Merv's Politically Incorrect Audio Blog

Discussion in 'SBAF Blogs' started by purr1n, Dec 26, 2018.

  1. squishware

    squishware Friend

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    RE: Cold War with China: I think our country's system of control will look a lot like China's by the time they are done with Covid-19. Look at some of the things proposed to get school back in session. It's "Duck and Cover" on steroids. Five minute video below.

    https://www.bitchute.com/video/oZJIhduczyuW/
     
  2. crenca

    crenca Friend

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    I got through one minute and 28 seconds of these mostly non sequiturs (e.g. republic vs. corporation) and medically ignorant comparisons (TB to Wuhan Virus). He does have a point about the quality of home life for children. In my local area, the teachers unions and Dem's own the system, and have already decided that no skin off their back, so no reason to risk opening government schools as they will all get paid no matter what.

    This was broadcast from this guys deer stand right? :p
     
  3. YMO

    YMO Chief Fun Officer

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    Do you have kids in the local system? Just curious.
     
  4. crenca

    crenca Friend

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    I send my two young daughters to local Catholic (though we are not Catholic) private schools. 15 years ago as an IT contract worker I was sitting in a New Orleans public middle school classroom cleaning the malware and porn off of the computers, spitwads and erasers bouncing off the back of my head, the teacher teaching exactly 2 students out of about 30, and I made a promise to myself that my children would never darken the door of a government school.
     
  5. YMO

    YMO Chief Fun Officer

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    Hey, it's your choice on that one if you can afford it. However, most parents aren't lucky as you and can afford private school. Even in FL with the school choice program it doesn't cover much, so after a while parents just stop sending their kids to these schools and go back to public schools.

    I thought personally there's a different mindset with those who send their kids to schools vs those who don't have kids in the school system. Locally I met more people who don't have kids in the system who believe schools should reopen 100% since the virus is overblown. Of course it doesn't help that Sinclair is doing their magic as usual. Others who are from both sides of the political spectrum and being careful about it, including most of them are opting to have the kids learn at home.

    I thought I came out just fine from a government school. I know some who went to private school and later went to prison. It always going to be a mixbag no mater what. I think parents are more important on teaching values than what type of school they go IMO.

    The dislike is from posting anything from Bitchute. Lets try to avoid anything far-right or far-left (American's perspective of them) as much as possible. This stuff is nothing but spreading discord, which I think it something we can agree that it is not needed right now.
     
  6. robot zombie

    robot zombie Friend

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    I can get that. The vast majority of our parents have zero involvement with the church or any church, but pay up for the safer environment and more attention for their kids. Our upper classes are 15 kids max and they do get a serious education. By 8th grade they're well beyond high school level in core subjects. And you don't get away with much there. Religion is a very small part of the curriculum... sort of an afterthought for teachers. They know that the people who pay their salaries send their kids there to learn.

    I remember what my public school experience was like as a kid. In a word: crazy. Especially high school. That's why I laugh when I hear the whole mental health angle... because I remember it being sort of like prison, from the look, to the institution, to the behavior of the kids... nobody ever wanted to be there. Just kind of a sad and dark place. And it wasn't even a poor school. Even the more upper class school over the bridge was a messed up environment. The poor ones just had more weapons and new juvi occupants. 15 years later I still have f'ing nightmares about going to that place... and then I wake up feeling like I'm in the ending of Shawshank Redemption. I think everybody got at least a little messed up by those places. Nobody ever claims to miss it. For a good half of my childhood I thought there was something wrong with me... just severe depression all of the time. And then I got out of school and got a job... and it all went away. Escape from the wild west.

    Not to mention, the actual skill bar was absurdly low. I went to private school all through elementary and parts of middle school (back and forth getting in lots of trouble in the public school.) What I learned in 8th grade at the private school carried me all the way up to high school graduation, to the point where I completely skipped sophomore year and graduated early with honors. No f'ing thanks to them! I worked my ass off just to get out of there.

