Kyiv, Ukraine, February 25th 2022. (via AP)
World population passed 8 billion, two years ahead of schedule despite the pandemic. Previous milestones:
- 1804: 1,000,000
- 1927: 2,000,000
- 1959: 3,000,000
- 1974: 4,000,000
- 1987: 5,000,000
- 1999: 6,000,000
- 2011: 7,000,000
War in Ukraine: Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th in an unprovoked attack. A cake walk for President Putin of Russia has turned into a quagmire thanks to his own arrogance and incompetence, Ukraine’s never-say-die courage, and Western arms. A nuclear showdown between the US and Russia has been avoided, but there is no end in sight as Ukraine now faces winter while Russia bombs its power plants to bits.
War in Ethiopia, the world’s second deadliest conflict of 2022, seems to be winding down, at least in the Tigray region where hundreds of thousands have died since 2020.
The covid-19 pandemic is not over but the worst seems to be over: in 2022 “only” 1.3 million died worldwide, bringing the total to 6.7 million. But with the end of China’s zero-covid policy in the wake of protests, as many as 1.5 million could die in just the next few months. Chinese vaccines are not as good as Western ones.
Will Smith briefly pushed both covid and the Ukraine war out of US headlines when he slapped Chris Rock at the Academy Awards.
Roe v Wade (1973) was overturned by the US Supreme Court – by judges who had publicly told us it was settled law. Until it wasn’t. Now it is up to each state to determine its own abortion laws.
Ketanji Jackson Brown became the first Black female judge on the US Supreme Court and the only Black judge on the court whose name is not Clarence Thomas.
Elon Musk bought Twitter. Like Putin in Ukraine, yet more arrogance and incompetence.
The Doomsday Clock is still at 100 seconds to midnight, the same as a year ago.
Global temperature average: 14.55°C in April (NOAA). That is 0.85°C above the average for the 1900s (13.7°C), and 0.06°C above last year.
Word of the Year: goblin mode (Oxford).
Time’s Person of the Year: Volodymyr Zelensky, president of Ukraine.
Top US R&B song: “About Damn Time” by Lizzo:
Top Hollywood film: in North America: “Top Gun: Maverick”:
World map:
De facto world map, October 2022. (reddit)
Top images (on Google Images):
the most beautiful woman: Jodie Comer:
the most gorgeous man: Robert Pattinson:
car: 2020 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray:
computer: HP Elite Desktop PC Computer Intel Core i5 3.1-GHz, 8 gb Ram, 1 TB Hard Drive, DVDRW, 19 Inch LCD Monitor, Keyboard, Mouse, Wireless WiFi, Windows 10 (Renewed). (price: $174.99)
phone: iPhone 14 Pro (from $999):
president: US President Joe Biden:
In memoriam: The Buffalo 10:
- Celestine Chaney, 65
- Roberta A. Drury, 32
- Andre Mackneil, 53
- Katherine Massey, 72
- Margus D. Morrison, 52
- Heyward Patterson, 67
- Aaron Salter, 55
- Geraldine Talley, 62
- Ruth Whitfield, 86
- Pearl Young, 77
Elizabeth II (Queen of England, 1952-2022), Benedict XVI (pope of the Catholic Church, 2005-13), Gorbachev (head of the Soviet Union, 1985-1991), Jose Eduardo dos Santos (president of Angola, 1979-2017), Shinzo Abe, Mahsa Amini, Sidney Poitier, Lani Guinier, Nichelle Nichols, Irene Cara, Olivia Newton-John, Ronnie Spector, Angela Lansbury, Anita Pointer (sister of Bonnie), Monica VItti (the 8th most beautiful White woman), Betty Davis (wife of Miles), Ivana Trump (wife of Donald), Kenneth Starr, Pele, Jerry Lee Lewis, Richard Leakey, Bernard Shaw (CNN), Coolio.
– Abagond, 2023.
See also:
Abagond 
Welcome back pal.
I’ll not comment directly to your suggested new topic of discussion but let me make a few remarks about your long disapearance from this space.
Just yesterday, after I saw your third postponement of the resumption of your activities in this blog, I thought to myself: “No way, this is not the disciplined guy that we learnt to know as our host. Something odd and probably uglier must be going on”. I was even thinking that if the promise of the last update were broken, I would put a message to others to warn them about the strange situation we were possibly in. Something as a answer to the last gro jo ‘s comment at the Programming note #46 thread:
“Maybe, just maybe is not about the thrill having been gone but the host himself not being with us anymore. Maybe we are in the midst of a sophisticated identity theft operation.”
