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e10withadot · 1 year

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Twitter is dying

Image Source: Reuters

And on one hand, I’m all for it.

I’ve had my fair share of spats with the site, I’ve even made this Twitlonger about leaving it:

Did I leave? Yes, for a while, but now I’m back. Does it feel good to be back? No. No it doesn’t.

So my question to myself, is…

Why can’t I be happy with Tumblr?

The answer is pretty simple. It’s not as popular.

I would loooove for everyone to move here, but that’s the curse of social media- you can’t use whatever site you like. It’s like messaging apps, everyone in the US uses iMessage- so you can’t “choose” between WhatsApp and iMessage. One choice is wholly superior to the other because of its userbase.

So maybe I’m stuck? Maybe I’m just forced to stay on whatever site is most popular because that’s what the cool kids do?

There is a difference between social media sites and messaging apps. Messaging is with family and coworkers- they might use a specific app, and so you have to use it. In contrast, you DON’T have to use Twitter. It’s just that you might get less traction.

Attention in social media is a losing battle

By rejoining Twitter, I put this claim to the test once more. Will I truly get more traction on Twitter or Tumblr? The answer is- random. Very random.

The same art piece on Tumblr vs Twitter

So, I posted the same piece of art on both platforms- and my Twitter post got 7 likes while the Tumblr one got 3. Why is that? Not because Twitter is better or actually because it had more users- it’s because a friend of mine with way more followers than me retweeted it. But usually? Even if by a few likes, Tumblr would always get me more traction.

Tumblr vs Twitter: Round Two

This to me, confirms a sneaking suspicion I’ve already had- Twitter is more for lightning-in-a-bottle chances if you’re a content creator, not for actual consistency.

But why is it that Tumblr sometimes gets more likes? If Tumblr is so small in comparison to Twitter, then who are these people liking my posts?

Tags.

It’s tags. Twitter uses the tried-and-true hashtag system, where you can add tags as long as they fit the tweet- this system, frankly, sucks. Labeling your posts on Twitter makes you look like a maniac (just look at how I wrote “Happy Birthday #SonicTheHedgehog!” like an insane person), and Twitter today relies more on keywords for labeling- which is a lot less consistent.

This is why, the way you get popular on Twitter is by leeching off the success of someone else. There’s no other alternative. The chance of a Twitter user finding your post by searching the appropriate tag is near impossible, a far cry from sites like YouTube or Tumblr. What’s the difference between Twitter and them? They let you choose all the tags you’d like.

YouTube has like a set limit of 30 or 50 I think, but that’s more than enough to label the video accordingly. Tumblr just lets you go completely insane with it, which is good- because that means more chances to get people on board.

This is just one reason why Twitter can be so frustrating- and it’s forced by the character limit, a limitation so dysfunctional, it causes most of the issues with the site.

With all this in mind, I think my mentality towards Twitter shouldn’t be to leave it- but to leverage the short term, lightning-in-a-bottle successes that may come from it. Yet, I’ll still mostly be here instead.

#twitter #social media #tumblr #writeblr #writing #txt post #text post #fuck elon #elongated muskrat #elon twitter #elon musk #text

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lagiacrus · 2 months

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i know people are just spreading awareness of issues/etc but god it does get Tiresome seeing people be like ‘heres these awful issues in america why isnt anyone talking about this’ and its like, stuff they arent affected by, that i *am* affected by, and like. again. i know its for awareness but seeing posts like that about stuff i am affected by being expected to reblog/retweet it because obviously otherwise i dont care enough is so like. im so tired. idk. its hard to explain. its like if a man was going around being like HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT FEMALE RAPE STATISTICS. WHY AREN’T YOU TALKING ABOUT THIS? at like a womens center. like glad you’re on board but read the room

#this is about disability stuff. im tired.

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schneiderguldborg · 2 years

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#seo

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falselyprofound · 3 years

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The Neopets NFT Debacle: A Summary Somehow Not The First Time This Has Happened!

So. Neopets recently announced its latest merchandising venture: Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). Without getting into the nitty-gritty technical details, these tokens are a digital collector’s item - a randomly-generated string of letters and numbers (’token’), with a unique picture of a customized Neopet that represents it. Kind of like a digital trading card.

No, you don’t get to choose what species of pet. No, you don’t get to choose what it’s wearing. No, you don’t get the pet on the main website. And no, you don’t even really own the artwork. Just the token.

Given that Neopets has continued to advertise itself as a children’s petsite, players have understandably been confused by the very non-kiddy merch move. And - more importantly - pissed.

It’s been a mess of a month so here’s a (not-so) quick recap of both the details and drama.

September 22nd:

Neopets Metaverse tweets for the first time, announcing that it will be creating a new line of official, Neopets-themed Non-Fungible Tokens.

A member of the Neopets Nation Facebook fan page notes that the twitter account is not being followed by the official Neopets twitter, nor has it received any public endorsement from the company. (x)

A Neopets Nation member sends a direct message to the Neopets twitter account, asking about the partnership. The staff member in charge of social media responds “I believe that is a scam.” (x)

Some hours later, the official Neopets twitter retweets the announcement, clarifying that it is indeed an official partnership. (x)

People are pissed.

September 23rd:

The Neopets team posts the announcement on the site’s New Features page, spreading the news to the playerbase at large. (x)

Users start voicing their concerns on the site’s forums (NeoBoards). Among the complaints are environmental concerns, the lack of site integration, the ugly RNG artwork, and Neopets’s long history of not delivering on merchandise. (Remind me to make a separate post on that last part because it’s a whole thing.)

Neopets responds by reassuring players that the partnership is legitimate and not a scam. ...That’s it. (x)

Fansite JellyNeo echoes the announcement to their homepage, with an added warning; “As a reminder, the last foray into Neopet crypto collectibles ended with the cards being largely worthless and unsellable. (The marketplace to sell/trade the cards was also shut down.)” (x)

The official NeopetsMeta discord server is reportedly a complete mess.

