Phil Beaver works to establish opinion when
the-objective-truth has not been discovered. He seeks to refine his opinion by
listening when people share experiences and observations. The comment box below
invites readers to write.
Note 1: I often dash
words in phrases in order to express and preserve an idea. For example, frank-objectivity
represents the idea of candidly expressing the-objective-truth despite possible
error. In other words, a person expresses his “belief,” knowing he or she could
be in error. People may collaboratively approach the-objective-truth.
Note 2: It is
important to note "civic" refers to citizens who collaborate for the
people more than for the city.
A personal paraphrase
of the preamble by & for Phil Beaver: We the willing people of nine of
the thirteen United States commit to and trust in the purpose and goals
stated herein --- integrity, justice, collaboration, defense, prosperity,
liberty, and perpetuity --- and to cultivate limited services by the USA,
beginning on June 21, 1788.
Composing their own paraphrase, citizens may consider the actual preamble
and perceive whether they are willing or dissident toward its agreement.
Our Views (theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/our_views/article_68c3ce02-a93e-11e7-ab3e-83073e9b0876.html)
Austin Guidry, ChE, LSU, was reviewing to improve our
presentation to promote public commitment to the agreement that is stated in
the preamble to the constitution for the USA. When he came to the page that
focuses on posterity, he said, “An adult should do everything he or she can to
help children.” I’ll never forget Austin’s sincere liberty.
I hope the Rev. Raymond Jetson’s program will coach children to
take charge of personal autonomy or human
authenticity, to develop comprehensive fidelity to the-objective-truth,
to practice collaborative association with willing people, to acquire basic
comprehension and understanding, and to enter adulthood intending service and
self-discovery in their lifetime always increasing justice.
A child cannot be instructed. No matter how great the instructor
is, the child must privately experience or personally observe the good. Adults
may demonstrate, encourage, and coach.
Our Views, 10/8 (theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/our_views/article_feff0df6-a942-11e7-9a7a-5f3c64957206.html)
In the interest
of morality, civic people discourage procreation by adolescents and adults who
do not intend to care for and appreciate the child.
Child neglect and abuse can be lessened by a culture of mutual, comprehensive
safety and security or civic morality. "Civic" refers to people who
develop behavior that maintains and increases justice during every decade of
their lives.
(BTW: What's
the motive behind those misused hyphens?)
Our Views, 10/6 (theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/our_views/article_55695ae0-9e79-11e7-9c9f-8f938aec90d0.html)
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A free and responsible press gives readers a balanced view of issues and lets them decide their preferences. But in the words of President Donald Trump, readers don’t always get what they [need] and have to wade through what the press wants.
The Pareto principle informs humankind (excluding the press?) that “80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.” Thus, in the work to comprehend there are diminishing returns as understanding increases. Europeans and others seem to have a propensity for perfection.
President Trump’s administration is acting in the people’s best interest when they cut budgets aimed at perfection when close enough is what the people need.
Contemplating justification, it seems to me The Advocate is happy to pick the people’s pocket in order to carp at President Trump.
I voted for Trump twice: first for a chance to overcome the GOP swamp and second to stop the liberal-democrat disastrous movement to ruin the American republic. I wrote then that I expected it to take Trump three years to find his way. That was based on Abraham Lincoln’s like time to understand he was at war and war is hell, especially when it’s internal.
A free and responsible press educates the public. I doubt The Advocate is ignorant of the Pareto principle.
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You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. However, you do have a remarkable abillity to take a perfectly reasonable concept, e.g., the Pareto principle, and mutilate it while spinning out rubbish.
The Pareto principle is not even remotely a rule about decreasing returns from increasing knowledge. It is a concept that deals only with what we know already, not with future knowledge. It also does not state that it is good enough to know 80% of the impacts of a given phenomenon, e.g., extreme weather events, while ignoring the remaining 20%. In the case of extreme weather events, incomplete knowledge means greater risk. Period. Indeed, the 20% we don't account for can be more serious that the 80% we can explain.
Instead of your usual blabbering, I challenge you to show specifically how 80% of the effects/damages of individual hurricanes are explained by 20% of the causes. I also challenge you to explain how the remaining 20% of the impacts of individual hurricanes can be dismissed.
Beyond that, you're nothing more than a Trump "holster."
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GM King Hey there, strawman proponent.
The Advocate (and I) addressed models, not hurricanes. Like The Advocate, you seem to seek to ridicule President Trump (and me) rather than communicate.