And as I saw the text of the current new topic, I parsed it carefully to assure myself that this was really written by Abagond himself, that it has the signs of him. It seems to be the case, Gott sei Dank.
By the way, I’m not asking for further explanations about that long interregnum. I respect individual privacy and would even ask us all to not dwell at this and instead look at the discussions and topics that lie ahead in the future.
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@ Abagond
Welcome back, and I hope 2023 is a much better, gentler, happier year for you and for all of us.
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@ Munubantu
I understand your concerns, but in my humble opinion, I feel like a sophisticated identity-theft operation would have started in right away with forged posts. To me, the postponements actually seem more authentic.
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“War in Ukraine: Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th in an unprovoked attack. A cake walk for President Putin of Russia has turned into a quagmire thanks to his own arrogance and incompetence, Ukraine’s never-say-die courage, and Western arms. A nuclear showdown between the US and Russia has been avoided, but there is no end in sight as Ukraine now faces winter while Russia bombs its power plants to bits.”
Yep, it’s our genial host alright, Still parroting the bs from NYT. The attack on Ukraine was provoked when the president of Ukraine was kicked out by violent demonstrations led by fascists and a civil war started against the Russian speaking minorities in the east of Ukraine. Putin endured such attacks for eight years until he felt strong enough to do something about it. The war was inevitable, some argue he should have attacked in 2014, some say 2022 was the correct timing and others say he should have waited longer.
Your plucky little Ukraine is a figment of the cynical west, ready and willing to bleed Russia to the last Ukrainian. Since you’re too lazy to bother to get the other side of the story, let me do it for you.
We’ll start with Putin’s most recent speech and work our way back to his comment in 2007 where he let everyone know he wouldn’t live with an armed and hostile Ukraine.
The choice for Ukraine is disarm and adopt neutrality or vanish. Do you seriously doubt that Russia can’t achieve the latter?
Don’t be too sure this won’t go nuclear. In my opinion, the attacks on the Russian nuclear armament base in Engels, Russia is a dress rehearsal for the big show.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ina98-IN9k8)
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7bUHc4jAI0)
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQ58Yv6kP44)
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“Ketanji Jackson Brown became the first Black female judge on the US Supreme Court.”
With the amount of corporate media fanfare, her being married to a Caucasian man and other celebratory accolades that were continually repeated, you’d think that her vote held more value or somehow had more authority than others on the bench. Needless to say, nothing will change because her single vote is still a single vote!
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WB abagond. Hope you and your family are doing OK. In your absence, I learned that Solitaire was actually a woman (real or recently emerged I don’t know) who likes to post weird mermaid related stories or something.
Anyway, I could take issue with a few things you raised in this post, but yeah the big one is the proxy war with Russia we are in. Gro jo gets it right. Do you think in hindsight that our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan worked out well for us? for humanity? Did you swallow the MSM warmonger Kool-aid then as well? This conflict was anything but unprovoked. In fact, before hostilities started, Russia was practically begging the West to just agree that Ukraine won’t join NATO (the US had promised not to expand NATO Eastward when the Soviet Union fell, but they must have forgotten) and to stop bombing ethnic Russians in the Donbas. With a simple declaration to that effect, this could all have been avoided. Our leaders wanted a war with Russia, however. They want nothing less than regime change because Russia hasn’t bowed to globohomo.
The bigger picture of course is that Russia would take no action without the support of China. None of the BRICS countries voted to condemn Russian actions in the UN. Actually, other counties including Argentina, Iran and Saudi Arabia among others would like to join: https://www.silkroadbriefing.com/news/2022/11/09/the-new-candidate-countries-for-brics-expansion/.
The BRICS+, led by China (which is the ultimate target GAE wants to control), will have over half the world’s population and most of its economic growth. The US empire (also known as GAE) is fading, but our elite overlords cannot accept any diminution of their powers. So it’s a very dangerous time for the world right now.
2023 is a very ominous year. Besides being on the brink of a global financial crisis with record inflation caused in no small part by the $100B+ war spending, we could easily get into a nuclear conflict if we back Russia into a corner–or very possibly we are backed into a corner ourselves. The US military/CIA has shown they are very capable and willing to create false flags to escalate the conflict against the will of the American public. US proxies (apparently UK forces, based on leaked texts) blew up Nord Stream 2 to keep Germany fully in the war and then used their MSM propaganda to blame Russia for it (as if they had anything to gain from blowing up their own pipeline). The conventional war isn’t going as well for the US and their proxies as their propaganda would indicate (Ukraine forces have already been decimated, even as we send Ukraine the equivalent of almost 2x the annual Russian military budget) and there’s a good chance Russia launches a Winter offensive soon. How will the Evil Empire respond? We’ll see I guess.
