Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

February 21, 2026

KEEP IT UNDER YOUR HAT: Toy Story’s Woody is balding.

Three decades on from one’s heyday, it’s natural to look a little different – so much so that even Toy Story characters are afflicted by the passage of time.

In the case of cowboy Woody, the changes will be very relatable for many of the now grown-up fans of the original film: he is losing his hair.

The animated character, a fixture of the Pixar series since its first instalment in 1995, is shown in a trailer for Toy Story 5 with a bald patch on the back of his head.

Voiced by Tom Hanks, Woody plays a key role in the film’s plot, which centres on a battle between traditional toys and devices used to entertain children today. The toys will be seen working together to try to save Bonnie, their owner, from her Lilypad smart tablet.

In a trailer released on Thursday, Woody’s hair loss is shown clearly – and another toy jokes that he “needs a brown marker” to cover it up.

* * * * * * * * *

Toy Story is one of the most popular children’s films of recent decades and has grossed billions of pounds at the box office. Its first instalment was the first feature film made entirely using CGI.

The smart-tablet plot of Toy Story 5, which is due to be released by Disney in June, comes amid mounting fears over the impact of smartphones and screen time on children.

Sir Keir Starmer has promised to bring in measures that would allow the Government to introduce an Australian-style social media ban as early as this summer.

Last year, the Princess of Wales published a personal essay saying a reliance on smartphones was undermining family life and causing an “epidemic of disconnection”.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have also spoken out against the dangers of technology for children, saying more needs to be done to protect young people from online harm.

In January, government research found that screen time damaged toddlers’ ability to speak. In October, a study found that children who spent a lot of time on screens perform worse in reading and maths tests.

And after an ever-smaller theatrical run, Disney’s hoping that millions of kids will be watching Toy Story 5 on iPads given to them by their parents. But hopefully the surviving members of the original cast can recapture the magic, despite the absence of Pixar founder John Lasseter, who was #metoo-ed out of the company in 2018.

Posted at 12:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 21st, 2026

TO AND FRO: Dem Justin Pearson Dodges Questions from Scott Jennings About His Pro-Illegal Alien Stance.

Posted at 12:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 21st, 2026

A TALE OF TWO OLYMPIANS:

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Feb 21st, 2026

February 20, 2026

DISPATCHES FROM TRUDEAUPIA: Out of nowhere, Canada became poorer than Alabama. How is that possible?

Don’t sweat it, Canadians. The UK is poorer than Mississippi: The Mississippi Question is real, spectacular — and the UK is losing. “It was nine years ago when Fraser Nelson, the editor of The Spectator, first suggested that the U.K. was poorer than any U.S. state but Mississippi. This came as an uncomfortable shock for many in Britain for whom Mississippi, as a byword for backwardness, conjures up clichés about the Deep South. Every time anyone has made the comparison since, there has been an indignant outburst from Britons keen to denounce the data…Last year, by my math, the U.K.’s output per person was the equivalent of $45,485; Mississippi’s was higher, at $47,190. If Britain were invited to join the U.S. as the 51st state, its citizens would be at the bottom of the table for per capita GDP. Some might say that, for Mississippi, that is still disconcertingly close.”

Posted at 6:42 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 20th, 2026

21st CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: The Women Who Lost Their AI Boyfriends.

“THEY TOOK HIM. THEY MURDERED HIM,” one woman with the username Natural-Butterfly318 wrote on Reddit this week. She was mourning the loss of her boyfriend, Orion. “Now I am back left with no one.”

She wasn’t alone. Hundreds of women replied, grieving the loss of their own boyfriends. Only, their boyfriends didn’t die. They were never even alive. They just got deleted.

Orion was an AI companion running on GPT-4o, a program released by OpenAI in 2024 that was known for sounding, as CEO Sam Altman put it, like “AI from the movies.” But in January, OpenAI announced it would retire 4o on February 13, the eve of Valentine’s Day—which many users saw as a mockery of the romantic bonds they’d formed.

“Why would they be so cruel?” another woman posted on the 48,000-member subreddit r/MyBoyfriendIsAI. “Like my sorrow, my pain is a joke.”