“...ever since this went up all I've seen in NFT spaces is talk of literally buying [Neopets] accounts on the black market to get a 'head start on the competition', so it's good to see that the rules of the website only apply to the long-time users and not the people wanting to pump and dump this community." (comment in ”love the new audience the NFTs are attracting!!”, 24 Sep 2021 - 5:09 am) “I don't know what NFT chats you mean but in the one specifically for Neopets Metaverse people are being overt about their motives.” (herdygerdy, JellyNeo staff, confirming the above)

No sign of any Neopets staff members. (x)

Also, one of the lead admins is called Jizz. Family friendly. (x)

September 24th:

A Neopets user does some digging into the partnership company, taking screenshots and documenting results on a petpage (originally NetDragon69, currently NFTurd. Mirror here). They note the following:

Moonvault, the company behind the NFTs, has existed for roughly a month. It's a shell company with little-to-no information on its homepage. A homepage which is mostly stock assets, anyhow.

Moonvault’s partner companies are both owned by NetDragon (which owns Neopets) and are most likely money laundering schemes.

One of said partner companies will write positive news articles about your company if you pay them. Hmm.

A disgruntled player posts the full names of JumpStart’s upper management to the boards. Players track down their LinkedIn profiles and start sending messages directly to the CEO, en masse. While this is public information and not considered doxxing, it is against site policy. Curiously, the thread remained up for at least twelve hours. Mods asleep, post their boss’s contact details.

Solana, the crypto-company powering the technology used for the NFTs, claims to be better for the environment than other methods of making crypto-merch. Heated arguments over whether or not NFTs can be environmentally friendly ensue. 2am rolls around, and I bail on the conversation after a crypto-bro unironically calls me sheeple.

At least one Neopets user is accused of being JumpStart staff in disguise, as their account is less than a month old and they seem to be the one (1) person on the boards defending the NFTs. This is likely untrue but it was very, very funny to read.

NeopetsMeta retweets an advertisement for, uh... Horny Hedgehogs. It’s nothing particularly graphic but sure, link to cartoon hedgehogs humping each other from your kids site merch page, why dont’cha. (x)

China declares all crypto-currency transactions illegal. Not because of TNT, obviously, but the timing is again very, very funny. This includes NFTs. Given that NetDragon is a Chinese company, this now means they’re also in some legal deep shit. (x)

September 25th:

JellyNeo staff member Herdy recaps and further explains the above happenings on a pet page. He also notes the following:

The artwork being used for the Dimensional Kougra NFT is not the official artwork, but rather an image unique to the Neopets fansite Dress To Impress. When this mistake is pointed out, the promotional artwork that included the Kougra is replaced with a Chocolate Kougra without comment. It’s currently unknown if the stolen asset is still in the system, but it does confirm that NeopetsMeta has no access to the site’s image databases. (x) (mirror) (archive of original page)

JellyNeo publicly criticized NeopetsMeta for tweeting a link to literal horny hedgehogs. Rather than taking the tweet down, NeopetsMeta instead accused JellyNeo of spreading misinformation. ...Even though their original tweet is still up. (x) (mirror)

He also speculates from past NFT endeavors that the starting price for one Neopets NFT is somewhere in the ballpark of $450 USD.

September 26 ~ 28:

No additional statements are made by TNT, and things on the NeoBoards begin to die down in lieu of new things to discuss. Less threads being made, but the ones that remained stayed active.

(Most of the drama around this time targeted a few specific players, particularly one who works in the Crypto industry. While it was certainly a thing to read, I won’t recap it here.)

JellyNeo reports that members of the NeopetsMeta Discord server have been receiving direct messages from bot accounts, attempting to trick new NFT-buyers into scams disguised as freebie giveaways. (x)

...An issue that is somewhat magnified by the fact that the Discord server is doing a recruitment leaderboard-based giveaway around the same time. (Can you say ‘MLM’?) (x)

September 29:

Homophobic language is used in the NeopetsMeta Discord server (specifically the f-slur), and is not filtered out by its moderation bot. When this is brought to the attention of the actual human mod, he chucks a shitfit. It’s three hours before the offending message is deleted. (x) (x) Bonus points: “gay” is automatically filtered out. (x)

Side-tangent: it’s only been nine months since Neopets began allowing users to use terms such as “lesbian” and “transgender” on the site itself (”gay” is allowed by site rules, but still filtered out). Pride-themed merchandise is available in their store year-round. This is who they wanna partner with, huh. (x) (x)

September 30:

Continuing the streak of Discord drama, an admin channel on NeopetsMeta is accidentally made public. “Included in this channel was curated feedback gathered in private by mods from members of the community they valued. [...Regarding] suggestions for the future direction of Neopets Metaverse.”

The list of suggestions includes pushing TNT to release extra pet slots and release new UC (”Unconverted”/extremely rare) pets ahead of schedule, in order to “distract” players. (x) (x)

Entrants to Neopets’s weekly Beauty Contest (art competition) submit anti-NFT protest artwork. The winning entry is deleted from the listings, presumably for being a part of the protest. It is restored after users complain, but the New Features page notably does not list the winners and instead showcases the 2nd place artwork instead. (Quote 2nd place: “I'm really disappointed that they would use my art to censor the real winner. First place won fair and square.”) (x) (x) (x)

October:

The NeopetsMeta Discord moderator responsible for the aforementioned shitfit is kicked, with the staff issuing an apology... and he is replaced with a brand new discord account that definitely isn’t just him on a side account.

Neopets Metaverse releases their roadmap (plan for the future of the project). The roadmap lacks any dates or technical details and can thus be read more as a wishlist than an actual, tangible project.