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Phil Beaver No, you didn't address models. You said nothing about models. You did what you usually do. You engaged in a grandiose, sweeping and ignorant statement. You invoked Pareto incorrectly. You made an indefensible and foolish comment about diminishing returns that the history of inquiry shows to be utterly false.
You know absolutely nothing about meterological modeling. If you now want to make that your point, you are still 100% wrong. The history of meterological modeling shows that more knowledge has resulted in more value. As I stated above, "close enough" is not "what the p...See More
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GM King Quoting the "Our Views," “It is an open question how accurate American citizens and businesses want their forecasts to be — and how willing they are to pay for the infrastructure to support such an improved system,” Reeves writes."
This citizen does not want more money spent on competition in predicting weather.
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Phil Beaver That's crap Beaver. All Reevs says is that it's an open question. You don't speak for citizens, you just speak for your own very narrow and selfish interests, and that's what makes all of your sermonizing totally vacuous and hypocritical. Thanks for demonstrating that. Again.
And thanks too for showing that you are unable to actually defend the specious arguments that you made. There was no strawman by the way. I provided perfectly relevant examples involving meterological modeling (extreme weather, hurricanes... what the heck do you forecasts about them involve?) to demonstrate that your claims were nonsense. You're the one trying to change the subject- as usual. You're the one who can't support your claims- as usual. The only thing missing is your AMO bs, like you spewed elsewhere. Please, go ahead and give us a sample along with some more of the-subjective-lies you promote.
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GM King You should beware AMO rule 5 "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon."
You ridicule yourself in your pretence that I write for anyone but "this citizen."
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Just googling around, there seems to be a lot of at least colloquial or vernacular usage of “'80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes'” or something like it, as description of the Pareto Principle, the 20 and 80 being approximations for a minority of resources producing a majority of results.
I would have a hard time refuting that the Pareto Principle is related to the law of diminishing returns that allocation of more than a minority of the available resources has less utility per increment than did an initially allocated minority of resources.
The body politic of the US may have, in effect, simply decided through its political apparatus that more accuracy of weather prediction than is now available, is not worth the allocation of more public resources, including money.
Refusal by large numbers of the citizens and other residents to use the information now available and evacuate for hurricanes or buy subsidized flood insurance, suggests that government's purchasing of more meteorological accuracy might indeed not add proportionate increments of benefit.
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JT McQuitty There is no basis for the Rev. Beaver's generalization, "Thus, in the work to comprehend there are diminishing returns as understanding increases."
Pareto was an economist who developed an number of valuable insights. The 20/80 concept is just one of them. In describing the idea that there are skewed distributions of input and output, the Pareto principle captures some general behaviors that might or might not actually look like 20/80.
But the critical point is that the Pareto principle doesn't apply in the context the Rev. Beaver used it. The notion that there is a diminishing return with increasing knowledge has been refuted throughout the history of human inquiry by one advance or breakthrough after another. In the late 19th-c physicists thought pretty much everything was known. AA Michaelson, a later Nobel laureate, once thought that all that remained for physics lay in the 6th decimal place. How wrong he was! And since then, the notion of diminishing returns has been refuted by the practice of research supported by government, the private sector (non-profits) and industry.
At one point, CRISPER-Cas systems were just curiousities in some bacteria. Look what's happened as knowledge has grown. Look what's happened as sequencing technologies have continued to advance, i.e., as knowledge has grown. Of just thousands of advances, many revolutionary or transformative, I'll simply note that the risks of amniocentesis are no longer necessary, since fetal DNA can now be easily harvested and probed. The discoveries and value of increasing knowledge have been mind-boggling and saved countless lives.
When Tom Brock discovered Thermus aquatics in a Yellowstone hot spring in 1969, who knew that that contribution would lead to Kary Mullis' innovations of PCR in 1983, a Nobel in 1993 and a global biotech industry worth many billions that continues to advance knowledge and build value (e.g., the human genome, bioengineering, CRISPER-Cas, on and on).
In the context of meteorology. the possibility of explaining 80% of a given phenomenon by 20% of the causes doesn't necessarily say anything about the value of the remaining 20% of the effects. Aside from the fallacy of generalization, Rev. Beaver provided no examples- zero- to show that the cost of a given level of forecast exceeds the value provided. He provided no rationale that Americans who have to deal with extreme weather should face more risks than Europeans or Japanese. Instead, he took the astonishingly presumptuous position that the "people" can do with "close enough". Of course, he later tried to make the prepostrous claim that he only speaks for himself. Right.
