Chrisprattalpharaptr
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User ID: 1864
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
19hr ago
Chrisprattalpharaptr
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20d ago
Chrisprattalpharaptr
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28d ago
Welcome back, assuming you're Obsidian from the old place.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
1mo ago
Economy aside, Joe Biden aside, whatever personal animosity you might have for me aside - my man, what are you doing spending 6.75$/lb for chicken at Costco as 'cheap meat?' Just checked and I spend 1.79$/lb on chicken thighs, something like 2.99$/lb for the organic/ethical stuff at the cheapest supermarket nearby. Chicken breast is still something like 4$/lb for the cheap stuff. For 6.75$ I'm pretty sure I could get a rotisserie chicken. I don't live in Manhattan but I am in a probably top 5 or top 10 CoL area. Costco isn't cheap anymore, it's only good if you want the brand name stuff for slightly less than elsewhere. Local discount chains with store brands or Chinese/ethnic markets are cheaper.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
1mo ago
Thank you for that clarification, wasn't aware of the context.
I won't able to comment on most of your post objectively for obvious reasons, but I'll at least try to answer some of your questions.
Downtown Montreal is full of taller buildings, but definitely seem like they stopped building after 1970s. Seemed to coincide with the first French language laws?
It coincides with with language laws as you note. It also coincides with a terrorist group kidnapping and murdering government officials and a couple dozen incidents of bombs in mailboxes in Montreal. Then the two independence referenda in 1980 and 1995 really drove the nail in the coffin, with the second referendum to separate from Canada failing by 1% of the vote (50.58% remain versus 49.42% leave). The voter turnout was a shocking 93.5%. It's pretty wild to imagine how different history may have been if that vote had swung another half percent in the other direction. The premier went on television after losing the referendum to say the following:
"It's true we've been defeated, but basically by what?" Mr. Parizeau asked in his concession speech. "By money and the ethnic vote."
But I suppose I'm veering into dangerous territory. Back to the story.
The 60s and 70s were a boomtime for Montreal, when they had the world expo as well as the olympics resulting in a lot of new major infrastructure like bridges, the metro system and an artificial island/amusement park. Probably other things I'm ignorant of.
The factors mentioned above also led to a steady bleeding of educated anglo professionals. It's difficult to get exact numbers, but about 250,000-500,000 seems in the ballpark]. This isn't insubstantial in a province with a population of 8.5 million, and the impact is again probably heightened by the fact that these were many of the wealthier residents.
Which brings us to the next point...French people were probably right that Anglos fucked them over economically for decades if not centuries. Some of my family members in my parents generation would casually make comments about how they were too stupid/uneducated to perform the better-paying jobs anyways. They were dismayed that my school was teaching me that the French had been subjugated, but as far as I can tell, it was true.
Which brings me to my last point, it absolutely has been a rather gentle ethnic cleansing. Most of my family and friends have left, myself included. Those that remain speak french professionally. The laws that were passed would 100% be unconstitutional in the US, hell, they're unconstitutional in Canada too but when the Supreme Court struck them down Quebec basically said fuck you and nothing happened. I guess they didn't want to [deploy the army again] and/or spark another referendum. Francophones scoff and say anglos are just whining about having to learn French, when after all, they need to learn English. But it's more than that - it's feeling distinctly unwelcome at every level of government and society, it's an inability to integrate into social groups as you point out, it's the French Karens who report you to the language police for speaking English in the workplace (if you have a public facing job).
All that said, if this was the cost of national unity, I'll still take it. It seems to have worked; desire for independence is much lower in the younger generation.
You mentioned the schooling language thing. Seemed like you either have to prove you already got anglo schooling or go private school to avoid French schooling. Seemed like more choice before.
You can only go to an English school if your parents went to an English school in Canada. There used to be a loophole where private schools were exempt so that all the French elites could send their children to English prep schools, but it was closed relatively recently. The Anglo school boards are bleeding students hard and downsizing, closing or giving half their classrooms to French school boards. In other 2-3 generations I expect they won't exist assuming nothing else comes along to kick over the game board. McGill could have been a great college if they hadn't been repeatedly kneecapped by the French government trying to promote UDM and UQAM.