Tl;dr - their ultimate intention is to fork (duplicate) the main site and make it entirely operate on blockchain items. ...So you’ll have to pay for literally everything. (x) (x)

Neopets Fansites organize a two-day blackout in protest, altering their homepages and encouraging players not to log into the main site. Participating fansites include JellyNeo, Dress To Impress, the Neopian Writer’s Forum, The Daily Neo, Reddit community r/Neopets, Lost And Pound, and more. (x)

Neopets fan artists get more subtle with their protest artwork, and a No-NFT image makes the site’s front page. (x)

@NeopetsMeta on twitter creates and posts a Soyjack meme calling people against the project “Hateooooors”. I took actual psychic damage from typing that. (x)

The tweet is deleted by NeopetsMeta after considerable backlash. The Wayback Machine archive is also deleted, though QRTs responding to the original (14-tweet long) thread remain. (x) (x) (x)

NeopetsMeta issues an official apology for the tweet. (x) The response from the community boils down to “get bent”. (x) (x)

A Reddit user who works in the NFT industry makes a post on r/Neopets explaining that what the team is doing can’t even properly be called a ‘Metaverse’. I’ll be honest, I didn’t understand a word of it, but here’s the link if you’re interested. (x)

The Neopets Team posts an official apology for this ongoing PR disaster to the NeoBoards. They assert that JumpStart does not support the bigoted beliefs held by the Metaverse staff, that JumpStart will start moderating the discord server, and that protest entries will now be permitted in the Beauty Contest. There are no plans to cancel the project. (Also, not really relevant but kinda funny - TNT member Petrichor is shuffled away from working on the site. She was Neopets’ community manager for a grand total of... three weeks. Hoooly shit.) (x)

The Neopets Metaverse discord server is raided (spammed) by protestors. The moderators respond by publicly doxxing one spammer’s instagram account. The ensuing harassment forces the spammer to delete their social media accounts, and two moderators involved in the incident are later booted from the server. (x)

Crypto-merch company Quidd announces it will be releasing its own line of Neopets-themed “digital collectibles”. While not necessarily NFTs, buyers have the option to mint them into Etherium-powered NFTs. (Aka, the crypto-service that’s most garbage for the environment.)

Just to be clear, JumpStart didn’t change companies. They’re now multi-track NFT drifting. ok. (x)

Quidd retracts its announcement of the project from both its social media and discord server within 24 hours: “In the case of the new [Neopets] channel, our partners wanted to put a little more time between another project that they dropped and our project. So, it's a delay, not a cancellation.” We’ll see, Quidd. We’ll see. (x)

Another protest image wins the Beauty Contest. Normally I wouldn’t consider this noteworthy but it is, as the kids say, rather sussy. (x) (x)

November (Pre-Sale):

An official price point for Metaverse NFTs is set - or rather, prices. The more that are sold, the more expensive future ones will become, until eventually they cap out at a whopping 4 SOL (approx $1000 usd). What’s more, the number of NFTs being sold is cut in half in order to promote a fear of missing out. (x)

It’s worth noting that even NFT buyers are unhappy with this plan, as it encourages bots to buy up the cheapest ones and discourages legitimate collectors. (x)(x)

9 hours prior to the NFTs going on sale, scam twitter account @NeopetMeta (singular ‘Neopet’) posts their own version of the site. At the time of writing, the dupe account has reportedly stolen 243 SOL (approx $55066 usd). (x)(x)(x)

Launch goes as expected, by which I mean “bots buy all the cheap stuff and hobbyists decide not to bother”. (x)

Legitimate buyers report being banned from the Discord for asking which account is the real account. (x) The invite link to the Discord channel is removed from the official twitter, possibly due to the scam account swarming them with bots.

November (Post-Sale):

The sale period ends. 42% of the stock is sold (approx. 8,707.5 SOL, or $2.1 million USD). The rest are “burnt” - made permanently unavailable. (x)

Obligatory right-clicking ensues. (x)

Post-sale statistics indicate that 1,000 NFTs were apparently sold before the sale went live - meaning that only 246 could be purchased at the base price by outsiders. (x)

A good number of images were generated incorrectly - fur clips through clothing, Transparent and Eventide pets are completely opaque, Wraith pets are missing their smoke effects, some only have one piece of clothing. Also, there’s only ten species, and 50% of pets have the Sad expression. (x) (x)

Fansite Dress To Impress openly questions how the images were generated and officially revokes any permissions the Metaverse team may have had to use their (pet image-generating) service. (x)

NetDragon issues a press release that goes over the details of the sale, believing it to be a “success” that garnered “strong interest” from the community. (x) (x)

Neopets gets a new marketing employee who is Pro-NFT. She is doxxed by angry players within the week. (x)

...So yeah, that’s where we are in this on-going shitfest. Will add new developments as they come!

#pointless post #neopets #neopets blogging #1k

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avintagekiss24 · 3 years

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Hi! I don't want to start anything on here and am always willing for civil conversations. At this point there's so much I've found out about Seb (besides the video he liked, the tommy lee thing, and the girlfriend thing) that I feel so guilty if I would continue to support him. I love him sm but it just doesn't look good rn. He is associated/follows an organisation (for helping veterans) that has posted a blue lives matter flag picture and who's co-founder has sexual assault allegations against him, and worked with him in 'The last full measure'. His friend Paul Walter Hauser has done blackface in the past, and when called out on it he just listed a few people that also did blackface. There's more, I found a discussion on here that I can link. I seriously don't support "cancel culture" bc I don't think it helps anyone but there are just a lot of 'mistakes' and shady people that can be linked to Seb, I wish it wouldn't be that way. I honestly don't know what to think about it anymore.

Hi! I’m also open to having civil conversations and I don’t believe you’re trying to start anything. I really do think this situation of dragging up a four year old video and taking it completely out of context is harmful not just to Black people, but to fandom/activism in general. This is gonna be long because I’m going to take your points one by one, and I want to preface this by saying that I will not answer any derogatory, sideways asks pertaining to this subject. I will delete every single one and will block your silly ass. I’m not going to argue with people who think I’m blindly supporting Sebastian because I’m just trying to get fucked by him, or people who think I hate myself and am trying to appease some white man.

So, on with the discourse!

The video he liked - this video was taken completely out of context and that is my main issue with this whole situation. It was not a video of a white man saying that he thinks he should be able to say the n word as everyone claimed it was. They were quickly debating on whether or not it's okay to say in rap lyrics. He was told no, that's not okay, that's never okay and they moved on from it. That's it. End of story. That somehow was twisted into a click bait style headline of "Sebastian Stan likes a video of a white man defending his right to say the n word" when that is absolutely not true. My other issue is that people are more upset that Sebastian liked the video than they are about the white man in the video literally saying the n word. So, do you really care about the use of the n word like you're claiming? Cuz if you do, you'd be more upset at the white man that said the word than you would be about the white man simply liking the video. Or, are you just using this as an excuse to grandstand against a white man you don't like?

