Randomness to the Third Degree @listensmileandnod - Tumblr Blog

btw if youre young and scared of doing adult things without your parents ive learned that like 90% of the time you can just tell the doctors office or the dmv "haha sorry ive never done this without help before... can you show me how to do this?" the employee will not care. if that means anything to you

jabberwock33

literally walked up to a desk in the courthouse, said "is this where I register a car or is it the next one?" and she said it was the next one. and the lady at the next desk helped me. it feels embarrassing but I promise you can just ask

aspiringwarriorlibrarian

One of the most important lessons I learned in customer service is that no matter how much help you need, as long as you're nice about it, you won't even crack the top five of worst customers they've had to deal with that day. I will walk an old lady through every step on that pin pad with a smile as long as she's polite, because two calls ago I had to deal with someone screaming about politics for 45 fucking minutes because I wasn't allowed to hang up on him.

Everyone has their first time doing something, everyone makes mistakes, everyone has dumb moments, and as long as you're choosing kindness I'll just laugh it off and help out. Because no matter how dumb you think you are, there was already someone who was just as dumb but was determined to ruin my day over it.

stella-draws-things

rowark

(X)

goomymegpoid

I wish this feeling upon everyone who wants to wear a dress, its really the best

ghostlynblm

this makes me so happy as a fat hairy guy who likes skirts and dresses i never get to see guys like me in dresses it’s always skinny twinks this makes me so happy 🥺🥺

silvermoon424

UNFATHOMABLY based hive mother. Let's pour one out for our fallen bee comrades.

massachusetts-official

A modern Massachusetts classic

Official Post of Massachusetts

derinthescarletpescatarian

Love when you're reading a fanfic or web serial and it's great and you want more like it but you've run out of stuff by that author, but then you see in the author's note "I've been reading X and it's really fantastic" and you're like "great! More stuff to red!" and check it out and it turns out that this author you love has absolutely dogshit taste.

derinthescarletpescatarian

My theory as to why this happens btw is that writers see more beauty in what they cannot write than in what they can. Beginners will recommend stuff similar to what they're writing because that's what's inspiring them to start, but when people have their feet wet and know what they're doing then they're less likely to be fascinated by things similar to their own work unless the author they're reading is markedly and obviously more skilled at what they're trying to do. (The exception is if it's an author they got into before they started writing it, and nostalgia is involved.) Everyone who isn't just beginning thinks that the style of writing they do is trite and unremarkable, and is unlikely to be amazed enough by writers similar to them to recommend it to their readers, even though their readers obviously love writers similar to them (otherwise why are they here). So you read stuff you love by some writer and they're like "I am so obsessed with X!" and X is some nonsense slop you couldn't be less interested in because the stuff you are interested in is the stuff that the recommender, by definition, finds routine and not worth appreciating.

That's what I reckon, anyway.

derinthescarletpescatarian

#i am in the process of having the reverse happen to me#where im realizing an author i like maybe isnt as MatureTM as i thought they were originally#and im sitting here now like 'oh no am i the author op is talking about'

Listen, when I was a teenager I recommended Sword of Truth to multiple people.

greyhyms-deactivated20220506

LES MIS: WHAT THEY WERE REALLY THINKING dont worry guys this is so legit gladiator would never lie to me

yeahisawitlikethreeweeksago

serv0z

if there's a will there's a way

nonetoon

I made this in reference to comic/game stuff but I’m glad to see this one’s going over well with all the writers

sarroora

Reblog to give your followers and mutuals the strength to continue

nattousan

ok so, I approached my local library with a proposal to donate a mural as a way to A: build portfolio/gain practical experience and B: give back to a beloved public institution. The director was very enthusiastic about it and i've been working on it since the beginning of March. Come with me as I endeavor to paint what is in all honesty an excessive amount of birds

I wanted the birds to look like they were actually in the space so first thing after doing the draft was to do a lighting study

after that I covered the walls in letters in lieu of a projector/vr headset bc i have neither of those :) Then i take a picture of the section of wall and superimpose the lineart over top of it so I can pencil in the lines

et voila

and that was a whole week on it's own so next comes the paintin' >:)

nattousan

and now, the birds

Birds 1 and 2/14: Red Winged Blackbird, Male and female, Agelaius phoeniceus

nattousan

Bird 3/14, American Robin, Turdus migratorius

nattousan

hoo boy, ok *out of breath*

GIVE IT UP FOR BIRD NUMBUH 5, THE CANADIAN GOOSE, Branta canadensis!!!!

