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Hard to take the Aussie Pie Guy (or Resourcecode Media Inc.) seriously

Nov 17th, 2024
by Craig.
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In Vancouver there is a company called Aussie Pie Guy. I have to admit, I like their pies. I haven’t tried them all, but the Trifecta Pie is pretty darn tasty. I recommend them.

But their website makes me want to chunder.

Take a look at the screenshot below. How many spelling mistakes and other errors can you find in the four sentences? By my count there are five!:

  • “favorite” –> favourite
  • “savory” –> savoury (x2)
  • “flavor” –> flavour
  • “aussie” –> Aussie (it’s a proper noun)

They claim to produce “Australian-themed … pies” in Canada, both of which are Commonwealth countries that (for the most part) use British English, not American English! At least the punctuation and grammar are passable. And I’ll give them the capitalisation error; I suppose it looks better from a marketing perspective if the lone word doesn’t clash or cause confusion with the name of their company.

But this website is apparently made by a company that bills themselves with the slogan, “Multi Language Website Design, Development and Translation“! Uh, yeah, sure! I speak French, passably, but I don’t claim that I’m bilingual and market myself as such to paying customers! But if you know my definition of the word “marketing“, you’ll understand.

Aussie Pie Guy website screenshot, 2024-11-16.

Aussie Pie Guy website screenshot, 2024-11-16

Posted in: Food, Opinion.
Tagged: · · · · · ·

America and communism

Nov 15th, 2024
by Craig.
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United Socialist States of America flag.

United Socialist States of America flag (Samdir3 CC BY-SA 3.0).

The way that Americans seem to have a penchant for labelling anyone they disagree with — particularly Republicans labelling Democrats — as “communist” has always troubled me. The problem is ignorance. A good friend of mine — a former resident of the United States — who is well educated in this area says that he won’t talk to anyone about communism unless they have read all of a reading list by authors such as Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, etc. I don’t remember the full list, but I myself have not met the prerequisite. Among them I vaguely recall “Das Kapital” by Karl Marx. At best I have read a number of excerpts of a few of the texts in my friend’s list from text books from a college political science course.

But today, in 2024, I am stunned by the extent to which right-leaning American politicians are siding with former communists, particularly one vladimir putin. You may have heard of him: he started the first war in Europe since the end of World War II in 1945 by sending Russian troops to invade Ukraine, troops that were immediately defeated in their push for Kyiv. The current American president-elect — donald trump — and his nominee for the cabinet position of Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, both (by all accounts) support putin, and trump claims that he plans to end the war within 24 hours of taking office, if not before! It is widely expected that he will do this by denying any further military assistance to Ukraine and twisting the arm of Volodymyr Zelenskyy (president of Ukraine) into ceding Ukrainian territory to putin.

To someone whose country’s west-leaning government was abandoned by the United States of America to the communist terrorists — supported by the Soviet Union and China — against which we fought in the 1970s, this actually shouldn’t be surprising. So welcome to the club, Mr. Zelenskyy, the club of people that have been fighting on the side of America and to bring the freedom of the West to your country, but in whose faces America has spat.

But is this really surprising behaviour by a president-elect who has nominated an anti-vaxxer as the Secretary of Health, and a suspected criminal as the Attorney General?!

Posted in: Opinion.
Tagged: · · · · · · · · · · · ·

OMG, I’m stunned

Nov 7th, 2024
by Craig.
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Tattered American flag.

Tattered American flag

Despite the supposed neck-and-neck polls, I didn’t think it was conceivable that a nation that bills itself as the smartest, richest and most successful could actually vote in a potential (probable?) dictator and an actual convicted felon. Under normal circumstances I’d say, “Thank the gods for term limits,” but that may be the smallest thing he will change, if predictions are correct. If I was Liz Cheney right now, I’d be very concerned for my safety.

But what I’m not surprised about is that Americans, once again, gave a female candidate the heave-ho. Other countries have been electing woman politicians as president and prime minister and whatnot for years, but America stubbornly refuses to join even the 20th century, never mind the 21st. Listen, I don’t think anyone should vote for a woman (or anyone else) just because of what she (or he) has between their legs but, my god, I just don’t get it. What is with these people?!