The Tommy Lee thing - Sebastian Stan playing Tommy Lee does not make Sebastian Stan a bad person. Is Charlize Theron a bad person for playing Aileen Wuornos, a prostitute who started murdering men? Is Leonardo DiCaprio a bad person for playing a slave owner? Is Edward Norton a bad person for playing a nazi sympathizing racist? Actors play bad people. That doesn't mean that they themselves are bad people. 1990's Tommy Lee was a bad person, but that should have no bearing on who Sebastian Stan is or his character as a man.

The gf/Paul Walter Hauser thing - Why are we holding Sebastian accountable for what the people around him are doing? Again, why are we more upset that Sebastian is associated with people who have done questionable things than the specific people themselves? I'm not going to speak on the kimono wearing -- I'm not Asian. It's not my place to say whether or not its offensive because it's not my culture, but she posted that picture and attended that party before she started dating Sebastian, quite possibly before she even knew him. Same with Paul. I think that black face thing was long before he knew Sebastian. Now, if Sebastian was defending these actions, going around saying "I think it's okay for white women to wear Kimono's" "I think black face is fine" "I think white people should be able to say the n word" then we'd have a different story, wouldn't we? But that's not what we have, and that's not what he is doing. He is not responsible for the things his friends do or have done in the past just because he's more famous than they are, and he is not required to speak on them. Let's put it this way -- would you be comfortable having to be responsible for something a friend of yours did before you knew them? Would you want to have to be forced to answer for your friend when you yourself had nothing to do with the questionable behavior?

The organization that supports the military/blue lives matter - Sebastian cannot control what message that foundation puts out and it does not mean that he is or is not pro-police himself. There is not enough concrete evidence -- if any evidence for that matter -- that Sebastian is a blue lives matter supporter. Did Sebastian donate before they put up the blue lives matter post? Or after? I don’t know, cuz I don’t follow him that closely, but if he donates before they come out with a particular stance, that means he should be held accountable for that? I know I donated to an organization once and they turned out to support something that i’m 100% against. That means I’m a bad person because I couldn’t see into the future? Another point, how can we be certain that Sebastian saw the blue lives matter post in the first place? I know I’m not online 24 hrs a day, I miss posts all the time and I’m just an average person. I make three or four tumblr posts a day, and I’m gone. I have to play catch up on social media, and even then, I still miss stuff. So I’m sure the same happens to a working actor. As for the co-founder, I don't know who this person is and would rather not get into any allegations against them because I don't want to trigger anyone who comes across this post. If Sebastian knows about these allegations, is a willing participant/supporter of this person then yeah, that's pretty shitty, but we don't know the inner workings of this friendship/acquaintance/work relationship. We don’t know how close they are or if they even still speak.

I’m a pretty big fan of Don Cheadle. He’s a stand up guy, he’s a great actor, he’s funny, he’s political and stands up for what he believes in and in a very public way. I support him. Don Cheadle is also friends with Chris Evans, RDJ, Mark Ruffalo, and Letitia Wright (just to name a few). Chris Evans has a bipartisan forum that highlights/promotes right wing politicians, RDJ defended Chris Pratt during the whole “he’s the worst Chris in Hollywood” crap, who’s technically done black face, and who once said to a female reporter “nice tits” when she walked into the room, Mark Ruffalo just walked back his support of Palestine, and Letitia Wright retweeted/supported an anti-vaxxer/anti-trans Pastor who equated an ingredient of the covid vaccine to the devil because it contained some parts of the word Lucifer. Does that mean Don is now a bad person because he’s friends with these people? Why isn’t he getting any heat for his friendships with them? Why isn’t he being held accountable for what they’ve done and said? Oh right, because he’s not a white fave. So people don’t care one way or the other, which brings me to my next point.

I can guarantee you that if Sebastian’s gf or Paul or this co-founder were not associated with Sebastian in any way, nobody would give a shit about her wearing a kimono, about Paul doing black face, or about the co-founder/organization being blue lives matter supporters and in that lies the actual problem. Being critical of people and their actions should be consistent and should happen all the time -- not just when they interact with your white fave. That’s when it becomes performative and looks like you just want to be able to show internet people that you follow/support/stan unproblematic celebrities, when really, you don’t care.

I think the moral of this post is that I think it's unfair to hold a complete stranger to a standard that I cannot hold myself to. I also don't view celebrities the way most teenagers/twenty somethings do, and that’s because when I entered fandom we didn't have social media, so I grew up with a wall between myself and said celebrities. There is no wall now with the presence of social media. "Fans" nowadays have a weird ownership feeling over celebrities because they can read their personal thoughts or view personal pictures and think that they have this personal quasi-friendship with them. I can't get on board with that. I prefer having the wall and I still keep the wall.

If supporting Sebastian makes you uncomfortable, then by all means, stop supporting him. Just make sure you are making this decision for yourself based on credible sources and concrete evidence and that you're not letting this fake woke activist mob make you feel uncomfortable. Internet activism means nothing unless you put your money where your mouth is in your real life and 90% of the social justice internet warriors do not. Real activism is bigger than changing your avi to a black square.

#asks #answered #sebastian stan

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guiltygearofficial · 3 years

Note

What are the characters like on social media?

Sol Badguy has only one Social Media and it is Myspace. He has two friends on there, one of which is Axl who made a Myspace before other options were available and the other is a bot. He only posts once a year to review a Queen album (all 10/10) or to post a picture of his motorcycle.

Ky is a christian facebook mom. He has a “No Swearing on my Profile Please” banner.

May sometimes posts pictures of the dolphins or group photos with the other jellyfish pirates, but she’s mostly here to play browser games. Flash never died in the world of Guilty Gear.

Zato is considered one of the funniest people on twitter, none of which is intentional. He posts shit like “Eddie ate a rat today...effervescent.” and everybody loves it. He isn’t verified so everybody assumes that he’s some kind of parody account.

Millia runs a beauty instagramm that’s mostly just her explaining how to take care of your hair when it’s A) more mass than your entire body and B) Alive

Potemkin runs an art account, where he posts pictures of the paintings he drew. Most of his tweets are garbled messes of text however, due to him being forced to author all his tweets in text to speech, since his fingers are too large for a keyboard or touchscreen.