From a self preservation aspect for their Francophone culture, language, and identity, these policies all seemed to work. And Im impressed they work so well...Overall: impressed by the choices made there and the results. Seems like something other places that wanna strengthen their cultural identity can learn from. It would probably work if they have the will to enforce similar cultural / language rules and the unity to endure the economic costs.
Quebec is propping up their population with immigration. Back-of-the-envelope math seems like it's 2-3 times the rate of immigration in the United States, although not sure how illegal immigrants change that picture. You're conflating culture with language, however. Quebec seems worse at assimilating immigrants than the US - they may speak the language, but I don't think most of them share values and they largely stay within their ethnic groups.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
1mo ago
Not to be snarky, but if you keep reading his work I can pretty much guarantee his politics will drive you up the wall. Red Mars and 2312 are sublime, I also enjoyed the gold coast quite a bit. You may get some mileage out of the years of rice and salt. The rest will probably not be enjoyable.
to create a people. Not to destroy one. These people are not only losing out in demography but also they are losing the soul of the nation. Their spirit will not survive a Gazan genocide.
It's remarkable to me how often the comparison to 9/11 has been made here and in the broader conversation, yet nobody has ever bothered to carry that thought through to it's conclusion. Yes, the direct analogy where hundreds/thousands of Americans/Israelis were murdered by terrorists in their home countries is obvious. But why stop there and leave out the fact that the next twenty years saw a massive belligerent overcorrection and self-destructive wars abroad? Wars that nobody, even conservatives who presumably voted for Bush twice and raked Obama over the coals for being soft on terror/homeland security, will currently defend? It's all too easy to see a future where Israel will regret the actions it takes over the next few months as the entire nation is baying for Palestinian blood.
The local growing consensus around what is effectively genocide is also a mistake. Your personal DR pro-HBD/white supremacist bubbles are blinding you to what the normies think. If Israel 'does a genocide,' as people here have been saying, they're finished in the eyes of normies for at least a few decades. Not to mention the rank hypocrisy inherent in a nation and people who spent decades saying 'never again' will have changed their tune to 'never again, to us.'
The funniest thing about this entire debacle has been the overnight dissolution of the standard battle lines. Suddenly pro-Palestine leftist protestors flashing swastikas at Jews are shoulder-to-shoulder with stormfront White Nationalists. Center-left/center-right politicians and normies are largely united in condemning Hamas, hypocrisy around military aid and foreign interventionism be damned. Even here, there's a consensus that 'the media' is biased trash written by subhuman retards who were too low-IQ to code or do STEM in college, but half the comments claim they're bought and paid for by our Jewish overlords whilst the other half accuse them of institutional capture by pro-Palestinian leftists who will propagandize every civilian casualty due to a righteous freedom bomb dropped by the IDF. Neither bother to do a cursory check of the NYT cover page which would largely falsify both claims, but there's also nobody left to push back or call them on it.
Lest I be accused of being a dirty Muslim-loving commie anti-semite, I made the conscious decision to do my best to ignore Israel/Palestine over a decade ago after watching protestors rage at each other on a weekly basis at my college campus. Obligatory Hamas bad, rape and murder of civilians bad, what happened to innocent civilians in Israel was an atrocity, by all means go decapitate Hamas. But be careful in how far you go in the heat of the moment.
Western Jews are assimilating into the PMC deracinated blob at a breathtaking pace. They are losing the set of assumptions that motivated them to identify with their kin in Israel, and they are losing the power that comes from ethnic favoritism.
Good. Why should I shed a tear for the passing of ethnic favoritism in my home country? I'll take national unity over sinecures and in-grouping based on religion anyday.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
1mo ago
Interesting, thanks for the writeup on a world i think most of us would otherwise never be exposed to. Based on the comment about the tip of the spear being very fine indeed, do you think it abnormally so for the post-korean and/or Vietnam war era? And is the implication that you think the US military is particularly impotent at the moment?
