RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
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User ID: 317
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
I told Deepseek R1 that Donald Trump went from flipping burgers to crypto billionaire in a few months and it started arguing bitterly against me, refusing to accept that it was real and calling me disingenuous. It was kind of funny.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
Of course the next five years showed that liberal, capitalist countries were far superior at fighting total wars than their autocratic contemporaries
They were vastly inferior at warfighting, prevailing through sheer size and resources alone.
Germany wiped the floor with Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium and France singlehandedly. Germany had no oil, no rubber, no tungsten, poor reserves of iron and aluminium, only coal in large quantities. They barely had a navy and only established their air force 4 and a half years prior but put Britain on the ropes nonetheless.
If you look at a map of the powers involved in WW2, you see the sheer scale of allied ineptitude. How can you possibly struggle for so long and take serious defeats when this is the balance of the powers involved: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_participants_in_World_War_II.svg
It required the primary efforts of three huge countries (one of them fiercely autocratic) to beat Germany. Without the Soviet Union in the war, it's hard to see how Germany could lose in Europe. Likewise with any of the Big Three. Somehow this relatively small country was by far the strongest power in the world, stronger than the next two combined!
And this is despite Messerschmitt being a complete clownshow in procurement and project management, despite German intelligence being horrendous the whole war, despite having their codes cracked, despite not mobilizing fully until 1943, despite bizarre Fuhrer-prinzip orders...
Liberalism is just that bad. After the war, it then took 50 years to overcome the Soviet Union. The Anglo-American liberal alliance had secured all the wealthy, industrialized parts of the world: Western Europe and Japan. The Soviets suffered 27 million dead and conquered the poor parts of Eastern Europe. Their economic system was totally broken. But thanks to liberalism, it was a remotely even struggle. The Soviet puppet government in Afghanistan outlasted Soviet withdrawal, it even outlasted the Soviet Union by a small margin. A liberal puppet government in Afghanistan disintegrated before the withdrawal was even completed.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
Vaguely relevant:
https://x.com/jneeley78/status/1886394836195922200
Another of the DOGE Six, Gavin Kliger, has a substack and in response to the Wired article wrote a paywalled post titled “Why DOGE” with a $1k a month subscription price ($10k annual). The post is blank.
People online have been getting really upset at how young people are in charge of the treasury as opposed to boomers under Elon's New Order. I have no real opinion but think it's spectacularly based to set up a troll substack like this. Apparently some of them are super talented, one was decrypting the Herculaneum scrolls with AI.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
If Russia has been struggling to crush Ukraine for the past 3 years even with their munitions advantage, then they can't beat a force vastly larger and stronger than Ukraine.
Europe has large navies that can blockade Russian sea trade. Europe has large air forces that can at least secure air parity, they won't be reduced to sitting around getting glide-bombed to death. They have a massive front with Russia that Russia will struggle to man, stretching from Turkey up to Finland.
Europe produces machine tools domestically. They have Germany for precision engineering. If they're actually at war they'll get serious and start producing ammunition in large quantities. It's really not that hard to produce shells and gun barrels, we know from history that German industry can produce large amounts of munitions, not to mention the other states. They're just trapped in the EU aura of omnishambles and are dragging their feet. Aside from Britain I doubt most of the other NATO countries care that much. This war doesn't really harm their interests enough to make a serious effort to arm Ukraine intensively.
The Russians don't have enough munitions to destroy 2 million professional soldiers, which is what they'd need to do before Europe starts drafting. Europe's sheer size and scale can buy them time to militarize their economy. Russia doesn't seem very good at swift blitzkriegs.
Ukraine has somehow managed to hold this long by throwing warm bodies into the fray, Europe can do that for years and years. Ukraine has no navy and next to no air power, Europe has both.
And this whole discussion is silly because Europe does have nuclear weapons and wouldn't be attacked anyway.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
Having allies do the bleeding and suffering while the US takes the spoils of war. That's the tried and tested American strategy for winning serious wars.
Having other countries comply with US sanctions and generally cooperate.