It’s actually a good thing that I am in the process of winding down my business, because it’s time I closed my accounts in that shithole, about-to-be-third-world country. That will make two Third World countries I’ve pulled out of this year! I have just a couple of months to whip around and visit what few friends I have there before I close the border to myself for at least four years.

Posted in: Opinion.
Tagged: · · · · ·

BC General Election 2024: Official results

Oct 29th, 2024
by Craig.
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Vote with an x.

Vote (cropped, Alan Cleaver CC BY 2.0).

The final results of the 19 October 2024 BC General Election are in, and the losers are the voters of British Columbia. Congratulations!

Wait, what? Oh, you were expecting that I was going to celebrate the winner?! Nope, with every election we have I become more and more convinced that the electoral system we use in this province and country was designed by morons. I mean, on the face of it, winner takes all just makes sense, right? You and your friends are deciding where to go for dinner. It has long been my contention that the bigger the group, the more likely it is that you’re all going to end up at White Spot in this part of the world. (Probably Wetherspoons in the UK.) White Spot is a good, run-of-the-mill, middle-of-the-road restaurant, with something to please just about everyone so, just as I said, the bigger the group the more likely it is that there are going to be people who reject a pizza place, a steak place, an “ethnic” place of one stripe or another, or whatever someone in the group will vote against. So someone in the group says, “What about White Spot?” “Yeah, OK, I guess,” grumbles just about everyone. The steak guy can get a half decent (but overdone) steak, the pizza guy can probably get a flatbread thing, the person who wanted something “ethnic” can probably get something resembling a curry or that has had some curry powder waved in its general direction, people can get burgers, and off you go. Ain’t majority rule great?!

Final 2024 BC general election voting results.

Final 2024 BC general election voting results

And so here in British Columbia the NDP have just squeaked by with a 47-seat majority, an absolute bare minimum majority required in a 93-seat house. (And already the Conservatives are promising to bring down the government! Way to read the room guys!) The 46 seats they had until the recounts were completed over the weekend — actually, they weren’t really recounts, they were the counting of mail-in, out-of-district and other miscellaneous ballots — was one seat short of the majority, and they would have required at least one MLA from another party to pass legislation.

Of course, the NDP are happy! Phew! We can get our agenda done! But the fact is that 55.13% of the province voted against the NDP, the majority of voters! (Sound familiar?! 56.73% voted against the Conservatives.) Don’t get me wrong, of the two main parties in the contest I’d far prefer the NDP to win over the Conservatives who, as I said in my earlier post, are led by a mentally and socially deficient anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist who would be premier of the province had the Conservatives won! So thank the gods that they didn’t win, but the issue I have is that everyone seems to think that a minority government is “bad”, when in actual fact a minority government is the absolute best we can possibly hope for in a first-past-the-post system, where it’s usually one dictatorship after another! If you’re using a system where the majority of voters do not get what they voted for, how can you possibly think that that’s the best possible voting system?!

But I’m farting into the wind, because BC voters have twice (or maybe it’s three times, I’ve lost count) rejected some kind of proportional representation system because the maths were “too hard”!

Initial 2024 BC general election voting results.

Initial 2024 BC general election voting results

Let me go back to my White Spot example. Based on my own experience I’m not a big fan of the various food-delivery services out there, but here’s a possible variation on the example I gave: The majority of the group would probably vote against White Spot, not because White Spot is crap (I do love some of their dishes, so I don’t want you to think I have a hate on for them), but because the steak guy would kill for a good steak, and the pizza guy really wants a meat-lover’s pizza right now, and someone really wants a good goat curry. So head for some venue where you can have fun and that will allow you to call in a food delivery, and order from the places that specialise in those foods and eat what you actually want! Maybe it sounds a bit too “pie in the sky”, but you all get to vote on what you want to eat and you all get what you want! In PR, if 40% vote for the NDP, 40% vote for the Conservatives, 10% vote for the Greens, and 10% vote for the Rhinoceros Party, that’s exactly how the seats are divvied up in the legislature (or parliament).