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@ Biff
“In your absence, I learned that Solitaire was actually a woman”
What’s hysterical is you used to know that. Somewhere along the line you apparently forgot and decided I was a man.
I decided to let it go without comment but at the same time to answer/address everything truthfully, like the whole gay thing you interrogated me about. That’s why I kept LOLing whenever you said that you knew exactly where I was coming from. You can’t even keep my gender straight!
“real or recently emerged I don’t know”
I’ve been honest about being a woman since the very first comment I made on Abagond’s blog in 2015. I’ve made tons of comments relating to women’s history over the years. It’s never been a secret. I just didn’t feel obliged to correct your mistaken assumption, especially when I remembered that at one time you did in fact know I was a woman.
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Solitaire:
Oops. Well, as I recall, I took a break from this site for a while some years back–had lots going on then. You were one of many people I interacted with previously, but after coming back it seems like you were the almost the only one (a couple prominent Asian commenters seemingly left)–generally aggressive and always trying to have the last word. All I saw was the avatar (which admittedly you probably have no control over) and my default assumption is most people active in certain spheres are male. For instance, in online gaming, in many contexts most of the good players who identify as “female” are actually trans (i.e., genetically male). I recall you being secretive about your background (unwilling to divulge your ethnic background or age range). You also didn’t post a lot of mermaid type stuff previously that I was aware of. Anyway, won’t forget again I guess.
One thing I left out from my post above was the huge corruption involved with US support of Ukraine. Lots of money comes back to our esteemed lawmakers in various forms. Their defense industry donors definitely know the score. Ukrainian entities employing people like Hunter Biden and relatives of folks like Romney, Kerry and Pelosi (if I recall correctly) should be illegal, but apparently isn’t. Sam Bankman-Fried/FTX was involved in a lot of cooperative exercises with Ukraine. They support him and somehow he becomes the 2nd biggest donor to the Democrats last election cycle, while also donating lavishly to many influential Republicans. Efforts to have any supervision over what actually happens to the money (Zelensky’s wife had a massive Parisian shopping spree recently and Ukrainian officials are said to be buying up real estate in places like Switzerland) or weapons (many somehow wind up in the black market) that US tax payers are sending over are apparently seen as unnecessary distractions, since we must all focus on beating Russia at any cost!
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@ Biff
“I recall you being secretive about your background (unwilling to divulge your ethnic background or age range).”
This is from last May, less than a year ago:
“For the record, I myself am Gen X.”
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2022/05/21/abigail-shrier-irreversible-damage/#comment-591532
That was in response to your assumption that I among others was a boomer.
I have never given my exact age here, but I’ve narrowed it down before to within a couple years, give or take. All the demographic information you refer to in the quote above, if you’re that obsessed with me, you can find it in various comments on this website.
For real: There were times when you were assuming I was male, that I was concurrently having discussions on other threads here about issues related to being a cis woman. If you had even glanced through the comment feed, you would’ve had your eyes opened. It certainly was educational for me!
“my default assumption is most people active in certain spheres are male”
There’s a word for that.
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@ Abagond
It’s good to read your posts again.
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@ biff
The Silk Road Briefing article you referenced was more interesting than you let on.
Other countries interested in joining BRICS include:
Egypt, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Senegal and Thailand.
The inclusion of West African nations in BRICS is the stuff of nightmares for France and NATO.
They are desperately trying to hold on to those resource rich nations. Without them, the French economy would collapse and seriously weaken the EU/NATO groups.
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Why not just be satisfied that they are independent from France instead of getting greedy and asking for even more?
As the wise man Steve Perry said, “stop yourself before you fall, stop before you lose it all!”
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abagond:
By the way, since you are seemingly back to normal and setting ambitious goals for yourself this year, any chance you could do make up posts on some important stuff from 2022?
For instance:
Kanye West’s and Kyrie Irving’s comments/posts and the swift response from the establishment. Ye supposedly had his net worth decrease by about 99% in a matter of days or weeks and had his Jewish minder (fitness coach and former intelligence operative) explicitly threaten with having him committed again and not being able to see his kids again unless he recanted. Kyrie’s whole career was threatened to be blown up for reposting an informational video from a religious group that holds certain views that, for instance, many Muslims share. Is that kind of control cool with you guys?