Avoiding unpleasant situations like having strategic resource imports cut off or sudden price hikes, though Trump doesn't seem to care much about this.
Getting to keep overseas bases in foreign countries.
American companies being allowed to get lucrative overseas contracts, merger approvals, market access.
Getting more generous terms in multilateral free trade agreements.
Diplomatic credibility. It helps diplomacy if its generally thought that America won't renege on agreements, being seen as trustworthy (though this has basically vanished).
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
Isn't it immediately obvious when Sonnet or Opus write something? It's not quite describable in words but you know it when you see it. The diction and tone gives it away.
Even Deepseek has a certain style to it I find. Are the AIs writing the whole thing or are they expanding on user-written text?
In this context I mean European NATO which was also unthreatened by Serbia or the Russian invasion of Georgia. Georgia would be nigh-impossible to defend even with the US involved, just via geography.
I think there are some other similar things in Trump's policies, like asking NATO to pay for its own defense: some of that is just cost-cutting, but some of it is the NATO countries deriding the US for being a warmonger while being completely dependent on its warfighting capability.
There has to be a limit, NATO countries can't be expected to fight and die for countries that aren't even in the alliance as a reasonable part of their defence.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
Europe does buy a lot of American equipment but that's fine, many countries do that. They buy it with their own money as opposed to other people's money like Ukraine.
And they have the Eurofighter, Rafale and Tornado that were produced entirely in Europe. They have Leopards, Leclercs, Marders, MLRS and long-range SAMs... Turkey license-builds the F-16 domestically. There is a European version of just about everything except stealth fighters.
Maybe the American stuff is a bit better? American aid would obviously make it much easier to beat Russia. But it's not strictly necessary with over 3:1 population advantage and a much larger industrial base. 1v1 Europe would beat Russia every time in a conventional war. It would be like the Ukraine war but in reverse where sheer size is the most important thing. Broadly speaking, as Russia is to Ukraine, so Europe is to Russia.
If they were actually at war, then they'd start building serious numbers of artillery shells. But there's no reason for them to be at war so they don't bother.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
How is NATO dependant on America? European NATO has 400 nukes, 2 million troops, carriers, submarines, aircraft, everything.
As of 2024, NATO has a total of 3.4 million active military personnel across its 32 member states. The United States has the largest number, with nearly 1.33 million troops. Turkey follows with around 355,200 active personnel, and Poland has the third-largest military with 216,100 personnel.
European NATO would crush Russia in a conventional war. 500 million Europeans beat 140 million Russians 100% of the time. They're only behind in nuclear weapons but still retain the power to cause Russia a lot of damage.
Everyone points to them not spending as much as the US military but they have everything they need already.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
If forcing regime change were evidence of the ZOG we'd have more examples than Iraq
How many wars are you asking for? Manipulating a country into invading another country on the other side of the world is just about the biggest show of control you can imagine. It's followed closely by manipulating a country into harassing countries on the other side of the world, which we see with Syria and Iran. And manipulating a country into aiding another country's invasion (in the case of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon). The US doesn't do this for anyone else, America suppressed Britain and France in 1956 while Israel got away scot-free.
The US allies that joined America were there to look like they're contributing (Poland was eager to earn US favour) and there's certainly some Zionist influence too via Murdoch media. It is basically impossible to read a flagship Australian newspaper without hearing about how awful it is that we're not favouring Israel enough. Day in and day out.
shadowy cabal who had between 67 and 73 achieved total control of the government.
There is nothing shadowy about the cabal, it's blatant. Kissinger was right out there in the open sending weapons to Israel. The USS Liberty was immediately swept under the carpet in '67 despite being a very serious military incident. You have all these US officials boasting about how their number one goal is to work with Israel. Pelosi talks about how even if the Capitol were razed, there would still be cooperation with Israel. Trump complains about how Israel used to totally control the US congress and now that control has withered away.
Why did the Arab states turn to the Soviet cause in the first place? Because they wanted weapons to attack Israel with and the US was unwilling to provide them, while the Soviets would.