If you or the Rev. Beaver can provide specific examples of the diminishing returns of increasing scientific inquiry, or inquiry in the social sciences and humanites, I'd be happy to consider them. If you can show that industry in general is decreasing support for research due to diminishing returns, I'd be happy to see the examples. Just as an aside, note that pharma funding for basic research rose from $3B to $8.1B from 2008-2014, 6-yr period during which were recovering from the recession. Why did they invest? Diminishing returns?
Please also provide the specific examples of diminishing returns related to meteorological forecasting. Maybe you can contact NASA, NOAA, FAA and the commercial airlines to help you find them.
Pareto's ideas certainly have their place. A specious apologia for Trump isn't one of them.
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JT McQuitty Let me add an additional thought or two for you last points. The "body politic" has made no decision about meterological accuracy. It hasn't been given that choice or even presented with a discussion about the issue. As you also know, politicians rarely talk about detailed budgets, policies and consequences and voters don't make decisions based on such details.
A perfect example is the ACA. You might argue that the "body politic" voted for repeal or repeal and replace, but when push came to shove, and that body figured out what repeal and replace meant, it objected loudly, clearly and with a majority opinion.
At this point, it would be false to claim that the electorate prefers greater risk and less expense when the subject has been barely discussed. The editorial doesn't even present a dollar figure for costs or benefits. What it points out is that the administration's antipathy to climate science is driving its cuts in the meteorology that affects lives on a daily basis. It's not a matter of cost/benefit, it's ignorance.
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JT McQuitty Beware that in the King tomes that follow your comment, King, for his purposes, takes my words out of context. My words: "Thus, in the work to comprehend there are diminishing returns as understanding increases. Europeans and others seem to have a propensity for perfection."
·
Phil Beaver - I think you meant "diminishing marginal returns" and in this context might better have specified so. Common parlance even among economists is admittedly "law of diminishing returns" as shorthand for "law of diminishing marginal returns" so your phrasing is understandable, but sometimes it's better to specify every little thing.
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Phil Beaver I didn't take your words out of context Beaver. As usual, your words are confused and rambling, but you also made your context clear. You followed the sentence I quoted immediately by speaking for what the "people" need. Do you recall that? "Close enough" is what you said they need. Of course, in typical Beaverian style, you don't bother to specify what that means, because when it comes to meteorology and forecasting extreme events, you actually have no idea what you are talking about.
But let's be frank Beaver withour your new dissembling. You tried to claim diminishing returns as knowledge/understanding increases, plain and simple, and that is bs. Neither you nor McQuitty have justified your claim with specific examples. If you can't present them, then you have engaged in yet another fallacious argument that boils down to nothing more than your routine kvetching about The Advocate and your hypocritical fawning over Trump.
For someone who babbles extensively, I find it humorously ironic (and hypocritical?) that you referred to my "tomes." In responding to you, I invoke Brandolini’s law (also known as the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle): "the amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it."
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GM King Under the weather forecasting that existed when I moved to BR five decades ago, yesterday I would have moved everything that is outdoors into the garage to prepare for Nate.
With today's forecasting, I did not even take the glass tops off the patio furniture outside the kitchen. I've done that three times this spring and summer for heavy rainstorms. I’m satisfied with the weatherman’s work and know he will continue to improve at a viable pace.
My satisfaction with my experience and reluctance to seek perfection raises great alarm for you. You raise a mountain of complaints and challenge me to address them. I could not care less about your concerns nor would spend a whit to resolve them. I am a fellow citizen and nothing more.
As for your trashy characterizations of me, I consider them a reflection of you yet hope for a better fellow-citizen. However, I know I don’t always get what I want. (Reminds me of a Trump campaign song.)
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Phil Beaver Hilarious Rev. Beaver. I refuted what you had to say about diminishing returns and knowledege. You have no reply. Instead, you now duck into nonsense about BTR weather, and not surprisingly you create a contradiction: you know the "weatherman" will "continue to improve at a viable pace" (whatever that actually means), but you don't want to pay for it!! And it doesn't even occur to you that setting forecasting accuracy aside, your ability to communicate with the world has been dramatically transformed over the last 50 years by guess what, increasing knowledge! Other than the a...See More
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Charles Kane Touché! The Rev. Beaver is in full bumble today.
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GM King I'm just glad you did not call me an empty wheelbarrow. That would simply crush me!
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Phil Beaver Oh my! Rev. Beaver... why I would never apply to you a misnomer like "empty wheelbarrow." It just doesn't fit at all. You're not an empty wheelbarrow, you're carrying around a full load of your own BS along with a load of crap from Trump. Lesser souls would struggle with the burden, but not you! Well done Rev. Beaver!