    Granted, this is Florida we are talking about. I consider myself lucky that my parents were always involved in my life and growth as a person. The same wasn't true for a lot of my peers. Still... put a bunch of kids like that in a confined space with minimal oversight, what do you expect? It's going to be toxic. And often I think kids don't talk about the things they experience, either not knowing what to think, not trusting adults, or simply believing that it's normal.


    More on the subject, I can speak to this a little, having been working for a private school this whole time. They've been polling to see who wants on-campus... less than half of our 300 odd families are willing to send their kids back to on-campus learning as it stands right now. It's funny... due to religious status, mask mandates are unenforceable (police can't set foot here normally,) so virtually nobody wears them. I don't know how much it helps, but I do when I am actually around people there, just because all of the parents with kids enrolled in our still-active daycare do and they see that and I only need to see their eyes to know what they are thinking. They themselves aren't comfortable being there.

    Staff on the other hand is mostly dead sure we are re-opening on the original set date and generally have zero interest in a single CDC guideline for schools, outside of surfaces, even though our largely republican-run county is likely rolling it back, like all of the other major ones around us. Reason being, those guidelines are a non-starter. There are a few teachers here I've spoken to who feel they are important, but that we are not close to being ready to implement them. They see no plan and it makes them nervous.

    People make it a black and white thing of whether people want the kids back in school or not, which I think is a false dichotomy. Everyone wants that. The debate I'm actually seeing on the ground is a question of risk factors and the logistics of outlined mitigation tactics. It's a question of money, resources, structure, training. Teachers question how to get it done, or if it even can be done in a way that makes any damned sense. In regular public spaces we have more options. Schools with lots of tight spaces, full of kids of all ages, trying to get them to go along with this huge paradigm shift... not as much. Even if they do open, it's not going to be 'normal' for kids or teachers. There are a lot of challenges and obstacles that complicate the important social and learning-based aspects of a functioning school... stuff that gets in the way of schools fulfilling their roles. They're wondering if they can deliver what is needed from a school under these conditions.

    I've stopped and chatted with a few here and there. The general sentiment isn't concern for the kids getting sick, but concerns about schools being a hub for spreading it out. Which I sort of get. The kids may be fine if they catch it, but they're coming from all around to be in one place, and then going back to their respective communities to potentially expose their parents/grandparents, who can then expose people locally. Martin county is getting hit especially hard right now... worse than before. So it's dodgy.
     
    Last edited: Jul 25, 2020
  7. squishware

    squishware Friend

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    RE bitchute: Youtube is taking that video down as quickly as people are reposting it. Word to the wise, watch for all anti-vaccine channels on youtube and groups on facebook to disappear and be blamed on the russians. I think if we talk about Covid at all we need to address the paradoxes as well as regurgitate the company line. Don't ban me until I learn to use REW, please.
     
  8. blackships

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    I don't particularly care under what guise anti-vaxxers get shut down.
     
  9. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    I'm not so cynical. Seeing some changes already. When Bill Maher dedicates the last five minutes on his show on the stupidity of so-called "progressives" using no-win shaming techniques we know progress is being made. Progressive canceler types are realizing they are losing allies, losing people who haven't made up their mind yet, or just didn't know from "ignorance". Any kind of change takes time.

    Well, put it this way, if they don't stop shaming and cancelling people who's views they don't agree with, they will end up cancelling themselves in the long term. People are already sick of it. Personally, I think in some instances, it's a form of written terrorism or skull-f'ing. Powerless people, usually with nothing else better to do than hang on Instagram or Twitter get a rush from exercising power. It's incredibly empowering to shove that strap-on into the eye socket of someone that you disagree with, pop that eyeball, and f**k that hole over and over again while getting your like-minded social media friends to join in.

    P.S.