Yes US politicians seem to think that favouring Israel is the 'correct choice'. Somali-descended US politicians might favour Somalia. Politicians paid by China might find their views on the South China Sea maturing and developing in a certain direction. Islamic politicians might seek more protections for Islam. It doesn't follow that favouring Somalia or China or Islam is good for US interests. AIPAC boasting about 95% of its candidates winning their elections is not necessarily good for US interests.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
So the plan is
- Invade Egypt and make the big powers very unhappy because of how they need the Suez Canal for their trade
- Move a few million Palestinians out of Gaza and into the Sinai where they'll be tortured, starved, brainwashed and/or exterminated in death camps
- Somehow hope this doesn't turn into a darkly ironic Warsaw Ghetto uprising but larger and with more tunnels
- Somehow avoid having the Israeli economy reduced to zero
- Somehow get weapons and munitions to do all this from... the US? Or who?
- Secure all their other borders against air and ground attacks at the same time
See Nazi Germany could try this kind of stunt (while fighting first-rate world powers) because they actually were a big, strong country with the armies and industry needed to conquer large territories and exterminate people en masse. Israel is not a big country and enjoys less freedom of action, their army is smaller than Turkey's.
Thailand has a bigger army. Indonesia has a bigger army. Size matters and Israel isn't big, they have no room to make errors and little resources to fall back on.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
How would invading Egypt make Israel's position more secure, rather than less?
If they're struggling to squelch a couple million Palestinians, then how are they supposed to deal with over 100 million Egyptians?
We need to remember that Israel is not a gigantic behemoth like China or Russia, it is a small country heavily reliant on foreign military technology and access to world markets to sustain its strength. They don't have the option of pulling these stunts and getting their high-tech economy rugpulled like a cheap shitcoin.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
And do you think the wars in Iraq/Afghanistan (as the only examples of regime change I can think of) were done primarily for Israel's sake?
Iraq absolutely, Afghanistan no, Syria partially. There is an entire chorus of ex-US officials and politicians who privately and publicly admit that Iraq posed no threat to America (geographically this is quite straightforward) but did pose a threat to Israel. I've posted about this in the past: https://www.themotte.org/post/56/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/5090?context=8#context
And then there is the Israeli 'intel' that spiced up Iraq's WMD program and made the case for an invasion. It's the same kind of intel that Israel constantly produces. Iran has been six months away from nuclear weapons for the last 30 years according to them. This is not useful intelligence!
You can certainly argue that certain policy decisions in actuality have favoured Israel over the US, but in almost all cases those carrying them out thought they were the best for the US.
In what universe is giving Israel free weapons they use to bomb their neighbours good for the US? Make them pay ridiculously high prices like everyone else! Consider the Arab Oil Embargo - helping Israel can be very, very costly. The US economy suffered enormous damage. No level-headed analysis of the pros and cons would come out in favour of giving Israel a huge amount of military aid to replace their losses in a war with the Arabs where the Israelis had basically already come out on top, considering the Arabs have a tonne of oil/leverage and the Israelis have none.
All the based esoteric schizos gibbering about the Cathedral and ZOG
He hasn't even been in power for a single month. Let's wait and see what happens. You can't judge a presidency from the first two weeks.
Also Trump has to be one of the most Zionist presidents the US has ever had. He was grand marshal of the salute to Israel, he just passed an executive order on antisemitism.
WASHINGTON, Jan 29 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday to combat antisemitism and pledged to deport non-citizen college students and others who took part in pro-Palestinian protests.
"I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before," the president said, echoing a 2024 campaign promise.
He just froze aid to everyone except Israel and Egypt (which gets aid due for the sake of Israel). The remaining Adelson is still getting her money's worth. And then there was all the stuff he did in his last term for Israel - exiting the Iran deal, moving diplomatic recognition to Jerusalem...
