JustDuckie

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Brown Ballerina Spotlight: Q&A with Leah Simpson (http://browngirlsdoballet... http://browngirlsdoballet... http://browngirlsdoballet... )

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"Q: What are some of the challenges you might be facing running Monet School of Ballet and how can the public help? A: What I’ve noticed since opening my ballet school is that some parents are not able to pay for ballet lessons. Fortunately, I have been able to provide free ballet lessons to single moms, and I currently have three scholarship students. I feel that all children should have equal opportunities to participate in arts programs, no matter what their parent’s financial circumstances are. My mission is to give back to my community, with hopes to receive donations to our scholarship fund to help those in need. I want all of the students who walk through my doors to know that this is their second home." - JustDuckie - -

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Woman Live-Tweets Terrible First Date That Will Make You Cringe | Fox News Insider (http://insider.foxnews.co... )

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"A Toronto woman live-tweeted quite possibly the worst first date ever, which she overheard in a coffee shop. Anne Thériault posted some of the top lines from the date — most of which came from a man who she described as "every precious self-involved writer" who didn't ask his date even one question about herself. The woman on the date ended up bolting out the door, explaining that she had to go check on her mother's stove. Read how the hilariously painful date unfolded in the tweets below." - JustDuckie - -

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I have to say, "I have to go check my mom's stove," has to be one of the better exits from a terrible date I've seen. - Jennifer D. - [ 2 ] -

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Taiwanese teen chosen to join S Korean girl group - Taipei Times (http://www.taipeitimes.co... http://www.taipeitimes.co... )

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"Teenager Chou Tzu-yu (周子瑜) on Tuesday was chosen for new girl group Twice, becoming the first ever Taiwan-born and raised member of a South Korean girl group. Sixteen-year-old Chou, who goes by the stage name Tzuyu, competed since May on South Korean TV talent show Sixteen, which saw 16 girls from different countries vying to become a member of the new group. Initially intended to form a group of seven girls, nine members were eventually chosen: five from South Korea, three from Japan and one from Taiwan. South Korean company JYP Entertainment is to launch the group and release an album by the end of this year." - JustDuckie - -

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Ha, my wife had just been watching some promo vids of the girls in the show the last few evenings. Wonder if she came across this yet. - rønin - [ 1 ] -

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City543 » 10 Of The Coolest Design Hotels In Taiwan Worth Checking In To (http://city543.com/taipei... http://static.city543.com... http://static.city543.com... )

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"Hotels have a way of making or breaking a holiday. Luxury, dependability and room-service aside, chain hotels just seem to scream “cookie-cutter”. That’s why we’re looking forward to resting our heads in these design and themed hotels with some eccentric yet ingenious décor." - JustDuckie - -

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Watch: Man lets dog steer motor scooter in Vietnam - UPI.com (http://www.upi.com/Odd_Ne... http://cdnph.upi.com/ph/s... )

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"Vietnamese police said a man seen in a viral video allowing his dog to steer a motor scooter would be fined if he is identified by authorities. The video, which went viral on social media and YouTube, shows the man propping his dog's front paws on the handlebars of the scooter before taking his hands away and allowing the dog to do the steering. Police said they are trying to identify the man in the video and he would face a fine of $230 to $320 on a citation for releasing both hands from the handlebars of a motorbike. " - JustDuckie - -

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The last woman to receive a ticker-tape parade? An Olympic champion | OlympicTalk (http://olympictalk.nbcspo... https://nbcolympictalk.fi... )

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"When the U.S. women’s national soccer team receives a ticker-tape parade in New York on Friday, it will mark the first such celebration for a female athlete since 1960. That’s when Manhattan confetti rained on New York native Carol Heiss Jenkins, then 20, who won Olympic and World Championships figure skating titles earlier that year. “You look up at the buildings, and people are just hanging out of the offices of these high buildings and cheering,” Jenkins said this week, according to the Wall Street Journal. “There was so much warmth and applause, and people were all just so genuinely happy for me. It was that small-town feeling in this huge city.”" - JustDuckie - -

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Prosecutors: Knife trumps all in rock-paper-scissors game | Local & Regional | Seattle News, Weather, Sports, Breaking News | KOMO News (http://www.komonews.com/n... )