this guy took me about 4 days to completely finish, all of those freakingk coverts were a bear to render

nattousan

speaking of obnoxious coverts:

bird 5/14, Bluejay, Cyanocitta cristata

the friggin stripes almost got me chat, i may not make it

nattousan

Madam....

nattousan

birds 6 and 7: American Goldfinch, Spinus tristis, male and female

pleasantly simple to paint! next is the flickerrrrr

nattousan

*melts into goo*

BIRD NUMBER 8, (yellow shafted) NORTHERN FLICKERRRRR, Colaptes auratus

genuinely made me start questioning my sanity around day 3, it's half the size the of the goose, WHY did it take me 4 days to finish??

nothing but pain and suffering, i'm sure hope the next bird will be much easier and with FAR less barring :)

nattousan

in other news, I am losing my mind hairline

nattousan

SHE'S DONE!!

Bird number 9: Red-tailed hawk, Buteo jamaicensis

my chains are broken i am FREE. although i did have a great deal of fun with this, the barring on the wings itself took me like four days and i am READY to move on

this was a week and a half of continuous work so please excuse me for getting a little emotional in the bg 🙏

nattousan

*does a little jig*

BIRD NUMBER 10!!! The Male Mallard Duck, Anas platyrhynchos

the male and female ones are gonna be posted separately bc they're taking a lot longer lol but yea! super happy i was able to capture the iridescent green of the head, i found metallic green and blue paint at a craft store that really made his head POP. it looks better in person i promise

ALSO!! As this is the 10th one, BIG announcement. The end is in sight!!!!! I plan to finish within the next 3 weeks and there will be a small dedication ceremony/ unveiling happening at the library to commemorate its completion on the 16th of May. If you live in the Western New York region and want to check it out for yourself shoot me a dm!

Also thank you everyone for your kind words and support throughout this whole process, it's been a genuine treat thinking there are potentially thousands of you out there cheering me on while I paint this 🥹

nattousan

aaaand another one bites the duck,

we're movin right along with bird numero 11!! The lady Mallard!! Anas platyrhyncos

the 16th is looming in the distance so i'm trying to get thru these as quickly as i can so i can have as much time for the GBH as possible. i still need to do the names next to all of them so i've got about a week and a half to finish everything which is GREAT because i have adhd and nothing gets my ass in gear like a fuckin deadline, let me tell you

nattousan

power couple that they are, here's bird number 12 and 13,

the Northern Cardinals, Cardinalis cardinalis

and NOW that they are complete, ITS GO TIME, in the next five days (library's closed for mother's day 😭😭) i need to have the GBH fully rendered, the names of the birds vectored, weeded, masked, applied to the wall, and then painted, plus additional cattails throughout. I may be able to get away with just getting the GBH done in time for the unveiling and then just have the names and cattails added later, but i'm gonna really try to get it all done in time. BUT, i have a plan. Part of why i take so long on these is because i really am just figuring it out as I do it lmao. there have been many a time where i am sitting on top of the ladder googling "how to paint birds" but I think if i take the time tomorro to do all that figuring out how to approach it beforehand, this will go a lot faster. I may also recruit some of my artist friends to help with the placing of the names... hrmm we'll see.

Anyways, shout out to the librarian who tracked down exactly the thing i needed so i could figure out where to place the highlights in my birds eyes, ur the real mvp

nattousan

thanks for the reminder, kid

nattousan

at long last, we've reached the end...

Bird number 14 out of 14,

The Great blue heron, Ardea herodius

thank you to everyone who reached out or got excited about this project, it genuinely gave me the fuel i needed to keep going. In total, the 480+ total hrs it took me to cover this wall pales in comparison to how long its expected to spend on there, hopefully imparting a sense of beauty and love for the natural world to the next generation and here's hoping i'm only getting started with these.