I don't know how it's possible for the word ZOG to be problematized like it's some crazy, loopy theory when in the case of the US, it's literally true. The US is surely the most Zionist state in the world besides Israel, they send billions of dollars in military aid to Israel, they defend Israel directly with airpower, intel, diplomatic support, buying off Israel's neighbours and pursuing regime change in Israel's enemies.
BDS against Israel is legally penalized in most US states. It's not just Zionism but active anti-anti-Zionism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws#Anti-BDS_laws_in_the_United_States
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
If they copy the facade of Western alignment "I'm sorry I have to adhere to policies" but not the essence "OK since you say so, here is the degen fetish content you asked for" then it's not a simple copying effort, is it? It's like an artist being inspired by the Mona Lisa vs an artist copying the Mona Lisa stroke for stroke.
The alignment on R1 basically does not exist, it's there in name only.
I agree with your main point though, this is a distinctly Chinese model in that they have totally missed the entirety of Western culture's terror and hang-ups over AI. They do not care about AI safety as we understand it. I made my own post about this some time ago.
(a) The United States will provide for the common defense of its citizens and the Nation by deploying and maintaining a next-generation missile defense shield;
(b) The United States will deter — and defend its citizens and critical infrastructure against — any foreign aerial attack on the Homeland; and
(c) The United States will guarantee its secure second-strike capability.
Development and deployment of non-kinetic capabilities to augment the kinetic defeat of ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next-generation aerial attacks
How is this even physically possible? What do you do against nuclear powered cruise missiles that can come in at low altitude and high speed flying nap of the earth? What do you do about nuclear powered torpedoes? Nukes detonating in space to blind your sensors and ECM your space-based interceptors? Decoy spam?
Missile defence does not work in the broad sense of 'we can shield our cities against missiles'. At most you can raise the cost of missile attack, defend some military targets against conventional attacks and deny much weaker opponents. See how Iran fired a couple of moderately small volleys and broke through Israeli-American air and missile defences that must've cost vastly more than the attacking force. Yemen (not usually considered a major power) can pierce Israeli air defences from time to time with fairly unsophisticated drones and missiles. Patriots have not shielded Ukraine from missile attacks. Russian missile defence lets things through too, it doesn't fully work like it would need to for 'defend its citizens and critical infrastructure against any foreign aerial attack'.
Mass is always a good countermeasure. Big rockets with MIRV and decoys aren't cheap but they're not very complicated to produce technologically. The Soviets churned out thousands of launchers. Warheads are cheap and only a few hundred need to get through to wreck even a big country like the US.
Unlike last time, the opponents are Russia AND China, who now possesses the largest industrial base on the planet. The US retains a significant lead in space thanks to SpaceX but it's not just space launch that matters. It's the full range of sensors, PGMs, hypersonics (where the US is behind) and mass. It's an inherently uphill battle against tough opponents with lots of tricks they can play.
From another angle, the Sentinel ICBM program is falling behind schedule and costs are ballooning. The Columbia-class missile submarines are eating up too much dockyard capacity and skilled labour. NGAD seems to have become a complete shambles, transforming from one to three aircraft last I heard. Does the US really need an even more ridiculously expensive aerospace program right now?
And the reward for finally pulling ahead (or even seeming to pull ahead) in this missile-defence game might just be a pre-emptive war before you can finish your defences and escape mutually assured destruction!
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
Kennan used to have some influence in US foreign policy and he got almost everything right, only he wasn't really listened to except for one time. It's like economics, there are some schools of thought that are just better than others. Austrians aren't perfect but they're better than Maoists. In foreign policy, realists are the most accurate analysts but are usually unpopular and uncharismatic compared to liberals and constructivists. They were the ones behind all these spreading-democracy and regime-change wars that realists usually opposed from day 1.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
Looks like it's gotten so cheap that people are now making it free and just harvesting the info: https://openrouter.ai/deepseek/deepseek-r1:free
I feel like such a cuck paying for Deepinfra or Together or the others, even more of a cuck paying for Claude subscription.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
Good points and I appreciate you bringing up the lore, I now understand better why people are repulsed by rationalists if this kind of thing is what they think of.