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
1mo ago
In the most pithy form - is retirement just plain immoral?
If you're retiring in your prime, maybe. More Boxer less Napoleon.
The path of least resistance for talented people is DINKing your way to FIRE at 40 and maybe getting a golden retriever or a couple of cats. Playing video games, smoking weed, phoning it in at your job (if you have to work) and taking a couple months of vacation a year.* I know an unfortunately large number of people who fall into this bin.
This is very much not the behavior we want to incentivize. We need people to do the hard work of having children and raising them well - or perhaps more realistically, decreasing the financial and social burden, but that's another story. We'd all be poorer if Elon Musk had spent his 20s/30s blitzed in Ibiza doing lines of coke off hookers, or whatever it is fun people do at raves. The American frontier wasn't tamed by childless, unemployed scions of wealthy families, good times create weak men, insert your preferred aphorism about rich, lazy fucks here.
*I'm not so tedious as to argue that vacation itself is immoral, but c'mon. Everyone should try to accomplish something worthwhile with their lives, everyone should see what their body is physically capable of in their prime and we need to cultivate a sense of ambition and civic responsibility.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
2mo ago
Why do you believe your prefered policy a good idea? Why is it a better idea than doing nothing?
Do you understand that your prefered policies have costs? That they have consequences? That if government is a coherent concept at all, you need to actually try to anticipate these things and steer a course toward positive outcomes? Is politics literally nothing more to you than good fucking vibes?
You're cheating.
- You point out instances where we intervened and shitty situations failed to improve or did, in fact, get worse. What about instances where the isolationism and appeasement carried the day?
How'd Rwanda go? I guess there weren't any stars and stripes draped caskets flying home, but at the same time hundreds of thousands of people died in large part due to the apathy of the West - your choice to do nothing also carries consequences. I can even imagine a hypothetical counterfactual where we did intervene, and after averting genocide and saving a quarter million lives, the isolationists could still I-told-you-so about the failed Rwandan state, neocolonialism, continued ethnic violence between Hutus and Tutsis, incompetent American foreign policy wonks, whatever.
Similarly, there's a parallel universe where we failed to arm South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and any or all of them fell into the orbit of China/USSR. Any of these countries could easily have been failed states suffering under communism rather than the prosperous, developed nations they are today. Airlifting supplies to West Berlin? Fuck that, have you seen the price of sugar in New York?
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Many of the examples you give are just categorically different from Ukraine. Selling/donating a country arms to defend it's right to self-determination is distinct from us putting boots on the ground and invading a sovereign nation ourselves. If the Ukrainians decide the juice isn't worth the squeeze, and hey, whatever, those Russians aren't that bad anyways.
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Implicit in your writing is that Ukrainians lack agency and are just useful pawns for the West to push around a board. My impression is that support in Ukraine for prosecuting the war is fairly high. Internationally, many loathe Putin even more than they used to and support for NATO (cold comfort to you, perhaps) and the West are boosted. Again, the inverse of many of the examples you gave, no?
Failure would be Ukraine being completely conquered and subjugated by Russia. Failure would be the Ukrainian army deserting en masse, as they lose a sense of national unity and their appetite for the war. Failure would be swathes of the world aligning with Russia, China and/or communism/authoritarianism.
As you point out, it's harder to paint a rosy picture of success. Childish dreams of kumbaya moments where Russia and China join our big hugpile and all the nations of the earth are buddy-buddy as we blast off in SpaceX rockets to other solar systems are unlikely to follow from sending Ukraine some artillery shells and tanks. Success may just be another frozen conflict and DMZ around Crimea and the Donbas. But the Ukrainians can make that decision for themselves, and if they decide to fight, I believe that they should be given the means to do so within reason.
Overseas military adventures don't particularly interest me, and I align with you in large part in your condemnation of the wars we have prosecuted in the last half-century. But I disagree that absolute isolationism in every scenario is the appropriate heuristic to pull from that. s
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
2mo ago
Hilary had all of those as well and lost just the same.