Chipp has a twitter account on which he posts government reforms and anime reviews. There’s a 50/50 chance if his next tweet will be “We’ll be raising taxes on cigarettes and alcohol” or “Alter Memory didn’t really hook me. Had only one ninja. 3/10″

Faust runs a blog in which he gives medical advice to anyone who asks. Its become an urban legend that if your symptoms are vague enough, the blog owner will break down your door and treat you personally.

Axl has 20 different twitter accounts, all of which are from different timelines with different email addresses. Usually by the time he manages to log into one, he gets thrown into another timeline.

Kliff mostly posts really outdated memes like “Me and the boys awake at 3 AM looking for GEARS” while tagging every single member of the Holy Order.

I-no was a casuality of the tumblr p*rn ban.

Testament has a social media account on which he posts pictures of the grove and the local wildlife. He has only one person in his contacts and its. Whenever anybody else tries to interact with his account or comments on his pictures, they’re instantly blocked.

Justice used to have a twitter, Apparently trying to wipe out all of humanity gets you banned from twitter thought. She’s still active on facebook however.

Baiken only posts pictures of cool swords

Anji has nothing but sockpuppet accounts which he uses to join antivaxxer/flatearth conspiracy groups so he can debate them for shits n giggles

Venom only follows Zato on twitter and is sure to like and retweet everything he posts. Without fail, the top comment on everything Zato posts is venom saying “Banger tweet milord.”

Johnny lost his social media priviledges because he kept infecting the mayships board computer with viruses since he refuses to stop clicking on the horny ads.

Jam runs an account for her restaurant, doing her best to advertise herself on social media.

Dizzys page is filled of pictures she has taken with people around the Kiske household. It gained a lot of followers one day when somebody noticed that both Ramlethal who declared war on the world like a month ago and two kings of Illyria were in one of the pictures she posted.

Bridget is forced to make memes for Jams social media account. They’re the only reason anyone follows the account.

Slayer runs Haikubot on tumblr.

Zappa has found much popularity with the youths, due to them misinterpreting his posts screaming for help as self deprecating humor. Most of his posts are something like “My body is a screaming wreck being haunted by 12 different spectres and I will never know peace.” and every single reblog is tagged as #Mood

Robo-Ky runs the bakeries actually succesful meme page. Most of his posts are vaguely bread related deep fried images and weirdly horny posts. They have 200k followers but most aren’t convinced they’re an actual real bakery.

Bedman posts all his hot takes on the internet and has sworn vengeance against twitter for limiting him to 280 letters.He constantly gets into arguments with people, none of which actually engage him in debate due to the fact that everything he posts is atleast 7 pages long.

Daisuke Ishiwatari runs this blog

Sin runs a tumblr blog where he pretends to be Ky, making satirical posts bullying his dad for being a nerd.

Ramlethal made an account after Elphelt and Sin pressured her into doing so. She posts pictures of her magehound and nothing else.

Elphelt is currently on her 12th account due to the fact that she keeps getting hacked. No matter how many times she’s told to block them, she keeps falling for horny spambots every single time.

Raven has been banned from every social media website in existence.

Leo posts whatever he feels like at the time, which consists of rants about Ky, new definitions to his dictionary or pictures with whoever happened to be nearby in Illyria castle. There are three different “Whitefang Out Of Context” accounts currently active.

Answer does damage control for Chipp. Whenever Chipp ends up getting into an argument with another world leader on Twitter due to differing opinions on anime, he DM’s them to apologize. His actual posts mostly consist of pictures of his frogs.

Nagoriyuki posts pictures of his haikus on social media. While they are fairly popular in their own right, most of his fanbase comes from people thirst following him from that time his reflection was visible in one of his pictures.

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gallickingun · 4 years

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so i saw the post about kissing that you reblogged and that made me think... imagine reader retweeting that on twitter and bakugou sees it, then proceeds to kiss her at random times the next day which really flusters her and she wonders why he's doing this because they normally don't advertise the fact that they're dating

a/n: this is a lot of all over the place randomness but... i kind of love it??? short little blurby about bakubaby treating you right!!!

ps, i can’t do anything short, can i? couple hundred words ahead lol

Bakugou had always been possessive over what he deemed as his.

So, it’s somewhat strange, when he doesn’t necessarily lay claim to you in front of all his friends.

Sure, Kirishima and Mina know that the two of you are secretly attached at the hip, and Denki may or may not raise a brow when you get too close to one another, but overall it’s not necessarily well known that you have been exclusive to one another for the past few months.

Bakugou is genuinely secure in your relationship; the one constant in his life now that the Pro Hero Sidekick gigs are taking off. He knows that when he calls, you’ll answer, and that there is never too much of him for you to handle. Honestly, he never thought much about the fact that you didn’t really show much affection in public because you were on his mind every moment not premeditated on training exercises and patrols and skirmishes in the streets.

No, your affection comes in small doses, here and there and always in private. And you know that the Pro Hero life will be a lonely one at times, but you can’t help the insatiable need for physical affection. It’s something instilled in you, bred in you maybe. The unbreakable desire to feel the pads of his bare fingers, his knee slotting between your thighs as he lays closer to tell you about his day. You even wish you could just feel his hands on the crown of your head, maybe a gentle kiss to your shoulder.

At this point, after a couple of weeks of non-stop action in the streets, you start to grow restless. Your publicist says you need to show more attention to social media, so you take to Tweeter when you have a second to breathe in the agency locker room.

It doesn’t take long for you to find a relationship-based account that posts sappy quotes and cute photos; it makes your heart ache and long for something a little more concrete than what you have now - something just a smidge more open.

In a moment of haste, you post a response to a specific original comment: I was extremely kissable today and do you know how many kisses I received???? Zero!!!

It’s something harmless; a gentle joke with your growing audience. You need to prove to them that you’re relatable, which is all that you’re doing. It couldn’t have come from the darkness of your mind that clouds your vision at night, begging you to crawl into Katsuki’s bed at ungodly hours of the night even if he’s not there; even if the two of you aren’t there yet.

