll of who ends up injured or dead.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
3hr ago
We can't just go around shooting women if they can't make K-Turns quickly enough.
My High School driving instructor would like to respectfully disagree with you.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
3hr ago
Where gay men have deviant sex with one another, straight men are balls deep in weirdo niche porn and gooning for hours.
Degeneracy finds a way. There's still a case to be made that solo, self-destroying degeneracy is Less Wrong (lulz) than inducing others to degeneracy with you.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
3hr ago
See also: Taliban fighters complain about having to work in an office instead of waging jihad.
Bro.
I feel their pain.
A final question: will the shooter be charged with a state crime in Minnesota and will he be able to avoid that charge? Could we run into a Chauvin type situation here?
No. The Chauvin example is actually the wildly unlikely scenario. As it always has been.
1. Can we get some links to full videos that aren't on Mass Media website? Navigating those with all of their ads and popus - even with AdBlocker - is a nightmare. The first one I saw, also, was only a clip of about the final ten seconds.
Here are good links to multiple angles of the video. @self_made_human posted them downthread:
Angle 3 (Emerged as I was writing this)
- Hard disagree on your assessment of the culpability of the shooter. When the car starts moving (i.e. the driver doesn't kill the engine and present their hands), this is pretty much brandishing a deadly weapon. At point blank, the cop is justified 100%. I've posted before about how people really overestimate the ability to "think rationally" in situations like this. You default to a lot of training / muscle memory / self-preservation instincts. Again, go watch some police bodycam videos on YouTube to understand how quick things can turn from ho-hum traffic stop to shots fired.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
3hr ago
100% Agree and Simon is the kind of "lefty" that I will spend extra time and effort trying to engage with because of his own self-discipline and refusing to adopt the easy but wrong (and, worse, intentionally deceptive) sentiments of the woke / progressive sphere.
But the class lens is still a difficult circle to square because of its high dependence on chronology. In Season 2 of the Wire, we're exposed to the plight of the dying dockworker industry in Baltimore. These are quite literally the almost mythical "working class" of the 1950s and 1960s who, on one high school education level income, could buy a home, a car, raise 3 - 5 kids (the Polish are Catholic!), enjoy BBQs and little league etc. They did this through comically illegal political patronage, state sanctioned segregation, and, following that program's demise, strongly self-enforced neighborhood segregation. If ever there was something like "systemic racism" and an "oppressor class", it was boldly exemplified by just these sort.
But in the early 2000s, they're so economically displaced that a major subplot of Season 2 is how the younger generation (Nicky and Ziggy) involve themselves willingly in the drug trade in order to (again, literally) move out of their parents' basements.
So, where exactly is my sympathy supposed to lie with these classes? Sure, rich people are always generically evil in some sense or another. But where does one class begin and end? Where does one single group of the same people (i.e. Frank Sabotka) stop being oppressor and become oppressed (or vice versa?)
This is one of my macro problems with the broadest possible "left" - despite their professed hatred of hierarchy and social group demarcation, they explicitly base their worldview on a static grouping of people based on criteria that is inherently dynamic! They even build wild hacks to get around this by creating mental "concepts" like "poverty mindset" and "whiteness is a state of mind."
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
3hr ago
This is an excellent point! If the insider doesn't have knowledge of a fait accompli already, then it still is somewhat probabilistic. Here, I guess, it depends a LOT on how the market resolution mechanism is built - i.e. "Attempt to depose Maduro" versus "Maduro actually deposed."
Still in all, broacasting insider info too early or too broadly may defeat its value!
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
3hr ago
Markets only exist if you have enough buyers are sellers. There is no one forcing people to bid into the Maduro strike market.
It's a little trite but it's also rite right; don't play in markets that have a strong "insider-ability"
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
2d ago
Up front caveat: I love prediction markets.
First, don't think of prediction markets as roughly the same as the stock market. They are wildly different. The "stock market" - which is, more broadly and accurate, the regulated exchange of financial instruments - is far more complex and serves vastly different purposes. The stock market is not about bidding on the correct outcome of something in the future. It isn't even, necessarily, about maximizing - in all cases - return on investment. Hedging and managing risk is just as important, if not more so. Much of it is about how to finance the ongoing operations of a firm. Still other parts of it are about building a portfolio that performs to a given objective with understandable and (didn't I already say this) manageable risk.
Most critically, the stock market never "resolves." It is continuous (unless, of course, we actually have a financial meltdown).
Prediction markets are, first, continuous before they're discreet. You have a range of outcomes, though most commonly two. People are free to trade their confidence on those outcomes (via price). That's it. Can this be manipulated to work like the stock market? Yeah, kind of. Except, the bids you make on Kalshi or Polymarket don't actually represent ownership in anything. There's no preference in liquidation (a la senior debt etc.) It's just a bet on what will, eventually, happen. It's a truth discovery mechanism.