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GM King This morning I wondered how a person could behave so inhumanely toward a fellow-citizen’s opinion and attention to press-biases he deems harmful (yet holds atheism a leap of faith he cannot take and therefore does not dismiss any peaceful person’s religious faith).
I thought of those especially egregious college professors who carry their arrogance toward students into the public arena. I went wandering about LSU googles. I discovered Gary M. King at youtube.com/watch?v=iMUePlSNXEY , March 2016. I neither know him nor have opinion about him.
King’s talk of CO-eating bugs (if I may use a layman’s term) reminded me of 1999 meetings with Ralph Portier, LSU. Together, we proposed research to find a bug that would eat Lindane! Portier seems not pedantic, boring, and humorless. In fact, I recall him a friend, neighbor, and fellow citizen.
I wonder what GM King is. Alien? Enemy? What does he say he is?
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Phil Beaver - Just a suggestion - try sticking (in this case) with the economics and science and leave politics and the _Advocate_ out of it. I am no authority but my default is to attribute error to incompetence rather than to mendacity.
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Phil Beaver Oh, now Beaver. Have you decided to engage in ad hominem yourself? Well why not? You actually do so quite a lot with your generalizations about others. You're just hypocritical about it.
I'm glad you found my TED talk though. I hope you enjoyed it. Send me the link to yours. Here's a link to one of the pubs describing the work: http://www.pnas.org/content/112/14/4465.long Send me links to your pubs please.
So you proposed a lindane degrader did you? Well, how impressive. Too bad you were over 30 years late. Microbial degradation of lindane was very old news in 1999.
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Phil Beaver I know Ralph. Obsolete isn't the point; that you would even raise it as a diversion is telling. Go back and read again. The point was that in 1999 "your" proposal was already 30 years behind the times. I won't speculate on what drove you to mention it.
You have yet to provide documentation for your original claims or any since. Go ahead. We're all waiting.
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It's good for a person to know his or her limitations. I am no candidate for a TED talk. I'd need a couple years at Toastmasters' or the Dale Carnegie course to catch up to TED delivery.
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JT McQuitty I appreciate your suggestion.
However, it's much like not speaking out against the imposition of religion onto the struggle for civic justice. Unless the people address the problem, religion will continue to bemuse and control the people. (That's Chapter XI Machiavellianism, expressed 500 years ago; so I search for new vocabulary and framework to reiterate what is known.) Religion is a private pursuit. Who will attend a civic meeting that is scheduled to debate their religious beliefs?
And the question of a free and responsible press is not mine. See archive.org/details/freeandresponsib029216mbp . I was assigned this book in Jack Hamilton's wonderful course, "Principles and Philosophy of Mass Communication," at LSU, about 1999 or 2000.
Also, I objected to The Advocate's misrepresentation of my letter in the caption. I said, "You are preventing my freedom of expression." The response was, I recall, "You are subject to freedom of the press."
Lastly, I pay my full subscription to The Advocate and write to express my views. Some people are willing to collaborate. Others prefer to attack either my opinion, my persona, or both. When people attack, I learn.
There are dated acknowledgements ending my library presentations. Entries with first name only include some who want no association with my work. They told me not to identify them, but they cannot prevent my appreciation for what I learned from them.
In other words, I write to learn.
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Phil Beaver More diversion. More fallacy. Neither Dale Carnegie nor Toastmasters can help with the idea salads your create in your mental cuisinart.
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GM King A lay person like me often thinks by analogy, and my mind related the carbon monoxide eating bug from Utah to the lindane eating bug we proposed to develop here in 1999.
Further, I recall reading the timeline of biological evolution on earth, beginning 4 billion years ago when the first prokaryotic cell emerged. When I read this out of my field book, I barely glimpsed the meaning: Swimme & Berry, “The Universe Story,” 1992.
Given what is disclosed in that book, and considering the competition for public dollars, I would choose studies of how to get citizens and the press to adopt responsible and free expressions long before improvement of weather reporting. The Pareto principle should be reported until the public understands. Studies of CO eating bugs from Utah would not be on my radar. “Earth’s Next Chapter.” Kidding, right?
Rev. Beaver? Check “mysticism,” second definition on Merriam-Webster online. merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mysticism. I oppose the use of “Rev. Beaver,” to refer to me.
To JT McQuitty:
Thank you, as always.
At journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/500771?journalCode=ajs
I read in Preda’s book review that Foray, “emphasizes the dual character of
knowledge (explicit and tacit), its personalization, its inseparability from
social relationships, and the importance of learning processes.”