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"King County prosecutors claim Michael Langley stabbed at another man after his friend lost a $1 bet on a street corner rock-paper-scissors match. Langley, 36, has been charged with second-degree assault in the June 29 incident. Prior to the incident, the alleged victim had been soliciting rock-paper-scissors opponents near the intersection of Broadway and East Pike Street in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood. A friend of Langley apparently took the gambler up on a game shortly after 3:20 a.m., and lost his dollar. While Langley's friend was sanguine after the loss, police say Langley saw red. "I'm going to stab you in the (expletive) neck," Langley told the other man after demanding a refund for his friend, according to charging papers. Langley then pulled a folding knife and lashed out, slashing inched from the other man's body and slicing his "rock-paper-scissors for a dollar" sign, a Seattle Police Department detective said in charging papers. The alleged victim gave the other man back his dollar and fled." - JustDuckie - -

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That's going to 11 on something that's not even serious. What would that dude do over something that matters? - faboomama - -

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Google’s algorithm shows prestigious job ads to men, but not to women. Here’s why that should worry you. - The Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost... https://img.washingtonpos... )

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"To come to those conclusions, Datta and his colleagues basically built a tool, called Ad Fisher, that tracks how user behavior on Google influences the personalized Google ads that each user sees. Because that relationship is complicated and based on a lot of factors, the researchers used a series of fake accounts: theoretical job-seekers whose behavior they could track closely. That online behavior — visiting job sites and nothing else — was the same for all the fake accounts. But some listed their sex as men and some as women. The Ad Fisher team found that when Google presumed users to be male job seekers, they were much more likely to be shown ads for high-paying executive jobs. Google showed the ads 1,852 times to the male group — but just 318 times to the female group." - JustDuckie - -

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Google's Ad Settings is convinced I'm a dude, and I've never been able to figure out why that is. Apparently I am a dude who visits many, many ballet and figure skating websites. - JustDuckie - -

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Great expectations | Manfeels Park (http://www.manfeels-park.... http://www.manfeels-park.... )

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"This woman had the best response when a Tinder date said she was too fat to love." - JustDuckie - -

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Texas man killed after shooting firework from chest | News - Home (http://www.click2houston.... http://i.kinja-img.com/ga... )

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"Sheriff's officials said Bartek and friends were shooting off fireworks at a popular fishing spot on the Colorado River. Sheriff's officials said Bartek put one the fireworks on his chest. When it went off he was critically injured and died after he was rushed to the hospital by paramedics." - JustDuckie - -

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Also note that this was on July 7th. Which is not even a holiday. - JustDuckie - -

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Police charge a man for holding two deer captive in his house for a year - The Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost... https://img.washingtonpos... )

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"On Friday, police said they responded to a report that deer were being kept inside of a house in Cabell County. Officers saw a deer standing in the middle of the house when they arrived and spoke with a man at the house. “While they were interviewing the subject, they could hear the commotion in the back part of the house, and the man tried to explain it away as a dog,” police spokesman Sgt. Gary Amick told The Post. “He finally confessed it was a second buck.” The man was charged with two counts of illegal possession of wildlife, with his prosecution pending, according to police. The misdemeanor can carry a penalty of $20 to $300 and the possibility of jail time." - JustDuckie - -

"The man told officers he picked the animals up as fawns, thinking they were injured, Amick added. That’s actually something a lot of people call the natural resources police about, particularly in the spring as people spot young fawns who appear to be abandoned. Their mothers may just be off feeding. People “misinterpret it. They want to bring it home, give it milk,” Amick said. “They don’t know how to care for a wild animal, and that becomes detrimental, and often times leads to their death.”" - JustDuckie - -

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Men Starting Unnecessary Conversations In Art History (http://the-toast.net/2015... http://17rg073sukbm1lmjk9... )

1 decade ago from Bookmarklet - Comment - Hide - - [ 1 ] -

"come with us, we’re not done telling you about our spec script yet" - JustDuckie - -

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'Vampires' keep doctors in the dark for fear of stereotyping: study | Reuters (http://www.reuters.com/ar... )