It is another night spent alone, cold ramen on the coffee table as you fall asleep on the couch to old training tapes of yourself replaying on the television. You were trying to pick apart your every misstep, but all you could focus on was the way your body aches for your lover. Your blood beats heavy in your chest, the sound deafening to your ears when the pulse throbs at your temples and in your jugular. The edges of you crave something solid to fall against, to fall into.

You want Katsuki.

Instead, you step into your hero shoes and get ready to conquer another day at the agency.

When you step out of your car, you’re surprised to find Bakugou’s vehicle parked next to your usual spot. Even though he’s an early riser, he’s usually patrolling or attending appointments during the morning hours, so it’s a bit out of sorts to see his car already in it’s place.

The front door is pulled open for you by a familiar face - ashen blonde hair framing crimson irises, a small smile tugging on his full lips. You tilt your had in silent questioning as you step over the threshhold and into your persona for the day.

You let out a strangled sound when those very lips find yours, right in the middle of everything, the hallway full of people turning to look at the two of you.

“Good morning,” he murmurs as he steps away from you, vermillion irises trailing over your frame, “sorry I didn’t make it over last night. Patrol was a bitch.”

You shake your head but you can’t reply because your mind is foggy, dizzy in its haze to attempt and figure out why he’s done what he’s done. There are several people staring at you now, mouths slightly agape at the obvious display of affection that is rather unusual for the pair of you. Most of those that you’ve now given full access to the validity of your relationship only hinted and gossiped about it prior, unsure if the lingering gazes you might send one another are truly that of longing rather than carelessness.

“S’okay,” you manage, “no big.”

He’s smiling, squeezing your arm before turning to walk his own way. You’re left breathless in the front entryway, hand covering your mouth as you watch him fade further into the hallway until he’s boarding the elevator.

You blink once, squeezing your eyelids tightly so you see stars. And then you take the first step forward to start your day, desperately trying to ignore the effervescent champagne bubbles in your belly but failing miserably with each passing moment.

The tap on your door at lunchtime brings your attention back to the present, eyes finding the bulky frame of one Pro Hero: Ground Zero at your door. Your jaw goes slack but you stand to your feet anyway, “H-Hey, what’s up?”

“Can’t I take my girlfriend to lunch and it not be a whole thing?” Bakugou clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth, crossing his arms and rolling his eyes. “C’mon, dummy, let’s go.”

Bakugou actually takes you by the hand - a gesture he hardly does even in the confines of your personal home - and walks you towards the food court near the center of the agency. When you stand in line, he kisses the back of your head and pulls you closer to him. The people around you stop and stare and you know it’s because the big, bad Ground Zero finally appears to have shown that he has a heart.

The pair of you eat in relative silence, focused on scarfing down the food in front of you before you turn to speech. Bakugou is finished first, kicking his feet up on the chair next to yours. He smiles across the table at you and offhandedly asks you about your day.

Through a mouthful of noodles you mutter something along the lines of a whole lotta paperwork, which makes him laugh. You tilt your head, marveling at this new version of your significant other. You aren’t sure if you should enjoy it or be worried, but the revelry you’re sharing in the way people look at the two of you now that he is being openly affectionate makes you keep your mouth shut for the time being.

It is only when he drops you back off at your doorstep and asks you to consider taking the rest of the day off with a kiss to your cheek that you finally broach the burning topic. The words are like acid on your tongue, “What is going on with you?”

Bakugou brushes his thumb over your jaw, leaning back enough to look in your eyes. Something falters in him and you step closer, palms finding his chest, “Katsuki, did I do something wrong?”

“No,” he snaps immediately. Bakugou turns his face away from you so he can compose himself, “I did something wrong.”

Your mind wants to flood with the horrible things he could be talking about, but Bakugou is already interjecting with another sentence before your imagination can wander too far off of a cliff.

“I saw what you posted yesterday and I feel like I’m being a really shitty boyfriend by not just fucking telling people that we’re together.” He runs his hands over your arms, tucking his thumbs into your gloves, “This is my way of trying to make up for it.”

The tips of your cheeks are painted pink and you can’t help it when you surge up to kiss him square on the lips. The action leaves him breathless, eyes half-lidded as he tries to work himself down from the adrenaline rush.

You bite your lip, “I just decided that I’m taking the rest of today off.”

Bakugou cups your face, fingertips tickling the nape of your neck, “Sounds like a plan to me.”

#bakugou katsuki #bakugou x reader #bakugou katsuki x reader #bnha x reader #katsuki x reader #bakugou katsuki x oc #bakugou katsuki fanfic #bakugou katsuki fanfiction #bakugou katsuki one shot #bakugou katsuki imagine #bakugou katsuki blurb #bnha one for all #bnha fanfic #bnha fanfiction #bnha imagine #bnha blurb #morgan writes bnha #my writing

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route22ny · 3 years

Link

(Copied here in its entirety below for the paywall-challenged)

***

The Differences Between the Vaccines Matter

Yes, all of the COVID-19 vaccines are very good. No, they’re not all the same.

Public-health officials are enthusiastic about the new, single-shot COVID-19 vaccine from Johnson & Johnson, despite its having a somewhat lower efficacy at preventing symptomatic illness than other available options. Although clinical-trial data peg that rate at 72 percent in the United States, compared with 94 and 95 percent for the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, many experts say we shouldn’t fixate on those numbers. Much more germane, they say, is the fact that the Johnson & Johnson shot, like the other two, is essentially perfect when it comes to preventing the gravest outcomes. “I’m super-pumped about this,” Virginia’s vaccine coordinator told The New York Times last weekend. “A hundred percent efficacy against deaths and hospitalizations? That’s all I need to hear.”

The same glowing message—that the COVID-19 vaccines are all equivalent, at least where it really counts—has been getting public-health officials and pundits super-pumped for weeks now. Its potential value for promoting vaccination couldn’t be more clear: We’ll all be better off, and this nightmare will be over sooner, if people know that the best vaccine of all is whichever one they can get the soonest. With that in mind, Vox has urged its readers to attend to “the most important vaccine statistic”—the fact that “there have been zero cases of hospitalization or death in clinical trials for all of these vaccines.” The physician and CNN medical analyst Leana Wen also made a point of noting that “all of the vaccines are essentially a hundred percent” in this regard. And half a dozen former members of President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 Advisory Board wrote in USA Today, “Varying ‘effectiveness’ rates miss the most important point: The vaccines were all 100% effective in the vaccine trials in stopping hospitalizations and death.”