Define democrats winning in a 'walkover' and conditional on Trump being the republican nominee I'll take the other side of that bet.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
3mo ago
I apologize that personal circumstances don't allow me to get back to this promptly, or as extensively as I'd like.
You see my moral objectivism is more like: "committing atrocities in general is wrong, for any ends whatsoever, whoever uses those means is evil."
So what then, a Kantian categorical imperative against 'atrocities?'
The people ranting in this thread about a Great Enemy are hopefully not evil, but I'm sure some of them are.
Oh, I doubt very much that they are. The person in question (if memory serves) posts fairly regular wholesome updates about their woodworking, book reading and other hobbies. If they didn't realize I was a Great Enemy we could likely share a few beers without issue.
I'm not sure we understand each other very well - can you clarify your arguments against moral objectivism?
1 - I'd likely agree that an objective 'truth' exists, I'm just pessimistic that it is knowable by you/I/anyone short of God. Some cases are egregious enough that it doesn't take much beyond a fifth grader, let alone God, to label something as wrong, but the vast majority of the issues we wrangle don't fall into this bucket. We've built such horribly complex social, economic and political structures that understanding them in a meaningful way to influence policy is virtually impossible. What is the objective truth of the CHIPS act? Even beyond that, should we compete with China at all or give them their sphere of influence? I could list a hundred other policy questions from the last decade that I lack the answer to, and I'd argue anyone trying to sell you an 'objective' answer is lying.
You might argue that I'm agreeing with you and simply think that most moral questions are hard, but my rejoinder would be that if we're making all our decisions based on vibes, values and feelings isn't that a lot of subjective bullshit that exists in relation to our cultural norms?
To be clear - this doesn't mean I think we should throw up our hands and abandon trying to base our decisions on evidence. I'm just mighty suspicious of the folks who claim to be doing so objectively, and doubly so of people who have strong convictions when it comes to complex issues.
2 - The moral relativists have strong arguments of their own without having to lean too much on criticisms of objectivism. A decade or so ago, some areas of Canada were debating banning burqas. I read an op-ed written by an immigrant from the middle east who'd worn a burqa her whole life and argued she felt naked and vulnerable without one even when given the choice. The public wasn't particularly swayed, and Quebec ended up banning public servants from wearing certain clothes.
On the flip side, I had a friend tell me about her experience in the Peace Corps. She was stationed in a country where women weren't allowed to wear shirts or bras and felt profoundly uncomfortable for the entirety of her stay. Not to mention her pale skin did really poorly with the tropical climate.
As an objectivist, what's your judgment here? Are Middle Easterners brutal oppressors, or are we? Is the objective truth that everyone should be free to choose their own garb without judgment from their peers? But how would you enforce the latter without some brutally oppressive state banning wrongthink/speech?
3 - I'm running very short on time, so this won't be particularly well fleshed out. Many, including our resident theocratic fascist, argue that people are happier with these social norms and restrictions on their behavior. And while I don't share his utopian vision where the gays get thrown in prison, it is clear that there is something to the idea that people require these social structures to be happy, and furthermore, that they are often built in such a way that not everyone can be happy. I also wonder how much of this is biologically hardwired.
What would your prescription be in that scenario?
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
3mo ago
Thank you for the kind recommendations, and apologies that I've been too busy to revisit this thread until now.
For this exercise with grade school children I particularly recommend E.H. Gombrich's A Little History of the World, William J. Bennett's The Book of Virtues, and a lot of Rudyard Kipling. As children get older, swap in classic novels as well as challenging nonfiction.
Never heard of any of them! I will follow up and probably benefit from reading them myself.
Also, assuming you are American, get your children to the Smithsonian museums in Washington D.C. at least once between the ages of about 9 and 14. The museums are free to enter, so you only have to pay the cost of travel.
I spent some time in DC! I agree, it should definitely be a bucket list item, although I got a lot more mileage out of the monuments, congress, white house, congressional library, etc. than the museums. Perhaps the calculus is flipped at that age.