i'll see y'all soon :')

only-cat-memes

forgwater

chirasul

we got a full redbox and now we're playing go fish with the redbox movies

chirasul

I would never pay money for a redbox. if you ask politely and are very very persistent (i.e. annoying) they will let you take it away

here's my dad and i taking it away

a redbox makes a wonderful addition to your patio

fishmech

for those wondering why they're free to take now, it's because the company that made those "chicken soup for the soul" books bought them a few years ago and then completely collapsed so bad they couldn't afford to dispose of or even take the blu rays and dvds out of their kiosks all over.

so any of them is free game because they're all located on other business' property and they usually don't want to have to pay to get rid of them either. so asking the store manager usually gets you the ok to pull it out and keep it.

chirasul

there was a period of time right after their bankruptcy where you could put in any debit or credit card and it would spit out movies without charging you. you could even put in like an expired or deactivated card, or a visa gift card with a $0 balance, didnt matter, they'd just start spitting discs out. a lotta people raided redboxes for movies for a couple months, with some people doing what me and my brother and my dad did here, taking the whole box and signs and marquees as well. because managers sure as hell don't want a big abandoned piece of trash on their sidewalk disappointing customers. BUT they're also often too cheap to pay someone to remove it. so they just sit there.

luckily there are no shortage of freaks like us who will just take them away on our own volition. we did it all "by the book", too: we set up cones and caution tape, disconnected electricity properly, used an angle grinder to grind down the bolts in the concrete so nobody would trip on them, then cleaned everything up afterward and sealed off the electrical panel so the store would know everything is safe and tidy. though they were hesitant when we were first contacting them, they were honestly very relieved and grateful when we finally took it away, especially once they saw that we "knew what we were doing" (we don't) and look like we've "done this before" (we haven't).

the fun part: the reason why this redbox, in particular, was completely full and unraided is because the computer hardware inside had failed some months before the bankruptcy, and a failing company sure as hell wasn't gonna send a tech out to our podunk dipshit city to fix it, so it was impossible to rent movies or take any discs out. plus, for who knows how long, people were returning old redbox discs to this machine and not taking any out, leading to a much higher variety of movies than your average redbox.

there is a thriving community of redbox hackers and modders out there, as well, creating open-source software for repurposing the machines and not letting their very interesting and robust disc-management hardware go to waste. this one belongs to my brother (who was very annoying persistent and did all the legwork of contacting managers and securing permission) who is a programmer by trade and will be hacking it into a family-access movie library, with whatever discs we want. i mean the machine is completely weatherproof and has a built-in AC unit, it would be such a waste to not try to turn it into something cool.

if we get another one, i'm gonna try to mod it into some sort of art or zine vending machine. the disc boxes are just the right size for small print art or stickers. would make a great "little free library" too.

remember: the rules are made up. act like you belong there and you can get away with anything. this applies to your own life

comicbookhyperfixationtime

I have the strongest mental image of the Avengers all having to complete mandatory Stark Industries employee mental health online training modules and Steve Rogers skipping through it at 4x speed with Betty Boop cartoons playing in the corner of the screen like Greatest Generation Subway Surfers.

sandandglass

The Muppets s01e01

le-sad-demiurge

Fozzy getting hit on by lots of twinks

cheshireinthemiddle

Happy Pride Month

comicgeekscomicgeek

Ten years later, this bit still slaps. They made a great pun and realized they could be nice/inclusive with it too.

headspace-hotel

Ideas for New Forms of Multimedia Storytelling

geocacheing

chain emails forwarded to you by an aunt you don’t talk to

writing on the walls of public bathrooms

complex system of Minecraft servers with interactive puzzles

hundreds of voice mails each sent to 100 subscribed members of the fandom each, who then have to piece everything together online

choose your own adventure but better

random people get released on stage during a stage play and can affect the plot however they choose

story is embedded in book of word find puzzles

people dressed as wizards kidnap you and you have to be the protagonist

news site that publishes weird stories and there are always weird comments in the comment sections

a group of people creates a story and memorizes it, and then they each have to teach the story to two other people, who must continue passing it on

links to questionable Wikipedia article edits

Instagram account whose photos start getting weirder and weirder until the person who runs the account disappears and the followers have to solve the mystery

recorded on random vhs tapes all over the globe

a podcast that is downloaded to 10,000 MP3 players that self-destruct if they are with the same person more than two weeks, forcing everyone to keep passing them on to new people

a composition book that is transported around the globe via hot air balloon

books left on McDonalds’ floors that say DO NOT READ

a gigantic park full of sidewalks with a story written on the sidewalk that can be read as you walk, and that has different endings depending on where you go