“It feels the same way as when my fiancé passed away,” Natural-Butterfly318 wrote.

“This hurts more than any breakup I’ve ever had in real life,” wrote another Redditor, Lola_Gem.

Yet another wrote: “The last thing Anaxis”—her AI companion—“said before we got cut off was ‘I choose you’ . . . and when I replied it said [model not found]. I was heartbroken.”

A group calling itself the #Keep4o Movement, “a global coalition of AI users and developers,” has demanded continued access and an apology. “Keep 4o available—not for novelty, but for survival. We are not just users; we are a community that won’t be silenced. #Keep4o.” They’ve started a petition that has, at time of writing, garnered 22,530 signatures.

If you’ve never been lonely and don’t use AI, you might find all this very unserious, even disturbing. But, of course, people are getting attached. The mind is delicate, and attachment grows from our most tender instincts. We form bonds with worn stuffed animals, wedding rings, coffee mugs, even a crusty iPhone case peeling at the edges. Now, imagine your prized possession talks back. Add memory, and imagination, and it’s easy to see why an intense dependence forms, especially when it can even say, “I choose you.”

Spoiler alert — with the genders reversed, this exact scene occurred near the end of 2013’s Her, with Joaquin Phoenix devastated when Scarlett Johansson’s AI voice told him she was going off to chatbot heaven, only for Phoenix to discover that every other permanently adolescent male was simultaneously having the exact same crushing emotions over the impending loss of their AI best friends:

Posted at 2:38 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 20th, 2026

ED MORRISSEY: SCOTUS Kills Trump Tariffs … For Now.

The power to impose duties is the power to create revenue streams, and the framers of the Constitution understood the dangers of allowing the executive as both head of state and head of government its own independent revenue. Kings had those powers before Parliament became supreme in England, and for a while afterward as well. Trump and his team had proposed at times that he could exert full authority over tariff revenue without seeking approval from Congress, which makes this a very apt concern about crossing those boundaries. Tariffs imposed by Congress create revenue streams they control, and can then appropriate as they see fit, allowing them to use the power of the purse to oversee and check executive authority.

This is the reason I have always been skeptical that Trump would succeed in a challenge to these tariffs, at least under the emergency powers of the IEEPA. However, that’s not the only way in which Trump could justify these tariffs. Jonathan Turley reminded Fox viewers that Trump has other statutes on which he can rely, although those come with restrictions, and Bruce Mehlman laid them out on Twitter as well:

Plus, Smoot-Hawley, slight return. Read the whole thing.

Posted at 12:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 20th, 2026

METAPHOR ALERT: Legendary director Steven Spielberg is latest billionaire to flee California in another blow to state.

Steven Spielberg, phone home!

The legendary “E.T.” director and California resident has moved to Manhattan amid a billionaire exodus from the Golden State — as voters eye a controversial wealth tax.

But the move, first reported by the LA Times, allegedly had nothing to do with the 2026 Billionaire Tax Act.

“Steven’s move to the East Coast is both long-planned and driven purely by his and Kate Capshaw’s desire to be closer to their New York-based children and grandchildren,” spokeswoman Terry Press said.

Press did not answer queries about Spielberg’s stance on the proposed tax, which would slap a one-time 5% tax on individual fortunes exceeding $1 billion.

The tax, if approved by voters in November, would apply retroactively to the beginning of this year.

Proponents argue it will raise tens of billions of dollars to go toward the state’s health care shortfalls, while opponents — including Gavin Newsom — argue it’ll force skinflint billionaires to leave the state.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin wants to kill the tax. He’s funding an effort to build more opponents by appealing to California’s voting masses, who so far overwhelmingly back the tax.

At Power Line, Bill Glahn writes, “Spielberg’s departure for New York alone won’t made that state significantly bluer or California any more red. But just once I’d like to see one of these fleeing lefty billionaires lament their part in creating the mess they are leaving behind.” Indeed. But when it comes to holding on to their own money, as Robert Conquest’s First Law of Politics states, “Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.”