If a group of friends can come up with an arrangement that suits all of them for dinner for the evening, how can a province or country not come up with an electoral system that actually pleases all of the voters all of the time?! I’m not so stupid that I think I know better than Abraham Lincoln but, my god, just about anything has to be better than this farcical first-past-the-post system in which we find ourselves every election cycle where (in this case) 55.13% of the electorate get told to suck it up for another four years. That won’t end well when the revolution happens.

Posted in: Opinion.
Tagged: · · · ·

Abandon Harris ’24

Oct 19th, 2024
by Craig.
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Yesterday evening I watched a CBC news story that focused on ex-Palestinians (and Arabs in general) in Michigan who have mounted the “Abandon Harris ’24” campaign, which aims to ensure that Kamala Harris is not elected president of the United States in their election next month. I did a web search and it turns out that this is actually a national movement.

I am blown away by how short-sighted these people are. One Muslim woman said, “If the consequence is a trump presidency, so be it.” I wonder if she has thought this through. Given the incredibly anti-Islamic stands that trump has taken, and given the extent of his fascist statements about mass deportations and turning the United States military on its own citizens (naturalised and not) or “the enemy within”, what makes her so sure that she will not be on the first boat or plane of deportations if she helps him win?

Also in the piece a Muslim or Arab man was interviewed outside either a mosque or perhaps some sort of Islamic cultural centre. He was standing in front of a green awning marked, “WOMEN ENTRANCE”, and in the background was another green awning; there was no way to see what kind of entrance that one was, but I can only assume it was the “MAN ENTRANCE”. I’m well aware that Muslims don’t allow men and women to mix — just like other religions based on the stone-age teachings of one prophet or another — but this interview was obviously conducted in the “free” United States of America! I am an immigrant myself (just not to the United States, thank the gods and my parents) and if I had behaved the way these Palestinians are behaving — including fostering sex discrimination — I myself (and my family) would probably have been deported!

It is people like these — who bring their country’s problems with them when they emigrate/immigrate — that give us immigrants a bad name.

Posted in: Opinion.
Tagged: · · · · · · · · · ·

The Joy of Bank (or Getting Banked from Behind)

Oct 16th, 2024
by Craig.
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I was looking for something on my hard drive today, and found this. To be honest, I didn’t remember writing it, so I searched for it online. I didn’t find it, so I’ve come to the conclusion that I did indeed write it, just two years into my sixteen-year relationship with Stanbic Bank Zambia that I terminated (with extreme prejudice) at the end of last month. I was probably saving it for the blog/website that I plan to set up where I will document my sixteen years of torment.

Anyway, enjoy. It even made me chuckle fourteen years after I wrote it.

The Joy of Bank (or Getting Banked from Behind)

By, I.M. Banked, 31 August 2010

The joys of banking (and, by corollary, being banked) are greatly underrated by the general public. I personally experience the joys of being banked by Stanbic on a regular basis. It’s a match made in heaven, because clearly Stanbic enjoys banking me. We often spend hours engaging in phone bank when the banking I usually get via the Internet has gone soft. But sometimes we get together in person, and it doesn’t take an overactive imagination to figure out what position I, as the submissive customer, am required to assume by my banking master.

While I do enjoying the banking I get from Stanbic, I often find myself wondering if I could get banked by another institution. Well, I know I could (bankers have a certain reputation), but will the bank be better? Will the banker whisper sweet nothings in my balance before banking me? One of the things I enjoy most in my relationship with Stanbic is the unpredictability of the withdrawal — will it be an early withdrawal, or will it be late? If things become too predictable, I worry that I’ll become bored with having my monthly banking on the same date and in the same quantity each month. Sometimes I just love the excitement of finding that I’ve been banked earlier in the month than usual, leaving me with not enough to give my other bankers.

Something else I particularly enjoy is being passed from banker to banker, while they laugh and promise me that the next banker will give me the banking that I’m really looking for. I must admit; sometimes I get my hopes up, thinking that the next banker will have a bigger tool with which he (or she) might quench my thirst for customer satisfaction. But while I do so enjoy this particular fetish, I am often disappointed, finding that the next banker’s resolve isn’t as stiff as it had appeared at first. Sometimes though the resolve is certainly quite rigid and inflexible — priapic even — but in those cases the banker turns to his own onanistic needs and I am left wanting yet again.

