Mailvox: A Tale of the Tubcuddler

A reader writes to share her experience of Neil Gaiman as a teenage fangirl.

I met him when I was in college at his book reading of one of his books: The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and after meeting him, that was the last book of his I ever had any desire to read. It took me a month to read his American Gods book. I had to keep putting it down. At the time, I attributed it to some deficiency in my own ability to crack into his prose, but given what we know now, it was my brain’s way of informing me that I was reading shit. For comparison, I was able to read War and Peace in a week.

But I was a sixteen year old goth girl at the time, so I dutifully brought a copy of that goddamn awful book along for him to sign. The red flag of an unoriginal mind was that he signed every copy of AG with the tagline of “Believe,” and all copies of Sandman with something along the lines of “never stop dreaming.’

When I reached the man himself, things just got worse. I noticed too his preferential treatment of female fans. I was a big B5 nerd at the time, and wanted to discuss the screenplay he had written for it; it became evident during our very brief conversation he had NEXT TO NO IDEA what was in the script. The script he purportedly wrote. I had assumed he’d be happy to discuss a script that was the ONLY episode from seasons 3 to 5 to be written by anyone other than the showrunner. He, on the other hand, sought to change the subject as quickly as possible, and was a complete wet blanket to my projected hopes of mental stimulation with a man up until that point I had respected. He signed me quickly and I was on my way.

There is more at r/NeilGaimanMemes if you’re interested. She also added this:

By the time my cohort reached him (we were a group of four) he was complaining about his sore wrists. I had time to read his entire little shitty novella, in the auditorium he had given a self-congratulatory speech, because of the hold-up for him to rest his wrists for stretches of time. Now, my friend was an osteopath and offered Neil Gaiman full access to his services for free. He gave him his number, which Gaiman behaved as if he was extremely grateful for, and he promised he would avail my friend of his services.

You already know that my friend never heard from the pervert. I thought it was due to the vagaries of the parasocial contract, but now I know better:

He just wasn’t tubcuddly enough!!!!

I have to admit, I find it both ironic and amusing that certain people still, to this day, pine over a parasocial predator like Neil Gaiman, while simultaneously attempting to deplatform, ban, and otherwise ostracize me, an author who rejects both parasociality and social predation, disdains all public appearances, and whom even my die-hard critics in the media have admitted to be gracious, polite, and impeccably well-behaved.

Which is to say I have now been banned by X, YouTube, Blusky, r/NeilGaimanUncovered, and r/NeilGaiman. And I will wager that not one of those places have banned Neil Gaiman despite the gravity of the sex crimes he is credibly accused to have committed. Note that despite what has been publicly reported about his alleged behavior in the presence of his young son, still no one has even begun to investigate any link between that and his obvious association with his co-editor Ed Kramer, the convicted SFWA pedophile.

Contemplate the significance of that, if you will.

UPDATE: The BBC reports that Coraline: The Musical has been cancelled.

A new musical based on Neil Gaiman’s book Coraline has been scrapped following sexual misconduct allegations against the author. The show had been due to open at Leeds Playhouse in April before being staged at Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum Theatre, the Birmingham Rep and Manchester’s Home. In a joint statement, the theatres said: “After careful consideration, we feel it would be impossible to continue in the context of the allegations against its original author.” It was announced last May and had been due to be a major production for the four theatres, but its cancellation will leave a major hole in their schedules and finances. However, the theatres said they had no option after further allegations emerged in recent weeks.

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Vaxx-Altered Behavior

I have to admit, I haven’t seen anything like this myself. But then, most of the people to whom I am closest never got vaxxed, or got the bare minimum. And how does one distinguish it from the quotidian retardery?

Leading researchers in South Korea confirmed that the injections are altering human behavior.

The troubling study found that people’s emotions, personalities, feelings, fears, stress levels, mental well-being, and general outlook changed after they were injected with the “vaccine.”

The peer-reviewed study, which included over 2 million participants, was published in the renowned Nature Journal.

The study was led by Professor Hong Jin Kim of the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at Inje University Sanggye Paik Hospital and the College of Medicine at Inje University in Seoul, Republic of Korea.