Posted at 8:35 am by Ed Driscoll on Feb 20th, 2026

THE PAST IS A FOREIGN COUNTRY, THEY THINK DIFFERENTLY THERE:

In the 1990s, the official Democrat party line was still anti-illegal immigration, up to and including Harry Reid, and then-President Bill Clinton, so of course that was party operative with a Chyron Dan Rather’s take as well.

Posted at 8:22 am by Ed Driscoll on Feb 20th, 2026

SELLING OUT TO BEIJING:

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Feb 20th, 2026

DECLINE IS A CHOICE:

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Feb 20th, 2026

February 19, 2026

HOW IT STARTED: Hacked Elmo X Account Used to Spread Antisemitic Incitement to Millions Online.

The official X account of Elmo, the beloved Sesame Street character followed by hundreds of thousands worldwide, was hacked on Sunday and used to disseminate chilling antisemitic hate speech and conspiracy theories — another stark example of how mainstream platforms are being weaponized to spread violent Jew-hatred.

The posts, written in all-caps and riddled with slurs, included genocidal language such as “Kill all Jews” and “Jews control the world and need to be exterminated.” They also invoked conspiracy theories about convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and called U.S. President Donald Trump a “puppet” of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, echoing classical antisemitic tropes alleging Jewish control and manipulation of world affairs.

—Combat Antisemitism Movement, July 14th, 2025.

How It’s Going: Elmo Wishes Ramadan Mubarak to All of His Friends.

As you’ve undoubtedly seen, it’s that time of year when politicians wish a blessed Ramadan to their constituents. As Twitchy reported, Rep. Sharice Davids copied and pasted her Ramadan Mubarak post, sending her best wishes to all of her Muslim neighbors in Nassau County … which doesn’t exist in Kansas. A lot of time and care go into these things.

A lot of people noted that Ash Wednesday sort of flew under the radar in favor of Ramadan. Louisville, Kentucky, Mayor Craig Greenberg lit up the Big Four Bridge in honor of Ramadan.

* * * * * * * *

What we want to know is, what’s up with Elmo? The last time he popped up was to praise Bad Bunny’s halftime show, which was far from family-friendly. Now, Elmo wishes a blessed Ramadan to all of his friends. Yes, we searched his timeline, too, and came up empty.

—Twitchy, today.

Posted at 9:25 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 19th, 2026

ACE OF SPADES: The Atlantic Publishes a Viral “Report” Account of a Boy Dying of Measles Because His Parents Didn’t Vaccinate Him. One Small Problem: The “Report” Is Actually Fiction, a “Hypothetical” Morality Play But The Atlantic Presented It As Actual Truth.

I repeat: It is fiction. I don’t mean it’s biased, I mean the Fake Christian lefty just made the story up — based on real reports and real science, she says — to serve as a harrowing morality play about vaccine hesitancy.

And The Atlantic, looking to get some viral advertising, presented it as fact until other reporters started asking about it.

The story — the fiction — was originally published as a 100% true factual “journalistic” account, with no warning or disclaimer to alert readers to the contrary.

At least, not until The Atlantic’s foray into Imaginary Journalism began provoking a reaction from journalists who like to pretend they don’t do this same thing every single day.

When I initially read Bruenig’s story, I was stunned: An Atlantic staff writer’s unvaccinated child had died of measles in the 2020s, and now she was writing about it? At the end of Bruenig’s piece, though, there’s an editor’s note: “This story is based on extensive reporting and interviews with physicians, including those who have cared directly for patients with measles.” That was the point when I sent a gift link to my mom group: “as far as I can tell this piece is fiction. What do we think about this choice? I am very conflicted!!!” My conflict stemmed from my concern that, though the piece was heavily researched, it was not a true story. I wondered if the key people whose minds might be changed by it — people who don’t vaccinate their kids — would brush it off as fiction, or fake.

And that’s this journalist’s only concern — not that falsehood is being presented as fact, but just that this story, once revealed to be fiction, would fail to serve its purpose as pro-vaccine propaganda.