Back in January I confided in one of my bankers that some of his friends — other bankers — were violating me as I slept, making non-consensual (sometimes simultaneous) transactions. In the nine months since, many promises have been made by my banker that these unwanted acts of bank would be dealt with, but the unsolicited banking I’m receiving continues unabated. Sometimes I despair, telling myself that this is the kind of banking over that we must expect in Africa; yet I hold desperately to the words of my banker: “[W]e take pride in being part of a large banking group rooted in Africa but reaching out to all corners of the world.” I yearn for the day when a more considerate banker in another corner of our round world might teach my banker how to bank me more tenderly, more considerately, and with due regard to my bottom line. These considerate bankers realise that communication is paramount, and my needs are important too.

If you too like to be banked, I’m happy to tell you that my relationship with Stanbic is not monogamous. While I engage in bank with only a few bankers, Stanbic are quite happy to bank anyone willing to walk through their doors with a reference letter and the appropriate stack of documentation. Come on down and join the party. We can all be banked together!

I think I may have had an obvious point in the “nine months” to which I referred, but I clearly didn’t carry on with it and I don’t remember what it may have been now. And despite the 2010 date on it, I can enthusiastically report that Stanbic are completely and totally banking their customers to this day in 2024! This is why I have dumped their sorry arses; I wasn’t happy with being banked any more.

Posted in: Humour.
Tagged: · · · ·

I just wasted my vote in the 2024 British Columbia provincial general election

Oct 13th, 2024
by Craig.
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Vote with an x.

Vote (cropped, Alan Cleaver CC BY 2.0).

Yesterday I went to the District Electoral Office in my area and voted in an advance poll. I did it there and early because I expected an issue with my ID, but thankfully I didn’t have one. (At least that part of the provincial government was working properly, as opposed to the part responsible for my ID.) Anyway, since we’re still using the FPTP voting system inherited from middle ages England, I knew that my vote would be wasted because I voted for the Green Party headed by Sonia Furstenau instead of one of the two main parties, one of which is headed by a mentally and socially deficient anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist.

But oh well. I’ll just consider myself on the vanguard of proportional representation in a province that has its head buried firmly in its ass, having rejected PR in two referenda!

Posted in: Opinion.
Tagged: · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·

London Drugs have lost all credibility … and my business

Sep 26th, 2024
by Craig.
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London Drugs logo.It is ironic, and coincidental, that my last post — six months ago — was about London Drugs, and now it is again!

Anyone who lives in this area knows London Drugs. They’ve been around for decades, almost a century actually. They were a great place to get all sorts of stuff except your meat and vegetables, but especially electronics, foreign (especially British) chocolate bars and candies and (in the old days) get your film developed and photographs printed. But like I said in my last post, NO MORE! I considered my issue with their sub-par passport photos to be a one-off, niche problem that could easily be avoided, and I still planned to (and did) patronise them for other goods. Until yesterday.

Until 2019 I had my drug prescriptions with London Drugs, since they were almost right next door to me, but in that year I moved and there wasn’t a London Drugs near me so I transferred my prescriptions to a nearby Shoppers Drug Mart. Then I moved again, and the situation with the proximity of LD and Shoppers was the same.

Then this year it turned out that Shoppers and Loblaws were mistreating their pharmacists and over-billing the Ontario government. I’m not a big fan of dishonesty, theft and slavery, so I decided that I’d move back to London Drugs, despite the extra drive. Yesterday I went to LD to do just that, and fill a new prescription. After several minutes of the LD employee typing out my biography on her computer, she then informed me that my prescription would be ready in an hour and a half! Excuse me?! Did you say an hour and a half?! At Shoppers I generally have to wait ten minutes, if that, and in that time I usually wander around the store and pick up a chocolate bar or two, so their making me wait for just a few minutes is actually good (ironically) for their business! I don’t expect instant service, but come on, ten minutes isn’t a big deal but ninety minutes is!