The researchers confirmed that the Covid injections are responsible for increasing global reports of major personality and behavioral changes in people in the last four years.

They explain that the “vaccines” cause “psychiatric manifestations” among the vaccinated.

The study found that these psychiatric changes resulted in spikes in mental health disorders.

Patients described feelings of inner turmoil, fear, dread, and depression.

The study found that Covid shots triggered a 68.3% spike in depression, a 43.9% increase in anxiety disorders, and a 93.4% surge in sleep disorders.

One hopes there isn’t, as several priests have suggested, a spiritual component to all of this.

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Why the Scripting Will Continue

As much as the NFL hates public discussion of its obvious activities in a) occasionally scripting the results and b) putting a thumb on the scale to reduce margins of victory, it’s almost certainly going to continue, although perhaps in a more circumspect manner, due to the costs of not doing so.

Via Austin Karp of Sports Business Journal, the game between the Bills and the Chiefs generated an average audience of 57.4 million. That’s a record for the AFC Championship and the most for any conference championship game since Giants-49ers had an audience of 57.6 million in 2012. The Bills-Chiefs game landed in the late window, which drew 56.7 million for Lions-49ers a year ago.

The bad news is that the audience for Commanders-Eagles in the early game was way down. Last year, Chiefs-Ravens racked up 55.4 million. This year, the NFC Championship did 44.2 million. It’s a drop of 13.2 million.

This isn’t about big markets vs small markets. The Redskins and Eagles are major, historic franchises, with strong support from their fans. But the Redskins aren’t an elite team yet and the game was a blowout . I don’t know what the cost of 13.2 million lost viewers is, but I know that it’s more than enough for the NFL to do whatever it feels it has to do in order to prevent it from happening. It’s not an accident that we don’t see the Super Bowl blowouts anymore, and I doubt we’re going to see many going forward in the conference championship games either.

The problem is that most people aren’t as invested in the season’s champion as they are in their team. That’s why the blowouts are more costly in the postseason than in the regular season, and even more so the deeper into the playoffs we go.

And the observable reality is that far more people turned off a game because Saquon Barkley was running over the Redskins than because the refs ended a dangerous Buffalo drive in the 4th quarter with a questionable spot that favored Pat Mahomes and the Chiefs again.

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Yes, I continue to call them the Redskins. My grandfather was a Redskins fan, and we all know it’s only a matter of time before President Trump issues an executive order instructing the NFL to restore the traditional name and logo to the franchise.

Underwhelmed by Deep Seek

Given Gemini’s obvious attempts to put a thumb on the scale, I thought it would be interesting to see how Deep Seek did when posed exactly the same questions. The results so far are inconclusive and underwhelming.

Given the average length in years of a human generation, and assuming that the Chimpanzee-Human Last Common Ancestor lived 9 million years ago, how many human generations has it been since the Chimpanzee-Human Last Common Ancestor?

An error occurred

An error occurred

UPDATE: The version made available by Gab did better.

 The user is asking how many human generations have passed since the Chimpanzee-Human Last Common Ancestor (CHLCA), which was 9 million years ago. They mention using the average length of a human generation. Hmm, so first I need to figure out the average generation length and then divide 9 million by that number.

Wait, but what exactly is considered a generation here? Is it the average age of parents when they have offspring? I think that’s typically how generation length is defined. For humans, I remember reading that a generation is roughly 20 to 30 years. But I should verify the exact value. Maybe different sources use slightly different numbers. For example, some studies might use 25 years as an average. Let me recall. The Generation length can vary depending on the context—demographic, genetic, or historical. In population genetics, they often use 25 to 30 years. But I need to pick a standard value here. Maybe the user expects an approximate answer, so perhaps 25 years is a commonly cited average. Alternatively, if I check some references, the OECD uses 25 years for a generation, and some genetic studies use around 25-30. Let’s go with 25 years as a middle ground. So if each generation is 25 years, then the number of generations would be 9,000,000 divided by 25. 

By the way, that was significantly reduced from the original wall of text. Deep Seek really agonizes over its answers.