Also, we found confirmation, through Musk’s Twitter drops and a slip from Zuckerberg in his Rogan interview, that the FBI/CIA were having weekly meetings with the major social media companies (with hundreds of people involved) to get them to censor anti-establishment views, including censoring all mentions of the Hunter Biden laptop (the fact that Hunter and dad were selling us out to countries like China, Ukraine and even Russia for tens of millions of dollars in kickbacks), which they knew to be legit and not Russian disinfo, before the 2020 election. Subsequent surveys have shown if the laptop contents had been reported on reasonably it would have easily changed the 2020 election result (assuming no additional fraud). Are people here comfortable with the unelected intelligence agencies controlling public opinion and choosing our leaders?
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“Are people here comfortable with the unelected intelligence agencies controlling public opinion and choosing our leaders?”
Don’t tell me you believed ‘public opinion’ was manipulated only in this instance? What do you think the advertising industry does? Never heard of a Noam Chomsky, Edward S. Herman book entitled “Manufacturing Consent”?
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gro jo:
Not saying public opinion isn’t manipulated in other ways, but I do think this is categorically different from advertising. Here the gov’t is using our tax dollars to fund this manipulation (without any knowledge of the public or legislative oversight) and actual suppression of important/publicly relevant news in the name of the State. Never read the referenced book, but sounds interesting.
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BTW, here is something wild re: the longstanding cooperation of the intelligence agencies with organized crime:
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3rhlXhvf-c)
It’s from a generally non-partisan source and is very eye opening.
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By the way, it looks like they followed through on threats to Kanye. No one here cares. Lolz!
https://www.crazydaysandnights.net/2023/01/blind-item-2_3.html?m=1
https://www.crazydaysandnights.net/2023/01/blind-item-4_0757860663.html?m=1
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Our esteemed host hasn’t written about current political events in many months. Hopefully, that will change at some point. However, I don’t expect he’d write about Joe Biden’s classified docs scandal, unless it was on the verge of taking Biden down. We’re not there yet (though things are moving fast). Here’s a hot take on the story–it’s fishy, seems inorganic and planted. The MSM completely ignored recent confirmation that the intelligence agencies censored info they knew to be true to change the result of a presidential election, but now they pretend to care a lot about some mystery docs stashed in Joe Biden’s garage. More and more docs mysteriously get found now, 6+ years after Joe Biden ceased to be VP.
The smart take is that powerful people on the left need to make sure Joe doesn’t attempt to run for 2024 and want to DQ him now (though note that they held onto this story till the 2022 election had fully played out, though they had the info beforehand). They choose to take Biden out for this random confidential document violation (which conveniently enables them to say Trump did the same thing and shouldn’t be allowed to run in 2024 either–though as president he had declassification privilege Biden never had as VP), rather than for his taking huge payoffs from China, Ukraine and Russia, which would be a lot more inconvenient for them–similar to how they took down Cuomo for supposed sexual harassment, rather than the fact that he was responsible for 1000s of nursing home deaths through his irresponsible Covid policies.
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” on Tue Jan 10th 2023 at 17:48:47
biff
By the way, it looks like they followed through on threats to Kanye. No one here cares. Lolz!
https://www.crazydaysandnights.net/2023/01/blind-item-2_3.html?m=1
https://www.crazydaysandnights.net/2023/01/blind-item-4_0757860663.html?m=1”
No one cares because your news source is bs. Ye ‘disappeared’ in the delectable Bianca Censori’s cavernous muff: “Kanye West Reportedly Married Yeezy Designer Bianca Censori: Inside Their Rumored Wedding”. Of course, this news could be as bogus as your source’s. Don’t stop caring. Lol!
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“The smart take is that powerful people on the left need to make sure Joe doesn’t attempt to run for 2024 and want to DQ him now (though note that they held onto this story till the 2022 election had fully played out, though they had the info beforehand). They choose to take Biden out for this random confidential document violation (which conveniently enables them to say Trump did the same thing and shouldn’t be allowed to run in 2024 either–though as president he had declassification privilege Biden never had as VP), rather than for his taking huge payoffs from China, Ukraine and Russia, which would be a lot more inconvenient for them–similar to how they took down Cuomo for supposed sexual harassment, rather than the fact that he was responsible for 1000s of nursing home deaths through his irresponsible Covid policies.”
They (the “They” who disappeared Ye?) say a broken clock tell the time twice daily. I believe you are on point here, minus the China, Russia, Ukraine bribe stuff. Joe can’t tell what he did an hour ago, how the hell is he going to remember what he did with pieces of paper six years ago?
“Our esteemed host hasn’t written about current political events in many months. Hopefully, that will change at some point. However, I don’t expect he’d write about Joe Biden’s classified docs scandal, unless it was on the verge of taking Biden down. We’re not there yet (though things are moving fast).”
Your guys have the numbers in Congress for such feat?