So I told this LD employee all of that, and she claimed that the pharmacist was busy and that the best they could do was an hour. So I took back my prescription and said I would return to Shoppers and get it filled there. Which I did, only to have Shoppers — the same Shoppers I’ve been using for the last year and which previously filled prescriptions in ten minutes — tell me it would take half an hour! By this time, of course, I’m done fighting The System for the day, so I said, “Whatever. I’ll probably be back tomorrow, or next week.” I then left.

So I’m still unhappy with SDM, but I’ll look into other alternatives for my next prescription. (I think there’s a Pharmasave in the area.) But now I’m done with London Drugs completely. I even gave away an LD gift card I had until a few minutes ago. I don’t know about anyone else, but I don’t like to make two trips to accomplish one activity, especially when I’m burning fuel to do so! If all their fucking surveys and consumer focus groups don’t tell them that, then they deserve to go out of business!

This is the problem with reading/watching/listening to the news. If I didn’t, I’d have never known about the Shoppers/Loblaws dishonesty and I’d still be dealing with them.

Here’s more information about the way Loblaws/Shoppers are treating pharmacists and scamming taxpayers, from Wikipedia as of today:

In 2024, Shoppers Drug Mart was criticized for enacting sales quotas on pharmacists for MedsCheck, a government sponsored program in Ontario. MedsCheck reimburses healthcare providers for medication reviews, allowing for a maximum billing of $75 per patient, which led to the profitability of enacting sales targets. CBC News reported that approximately 1.4 million dollars was billed to the province for a week in February 2024. A class action lawsuit was filed against the company in regards to these quotas.

And here’s a full list of Loblaws’ stores — just in case, you know, you thought you should stop doing business with less honest companies — also from Wikipedia:

    • Dominion Stores
    • Extra Foods
    • Fortinos
    • Freshmart
    • Maxi
    • No Frills
    • No Name
    • President’s Choice
    • President’s Choice Financial
    • Provigo
    • Real Atlantic Superstore
    • Real Canadian Liquorstore
    • Real Canadian Superstore
    • Shoppers Drug Mart / Pharmaprix
    • SuperValu
    • T&T Supermarket
    • Valu-mart
    • Your Independent Grocer
    • Zehrs Markets

And here’s information about a May 2024 boycott of Loblaws, and other Loblaw controversies, including taking millions of dollars from the federal government … while, of course, not lowering prices but continuing to pad executive salaries!

Posted in: Opinion.
Tagged: · · ·

IDstation and London Drugs passport photos

Mar 8th, 2024
by Craig.
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IDstation logo.

IDstation logo

I have had passport photos taken at London Drugs for years, but no more.

Turns out they are an agent of IDstation, to whom I was referred by the passport agency of one of the countries of which I am a citizen, who are advanced enough (unlike Canada) to take passport applications online. Great! So off I go to the nearest London Drugs to get my picture taken.

After waiting in line for a while I was finally served. I stated my reason for being there and confirmed that they used the IDstation service/system. They did, and then there was a lot of faffing around while they — three of them! — consulted the passport-photo requirements for my country … because, you know, they’re all so different! (According to the blurb at digitalphotosystems.nl, “Photomatic software is being used on many systems all over the world for passport photos …. Photomatic software automatically processes any image into a perfect passport photo. … The passport photo is checked on all official requirements for passport photos, as specified by the ICAO …. The ICAO check is a very important part of the Photomatic software because it will make sure the passport photo will not be rejected when used in offical [sic] applications for a passport, driving license of Visa. [sic]”) They eventually determined that the passport authorities for a number of countries (including mine) had recently been rejecting their passport photos, so they only agreed to taking my picture if I agreed to waive their guarantee, about which you can read on their website. (No surprise there, considering how bad the photo was!) Being the idiot I am, and with no other reasonable choice given my time constraints that day, I agreed. I mean, how hard can it be to fuck up a passport photo?! The people who had their photos rejected probably did something wrong that I won’t do.

London Drugs passport photo receipt.