Therefore, insider trading is actually great. If someone has better information, we want to know about it, and the market ought to reflect this. That a prediction market about Maduro being deposed even kicked off the night before the op is valuable info! Would I bet into it? Probably not. Which brings me to point 2:
Don't bet on things - directly - that can have insiders. The easy example is something like weather temperatures they are natural phenomena - nobody knows, for sure, what the weather will be tomorrow. There are other examples which are more indirect -- will Mike Johnson be speaker of the house at the end of next year? That requires a vote and no one knows what that vote will be until, perhaps, the very final hours before it happens. There is no insider here until after a certain time and, even then, it isn't a "hard" insider the way this Maduro thing probably was. It isn't hard to look at a market and go "how much insidering could there be?" If you want to bet into it, that's fine, that's your decision.
The knee jerk aversion to insider trading is mostly a product of a lot of Enron era hectoring by Congress and the press. (Fun fact: Enron wasn't even really insider trading so much as straight up fraud). To me, the bigger problem is that the overregulation of the markets makes insider trading "a thing" as the kids say. If markets were open 24/7 (as they should be), companies could choose to report whatever and whenever they wanted, there would be a lot less rigidity. The game would "move faster" and so trying to cheat at it via insider moves wouldn't be as profitable. Open and free flowing information means there is less opportunity to profit from having "special" information because so little of any information can be special when it's all "out there." The government created the space for insider trading to be a problem. Prediction markets show that it isn't a problem and, in fact, gets us faster to "truth".
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
2d ago
and he has claimed the intention to convert to Christianity.
You can't fake true, in the heart intent. If Scott Adams is doing this because he is, all of a sudden, afraid of going to hell, then 1) He's acting out of fear (sinful) and 2) Is not acting out of a true love for God (also sin). All that being said, I don't actually believe that all deathbed repentances are invalid. Sometimes, someone is called in those last few moments. While it may seem like this is the ultimate "Get out of jail free" card, the reality would probably be that the person, while truly called to Christ and therefore happy to (after a stop in purgatory) go to paradise, is also full of remorse for not having Him in their life for all of their other years. Imagine having had an entire life you thought was happy and then, moments before death, discovering the ultimate in music / art / passion. It probably wouldn't actually be that enjoyable as you'd be full of regret.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
2d ago
But if you're not implementing a minmax strat, playing for the 'meta,' you can feel like you're losing constantly in the short term.
Absolutely. So what matters more is which game you choose to play. Finite and Infinite Games does a great job of describing the two types of primary social games. This is one of my most recommended books.
Not to bring it back to Jesus, but ... to bring it back to Jesus, the entire "game" chosen there is sacrificing the fame / wealth / comfort of this world for the infinite comfort of the next. From a pure game theoretic standpoint, it's a total no-brainer. If not only the expected return but the guaranteed return to one course of action is literally infinite bliss forever, you go all in on that. For people who choose not to believe, they are still making a somewhat rational decision in their pursuit of wealth/status in this life. The tricky part is for lukewarm believers - C&E beige Catholics, whishy washy mainline protestants, cultural Jews, secular Muslims etc. who "believe" yet also hedge by pursuing wealth and status on earth. It's actually that exact non-minmax you're talking about and they'll likely get caught in the middle one way or another. And then, you know ,go to Hell forever.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
2d ago
Good review.
There's also kind of an unintentional self-own. During the riot scene, when Jenkins gets everybody food, rallies the troops, and says something like "Everyone goes home tonight!" it's hard not to feel solidarity with the police as a horde of barbarians encircles them.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
2d ago
I don't think they are actually fighting for male attention. I think this is ingroup status signalling and woman trying to be more popular among women. The prize seems less tangible.
I agree. This (and mobile gambling / sports betting) is the only "social media is destroying the world" narrative I buy. Political / ideological "radicalization" has been more or less debunked (it's the 1-5% of online political hyper posters who actually get real weird). "Phone addiction" while real in a habitual but not neurochemical sense is mostly a matter of self discipline and cultivating a dynamic and varied lifestyle.
But intrasexual competition for status is hardwired into both males and females. The difference being that for females, a lot more of the status is derived from attention markets - what other people think of you relative to other women. For men, it's more about quantitative and hierarchical absolute performance rather than a group voting / market dynamic. Far less ambiguity.
This is where social media really does "hack" the brain. It is an always on, 24/7 "who is the popular girl" machine that requires constant updates and vigilance from all users. The only want to win is not to play or - as in the Bonnie Blue case - to pursue such an extreme strategy that you'll have very few direct competitors, but may, perversely, actually lose status the more you exploit it.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
2d ago
I think it can be done if you're a high status enough male and if the framing is correct.