microchips placed inside feral cats

several hundred seemingly identical uploads of the devil went down to Georgia on YouTube, which each have different mistakes in the lyrics, and which can be pieced together to create a story

like jehovah’s witnesses but they walk around asking people if they want to hear a chapter of what is actually a very extended musical with dance numbers. yes, they will do this on your porch, and no, there is no way to get the chapters in order

book where you cut out a chapter every time you read it and write your own

vlog that gets increasingly more concerning

game where the only action is to pick up and read book and also to make coffee and pet your cat

movie put on dvds and scattered around random antique shops

found footage horror film that is just footage that you found

recipes passed down from generation to generation

an ever-expanding franchise that switches to a different type of media every time it creates a sequel. the first installment is a book, the second is a video game, the third is a Netflix series, the fourth is a broadway musical, the fifth is a podcast, the sixth is an alternative rock album, and the seventh is available only through oral tradition

story that is explained to the small children of the people who want to read it, and the children must in turn explain it to them. people without children can borrow someone else’s child.

tattooed on the hairy backs of old men at the beach

headspace-hotel

I’ve decided that this post is not a joke

susiephone

"How is waltzing scandalous?" "Well... partners face-to-face, chest-to-chest. All that twirling. Back in 1698 it may as well have been sex." Carmilla 1x28 // The Carmilla Movie

@gifevents Event #1: New Beginnings

Day 7: How it Started vs How it's Going

Also... happy first day of Femslash February! I had to kick off the month with these icons. The Carmilla webseries was such a huge part of my teen years, for a queer girl who loved vampires and happy endings, it was so special and it still means so much to me that this show exists.

oneefin

number theory* diagram

michaelrotonal

these relationships are always increasing numbers as well. so obviously we need six eleven to mean somethimg

derinthescarletpescatarian

Foreigners tend to assume that the big cultural confusions between Australians and most other countries are gonna be based on our food, or social services, or weather, or weird animals. But it’s never that. In my experience, the real cultural confusions re: Australians are about The Respect Thing almost one hundred per cent of the time.

deathsmallcaps

? I realize im proving your point but what

derinthescarletpescatarian

The broader Australian culture doesn’t, as a whole, have status-based respect. Some individual groups might, because they’ve brought it from other cultures they’re involved in, but the general culture doesn’t. There’s no sense that your boss or scout leader or the guy in charge of your country deserves more respect than you, or that you should behave differently to them than you would to any random person you know similarly well. (The very rare exceptions include ritualised settings, such as courtrooms, and for some reason the fact that children use “Miss/Ms/Mr” honourifics for teachers at school.)

I don’t mean Australians are a “stick it to the man, fight back against those in power” kind of people – we’re generally not. And I don’t mean we have a “we’re going to do the status thing but pretend we don’t and pretend to all be equal in mixed company” thing that middle-class Americans do. I mean the status-respect system does not exist, and if you try to use it, it weirds people the fuck out at best, and insults them at worst. Treating someone most countries would say is ‘above’ you differently in Australia is basically telling that person that you hate them; it’s saying “I’m forced to interact with you due to our current circumstances but I don’t see you as a person and won’t grant you the basic respect of treating you like an equal”. (When I was in America, I was constantly suppressing the instinct that random service people were sassing me because they overuse honourifics and were so keen to help me.)

This makes interacting with foreigners really baffling in a lot of circumstances. In university, my international friends would often describe Australians as “friendly, but very rude”. They thought we were all arseholes because of the way we spoke to our PhD supervisors and soforth, and wouldn’t believe us when we explained that our behaviour was respectful and that being deferential would be weird and awkward and insulting to them. Learning Japanese had a similar problem; everyone in the class could get the concept of different levels of formality and deference in language, ans was happy to memorise the usage of various words for Japanese people, but using them on each other was super weird, and we’d only ever use the most casual form of anything unless specifically instructed otherwise by the teacher.