    Fallout from a guy who signed up on Changstar to shame Mike Moffat on his making a joke concerning operating systems, Linux, Windows, and MacOS, specifically on "buying a Mac to impress LGBT friends" (LOL, one of my friends actually got his first Mac because of this reason!).

    https://www.changstar.com/www.changstar.com/index.php/topic,2379.0.html

    Basically person who complained played the victim card, big time.
     
    Last edited: Jul 25, 2020
  10. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    If I were psyops for Russia for China, I'd totally encourage the anti-vaxxers, write fake medical studies, etc. Downsides of a freer society is that people can choose to be dumb or be fooled by sciency articles from authorities who appeal to them (easy to find out on Facebook). Find groups of people, usually women, who are into alternative medicine, anti-aging (fear), energy healing, natural stuff, etc. Then write good sounding bullshit on how vaccines are not natural, made in vats of mercury, have trace "chemicals", other bullshit on how it causes their kids to be retarded (fear). For many Americans, Facebook has replaced news and education.
     
    Last edited: Jul 25, 2020
  11. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    ^ Forgot to mention, case in point: Audio Science Review saying we can't hear differences when most people do* (or saying they can hear differences when we know they can't, e.g. "I turned up Schiit Jot to 2 o'clock on volume with HD650 and I heard immense distortion that I did not hear on Heresy / 789 / Atom, etc." Yeah right.

    *or at least by some people, given the double-blind tests conducted here.
     
  12. crenca

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    @squishware , as a conservative I am most harsh (probably too harsh) on my own, particularly eccentric/conspiratorial libertarianism displayed by that guy - though the only thing I know about him is one minute 28 seconds...

    @YMO, it's not really about cost for most. I knew working class folks in New Orleans who spent a large percentage of their income on private schools. It's about priorities and what you value. Even if I was working class (which I am not) I would sacrifice things like cable TV and cell phones (two payments that for most folks almost add up to a typical cost of a local Catholic school in most places - there are always exceptions of course).

    @robot zombie, we have significant parental involvement in our school. When we return masks/social distancing and various significant adaptations will be required and enforced from within the community.

    A few years back I was standing next to a 2nd grade public school teacher who sends his two children here. His wife is a homemaker, so I have an idea of his decidedly middle (though not lower) household income. I asked him why he makes the sacrifice and this is how he put it, "when I am on playground duty at my school, and a kid falls down and scrapes his knee, the rest of the kids all gather around to point and laugh. When I volunteer/sub here, kid falls down and the rest of the kids gather around and say things like "you will be ok", offer to help, inform the teacher/nurse, help him up, etc. It is this culture, character, or "spirit" of the place that is evident even to those who are not Catholic or religous and whose primary motivation(s) are secular. One can go on about academics, safety, outcomes, and all the rest but in my opinion it is this overarching culture, one that is simply just more "human", that is the real difference...
     
    Last edited: Jul 25, 2020
  13. Josh83

    Josh83 Friend

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    I went to Catholic school K-8, and it was a horrible, traumatic experience. Educationally, some subjects were ahead of the public schools, some were behind. I was thrilled to go to the public school for HS. It was the first time I was ever felt safe and happy in school.

    As far as schools reopening, most of the public discourse is terrible IMHO. Teachers know that *in normal circumstances* in-person instruction is better. But these aren’t normal circumstances. The best case scenario for in-person instruction now is perfect adherence to health guidelines, which means kids in masks, spread apart, with the teacher having the life-and-death responsibility of keeping them that way. No group work, no socializing, no sharing, etc. It would be traumatic for most kids and wouldn’t involve good teaching, because we know from research that very little good teaching involves teachers staying six feet from kids and kids six feet from each other, especially when the teacher is constantly tasked with being the mask police. The more realistic scenario is a complete failure to actually follow health guidelines, with the schools being both unsafe and educationally ineffective. In most cases, quality virtual instruction is going to beat in-person instruction during COVID-19 whole also being safer. You’re also going to get more days of actual instruction per week virtually than in-person, since social distancing means kids being half time or less, given building constraints. That said, schools need to continue food distribution for kids who need it, provide childcare to essential workers, and in-person instruction to students with disabilities and other needs.