I can't think of a good example for the pure high status male, but, for framing, the host of the "Whatever" podcast, when he wants to, does this well. Unfortunately, that show has mostly turned into a circus where he invites on OnlyFans models and then literally guys from Andrew Tate's posse to flame each other. If you can find clips, however, where it's just the host and usually 1 - 3 OnlyFans girls, he actually does a passable job of framing he issue as one of personal integrity and self-worth versus instant gratification.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
2d ago
I like this comment because it sets up and interesting model.
Want a thing and don't care about status games? Buy it. Get rich, get what you want.
Want status but don't care about money? Get famous through any means necessary.
Want a thing and also care about status? Play whatever status game you want, and get to the level of wealth you need to acquire the thing.
But, of course, we see the hacks all over the place.
If you have lots of money - like, lots and lots of it - you acquire at least some status. If you have a lot of status (fame) you can pretty easily acquire money, perhaps even lots and lots of it.
It's that "both" model that is tricky. You want both status and money but you have to balance out one with the other lest you lose one or the other.
I don't know. This was off the top of my head, but it's interesting to play with.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
2d ago
They are both reenacting the past to give themselves gender valdiating experiences, men getting to pretend to experience heroism and self-sacrifice in combat
War re-enactors?! No, these are neckbeards playing dress up. They want to be hailed for their assiduous attention to historical detail and accuracy, not their "heroism." Even if airsoft, which is pseudo-athletic, most of the time is spent geeking out over hyperrealistic gear, rather than drilling movement to contact.
The male "gender validation" activity is sports. Go to any sports bar and just listen, you'll find several different styles of conversation, but it's all about the fantasy of kicking the shit out of the other team. You have the has been High School QBs who know more about the game than the NFL does ("sloppy defense!"), you have the hyper nerds who want to systematize dominance ("Davante Adams averages 1.8 yards of separation per target, you can't cover him even if you're covering him!"), and just the highly emotive (and likely drunk) general issue fans ("Go! go! go! COME ON, COME ON, YOU CAN'T CALL THAT A HOLD!").
miming heterosexual sex positions.
I woke up feelin' cheesiest, coach in a kind of DEUS VULT! mood. This has only exacerbated it. Burn the witch.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
2d ago
I agree with this and, sadly, think it extends further.
When men do communicate directly, it's perfectly acceptable for a female partner to issue a blanket veto in either a positive or negative sense.
"Hey, babe, I like blowjobs."
"I am not a fleshlight for your entertainment!"
Subtext: The guy wasn't commanding or coercing a blowjob, but was voicing his own kinks or whatever. The response assumed an imperative "command" and the veto is delivered.
"Hey, babe, I'm stoked about your plans for your friend's baby shower, but, that's the same time as the football game I wanted to watch. Perhaps you go it alone?"
"You never support me!"
Subtext: The guy is gently trying to message that he'll be miserable at the baby shower, it's likely she will detect his miserableness, and this, in and of itself, may be the cause of a fight later in the day. Furthermore, he has a reason that is, to him, quite important to not be at the babyshower. He's probably looking to make a compromise, she immediately jumps to the assumption that he's merely thinking "lol, fucking gay-ass babyshower."
First, I don't think the above is the de facto communication pattern in modern relationships. It is, however, common enough in my own experience and observation that I don't think what I've outlined above qualifies as hyperbole. And, of course, there are mature couples who can talk about their sexual kinks / fantasies etc. without getting weirded out (even if it includes toaster fucking) and can reasonably make concessions on social outings and recreation to fit each other's strong preferences as well.
Still, I think there is a an imbalance between how normie men and women are allowed / incultured to use vetos and other strong-arm relationship tactics. And I believe it is new. I can remember as a child asking my Grandfather what going to work was like for him (did you use a typewriter or a quill pen, ahahaha!) He told me about his day and then dropped this nice little anecdote;
"Your Grandma always had dinner ready when I got home, because a good wife knows that her husband is going to be hungry after a long day of work!" The obvious level of recoil on one or two of my aunt's faces was priceless. Even the more well adjusted pair rolled their eyes and gave small smirks.
But, perhaps, isn't this just the revelation of my Grandfather's preference that he, very likely, explicitly communicated to my Grandmother? Was this horrifically insulting and demeaning to Grandma? (I can assure you it was not.)
In today's normie long term relationships, I see a verbal pattern with men that is equivocal and designed to be low impact. "Hey, babe, I was thinking that ..." or " You know what could be fun?" or "Oh, hey, wanted to run something by you ...." It is extremely uncommon to hear a direct imperative tense verb; "Pick up the dry cleaning, please" or "Make sure dinner is ready at 6:30" or "We are going to the potluck on Saturday." This is a retreat from male coded directness to female coded subtlety. It is, in fact, the de facto verbal mode of the basic normie marriage.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
3d ago
I've been thinking about this as well and my money is on @WhiningCoil having grown up somewhere around Woodbridge. Maybe just the right part of Fairfax County (Herndon, Springfield).