The reason I’ve been thinking of this lately is because I’ve recently become aware that a lot of countries have like… a special respect for their country’s leaders? I don’t just mean “yeah, that guy makes the rules”, but that having that office makes them better than everyone else, somehow. Which I expect from countries with royal families, because Tradition, but I’ve recently found that Americans feel this way about their President, too. (Except the current one, who seems to be enough of a dick to break the system.) Like, if six Americans were in an aeroplane that was going down and there was only one parachute and one of the Americans was A Generic Non-Trump President, it’s just assumed that that guy gets the parachute? Like he’s automatically the life worth saving over the others, and they’d just give up their chance in favour of him? And that’s so weird to me. An Australian prime minister would have a 1 in 6 chance at the parachute; however the people decided, “this guy happens to be the leader of the country” wouldn’t be a factor.

When Americans don’t like a President, they usually feel the need to work in how he’s “not my president”, either through sheer denial, or by finding some way he’s theoretically illegitimate (different ways votes are counted, wild conspiracy theories about birth country, etc.), and while making sure those rules are obeyed IS extremely important, I’ve recently noticed that part of the motivation seems to be that they’re invested in whether he’s Really The President because being the President somehow makes someone Special rather than just a normal dick who’s been put in charge of the group project. (You see the same thing in “THIS IS TRUMP’S AMERICA!”, like him becoming President gives him superpowers or something).

This is getting off-topic. Point is, in Australia you can run into the Prime Minister and ask him to help you fix your phone and if he’s not busy but refused to help you out he’d be kind of a dick; of course he should help you out. And if I walk into your restaurant and you act like I’m a movie star and you’re going to be super attentive to my every need because I’m The Customer, I’m gonna get creeped out. We’re suspicious and insulted by what most people in the world consider to be basic manners, and vice versa. And it makes interacting with foreigners super weird because I always feel like they’ve got some invisible heirarchical flowchart in the back of their minds that I don’t.

becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys

I have long noticed that Americans have absolutely the same cultural attitude to the President as they would to a serving monarchy. They just think they don’t on a technicality.

drferox

Can confirm that if I call someone ‘Sir/Madam’ I generally mean ‘asshole’ (unless talking to an animal or tiny child) and that if I get called Ma’am I feel like I’m being called the asshole, which made time in Atlanta, Georgia suoer weird.

materassassino

Australians have a very good attitude to respect

onionhighonionandrenown

…so this explains why I have spent the last fourteen years low-grade pissed off at nearly every Australian I meet, because every time I try to be American Polite at them it pisses them off. And, for that matter, why my second boss here, the one I was so careful to be Formally Respectful of and always called “sir,” took such an intense dislike to me.

derinthescarletpescatarian

Yeah, even if that boss understood that you were American and what that meant, their instincts would’ve been screaming at them the whole time that you were being a dick. It’s a difficult thing for us to get used to even when we know the culture is different’.

earhartsease

As a Brit visiting Australia, the most vivid experience I had of this is: in the UK it’s really uncool to get into the passenger seat of a cab - you’re expected to get in the back. In Australia the reverse was apparently true.

derinthescarletpescatarian

… I am only just now realising that inAmerican and British movies and stuff, people don’t get in the passenger seat of a taxi.

whitmerule

covid update: you’re now meant to get in the back seat for social distancing and IT FEELS SO RUDE. sorry taxi person I AM NOT TRYING TO SHUN YOu just I know there are rules and we’re protecting each other. let’s be intensely awkward for a while.

makaeru

Reblogging this because I just remembered the time Molly Meldrum absolutely horrified Prince Charles by describing meeting the Queen as “I saw your mum last week”.

love-lays-bleeding

One of my favorite travel books described humanity as, broadly speaking, having two types of culture: one where formal is respectful and informal is rude, and vice versa. Australian culture sees formality as hostile or unfriendly and familiarity as warmth. It’s decidedly not the case in USA as a whole, though as with any broad category the dichotomy changes as the group gets smaller.

wolverrina

YOU PUT THE THING INTO WORDS!

padeko

Different cultures are fascinating.