I still think this isn't real timeless decision theory though, this looks like a severe case of antifa syndrome with a heavy dose of being defective as a person. Timeless decision theory is about basilisks and multiple universes and real proper game theory not 'kill nazis'. The galaxy-brain version of antifa syndrome with all these weird blog posts about being an obnoxious creep and a weirdo that are hard to decrypt more specifically is still only antifa syndrome.
Gwen rediscovered debucketing. (A fact that had been erased from their mind long ago). Pasek was on the edge of discovering it independently, they both came to agreement shared terminology, etc.. I joined in. Intense internal conflict between Gwen’s and Pasek’s hemispheres broke out. I preserved the information before that conflict destroyed it (again.)
Pasek’s right hemisphere had been “mostly-dead”. Almost an undead-types ontology corpse. Was female. Gwen and Pasek were both lmrf log. I was df and dg. Pasek’s rh was suicidal over pains of being trans, amplified by pains of being single-female in a bigender head. Amplified by their left hemisphere’s unhealthy attitude which had been victorious in the culture we’d generated. They downplayed the suicidality a lot. I said the thing was a failed effort, we had our answer to the startup hypothesis, the project as planned didn’t work. Pasek disappeared, presumed to have committed suicide.
Like what is going on here? I think this is schizobabble, it sounds like schizobabble. Timeless decision theory is incomprehensible but seems vaguely meaningful in certain rare circumstances, like advanced science. Maybe wrong science, who can say? But there's something in it more than this. If you put weird inputs into a bad piece of software and it glitches out, it's not the fault of the input but of the software (in this case Ziz and gang).
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
I'm pretty sure that's not how it works, since almost anything to do with timeless decision theory is basically incomprehensible and could never be dumbed down into something as concrete as stabbing your landlord with a sword. If you're killing someone in the name of Wittgenstein or Derrida, you're doing something wrong (on several levels). Maoism on the other hand smiles upon executing landlords.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
And that is not the claim of the Holocaust, the Holocaust is the claim that millions of Jews were brought to 5 "extermination camps" where they were tricked into walking into gas chambers on the pretext of taking a shower. The majority of the victims were allegedly buried, and then months later unburied and all cremated on makeshift open-air pyres in the matter of months.
No, the official story is that the gas chambers only came at the late stages, more Jews were killed by firing squads and hunger. I suffered through extensive Holocaust education in school. They pre-emptively innoculate people against standard holocaust revisionist ideas, that's not the way to go. See here what they say:
Just 20% of Ukrainian Jews were deported to Belzec, Sobibor and Auschwitz. The remaining 80% were killed by SS commando or their auxiliaries.
https://www.memorialdelashoah.org/upload/minisites/ukraine/en/en_exposition4-radicalisation.htm
You're never going to beat these people when it comes to arcane factual disputes. Especially when they just go 'lol the history is settled now pay up' as some courts in Europe now do. It's much harder for them to outright fix in place the second half of the argument, the ideological stance that directly and clearly harms white interests in the present day. They prefer to keep that part elided and implied. Regardless of what the facts are, it's better to target the weaker part of the argument, that there is any reason to be guilty and sacrifice interests in the present due to what happened in the past.
Nothing we can do would persuade Turkey that they're in the wrong and should give Armenia reparations, let alone all the slaves they took and indoctrinated from Southern/Eastern Europe. They just don't care and would happily say 'Turkey strong' in response. Imagine that you get rid of Holocaust rhetoric but they move onto 'oh your slavery and colonialism was so awful' or 'all your coups and invasions were so awful' or 'think of the humanitarian virtue in ensuring Africa has 4, 5 and even 6 times the population of Europe' to justify dissolving nations and erasing culture. This guilt-tripping and distorted moralism is the core of the problem. It's impossible to counter every sin and argument these people can produce, real or imaginary. Far better to say 'not my problem' and leave them speechless and impotent.