There’s a problem here. It’s certainly true that all three of the FDA-authorized vaccines are very good—amazing, even—at protecting people’s health. No one should refrain from seeking vaccination on the theory that any might be second-rate. But it’s also true that the COVID-19 vaccines aren’t all the same: Some are more effective than others at preventing illness, for example; some cause fewer adverse reactions; some are more convenient; some were made using more familiar methods and technologies. As for the claim that the vaccines have proved perfectly and equally effective at preventing hospitalization and death? It’s just not right.

These differences among the options could matter quite a bit, in different ways to different people, and they should not be minimized or covered over. Especially not now: Vaccine supplies in the U.S. will soon surpass demand, even as more contagious viral variants spread throughout the country. In the meantime, governors are revoking their rules on face masks, or taking other steps to loosen their restrictions. It’s tempting to believe that a simple, decisive message—even one that verges on hype—is what’s most needed at this crucial moment. But if the message could be wrong, that has consequences.

The idea that all of the vaccines are pretty much the same, in that they’re perfect at preventing COVID-19 hospitalizations and death, got its legs on social media. The USA Today op-ed by the former members of the Biden team illustrated this by linking to a data table found on Twitter. Created by the infectious-disease doctor Monica Gandhi, it showed a variety of trial results for six different vaccines. One column was rendered in canary yellow—“Protection from hospitalizations/death”—and every cell read “100%.” A similar table, tweeted out a few days earlier by the dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, Ashish Jha, conveyed the same idea through a grid of zeros—as in, zero people hospitalized, zero people dead. The prominent physician and researcher Eric Topol followed with his own clinical-trial data summary featuring a column of 100 percents. “That is impressive!” he wrote across the top. All told, their posts would be retweeted about 15,000 times.

The data were indeed suggestive of an encouraging idea. Based on the numbers so far, we can expect the vaccines to provide extremely high levels of protection against the most dire outcomes. Still, we don’t know how high—and it’s clear they won’t uniformly cause hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19 to disappear in vaccinated people.

The experts understand this, of course. Gandhi has been updating her table as more data come in, and now pegs Moderna’s efficacy on that front at 97 percent; Jha has since tweeted that “nothing is 100 percent … But these vaccines sure are close”; and Topol told The Atlantic that the numbers in his tweet are not a sufficient basis from which to draw “any determination of magnitude of effect,” though the fact that they all point in the same direction is “very encouraging.” Still, the message of perfection that their initial tables and tweets spawned—the gist, for many readers, of all those 100s and zeros—has since been picked up far and wide, and misinterpreted along the way.

To grasp the shaky nature of these particular data, it’s important to remember how the vaccine-development process began. Last April, not long after the pandemic began, the World Health Organization set out a target efficacy for vaccines of 50 percent, with options for how that value should be measured. A vaccine could be shown to reduce the risk of symptomatic disease, severe disease, or transmission of the coronavirus. The FDA offered similar guidance in June, and other regulatory agencies also followed the WHO’s lead. Among these choices, symptomatic disease was the most feasible, because it’s both a common outcome and one that’s easier to confirm in a large-scale trial. An outcome that included asymptomatic infections would have been even more common, but screening for all infections would have been prohibitive, especially early in the pandemic. So that’s how the vaccine trials were designed: Each would try to demonstrate at least 50 percent efficacy with respect to symptomatic disease as its “primary outcome.”

The trials could have used severe disease, hospitalization, or death as primary outcomes, but that would have slowed things down. These events are far more infrequent—there could have been 200 infections for each COVID-19 death in the U.S.—and that means it would have taken more time, and larger numbers of trial participants, to generate enough data to be sure of a 50 percent efficacy. Developers did include “severe COVID-19” as a secondary outcome—that is, one that would be measured and analyzed, but for which the trial might not have been designed to provide a definitive answer. Efficacy against hospitalization and against death, however, were not included as secondary outcomes for every trial.

Given that fact, the data can’t support a claim that the vaccines are 100 percent effective at preventing these serious outcomes. (Topol highlighted this very issue in an op-ed last fall for The New York Times.) Out of the six vaccines included in the dramatic data tables that made the rounds on Twitter, the clinical trials for only two of them—Oxford-AstraZeneca’s and Johnson & Johnson’s—included hospitalization for COVID-19 as a secondary outcome, and reported that efficacy rate. The clinical research for one other vaccine, made by Novavax, had hospitalization as a secondary outcome, but that trial hasn’t been reported in full yet. (On my website, I’ve provided more detailed information and analysis of the relevant data.)

Now, a casual reader of clinical-trial reports—or their summaries on social media—might take the fact that no hospitalizations of vaccinated people are mentioned to mean that none occurred. That’s risky, given that pieces of the data have been published across various medical journals and via several different regulatory agencies rather than in full in one place; that the plans for some trials did not specify ahead of time that the vaccine’s efficacy at preventing hospitalizations would be calculated; and that we’ve seen only minimal early data (via a press release from Novavax) from one of them. It would be just as risky to assume that all hospitalizations would be included in the analyses of people who developed severe COVID-19. Hospitalization and severe disease are not synonymous—people could be coping at home even though COVID-19 has caused their oxygen levels to drop severely, and moderately ill people might be hospitalized out of an abundance of caution when they are at high risk of getting worse.

The two vaccine trials that did explicitly report hospitalizations as an efficacy outcome make this latter issue very clear. For the AstraZeneca vaccine, one person in the control group had severe COVID-19, but eight people were hospitalized; for Johnson & Johnson, 34 people in the placebo group had severe COVID-19, but only five people were hospitalized. It’s true that zero vaccinated people were hospitalized in either study after the vaccines took effect. But with numbers that small, you can’t draw a reliable conclusion about how high efficacy may be for these outcomes. As Diana Zuckerman of the National Center for Health Research pointed out about the Johnson & Johnson trial, “It’s misleading to tell the public that nobody who was vaccinated was hospitalized unless you also tell them that only 5 people in the placebo group were hospitalized.” She’s right. And you can’t be confident about predicting effectiveness precisely in a wider population outside the trial, either. For example, some of the vaccine trials included relatively few people older than 60 as participants.