And I've not thought of this before, but it occurs to me that "going out to eat as a family" was, in my own childhood, a somewhat formal affair, and a memorable one, while today it seems to be quite a commonplace occurrence for many families.
It's true, to the degree that I somehow reached adulthood with a complete ignorance of cuisine beyond meat and potatoes. To a degree that someone had to explain to me what to do with mangoes, cilantro and other not-very-exotic foodstuffs.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
3mo ago
He claims that even if we can't tell there's objective good, most people aren't willing to bite the bullet and will call the Nazis, or Japan's rape of Nanking, or other horror stories objectively evil. From there, even if we can't necessarily agree on what's good, we at least have an idea of what not to do.
The Nazis and invading Japanese would likely strenuously agree with you that objective good exists, and furthermore, that their actions are objectively good. Pushing ethical relativism to the point that you're reserving judgment on genocide is a recipe for disaster, but having such conviction in the objective righteousness of your cause that you're willing to commit atrocities in the name of the greater good is just the mirror image failure mode. See the people in this thread ranting about our Great Enemy - do you think that attitude is any more conducive to a thriving society than the people they loathe?
Planting a flag wholly in the objectivist or relativist camps is fraught for different reasons, in my opinion. Perhaps planting a flag wholly in any camp is fraught, and everything in moderation (except for moderation) remains the wisest course.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
3mo ago
For those of you who are parents, what were your favorite experiences/things to share with your children? For those of you who aren't, what are your most meaningful memories of things your parents shared with you?
I'm thinking of books/movies/tv shows, camping trips, activities, sports, video/board games, puzzles, family stories, hobbies - anything you can think of that was meaningful.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
3mo ago
They're doing this because they think it will actually solve the problem, right?
No, not necessarily. People in my circle explicitly aren't thinking in terms of realpolitik (and in my experience very rarely do) which seems to be what you're gesturing at with 'solving the problem.' Many genuinely believe that Trump broke the law, that he trampled on democratic norms that undergird our system and that there need to be consequences for that. For what it's worth, I believe they have a point, although I fear the consequences of putting Trump in jail more, bringing us to...
Do you think it's going to solve the problem?
No, of course not. Even for very expansive definitions of 'problem.'
Do you think they think it's going to solve the problem?
No idea. Probably, although they engage with red tribers and conservative media even less than I do so I expect *surprised pikachu face* come election time.
You say the people are failing the system. Don't they always?
I'm unsure, again depending on how narrowly you're defining system. If you're specifically referring to the American political system, then...maybe? There certainly seem to be times in our history when norms were more respected and others where we strain against the letter of the law to eke out any kind of short-lived advantage against each other. Maybe just rose-tinted goggles though.
There are plenty of smaller-scale examples where we all manage to hit the cooperate button.
How does this particular use of the system measurably improve things? Is this going to work, for a given definition of work?
From a strictly functional perspective, it doesn't. The problem isn't Joe Biden or Donald Trump - hell, their policies are nigh indistinguishable outside of a few culture war topics that they indulge their supporters in. Corruption is remarkably low compared to most places in the world, the economy is doing great, people are living good lives when they manage to stop seething about toddler drag shows and a lack of access to late-term abortions. The solution isn't first past the post voting, admitting DC as a state or more rights for gun owners. The solution...well, you probably know what I think already and I doubt I can articulate it without sounding any less trite and naive than the previous times.
And if not, why don't people understand that? My answer is that they lack imagination. What's yours?
No idea. Isn't understanding tribalism and the culture war one of the stated goals of this forum? And if so, why is it that even we can't seem to discuss politics productively, let alone spread our ideals to the masses?
We've discussed plenty of manifestations of tribalism, of people failing to update even when clearly shown to be wrong, all the other culture war topics that have been done to death by authors much more competent than I. My personal bugaboo is people falling for simplistic, monocausal narratives to describe massively complex systems like the economy, geopolitics, the US government, etc. Perhaps it's born of a primordial need to make sense of our world, but God/Nature never gifted us with the mental horsepower to comprehend the hideously complicated social systems we've built. Grasping for simple, obviously wrong, explanations is more comforting to our monkey brains than the agony of having to admit that we just don't know.