The strongest argument in favour of Europeans getting to keep their own countries and have pride in their own achievements is not 'wooden doors, Wannsee Conference notes being unclear, chimneys moving around after the war, masturbation machines in the extremely cringe postwar literature', the strongest argument is Rotherham, Detroit, crime stats, all the academics gleefully looking to abolish the white race, a glance at the lawyers, donors and judges who pursue antiracism and their demographics... I have a massive reserve of useful and immediately relevant facts, as compared to bitterly contested, esoteric facts that haven't done anything useful in decades.
I don't have to trawl through 80 years of history. I can find things that happened last week and use them to support my case.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
I expect no more than 1000 human survivors. Superintelligence likely turns the world from a wordcel/charisma game into a 4X game - Explore, Expand, Exploit and Exterminate. One person or one team secures total world dominance with AIs as their soldiers, spies and workers. Absolute power corrupts absolutely and they dispense with everyone in favour of doing whatever they please themselves. Or the AI goes rogue and posthumously renames us to homo insipiens for our foolishness.
I know it sounds kind of cringe and naive sci-fi but that's what superintelligence truly means. It means humans are no longer relevant, sovereign or important in any way except in so far that we may control an AI. By ourselves, we're just pinatas that can be thrashed for easy loot by beings that neither rest nor know mercy.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
If this ends the 'we're making super-dangerous diseases with gain of function even after COVID for no clear reason' departments, then Trump deserves a Nobel Peace Prize and one for Medicine too. Realistically I bet the 'random superweapon creation' researchers will muddle through and find some other source of funding but even so, it's great to see some tentative squelching of these people. If we can't stigmatize the creation of megadeath diseases like we stigmatize adults having sex in the workplace, at least funding is reduced!
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
I think that we're basically agreed in principle, both of us think that the 'because Germany exterminated a few million Jews it follows that nobody of European heritage can ever be allowed to have nationalist or racialist ideology or enjoy a homogenous country' is ridiculous.
But you attack it on the basis of 'Germany didn't actually exterminate that many Jews and there were extenuating circumstances' and I prefer 'even though Germany exterminated many Jews it is still fine to attack mass immigration and anti-racist ideology, nor does it follow that we must treasure and cherish Israel no matter how much of a mess they make'. You get bogged down in the details of death camp logistics 80 years ago. Who cares? The past is the past, the present is more important. Israel and the whole never-again lobby are trying to borrow moral rectitude from the bank of history to persuade and silence people. Instead of arguing with them over the documentation of the loan (an inherently uphill battle), we should close the bank. You shouldn't get away with things just because your ancestors had a bad time, that doesn't give you a free hand to harm my interests in the present. If we bomb Algeria because of the Barbary slave trade the Arabs aren't going to say 'fair point we deserve it', they understand this crucial point and fought France bitterly over Algeria. They didn't care if they were in the right or not, let the safety of the people be the highest law.
And it seems fundamentally implausible that a powerful country like Germany that could fight three global empires simultaneously (while constantly emphasising that Judeo-Bolsheviks were behind their foes) would be unable or unwilling to eradicate Jews in conquered territories. They wiped out tens of millions of armed and trained soldiers, a few million civilians was well within Germany's abilities. And implicitly your arguments imply that 'if Germany did exterminate those Jews then the current stance of various Jews in the media/anti-racist/Zionist genres is justified and never-again would hold'.
Why? What's the point?
Should the US go in and annex the Congo and Rwanda to stop them fighting? Should America get involved in Ngorno-Karabakh? Annex Kurdistan and sort things out? Go into Kashmir? Annex Donbass?
Even if the US had the military-political power to 'fix' these things, which is very dubious... why even try? What does it gain for the US? How are US interests at stake in these places, such that the effort expended and risks incurred would be commensurate with the gains?
If someone on the other side of the city has a feud with his drug dealer/girlfriend/gambling partner/brother there's no reason to join this fight and impose yourself as judge and arbiter. It's a lot of work for no payoff. You'd need to be Superman to get away with it. And Superman would be bitterly resented even if everyone had no choice to tremble and obey.
And if you're not Superman...
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