    The unfortunate reality of public life now is that you’re only as safe as the dumbest person in the room you’re in (who, in turn, is only as safe as the dumbest person in their house). You’re also trusting whoever owns the room to constrain that person’s ability to get you sick insofar as it’s possible (which it often isn’t).

    I’m honestly baffled that many parents want their kids in school now. Do you trust every parent you know to keep their kids at home if they’re sick? Do you trust every parent you know to wear a mask? Or every kid you know to wear a mask? What about the school to be able to afford incredibly expensive, in-short-supply cleaning supplies and PPE all year? What about the principals and superintendents to manage this whole situation. (Do you remember the admins in your schools being brilliant? Or were they mostly former football coaches who just wanted to get out of the classroom and get paid more?)

    Everyone seems to be pretending school will look like it did before COVID-19 and be safe. That’s not even the case in countries with the virus mostly under control. It sure as hell can’t be the case in our failed state.

    Nothing is normal right now. You can’t will your way out of a pandemic or pretend it doesn’t exist. But businesses are going to open if they can, unless the gov gives them meaningful help to stay closed, because it’s try to open or go out of business (and in many cases, they’ll go out of biz anyway). Colleges are opening because they want tuition dollars—the fact that you can’t keep kids from having unprotected sex or getting alcohol poisoning, let alone make them mask and social distance, be damned. Same with private K-12 schools. It’s about tuition dollars. Public schools will do whatever the well-off, mostly white patents want, because they’re the ones who will threaten to leave. In some places, that’ll be the smart choice to go virtual. In others it’ll be the dumb choice to roll the dice.
     
  14. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    The quality of education will suck. The teachers are not prepared for this. The kids re not either. I’d rather the kids get a year off than to push them forward with inferior learning. It’s not about the grades. It’s about the learning, which includes socialization with others. Interacting with others via Snapchat and Discord is not normal.
     
  15. blackships

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    So from the subhuman secular perspective, I grew up in northern New Mexico in the 80s and went to public school. It was a small town with a private Catholic elementary school, but they didn't have a private middle school. When I went into middle school, we had an influx of students from the Catholic elementary, and many of them had calloused knuckles from being regularly struck about the back of the hands by the nuns that taught them. My main memory is that these students were generally terrified to speak up in class for the first year. After that, some of them were dicks, and some of them weren't, basically in the same proportion as the kids I had gone to public elementary school with. I mainly felt really sorry that they had scars.

    For the later subhuman secular perspective, my daughter is starting middle school in North Carolina this fall and public school has been really fantastic for her entire life. She has had tons of above-grade-level learning opportunities, and is about to start a gifted magnet middle school that offers classes that I would have boggled for in high school, much less middle school.

    But holy shit, our state doesn't have a reasonable plan for reopening, so this is terrifying.
     
    Last edited: Jul 25, 2020
  16. robot zombie

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    I share those same concerns. I'm just kinda watching and wondering how this is really all gonna go down. The realist in me kinda already knows, and he says it's looking dubious. Teachers ain't gonna like it. Kids ain't gonna like it. More of the same, regardless of what we choose.

    Over here in Florida, the governor is pushing this "parents can do what they want, if they believe it's safe, they can put their kids in school, and if not they can do remote." So basically, directionless. All about whims. No concentrated effort, no point-to-point risk assessment. Cursory glance at numbers. He has a great team and everybody's doing a great job. See you at noon tomorrow.

    It's crazy. All people do when they hear the man speak is argue. He's getting heckled at these live briefings... people screaming that he's lying to his people, that he doesn't care. All I see is a guy regurgitating the same talking points, every single day. 90% of the time he is looking down at the podium. Almost as if without a clue or care, as he drones on listlessly. So yeah... kinda balking on the whole leadership and unity thing. He says as little as possible.