Or perhaps I'm falling victim to my own fallacy - all our problems boil down to oversimplification! Follow this one weird trick to enlightenment, philosophers hate him!
The real answer is probably beyond any of us short of Asimovian-psychohistory-level knowledge. All there is to do is put our shoulders to the grindstone and do what we can to make the world a better place.
Is that what you meant by a lack of imagination?
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
4mo ago
Indeed. As far as I can tell, that makes him exceedingly qualified to run for president.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
4mo ago
I had the same realization the other day as I was comparing Xi Jinping (1.2 billion) and Putin (200 billion) to Biden's 9 million, before idly checking Hunter's net worth. It's lamentable how much more talented the autocrats are compared to our feckless western leaders.
But, why do you think Hunter is so useless? Drugs and guns aside, he has a law degree from Yale. He was a consultant and VP at a banking company, a lobbyist, tapped by Clinton and Bush for various roles and a hedge fund manager all before Joe was veep. It's not an unimpressive CV, or at least it wasn't before all the drugs and congressional investigations caught up to him.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
4mo ago
Maybe I misread it. I initially parsed it as Hunter holding '10' temporarily with the intention of passing it off to Joe. I suppose the more likely reading is that he just holds it...although I don't know why you would make that reference at all in that case.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
4mo ago
What exactly does this text message mean in the context of your statement? Hunter Biden is on the record complaining about how Joe takes half of his salary, so we know that there's a direct relation between the money that Hunter has been making and Joe's financial resources.
I don't have a satisfying answer, although the text you're citing isn't what was given as evidence a couple posts above.
The flip side to that question is, if true, where is the money going? Hunter Biden is worth 250 million, so we're talking a 7 figure salary, no? Joe Biden's net worth is estimated to be 9 million, so if Hunter is kicking him back 5 million a year, where is the money going? Presumably not real estate and cars, unless he's got a couple dozen lambos tucked away in the Delaware batcave.
Digging into articles on the subject, they don't exactly paint a picture of Hunter funding Joe's lavish lifestyle:
There were $1,239 in repairs to an air conditioner at “mom-mom’s cottage,” and another $1,475 to a painter for “back wall and columns at the lake house.” There was also another $2,600 for fixing up a “stone retaining wall at the lake” and $475 “for shutters.”
Why was Joe Biden using lines of credit set up by Hunter? I don't see how you can square your view of the situation with the texts and emails that we actually have access to thanks to the laptop.
Don't know. Curious to see what they were buying, or if there's any evidence that Joe was actually making extravagant purchases anywhere in the ballpark of what you're alleging.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
4mo ago
If you'll forgive the blatant whataboutism (though given that I'm swimming in whataboutisms it seems like that's just the way the game is played 'round here these days), do you feel the same way about Kushner taking 2 billion dollars from Saudi Arabia months after playing a major role managing US relations in the middle east in Trump's white house?
Joe Biden's net worth is something like 9 million dollars. His tax filings are public. He isn't taking millions of dollars worth of bribes from foreign officials. At best you could argue that Hunter Biden (net worth 250 mil) is doing the dirty work of selling influence on Biden senior's policy choices, as others have in this thread, although that doesn't square very well with the '10 held by H for the big guy' narrative.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
4mo ago
You've found a way to quantify this? Fascinating!
Being directionally wrong is infinite orders of magnitude wrong
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
4mo ago
That time he claimed Clinton engaged in election denialism as bad as Trump is infinite orders of magnitude wrong
Also, this other time he claimed Czech, or Slovak or Czechslovak (the details are lost to the sands of time and greedy reddit admins) hockey players are good
Oh, and he likes to argue that rural African hustlers are smarter than all us big brain types. Many, many orders of magnitude there
They make a larger proportion of the people willing to spend three hours writing a massive top-level post about the Jews and the Blacks ruining America. Frequent posters don't necessarily get the same visibility or drive the discussion if they're just writing a couple lines in response to a top-level post.
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