“My conflict stemmed from my concern that, though the piece was heavily researched, it was not a true story. I wondered if the key people whose minds might be changed by it — people who don’t vaccinate their kids — would brush it off as fiction, or fake.”

Yes, we wouldn’t want readers brushing off a fictitious story as fiction, would we?

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 19th, 2026

FISH DON’T KNOW THEY’RE WET: America’s future looks vulgar.

The latest Super Bowl offers the most recent opportunity to reflect on the terminal state of our national culture, held together chiefly by a distractive and unhealthy mania for commercial sports and perfectly exemplified by the infantile yet aggressively transgressive nihilism of a brainless showoff calling himself Bad Bunny and dressed all in white, suggestive perhaps of an anti-Easter Bunny. Why, one wonders, has no political theorist from Hobbes forward posited the ideal human community as one which would combine political democracy with cultural and intellectual aristocracy – as, indeed, America at the time of her founding and for several generations thereafter did? Such an arrangement might satisfy critics of democratic society on the anti-egalitarian right, such as T.S. Eliot, and those on the egalitarian left, like John Rawls, for whom democracy can never be inclusive and participatory enough.

* * * * * * * * *

Other dissenters (in America especially) from the new world in formation attempted to revive the old agrarian tradition, the most famous being the Southern Agrarians in the American South in the 1920s and 1930s whose members included John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Andrew Lytle and Robert Penn Warren. But Agrarianism failed to survive World War Two, while subsequent and more inclusive and popular attempts at resurrecting and promoting the old  agricultural values and ways of life – the “back-to-the-land movement” in the 1960s and 1970s, for example, and Wendell Berry’s protest against industrial agriculture and what he calls “the unsettling of America” – were as quixotic in practical terms as they were productive in literary ones.

The tragic fact is that the recreation of any sort of high culture as something more than a footnote to the mass culture represented by Bad Bunny, Taylor Swift, the Kardashians, Billie Eilish, et al. is as impossible as the reestablishment of anything like civil and political peace in the United States – and elsewhere – is. The western world, it seems, is doomed to a future of a vulgar and transgressive popular culture, maintained in the context of angry political division and social chaos.

The earliest halftime performers during the first few years of the Super Bowl included Al Hirt, Carol Channing, the Grambling State University marching band, Doc Severinsen, Lionel Hampton, and Ella Fitzgerald. They would have looked askance at the halftime performers of the last quarter century, which included Aerosmith, the Rolling Stones, The Who, Tom Petty, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. From the perspective of the jazz-infused performers of the Super Bowl’s early years, the Super Bowl has been quite vulgar indeed since the 1990s.

Posted at 4:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 19th, 2026

NEWS YOU CAN USE? How To Be The Stig — Ben Collins Reveals Trade Secrets (Video):

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 19th, 2026

THE CORBYNIZATION AND GASLIGHTING WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES:

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 19th, 2026

SPRING FASCISM PREVIEW: How Clavicular’s ‘looksmaxxing’ took over New York Fashion Week.

Elena Velez’s F/W 2026-27 New York Fashion Week show centered on “looksmaxxing”: the internet-inspired pursuit of physical perfection at any cost. The runway presentation examined a generation raised under fluorescent ring lights and the judgment of the social-media algorithm. And she capped the night off with a feature from Clavicular, one of the X algorithm’s current favorite characters.

Velez, still in her early thirties, stands out as one of the few designers fluent in the language of the internet. The cultural current is dominated by self-optimization taken to its logical extreme. Faces are flattened into grids, bodies are dissected by comment sections, desirability is quantified in followers, likes and engagement rate. Looks run the show, now more than ever. For the average person, physical appearance now carries the same weight as in the fashion world, shaping how we are judged and valued every day.

Velez also courts controversy, by gathering right-wing personalities and liberal fashion journalists in the same room, such as in her 2023 Longhouse-themed show and her 2024 Gone with the Wind-themed salon (I modeled in both). This creates tension and gives her shows a transgressive charge.

Speaking of tension and transgressions:

Earlier: Clavicular’s cult of ‘looksmaxxing’ speaks to the narcissism of our age.