Preda’s assessment serves as a good juxtaposition to my
theory: knowledge involves fact and imagination; fact is impersonal; justice is
based on fact and society is based on imagination; regardless of process the
object of learning is the-objective-truth. The-objective-truth yields to no
human construct, even the knowledge-based economy.
I doubt I will read Foray’s book, free at archive.org/stream/ForayD.EconomicsOfKnowledge/Foray%20D.%20Economics%20of%20knowledge_djvu.txt,
valuable as it seems.
Today’s thought,
G.E. Dean (Matthew 7:12, CJB)
"Always treat others as
you would like them to treat you; that sums up the teaching of the Torah and
the Prophets.”
Dean says “Be kind. Be thoughtful. Be thankful. Love others.”
Readers ought to be aware that the above ideas are
egocentric---consider not how the other person wants to be treated. But letting
the other dictate your actions is not always wise, either.
Addressing Dean’s list, I offer: Be neutral. Respect independence.
Be humble. Appreciate peaceful people. Beyond Dean’s ideas, offering tolerance requires
pride, and passion often equates to tyranny. In collaborating to conform to the-objective-truth,
humility a powerful.
For an apology respecting the rule as a description see iep.utm.edu/goldrule/
.
Letters
Court reform (Shea) (theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/letters/article_9ad65856-a9ed-11e7-9db7-b35f6be3570e.html)
I have no
sympathy for Shea’s peeve.
A free and
responsible press may inform willing people about judicial biases in order to fulfill
its obligations to the people.
The people may
reform the judicial system so as to establish the quest for the-objective-truth
rather than dominant opinion. For example, Supreme Court opinion is established
by majority opinion among a committee of nine. And typical judicial opinions
are based on an opinion-leviathan rather than the-objective-truth.
Gun insurance (Smith)
theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/letters/article_9c8a0154-aa0e-11e7-8d7f-c7d1275f404a.html)
Owning guns
for protection IS insurance. I pay that expense
and have other means of protection as well.
Licensed
carriers are paying capital expense, personal time, and risk that contributes
to comprehensive safety and security.
Columns. (The
fiction/non-fiction comments gallery for readers)
Gerrymandering (Michael Barone)
(theadvocate.com/new_orleans/opinion/james_gill/article_c953f4b4-a857-11e7-bb88-ffb09968d7f0.html)
I advocate responsible, personal independence as human
beings.
This column begins with the question of apportioning the
House of Representatives. See
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_congressional_apportionment. With 325
million people and 435 representatives, there’s an average of 750,000 people
per representative. However, each state gets at least one representative, so
the population apportionment applies to only 385 seats. Through a complicated
formula, California has 53 seats for 39.25 million people or 740.000 people per
representative. Wyoming, with 1 representative had 585,000 people per
representative. For Louisiana, its 780,000 people per representative.
Louisiana gerrymandering is shown graphically at
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana%27s_congressional_districts#Current_districts_and_representatives.
Number of voters in each district is shown on individual pages at
ballotpedia.org/Louisiana%27s_6th_Congressional_District, for example.
Populations range from 758,000 to 768,000, pretty close. White population
percentages range from 61% to 80% in five districts and is 30% in District 2.
District 2 may appear “packed” by Districts 1 and 6, but practically, the population
rule defines District 2. That may be one of Barone’s points.
Barone writes about “demographic clustering,” but equates it
to democratic voters tending to segregate as urbanites.
One solution to this problem is personal independence. In
other words, citizens think of themselves first as human beings who are willing
to establish civic morality, then as members of responsible associations and
societies, such as races, churches, parties, etc.. Thereby, voting types may
distribute throughout the state.
Shootings ratio (Walter Williams)
creators.com/read/walter-williams/10/17/blacks-vs-police
In the worst case, Williams’s data may indicate
in Chicago so far this year 2 police shootings of blacks versus 533 murders.
“Many Americans, including me, see the black
NFL player protest of police brutality as pathetic, useless showboating.”
Williams cites seven decades' decline of the
black American community. I recall NFL players just a couple years ago
volunteering for communities. Perhaps they have made themselves victims of
Alkinsky-Marxist organization (AMO), for example, OFA --- a movement that seeks
conflict for chaos, with no respect for AMO soldiers, even NFL millionaires.
Phil Beaver does not “know”
the-indisputable-facts. He trusts and is committed to the-objective-truth of which
most is undiscovered and some is understood. He is agent for A Civic People of
the United States, a Louisiana, education non-profit corporation. See online at
promotethepreamble.blogspot.com.
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