London Drugs passport photo receipt

But since they were refusing to give me their guarantee (see scan of London Drugs receipt, across the top of which is handwritten, “Xxxx passport online Not gaurenteed [sic]”), and since they were presumably more adept at taking photos for Canadian passports, I decided to get photos for my Canadian passport taken as well, since it also expires in the near future. Looking back at the two pictures now, they’re like night and day! The Canadian passport photos would almost certainly have been accepted by the other country, but said country doesn’t accept scanned pictures, only the original JPEGs.

Anyway, when I submitted the JPEG to the other country’s passport office they rejected it because the “camera was too close”. With the benefit of hindsight I can now see that, as the requirement on their website is, “The photo must capture your image from head to mid torso.” (The Canadian one does.) The photo that London Drugs took barely took in my neck! If someone who takes passport photos all day can’t detect that error immediately they should be fired!

On the IDstation website they have a “File a complaint” option. I suppose they must get a lot of complaints! The problem is that the free-text field where you are supposed to describe your complaint severely limits how much text you can type (I can assure you that this blog post is far longer than my complaint!), but it doesn’t tell you how many characters you are allowed to submit. So this was what I ended up submitting:

My passport picture was rejected by the Xxxx government because they claimed the camera was too close.

I have more information, but your system says my “description is too long”, so you’ll have to reply by email to get the full description.

How do I have the $25.46 I wasted returned? Hmm, I paid using my credit card, so I suppose charging it back is one option.

They replied thusly:

From: IDstation Online <idstationmail@digitalphotosystems.nl>
Subject: You have a new response to the Complaint number 12906
Date: Wed, 06 Mar 2024 21:28:27 +0000 (UTC)

Request number 12906

Dear customer,

You have a new response to your request from IDstation.Online. The response is as below:

I Suggest going back in store with the rejection letter. London Drugs will retake the photo and work with you on the issue.
Please do not reply to this email, it may not be tracked efficiently. To add any comments/response to your query, please click on the link below:

https://idstation.online/default/Support/AddNewResponse?queryID=12906&token=cNQgXSQ+3EgxMjkwNg==
The above link will be valid for 72 hrs.

Regards,
IDstation.Online
Navigate to FAQs (Sendgrid tracking link removed)

(I love the “Please do not reply to this email, it may not be tracked efficiently.” A complete load of bullshit. Either it will be received [and likely ignored] or it won’t be! Don’t give me this “may” crap.)

So I copied and pasted the link (because it was not a clickable link, as opposed to the tracked “Navigate to FAQs” link in their signature) but their system informed me, “An error occurred while processing your request.” I tried twice, both within about 24 hours. So I filed a new complaint as follows:

I received a response yesterday, but the response link provided failed. So I’m back here with your ridiculously short length limit. This is not going well for you in the public-relations department.

In that vein, I have decided not to bother returning to London Drugs to fight for my money. I will just focus my efforts on publicly discrediting both IDstation and London Drugs.

That’s all the space I have to explain my position! So long! See you in the court of public opinion!

That was 476 characters. My original attempt at this message was rejected as too long again because I had included the text of the error message (48 characters) their website gave me, so it seems their limit must be about 500 characters. Not sure how much useful information you can communicate in fewer than 500 characters, unless you’re just calling for “Help!” (4 characters, not including the exclamation point).

Ironically, in the Third World country where I’ll be travelling to, every bureaucrat wants a passport-style picture of you to attach to paperwork (the locals carry them around with their wads of cash), so I’ll use the four hard copies of my “digital” photo when I’m asked for one.

London Drugs logo.

London Drugs logo

Lesson learned: Take a list of the photo requirements and carefully inspect the photo against those requirements before you accept the photo. Don’t trust a gaggle of poorly trained amateurs/idiots to have a clue about what they are doing.

Posted in: Opinion, Travel.
Tagged: · · · ·

Nice music

Mar 5th, 2024
by Craig.
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Here are a couple of videos of Mitchell Cullen, who does a great job of playing two of my favourite instruments: the twelve-string guitar and the didgeridoo.

Enjoy!

Posted in: Music.
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