Scientists have measured a genetic difference between modern humans and modern chimpanzees measured in DNA base pairs. How large is that difference and how many genetic fixation events are required to account for it?

First, I remember that humans and chimpanzees share a very high percentage of their DNA, often cited as around 98-99% similarity. But the exact figure can vary depending on the study and what’s being measured. For example, some sources say 98.7%, others might say 95% when considering insertions and deletions (indels) and other structural variations. So the actual number of differing base pairs would depend on the total genome size and the percentage difference.

The human genome is roughly 3 billion base pairs long. If we take the commonly cited 1.2% difference (from the 98.8% similarity), that would be 3,000,000,000 * 0.012 = 36 million base pairs different. But wait, I need to check if that includes all types of variations or just substitutions. Because indels (insertions or deletions) can cause more significant differences. For example, a study in 2005 suggested that the actual single nucleotide substitutions account for about 1.23% difference, and when including indels, the total difference increases to around 4% or higher. But maybe more recent studies have updated these numbers.

Alternatively, the 1.2% figure is often used for single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), while structural variations add more. However, the user specifically mentions “DNA base pairs,” which might refer to single nucleotide differences. But it’s a bit ambiguous. Let me confirm: DNA base pair differences can include substitutions, insertions, deletions. So total difference would be all those.

So to summarize:

  1. Genetic difference: ~35-40 million base pairs (considering SNPs and small indels), or higher with structural variations.
  2. Fixation events: Approximately equal to the number of differences, so ~35-40 million, as each difference is a fixation in one lineage.

However, it’s important to note that some studies might present different numbers. For example, a commonly cited figure is about 35 million single nucleotide differences and around 5 million indels, totaling 40 million. Therefore, the answer would be that the genetic difference is approximately 40 million base pairs, and around 40 million genetic fixation events are required. </Thinking>

The genetic difference between modern humans and chimpanzees, measured in DNA base pairs, is approximately 35–40 million differences when considering single nucleotide substitutions (SNPs) and small insertions/deletions (indels). This represents about 1.2–1.3% divergence in aligned sequences of the ~3 billion base pair genome. Including larger structural variations (e.g., duplications, inversions), the total divergence increases to 4–5%, but these are less often counted as individual base pair differences.

For genetic fixation events (mutations that become universal in a population), the total number required to account for these differences is roughly equivalent to the number of observed differences. This is because each divergence represents a fixation event in one lineage (human or chimpanzee) since their split from the CHLCA ~7–9 million years ago.

Summary:

  • Base pair differences: ~35–40 million (SNPs and indels).
  • Fixation events: ~35–40 million (assuming each difference arose and fixed in one lineage).

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An Intrinsically Uncompetitive Society

The cost of having your society run by nepotistic foreign socio-cultural parasites is the inevitable loss of competitiveness.

It is not surprising really. I am an innovative psychology. You can see how I synthesize stuff here, bringing together Google Streetview and surveillance camera footage, and reveal the surveillance in America as few could. Politics and biology, psychology, I come up with interesting stuff. And when I was just a young lad, I was identified by US Domestic intelligence’s grade school monitoring units as innovative, and their response was to supply me with massive amounts of pornography to try and make me a degenerate. When that was ineffective, they decided to flood in the kids of agents, acting as kid spies to try and beat me down. When that failed, they rolled out honeypots. And when I proved resistant to it all, I believe they rolled out an early version of the Havana Weapon to degrade my health physically.

I do not think I am unique in that regard. I even think there was another kid, maybe brighter than me, and certainly more disciplined and dedicated to academics, who they also beamed into chronic illness to try and clip his wings as well. I would assume that has been going on across the nation, with every young kid who showed an innovative potential, for the last thirty to forty years, as domestic intelligence has tried to make sure nobody could rise too high in society, and maybe oppose it. My guess is, given the granularity of the surveillance, if you ever have a child with real potential, the single biggest threat they will ever face in life will be US domestic intelligence, because the American Stasi will find them, it will view them as a threat, and it will try to destroy them using all the most advanced tools of the CIA. It is just how it works in America now.