    To me, we're dealing with a force of nature. Forces of nature don't care about the wants and needs of humanity. So arguing that kind of stuff is meaningless if we can't figure out how to weather it. It's just going to do what it does regardless. And thus far more people have died in a span of several months than US soldiers died in all of WWI. Here especially, it seems odd to me. We watch the number of cases climb in our area and somehow people think there is some way that's going to decelerate as we pile on more risk factors.

    I actually don't see that as the majority opinion, but the media projection. When I'm out, everyone is wearing masks and practicing distancing. I see the hand sanitizer bottles come out. Tense body language. People are actually being very careful now. I think your average citizen here actually gets that this is beyond their understanding and control. And they're probably as tired of the politics as any normal person would be.

    I want to believe there's a way. In fact, I think there must be. Humanity has weathered so much worse. But it will take more time. And may not be possible to get there pre-vaccine. That might show up first. Every time we've opened anything up, things have gotten worse again. But then, it doesn't matter what I think at this point. So I just do what I think is right and hope for that vaccine. I think these backs and forths only stop when that happens. Until then it's just going to be noodling and arguing with a gumbo of good and bad choices floating in a soup of sparse facts and every flavor of extreme thinking. Call me cynical. I haven't lost hope.Just acknowledging the stalemate of different factors involved.

    Unlike the hurricanes we're used to, structures remain intact. The damage is hidden. It's easy to disengage, especially as emotions are high and grasp of normalcy continually wanes. I see us kinda being fucked both ways. No matter what we do, there will be problems. But I also keep coming back to the idea that pandemics don't give a shit about the problems with our society. We don't really have the luxury of doing things our way. We have to get past it first, and then we can try to orient ourselves so that if this happens again, we don't have to compromise nearly as much. That's just not gonna happen on the fly, with everything constrained and mistakes leading to spiraling death counts.

    My perspective is colored by experience, though. I have to take it seriously. My own father was one of the first positive cases in the area, back when there were less than 100 and everything was still open. For a month he was severely ill, coughing like I've never heard him cough... and his last bout with pneumonia nearly put him in the ICU. He was talking like the inhaler kid stereotype. 2-3 words, sharp gasping breath, repeat. Again, for weeks! He was so weak... and my pops is fitter than me at 30. So that hits different. It was scary as hell to see him like that. He did eventually recover, but never fully. He still complains of problems breathing, with intermittent dry coughs. He is negative now (though to be fair his first test was negative, too... and it took a lot to get the second test, which was positive.) But I think upper respiratory infections will be different for the rest of his life. There are signs of damage there. He can't breathe or get around like he used to, and previously he got around very well. He's 62.

    I try to stay level and not fly off. But internally I get pissed at some of these blase attitudes. I take it personally, like my dad coulda died (and may now die to an infection he would otherwise have gotten past) and people out there wouldn't have cared at all.


    As for your first point. I've heard lots of horror stories about Catholic schooling, especially in past decades. No way would I have ever sent my kids there in the 70's. Not sure how it is now that the Church has come under fire for so many things coming out about things happening to kids under their watch. I don't doubt it and I'm sorry for your experience!

    Our school is wonderbread Lutheran. The school is an auxiliary to the church, but at this point it is a technicality. They have next to no involvement outside of Christian holidays. If not for signs on the wall, you'd confuse it for a secular institution. We've been inundated with so many families that don't care about the god stuff that we'd be shooting ourselves in the foot by not catering them. The school would have to close. So it's necessarily laid back. I am openly non-religious and nobody cares. Not a disciplinarian atmosphere at all. You'd be shocked at how many people on staff are not heteronormative, or at least I was lol. Kids actually do seem to love it here, and not in a Pavlovian way.

    I remember feeling the squeeze as a kid, though. I originally transferred because I wanted out. But the public schools here were far worse. Kids were terrible to each other. Lots of violence and drug activity. Teachers who seemed to hate all kids... I only ever encountered "The Wall" esque teachers in public schools. I could at least discard the religious stuff... not so much being surrounded by kids who generally treated each other like shit and teachers who never cared.