I also generally agree with his characterization of the changes over the last 20 - 30 years, although with a little less blackpilling.
- The big MS-13 story from back in the day was the 2005 murder of Brenda Paz.. A stabbed and dismembered teenage girl left on the banks of the Shenandoah was quite shocking for Virginia. That it wasn't some sort of crime of passion or schizo Green River Killer psycho, but cold and calculated gang retribution was infuriating.
- And it's continuing to this day. Note how, in that case, the victim was picked up in Reston, which has a median income of over $150,000 and boasts more > $1 million homes than < $1 million homes.
So, @WhiningCoil is right in that a lack of awareness is not a lack of evidence. My own semi-conspiratorial impression is that both Farifax County and Arlington County police know that most of their calls to the well to do parts of those areas will be for domestic stuff, they over patrol in the immigrant heavy parts of the counties with the clear message of; "you guys can fuck around with each other as much as you want, but if you make trouble for John Q. Taxpayer, we will destroy you."
There's also degeneration at the top. There was a time when Tysons Corner and Northern Arlington had mom and pop shops and restaurants. Local High Schools would host fundraisers and other events at these places. There were weird tarot shops that may have been mild drug fronts and, according to urban legend, classy rub-n-tug joints. You know, the things that make a small town work.
To say that NoVA is now corporatized is an understatement. It's internationally hypercorporatized. If you walk through Tysons II on any given day, perhaps on your way to drinks at the Ritz-Carlton, you will see a Saudi woman in full Burqa (fully face covered except for the ninja-slit) toting bags from luxury stores with doormen in $5000 suits. If you walk through Clarendon on a Friday or Saturday night you will see G-Wagons and Ferraris parked outside of the "clubs" there. How can this be? This isn't Vegas, LA, New York. This is a still heavily milquetoast white people suburbia full of, yes, "consultants" and political operatives who mostly make money siphoning off their portion of The Federal Trillions. Real deal finance isn't there, there is no celebrity entertainment industry, "venture" and "tech" exist but in silly reinvent-the-consulting wheel ways that would make actual Silicon Valley denizens laugh (which is saying something).
Less than two hours away you have multiple counties to the west and south that went for Trump 70/30 or better. You have the border with West Virginia (and not just the eastern pandhandle which is just extended NoVA). You have the area around Thurmont and Frederick Maryland, known as a one of the last super stronghold of the KKK. 90 minutes south on I-95 you have Quantico, VA, Headquarters of the USMC and the major FBI training center.
In 2018, Washington and Lee High School, in Arlington, VA, renamed itself (well, the schoolboard did) to "Washington and Liberty" High School. I guess Lee was removed because he was the loser slave owner instead of the winner one.
While I can't quite bring myself to the level of "intentional race replacement" that @WhinginCoil seems to have signed on to, I do think this is what it looks like when a society lets suicidal empathy and degenerative "inclusivity" run amok. It starts simple enough with an "authentic" arepas restaurant or food truck opening up. What's the harm? It ends, years later, with the high priestesses beginning the government backed erasure of history that displeases them.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
4d ago
Then I don't understand your original comment at all.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
4d ago
but it was basically an order of magnitude bigger than 9/11 and the LA riots combined.
The Soleimani raid or COVID?
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
5d ago
Well, No.
Trump has a natural, intuitive understanding of the American electorate, but he's always been rather incompetent at foreign policy personally. He clearly realized this after his first term and it has been plain to see that he's outsourced different problems to different people;
- Ukraine - Witkoff
- Gaza/Israel - Kushner
- Central / South America - Marco Rubio
This operation, and Venezuelan "policy" in general, has Rubio's pawprints all over it. Remember, Rubio is a Cuban-American from South Florida. Venezuela, being Western Hemisphere public enemy number one after Cuba, has always been in his crosshairs. Here's an article about Rubio, in 2020, meeting with the Venezuela opposition leader for instance. Also, here's a 2020 Politico article calling this out specifically.
Trump is still a lame duck. The midterms, which are ten months away, are not going to be full of campaigning on "Caracas Hawk Down!" For a bizarrely chronologically similar parallel, reference the Soleimani raid over New Years in 2020. How did that go for Trump's re-election? The economy is probably already down bad but some creative accounting and a flaccid rate cut are plugging the dam for now. The Special elections this november in VA and elsewhere ... didn't go well. And, to find whatever the opposite of the silver lining is, this strike on Venezuela has some pretty not fun open questions regarding AUMFs and War Powers.
self_made did share links as well.
Continuing downthread, there are actually a bunch of video links. Shame on me for not reading more before posting and the re-editing. But now, it's all a little messy, so I'm just going to send out a blanket "Great job, everyone. Terrrrrr-ific!"
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