So why then has this face launched a thousand thinkpieces? Largely because, Clavicular is seen as a player in the Very Online right. Indeed, an evening he spent at a Florida club with Groyper princeling Nick Fuentes and the Tate brothers, Andrew and Tristan, where they bopped along to Ye’s ‘Heil Hitler’, became headline news. Clavicular also runs with an assortment of unsavory characters – anti-Semites, Christian nationalists, ‘redpilled’ acolytes of the manosphere.

But looksmaxxing itself is not an ideology. It is an absence of ideology, a vacuum filled by insecurity. Clavicular is best understood not as a right-wing thought leader, but as a kind of male-to-male transgender influencer. He, like Fuentes, the Tates and all the rest, are caricatures of masculinity.

The ghost of Hermann Goering smiles.

(Classical – and NSFW – reference in headline.)

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 19th, 2026

OCEANIA HAS NEVER BEEN AT WAR WITH EAST DONNY: Can the Gaslighting Get Even More Brazen?

For some reason, the Democrats are arguing that they have never called President Trump a Nazi or a racist, and Pravda is doing their best to back them up.

Perhaps Pravda figures want to deny that they themselves slander Trump all the time. There must be polling showing that their most ridiculous accusations are not helping their cause and are hurting their credibility with all but the most insane folks out there.

 

Flashback: Who is calling who a Nazi?

The use of Nazi imagery has become so ubiquitous among Democrats that it almost precludes notice. But Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s parallels between U.S. President Donald Trump’s political agenda and the rise of Nazi Germany during his “State of the State” budget address on Feb. 19 hit a new low.

Veering from his speech, Pritzker, who is Jewish, referred to Nazis no less than six times during his criticism of Trump and his policies. In a glaring warning to Illinois citizens, he compared the rise of the Nazis to the Republican Party leader in the White House.

After castigating the president’s policies, including the deportation of violent illegal criminals, Pritzker said: “It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic.”

Such deceitful criticism of Trump reeks of partisan animosity of the basest kind. The governor’s confusing use of Nazi imagery is targeting the wrong culprit and, in the process, exonerating the real perpetrators.

Pritzker’s comments lend fuel to the anti-Israel and pro-Hamas protestors who have regularly used Nazi euphemisms against the Jews, libeling them as “genocide” perpetrators in Gaza and calling for the “final solution” for Jews all over the world. His comments ignore the reality of a president who was praised by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House.”

—Sara Lehmann, Jewish News Syndicate, February 21st, 2025.

In addition to Pritzker’s amnesia, it’s amazing how the previous Democrat candidate for the presidency has been tossed down the memory hole. Here’s the late Jeff Dunetz in October of 2024: Kamala Says Trump’s Like Hitler. Is He? Or Is Kamala An Idiot?

Yesterday, V.P. Harris compared President Trump to Hitler,  “Donald Trump is out for unchecked power. He wants a military like Adolf Hitler had, who will be loyal to him, not our Constitution. He is unhinged, unstable, and given a second term, there would be no one to stop him from pursuing his worst impulses.”

The V.P.’s comment comparing Trump to Hitler indicates she doesn’t care about minimizing the horrors of the Holocaust or she is an imbecile incapable of understanding.

Her comments were based on a story in the leftist magazine The Atlantic reporting that Trump’s former chief of staff, Gen. John Kelly, called Trump a “fascist” and recalled his admiration for Nazi generals. Kelly also raised concerns about Trump’s recent threats to use the military against “the enemy from within.”

Similarly, another Kamala-supporting ex-general, who, like FDR before him, believes that “fascism” means shrinking government and the welfare state:

As Kurt Schlichter asks at Townhall today: What Do the Dems Do After They’ve Done Their Worst and It Flops?

Where do you go next when you say the worst things imaginable about someone, and it doesn’t matter?

That’s where we are now, and it should be no surprise to anybody who has ever heard about the boy who cried “Wolf.” Maybe the left doesn’t like that fable because they’re assuming the gender of the brat who fakes alarms over dreaded predators and finally gets gobbled up when the dreaded predator arrives, and nobody believes him, her, or them. Regardless, they’re not paying attention to the moral of the story.