    I think it's going to vary from place to place. Times are quite different now, then even when I was growing up in the 90's. The very school I work at is night and day from back then, when some of their best educators got fired for living with their romantic partners outside of wedlock.
     
    Last edited: Jul 25, 2020
  17. Josh83

    Josh83 Friend

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    Ugh. Your dad’s ordeal sounds awful. I very much hope he recovers fully.
     
  18. crenca

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    This is right, and is true for everyone who has to work with the public. It's true for doctors/nurses/hospital staff. It's true for the folks who work the cashier and stock at your grocery store. It's true for police/fire/and other "essential" government service workers. It's true for those who work in transport/airlines. It's true for small business owners and their workers, and those who work for large corporations and their workers.

    Why, out of all these important (even "essential") workers, have teachers been allowed to claim exemption from risk? The answer as near as I can tell is that they have the political position/clout to do so - they get paid either way, what's their incentive to take on the risk most others can not avoid? This, despite the fact that most everyone, no matter what their political leanings, deems public education as essential, basic to democracy and society, the de facto social welfare system for children of the lower/underclass almost everywhere in America, etc.

    I don't see this. At our school the changes are mindboggling, and risk is real, and no one even know if its going to work. Yet we have to try. Somehow in too many places the politics have allowed the government schools from even putting in the effort...


    This is what I would do I think if I was not in the position we are with our school. Heck, we may be there anyways in a month or three because this is all new and our extraordinary efforts may be a fail. Certainly with our youngest (1st grade) an online only program is not realistic based on our experience in the spring. Even with our oldest (6th grade) it would be "mediocre" at best, and this is with teachers properly incentivised, 14 students maximum each, etc.

    I would stretch and home school, particularly in a "co-op" situation with the older girl, but I am too far out of my depth with the 1st grader.

    I have not seen this talked about in the media yet, but the medical community is discussing internally. It looks like the damage this virus does may have life long lasting effects, and a post-polio like chronic syndrome is going to be a daily battle for millions..
     
    Last edited: Jul 25, 2020
  19. Josh83

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    Teachers don’t get paid like doctors or nurses. Bus drivers, janitors, etc. get paid even less. Public schools also don’t get to refuse service to customers like private businesses. Moreover, hospitals have infinitely more safety procedures in place than any of the plans I’ve seen for any school. Want to go into a hospital? It’s three or so questionnaires, mandatory temperature taking, mandatory masking, and mandatory distancing. Don’t do those things? You’re kicked out.

    The South Korea study just showed kids over 10 transmit the virus every bit as much as adults. Packing kids into classrooms for poor quality education just because some companies aren’t willing to work with their employees to provide child care during COVID isn’t the answer.

    Teachers’ job is to educate kids. If that can be done more safely from home during a pandemic, it should be.

    This also isn’t just about teachers or school employees. It’s about kids’ health and the health of their families and everyone who will get sick as a downstream effect of an outbreak in a school. Everyone knows we shouldn’t be clustering people together in small, poorly ventilated spaces until we have the virus under control or a treatment. We’re just pretending otherwise now because people are tired of the virus.

    You’re right that schools provide other essential services to kids, but schools have continued doing that during closures. It also shouldn’t be that way. Schools shouldn’t be the only way kids get fed or get medical care. It’s good that COVID is making people wake up to that fact, but the response should be to fix the problem, not continue to expect schools to be a haphazard all-purpose safety net.

    I don’t see how these add up. We have to do the exact thing we know we shouldn’t — put large numbers of people into buildings — even though the more we find out about COVID, the clearer it is that it’s not just a temporary illness.
     
    Last edited: Jul 25, 2020
  20. robot zombie

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    Preciate these comments guys. I don't think quite like either of you do, but also am not set in my conclusions on things, so it's good to see some generally sober, plainly stated views on it even if they are different. Hard to find that sort of thing right now.
     

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