As a result, at present, the only chance America has to compete lies with the rubes and imbeciles of the insecure surveillance, and there just are not enough innovators there to keep up with nations like China.

After six decades of fake science, fake literature, fake art, fake genuises, fake 115-average IQs, the financialization of the economy, and the moral and intellectual degradation of the workforce, it is absolutely no surprise that the USA is losing on every side to its global rivals in China and Russia. The fetishization of frauds from Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Saul Bellow, and Philip Roth to Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro, combined with the suppression and sidelining of the genuine American creative class, has been sufficient to render the USA a global also-ran.

Someone once asked: “Where is America’s Wang Hunin?” Wang, arguably the most observant individual of the 20th Century, rose from a complete nobody who wasn’t even a member of the Chinese Communist Party to the CCP’s chief ideologist solely on the basis of the merit of his prescient observations. Someone else answered: “Living in Europe making comic books.” And while I’m not the equal of Wang Hunin, who saw things 20 years before I did despite being only 13 years older than me, the difference between the way he was embraced and elevated by the Chinese political elite versus the way I was explicitly banished from even the editorial pages at the age of 23 by the US political elite is telling.

The irony is that I’ve been treated with far more respect by the Chinese and Russian state medias than by the ostensibly private medias in the USA and Europe. Pravda used to occasionally run the very syndicated Universal Press column that the newspapers in the USA refused to touch, back when I was warning everyone about the coming financial crisis in 2002. Note that I’m not at all bitter. I caught enough of a glimpse into the US political elite at a young age that I wanted nothing to do with it and I’m quite content with having been sidelined. I like what I’m doing and I harbor zero desire to get involved with The Great Game. But that doesn’t change the effect the sidelining of me and others more talented than me have inevitably had for the last six decades.

So now we have corrupt second-generation mediocrities like Donald Kagan and complete frauds like Elon Musk establishing US geopolitical strategies instead of anyone setting them in the national interests of the American people. As long as we do, China’s triumph is absolutely 100-percent certain no matter what economic or demographic vagaries it might be facing. It’s like seeing one NFL team building a historic staff with Ron Wolf at GM, Bill Belichick as head coach and Andy Reid as the offensive coordinator and the other being run by the historically awful combination of GM Matt Millen, head coach Marty Mornhinweg, and the immortal Brad Childress not calling plays as the offensive coordinator.

The truth always and inevitably wins out over time because the longer the parasitical pretenders have influence in a society, the further from objective reality their policies will reliably guide it. It’s not an accident that everything across the West from AI to zoology has become fake and gay, because convergence toward entropy is the objective. The latest iteration of The Empire That Never Ended will fall again, because it celebrates falsehood and worships evil.

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Dark Horse Drops Gaiman

This isn’t news to anyone here since Fandom Pulse covered it last week. What makes it noteworthy is that Neil Gaiman’s favorite newspaper, which has fawned all over him for literal decades and has regularly featured his contributions, actually reported on the news, and did so without waiting for months this time.

A US publisher of comics by Neil Gaiman has announced that it has cancelled plans to publish future works by the author who has been accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women. Dark Horse Comics “takes seriously the allegations against Neil Gaiman and we are no longer publishing his works,” the company wrote in a statement on X.

“Confirming that the Anansi Boys comic series and collected volume have been cancelled,” it added. Dark Horse Comics began publishing the Anansi Boys series, an adaptation of Gaiman’s 2005 novel of the same name, in June last year. It was intended to be an eight-issue series, but has now been cancelled following the seventh issue, published 15 January.

Nine women have now accused Gaiman of sexual misconduct. On 14 January, the author published a statement on his website saying that he had “never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone”. Gaiman’s representatives did not respond to a request for comment on Dark Horse Comics’ statement.

HarperCollins, which publishes many of Gaiman’s books in the US including Coraline and American Gods, told Publishers Weekly that it does not have any new books by Gaiman scheduled. WW Norton, the US publisher of Gaiman’s book Norse Mythology, said that it will not have projects with the author going forward, though did not say whether this was connected to the allegations. Marvel Comics has no new works by Gaiman in progress, according to the New York Times.