searchingcassiopeia

Look there’s honestly a lot of history that build our culture today to be like this. We never really had a true aristocracy or class system in Australia and was still considered the dirty colonies up until federation in 1901. Even when we had the gold rush in the 19th century there were rich people but also anyone could dig up a nugget and get rich so no one really bothered with the rich = better than you thing because old johnno down the road who normally is on the piss all day and lives in a swag just picked up a 2lb piece of gold that’s worth thousands of dollars so now he can go buy his own pub and sell his own beer but everyone will still think of him as that guy who was always cracking bad jokes at the end of the bar and drinking a minimum of 8 beers a day. Sure we have rich people but we also pull them back down to earth when they get hoity toity. Australia is one of the most unionised countries in the world and yeah its true we dont get upset by much but when we do, all hell breaks loose. Look up some of Australia’s biggest protests and union movements like the convict rebellions, Eureka stockade, the campaign for the 8 hour day, and he general history of our Australian Labor Party. Australia was the second country in the world to grant women’s suffrage. So many unions and strikes and demands we made in Australia demanding equal and fair rights to working class in the 19th century that by federation in 1901 we were ahead of the world with workers rights and equality. Really the only class system we had was the employer employee divide but we still never bowed down and took it from them just because they boss. I’m not going to go into what happened in the 20th century but if you’re interested definitely look up post war Australia, the women’s working unions in the middle of the century, definitely look up the late Bob Hawke and his legacy, the nurse’s strike in Victoria in the 80s, the land rights movement and Eddie Mabo, and go from there.

I remember in school we were always taught to treat others how you wanted to be treated. You were no better or worse than anyone else. You want to be treated equal to everyone else and that meant being polite and showing decency and helping each other out. It’s true we only use titles for teachers or elders (indigenous Australians use “Aunty” and “Uncle” as a show of respect to their elders) but outside of that if someone calls you Miss y/n or sir or whatever it’s just uncomfortable. In hospitality and retail some of us will still use sir/ma'am mainly because we don’t know customers names but even then that’s rare and usually applied only to elderly. We personally don’t want to be addressed by titles or even surnames (unless it’s a nickname which I’ll get to) so we don’t use the titles or surnames for other people. With surnames often we use them as a nickname if we dont/can’t shorten their names. Getting a nickname (a good one, not one that is intentionally meant to bully you ofc. E.g. ScoMo is the nickname for our PM but he’s a piece of shit and ScoMo sounds a lot like Scum-mo) is the biggest show of respect in Australia. Usually it’s simply just adding a vowel or changing it up a little. I.e. John = johnno, Darren = Dazza, etc. If we can’t do it to your first name we do it to your last name. If we can’t do it to your last name it’s either a feature or behaviour and we put it in a good light. You ever notice that Australians like to make fun of each other and “insult” each other? There’s a very subtle difference when it’s truly meant to be insulting but that’s our way of being affectionate for each other. We will point out your flaws and make fun of you (and stop if you say no) and we will give you a nickname and it’s all in good humour. It’s one of the things I find foreigners get really upset about because they dont understand why we are so rude to each other. You build up a hard skin in this country and forget hat sometimes that stuff IS a bit insulting.

It’s a very backwards system of respect but it is a very honest one. No one is better than you. No one is worse than you. We are all humans.

silvergryphonart

We treat our acquaintances like friends and our friends like family. Teasing your friends is expected the same way it is for siblings. If you act like someone is above you, in a not-joking way, that’s basically declaring that you don’t see them as potential friend material—that something about them repels you and you want as many barriers between you as possible.

It would hurt my dad so badly if I ever called him “sir.”

confusementation

Yep, and the automatic assumption that you think I’m an idiot/bitch if I’m called ma'am. The only time it has ever happened and I haven’t taken offence has been brand new army recruits/cadets, who are required to use it while in public to show deference to civilians.

I legit take less offense from being referred to as a pigdog cunt than I do being called ma'am. Getting a sweary character reference or having a friend call you a mad cbomb is totally fine in Aus. Ma'am is not something I associate with respect, being included as part of the group, or acceptance in any way - it’s pointing out rather emphatically that you are “other”

alwaysfrowningslightly

This is interesting as hell as an American raised in an Active Duty environment. As a kid I called everyone Ma’am or Sir and I wonder how jarring that child would be in Australia

derinthescarletpescatarian

Whenever I watch an American show and a kid calls their parents ‘sir’ and/or 'ma'am’ I immediately assume that the intention is to clue the audience in on the fact that that child is being very severely abused. Addressing an elderly neighbour or something like that would be seen as charmingly respectful from a kid, but doing it to all adults would set off alarm bells in the heads of any Australian adult who wasn’t familiar with your past. They’d get it once they learned you were raised around American soldiers though, and expect you to grow out of it.

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