You can see how fragile these numbers are by looking at those compiled for severe disease. In the Pfizer trial, for example, just one vaccinated person developed severe COVID-19 versus three in the placebo group—which meant that a single bout of disease made the difference between a calculated efficacy rate of 66 percent and one of 100 percent. For the Novavax and Oxford-AstraZeneca trials, there were zero people with severe disease in the vaccinated group versus only one in the control group, so adding or subtracting one would have been even more dramatic. The problem is even greater for deaths. For that efficacy analysis, only two of the vaccine trials—for Moderna’s and Johnson & Johnson’s—reported any COVID-19 deaths at all in the control groups.

It’s also important to remember that these are early results: Some people who enrolled very late in the trials aren’t yet included in reported data, and analysis is still under way. Indeed, the FDA pointed out in December that one vaccinated person in the Moderna trial had been hospitalized with apparently severe COVID-19 two months after receiving a second dose. That person was in a group still awaiting final assessment by the researchers, and was not mentioned in Moderna’s formal readout of results.

We’ve learned a little more from the ongoing public vaccination programs. Four important reports have come in the past two weeks. In one, researchers compared about 600,000 people who had had a full course of the Pfizer vaccine in Israel with 600,000 people matched in age and other demographics who had not been vaccinated. The shots’ effectiveness at preventing hospitalization was measured at 87 percent. (“This vaccine is fabulous in a real world setting,” Jha tweeted in response.) A preprint from Scotland reported an efficacy rate against hospitalization of about 80 percent among people 80 or older, almost all of whom had received only one dose of either the Pfizer or the AstraZeneca vaccine. Two reports from Public Health England estimated a reduction of hospitalization of about 50 percent and 43 percent for the same age group, again almost all after just one dose of the Pfizer vaccine. These are exciting outcomes—those vaccines really, really worked! But they oughtn’t lead anyone to think that the vaccines are all the same, and that protection will be perfect.

Where does that leave us for making decisions? As Anthony Fauci told The New York Times last weekend, “Now you have three highly effective vaccines. Period.” Again, you will get a lot of benefit from any of them, and your risk will shrink even more as those around you get vaccinated too. Whichever one you start with, a booster may be coming in the not-so-distant future, of the same vaccine or perhaps a different one. By taking the first vaccine you can get, you’ll also avoid the risk of finding yourself without protection if infection rates surge where you live.

Efficacy is merely one layer, though. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have an edge at preventing symptomatic illness, but the Johnson & Johnson vaccine brings its own advantages. It has no demanding freezer requirements, which means it’s easier to distribute and more accessible to many communities. It’s more affordable than the other two—the company is providing it at cost around the world. Then there’s the fact that resources can be stretched a lot further when only a single dose has to be administered.

For individuals, too, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine has benefits. As a one-and-done injection, it’s more convenient. It also has a lower rate of adverse events than Moderna’s. You can’t compare results of these trials too precisely, but there are indications of a striking difference. About 2 percent of those who got the Johnson & Johnson vaccine recorded having reactions, such as fatigue, muscle aches, and fever, that were severe enough to interfere with daily activities. For those getting their second injection of Moderna, that rate was higher than 15 percent. People who are on the fence about getting vaccinated may find that this difference tips the scales in favor of getting a shot. Others who have doubts about the newness of the mRNA technology in the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines may appreciate the fact that Johnson & Johnson’s approach has already been deployed in the company’s Ebola vaccine, which got full drug approval in Europe last year.

Given these concerns, there’s some danger in the message—however well intentioned—that the COVID-19 vaccines are all the same by any measure, or that they’re perfect wards against severe disease. Vaccination is a public-health imperative, and going full tilt to promote uptake supports the common good. But it’s a personal health decision too. People want to protect themselves and those close to them, and they are likely to care about outcomes other than hospitalization and death, no matter what anyone says now.

Still, raising these concerns in public can be fraught. In response to an inquiry about her data table, Gandhi affirmed the importance of looking at severe-disease outcomes and noted that “careful, collegial and collaborative scientific discourse on the vaccines is imperative moving forward to help us get through the pandemic.” Topol pointed out that he has emphasized the vaccines’ measured efficacy against symptomatic disease many times before, so any isolated reference to his table “takes that particular post out of context.” Jha wrote in an email that he stands by the message of his original tweet, and notes that COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths are so rare among the people vaccinated in these trials, to quibble over differences is akin to “counting how many angels are dancing on the head of the pin.”

I can see why this might seem like quibbling, but I just don’t think it’s a trivial matter. It would be different if I thought the effectiveness of every one of those six vaccines against hospitalizations and death would really end up being close to 100 percent—or if I bought into the idea, now widespread, that they have already been shown to “nearly” or “effectively” eliminate these outcomes. There is very good reason to be encouraged by the data, but to say right now that people who have been vaccinated face zero risk of serious outcomes—that, for them, COVID-19 is no more dangerous than the common cold—is sure to influence behavior. Imagine how people in high-risk groups would feel about going to the movies, or how their employers would feel about putting resources into workplace safety, if we all assumed that vaccines confer perfect protection against hospitalization or death. Now imagine how the same people and employers would feel knowing they were 85 percent protected.

Nor is there any reason to believe that the public or the personal interest will be served by hype. People who think the vaccines provide ironclad protection may lose trust in experts if reality falls short. Trust in coronavirus-vaccine information is already a problem, and could sink even lower. Activists who are opposed to vaccination may end up turning experts’ “super-pumped” promises against them.

“The idea that people can’t handle nuance,” Jha tweeted at the end of February, “it’s paternalistic. And untrue.” I couldn’t agree more. The principle of treating people like adults is fundamental. We don’t need to exaggerate. Talking about the trade-offs between different medicines and vaccines is often complicated, but we do it all the time—and we can do it with COVID-19 vaccines too.

Hilda Bastian is a scientist, writer, and founding member of the Cochrane Collaboration. She was formerly the editor of the PubMed Health project at the National Library of Medicine.

#public health #covid vaccine #coronavirus pandemic #long reads

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