” The MSM completely ignored recent confirmation that the intelligence agencies censored info they knew to be true to change the result of a presidential election, but now they pretend to care a lot about some mystery docs stashed in Joe Biden’s garage.”
Says who? According to you Trump’s victory was assured if the facts came out? The 3 million who voted for Biden would have switched to Trump if they only knew, most of them weren’t sick of his act and wanted him yanked off the stage?
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Gro jo,
CDAN isn’t a rightwing site. It’s a Hollywood gossip site with a lot of crazy stuff that turns out to be legit. Of course, not all of it does. However, Ye getting remarried (if indeed he did) seems like a good way to take his mind off of.. other things. So yeah I don’t see that as being incompatible with him being “corrected”.
Gro jo, the MSM no longer actively disputes that the Hunter Biden laptop contents are real. See, e.g.: https://nypost.com/2022/11/21/cbs-confirms-hunter-biden-laptop-is-real-769-days-after-post-broke-story/. They just try to ignore it. Maybe you missed all of that. The docs clearly reveal (and reputable third parties, including interviews with Tony Bobulinski you could find if you wanted to, have corroborated accuracy) that Hunter Biden was selling his dad’s political influence to the aforementioned countries, most notably China, for huge sums and that “the big guy” was getting his cut. More recently, UPenn mysteriously receives massive anonymous Chinese donations after they set up the Biden Center (with Biden getting payoffs from UPenn around the same time). See, e.g., https://nypost.com/2023/01/11/penn-biden-center-is-dark-money-nightmare-patronage-mill/
You are willing to recognize the truth about the Ukraine war and all the official corruption that entails. Why would you not believe the Bidens sold us out for tens of millions in kickbacks, just cause you hated Trump and voted for Biden instead? They’ve done surveys and the number of people who say they wouldn’t have voted for Biden if it was publicized in the MSM (not just right leaning sites) that he was taking massive payoffs from China and others is well above the very slim amount that would have been needed to change the election result.
I don’t believe the plan at this time is to successfully impeach Biden (most Republicans don’t really want Kamala instead), but rather to prevent him from starting a 2024 campaign. However, things are moving fast, and Biden clearly has enemies on the left, as noted above, so if there’s bipartisan support to dump Biden, I wouldn’t be shocked.
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nypost.com is Fox News in print. I admire your capacity not to stray too far from the mother ship. Has it escaped your notice that China and Russia have nothing to show for their alleged investments in the Biden family? As Trump’s troubles showed, the presidency is a collective institution, not a one man show.
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“CDAN isn’t a rightwing site. It’s a Hollywood gossip site with a lot of crazy stuff that turns out to be legit. Of course, not all of it does. However, Ye getting remarried (if indeed he did) seems like a good way to take his mind off of.. other things. So yeah I don’t see that as being incompatible with him being “corrected”.”
If Ms. Censori is ‘correction’, where do I sign up for it?
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gro jo,
The whole point is that the non-right wing MSM has tried to ignore the laptop, but it seems only cites from them will satisfy you. The initial article stated: “Most news outlets ignored the laptop’s contents until recently. CBS’s report follows belated verification of the laptop in March by the Washington Post and New York Times,” with embedded links. You can check those out and see if the nypost is lying here. Maybe you can get a cut of the huge libel case you think CBS, etc. have.
China is the major known influence buying party, followed by Ukraine. They’ve been doing just fine with Biden–Ukraine has gotten promises of $100B+ in the last year and the US just not changing favorable trade policies with China (the way Trump did) is worth many billions for them as well.
Become a decent looking, relatively young billionaire (such that even if they take 99% of your wealth you are still comfortably a multimillionaire) and music superstar with 30 million followers and the Ms. Censori types will come to you. You won’t have to look for them.
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” You can check those out and see if the nypost is lying here.” Not my thing to buttress your arguments for you.
“China is the major known influence buying party, followed by Ukraine. They’ve been doing just fine with Biden–Ukraine has gotten promises of $100B+ in the last year and the US just not changing favorable trade policies with China (the way Trump did) is worth many billions for them as well.”
I know you’re putting me on because your comment indicates you’ve not heard of Obama’s “Pivot to Asia” policy. A change that aimed to challenge China and Russia because they are deemed to be too powerful. The hostility toward China predates Trump. The only thing Trump can be credited for was his belligerent rhetoric.
“Become a decent looking, relatively young billionaire (such that even if they take 99% of your wealth you are still comfortably a multimillionaire) and music superstar with 30 million followers and the Ms. Censori types will come to you. You won’t have to look for them.”
In other words, Ye is condemned to a life of privilege. Truly awful.
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