Other publishers of Gaiman’s work – including Bloomsbury, Penguin, Hachette, DC Comics and Titan – have not yet made public statements about whether they will continue to publish the author, and did not respond to the Guardian’s requests for comment.

Given that Dark Horse was historically inclined to NOT take action in similar circumstances, the fact that two institutions whose natural inclinations were to cover things up are instead distancing themselves from the accused serial rapist is a fairly strong indicator that the other publishers who are more heavily invested in their business relationships will eventually follow suit, however reluctantly.

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Where the Men Are

All the men are doing things of which this woman disapproves, disavows, and seeks to destroy. Men have no interest in the social environments that women create, much less learning how to navigate them, and very few men have any interest in seeking the approval of what appears to be an increasingly deranged and increasingly medicated population of maleducated women devoted to dyscivilization.

Men don’t follow women. And men aren’t interested in women who don’t want to follow their lead. And interestingly enough, women aren’t interested in the few sad specimens of men who are.

It’s not a mystery. The pick-me girls don’t seem to have any trouble figuring out where the men are.

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NFL Scripting Confirmed

The NFC Championship game didn’t require any interventions; the non-call on Saquon Barkley’s hold made absolutely no difference to the outcome of a game the Eagles dominated from the start and won 55-23. Indeed, given the way the NFL hates blowouts, it’s likely that the refs didn’t put a thumb on the scale due to the way that everyone is now watching very closely for them doing so.

The AFC Championship game was pretty good despite the Bills losing a key cornerback early in the first quarter to his second concussion in a matter of weeks; he almost certainly should not have been playing even though he cleared the concussion protocol. That made the game closer than it should have been. But once again, the Chiefs were given a dubious call at a very critical moment.

  • As CBS rules analyst Gene Steratore said, it looked like quarterback Josh Allen got the ball to the line to gain before he was pulled backward on fourth and short early in the fourth quarter, with the Bills leading 22-21.
  • CBS rules analyst Gene Steratore thought Josh Allen got enough yardage for a first down on a fourth-down quarterback sneak early in the fourth quarter and Bills head coach Sean McDermott felt the same way. Unfortunately for McDermott, Allen and the Bills, the officiating crew saw things differently.
  • The refs running in with two different spots — and the Chiefs getting the benefit of the spot and the stop on 4th down — is going to be the number one discussion from this game.

Even big names in the mainstream sports media are paying attention to the observable fact of the NFL favoring certain teams and disfavoring others. Dave Portnoy, the founder of Barstool Sports, has even gone so far as to claim he won’t watch the NFL anymore.

I’m quitting watching football. There is no other way to teach @nflcommish a lesson. This is blatant cheating. #nflrigged

Given the growing professionalization and competitiveness of college football, and a situation where top NCAA players can actually make more money staying in college than declaring for the NFL draft, it’s a tremendous mistake for the NFL to continue scripting outcomes and using the referees to control the winning margins. What was necessary to force through the AFL-NFL merger and eliminate the Super Bowl routs of the 1980s is not only not necessary anymore, but is increasingly detrimental to the health and popularity of the league.

It’s time to protect the Shield, Mr. Goodell. Stop the scripting, stop the rigging, take the thumb off the scale, and let the players play the game. Make every call reviewable and put a chip in the ball to ensure the accuracy of first downs and touchdowns; it’s now absolutely and entirely obvious to everyone that the reluctance to do both is based upon a reluctance to give up the ability to influence the outcomes.

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Ukraine Peace Proposal

Simplicius dutifully reports what appears more like a Ukrainian fever dream than the leaked US peace plan that it is purported to be:

▪️Trump plans to have a telephone conversation with Putin in late January – early February. He also wants to discuss the situation in Ukraine with its authorities.

▪️Based on the results of the negotiations, a decision may be made to continue or suspend the dialogue.

▪️Volodymyr Zelensky must cancel the decree that prohibits negotiations with Putin.

▪️A meeting between Trump, Putin and Zelensky may take place in February or the first half of March. It is not yet clear whether this will be a trilateral meeting or two separate ones. The meeting is planned to discuss the main parameters of the peace plan.