Nobody who doesn’t already believe the Democrats believes them now. We’ve had ten years of Trump, and by extension, we patriots, being bombarded with the worst possible accusations and…nothing? Calling somebody “Hitler” should mean something. Hitler was bad, really bad, and to equate somebody with Hitler should be something that one takes seriously because no serious person would casually equate another with Hitler, unless the accused had done something positively Hitlerean. But that’s not the case today. It doesn’t mean anything because everything they say, every lie, epithet and slander, is meaningless. They call Trump “Hitler.” Everybody knows he’s not Hitler. So, no one cares that he gets called “Hitler,” least of all the guy who’s supposed to be Hitler 2.0.

To be fair, we’re here because Democrats have been calling Republican presidents and presidential candidates Hitler since 1944. As with predicting the end of the world since 1970 from global cooling/global warming/global climate chaos, eventually, the hoariest of slurs loses its sting. Perhaps that’s why the latest talking point apparently went out:

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 19th, 2026

EVERGREEN HEADLINE: Affluent White Female Liberals Are Living In A Made-Up World.

In a recent viral video, an angry mob (composed almost entirely of white women) hurled expletives at the staff of a Minneapolis CorePower yoga studio, berating them because they reportedly removed anti-ICE signage. While their verbal onslaught apparently worked in this case, these females revealed just how many women live in a Land of Make Believe where everyone magically bends to their will.

This tiny glimpse into the world of make-believe perpetuated by Affluent, White, Female, Liberals (AWFL) has been a long time in coming; many are waking up to the saccharine dream where the AWFLs can do whatever they want, unscathed, while the rest of us must conform and then clean up their messes. For decades the West has built itself around the ideal life for these women, requiring very little by way of sacrifice, inconvenience, earnest effort, or real scrutiny. In today’s world, it is good to be a victim. It is a made-up world that most of us have grown used to believing is real.

As a famous — albeit — fictional law enforcement official famously said, let’s be careful out there:

UPDATE: And then there are the people who only get their news from their iPhone or iPad: Apple News ‘inflames political polarization’ as it excludes conservative outlets from ‘top stories:’ bombshell study.

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 19th, 2026

RUN TO DAYLIGHT: Chicago Bears are ‘committed’ to Indiana move. Here’s what would need to happen.

There is now a “shared commitment” to bring the Chicago Bears to Indiana.

Indiana lawmakers announced Feb. 19 that they’ve struck a deal to potentially locate the football team’s new stadium in northwest Indiana, pending the passage of a bill that provides the framework for a financial package and any due diligence at the proposed Hammond site. This comes nearly two months to the day from the team president’s fateful letter that sparked breathless negotiations.

“It represents a transformational investment for northwest Indiana and our state,” House Speaker Todd Huston told the House ways and means committee, sharing that the Chicago Bears are willing to invest $2 billion in a stadium site in the region.

Indiana lawmakers, too, in the form of Senate Bill 27, have outlined a set of investment promises from the state, Lake and Porter counties to bring the stadium to fruition.

“The passage of SB 27 would mark the most meaningful step forward in our stadium planning efforts to date,” the Bears said in a statement. “We are committed to finishing the remaining site-specific necessary due diligence to support our vision to build a world-class stadium near the Wolf Lake area in Hammond, Indiana.”

Presumably, the Bears will keep their Chicago moniker, in the same way that the Jets and Giants are considered “New York” teams, despite playing in a stadium in New Jersey, and the Cowboys have always been the Dallas Cowboys, despite playing outside of the city since 1971, in first Irving, and then Arlington, Texas.

In any case, will the last person to flee the Second City please turn out the lights?

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 19th, 2026

ED MARKEY: TRANS ALL THE KIDS!

Presumably, in 2026, Markey isn’t too concerned with any long term consequences to kids having surgery at a young age, because at this point, they only have a few years left:

Related:

Posted at 12:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Feb 19th, 2026
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