▪️Starting April 20, a ceasefire is planned to be declared along the entire front line, and all Ukrainian troops will be withdrawn from the Kursk region.

▪️An international peace conference is set to begin at the end of April to formalize an agreement between Russia and Ukraine to end the conflict. The United States, China, and a number of countries in Europe and the Global South will act as mediators.

▪️Also at this time, the exchange of prisoners will begin according to the formula “all for all”.

▪️By May 9, a declaration of the conference on the end of the conflict should be published. Martial law and mobilization will not be extended in Ukraine, and presidential elections will be held at the end of August.

➖ What is included in the agreement?

▪️Ukraine does not seek to return the territories that were liberated by Russia, either militarily or diplomatically, but at the same time does not officially recognize Russia’s sovereignty over these territories.

▪️Ukraine will not become a member of NATO and declares its neutrality. The decision that Ukraine will not be accepted into the alliance must be confirmed at the NATO summit.

▪️Ukraine will become a member of the European Union by 2030. The EU is committed to rebuilding the country after the war.

▪️The number of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is not decreasing, and the United States is modernizing the Ukrainian army.

▪️After the conclusion of the peace agreement, some anti-Russian sanctions will be lifted, and restrictions on the import of Russian energy resources to the EU will be lifted.

▪️Parties that defend the Russian language and advocate peaceful relations with Russia should participate in the elections in Ukraine. The persecution of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church will also cease.

▪️Separate consultations will be held on the issue of EU peacekeepers.

Very little of this makes any sense. NATO holds no significant cards. Russia can accomplish everything that is being offered to it here without the need to agree with either Washington or Kiev. As a starting point to signal a willingness to negotiate a surrender, it’s just barely plausible, but it’s not even remotely close to what Russia would expect to achieve through negotiations.

As Simplicius himself observers: In short: the deal above is a non-starter should it actually appear in even a remotely similar form; it is the mere deluded fantasy of the West to even think Russia needs to stop fighting any time soon, at a time when major Ukrainian strongholds are folding like cheap lawn chairs on a daily basis.

Some of the missing elements:

  • Demilitarization of Ukraine
  • Odessa
  • The withdrawal of NATO from all countries bordering Russia, especially Finland and the Baltics.
  • Compensatory payments for sanctions and seizures.
  • Future non-interference in Ukrainian and Eastern European elections by US, EU, and Western NGOs.

At the rate that Ukraine is losing territory and soldiers, there soon isn’t going to be any point to negotiations. No amount of bluster by President Trump or anyone else is going to change the facts on the ground.

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Inside the OODA Loop

  1. Colombia has refused to accept U.S. deportation flights, stating that migrants must be treated with dignity and not as criminals. President Gustavo Petro emphasized that U.S. military aircraft carrying deported Colombians would not be allowed to land until proper protocols for respectful treatment are established.
  2. President Donald Trump said on Sunday he will impose sweeping retaliatory measures on Colombia, including tariffs and sanctions, after the South American country turned away two U.S. military aircraft with migrants being deported as part of the new U.S. administration’s immigration crackdown. Trump’s punitive action appeared aimed at making an example of Colombia, the second case of a Latin American nation refusing U.S. military deportation flights. It was a demonstration of a more muscular U.S. foreign policy and showed a renewed willingness by Trump to use the might of the United States to force other countries to bend to his will. The retaliatory measures include imposing 25% tariffs on all Colombian goods coming into the United States, which will go up to 50% in one week; a travel ban and visa revocations on Colombian government officials; and emergency treasury, banking and financial sanctions. Trump said he would also direct enhanced border inspections of Colombian nationals and cargo.
  3. BREAKING: CNN reports that Colombia is now offering the presidential plane to help repatriate people being deported from the US.
  4. BREAKING: Trump administration has directed ICE officials to ramp up arrests to at least 1,200 to 1,500 per day because the president is disappointed with the results so far, per WaPo.

Remember this the next time people say something risibly stupid about the impossibility of repatriating foreigners. President Eisenhower deported 1,074,277 Mexicans in one year, which is nearly 3,000 per day, and that was with 1954 technology.

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