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"Research led by D.J. Williams, director of social work at Idaho State University, indicated that people who identify themselves as “real” vampires – that is, needing others’ blood to gain energy – would not disclose their practices to those in the helping professions and risk reactions like ridicule, disgust and possible diagnosis of a mental illness. The paper, published in the latest issue of Critical Social Work, a peer-reviewed journal based in Canada, found that authentic vampires as opposed to “lifestyle” vampires – black-clad figures with phony fangs – might be stereotyped by clinicians whose fields discourage biases. Williams, who has studied self-identified vampires for nearly a decade, finds they come from every walk of life and profession, including doctors, attorneys and candlestick makers. “They are successful, ordinary people,” he said. Except they are very, very tired. That’s apparently the chief reason they find a consenting adult willing to allow them to use a scalpel to make a tiny incision in the chest area so they can ingest a small amount of blood for energy, the study found." - JustDuckie - -

"“Most vampires believe they were born that way; they don’t choose this,” Williams said. The global vampire population is thought to number in the thousands, he said." - JustDuckie - -

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An Innovative Library Lifts the Fortunes of a Chinese Town - The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/20... http://static01.nyt.com/i... http://static01.nyt.com/i... )

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"In today’s China, villages like this often try to engineer a sense of well-being by opening a new medical clinic, say, or by upgrading the water supply. But Li Xiaodong, an award-winning architect who fuses traditional Chinese ideas of design with Western themes, had a different idea for Jiaojiehe. He was captivated by the potential he saw in the village’s most abundant natural resource, the branches of its thousands of trees, which the locals harvest for fuel. So he built a library — with a twist. At its base, it is a steel and glass box in the vein of a Philip Johnson open-plan creation from the 1950s, but its exterior walls and roof are clad with fruit-tree twigs. The spindly sticks are arranged in vertical rows, and their uneven shapes allow natural light to filter into the library’s reading room, while keeping the building cool in the summer and cozy in the winter. They also act as a kind of camouflage, making the library’s rectangular edges barely noticeable in the landscape as visitors approach the village on a narrow, twisting road." - JustDuckie - -

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Alligator in deadly attack shot and killed - Houston Chronicle (http://www.chron.com/news... http://ww3.hdnux.com/phot... )

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"A customer at a marina here who only identified himself as "Bear," on Monday said he shot and killed an 11-foot alligator he believed was involved in Friday's deadly attack on an Orange man. The man said he set a trap from his boat with chicken as bait and caught the 400-pound reptile before he killed it with a shotgun. "He had to go," "Bear" said. "That's what happens when you kill someone."" - JustDuckie - -

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The population size alone ensures there's no shortage of stupid in Texas. At least we'll never lack for entertainment. - JustDuckie - -

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Guilty stone thief returns booty after learning of crime - Taipei Times (http://www.taipeitimes.co... )

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"Dozens of stones were returned to the beach in eastern Taiwan that they had been taken from 10 years ago — by the person who gathered them. A resident of Puzih (朴子), Chiayi County, who refused to give their name, mailed the rocks to the East Coast National Scenic Area Headquarters, saying in an accompanying letter that they had been attracted by the stones’ beauty during a visit to the beach in Sansiantai (三仙台) in Taitung County a decade ago. A few years later, the person learned from a news report that collecting stones in Sansiantai was against the law and wanted to return them in person, but kept putting it off because they were too busy with work, the letter said. It was only when the issue popped into the person’s mind again recently that the individual decided to send the stones back to the national scenic area administration, along with NT$600 in cash to apologize for the “mistake” they made 10 years ago, the letter said. The administration made the letter public yesterday and took the colorful stones back to Sansiantai." - JustDuckie - -

"East Coast National Scenic Area Headquarters deputy director Lee Wei-ling (李維玲) said that Sansiantai’s scenic landscape was shaped by natural forces over tens of millions of years. Tourists should not think that if they just remove a small stone or plant that the natural environment would not be damaged, the official said. Each year, Sansiantai attracts more than 900,000 tourists, and “if each of them took one stone away, the beach would vanish in a few years,” Lee said." - JustDuckie - -

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Lifeguards have to rescue pair stranded on a giant yellow rubber duck - Mirror Online (http://www.mirror.co.uk/n... http://i4.mirror.co.uk/in... )

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Two youths were rescued by a lifeboat after they became stuck on a giant rubber duck. The coastguard were called to a report of two young people drifting near the entrance of Portsmouth harbour, Hants, in a giant yellow rubber duck. Portsea Rescue SSRO were tasked to attend the incident on Sunday, July 5, at 5.46pm. The pair got up onto rocks to safety before being spoken to by the lifeboat crew. The crew deflated the rubber duck "to stop incidents like this occurring in the future" and gave the pair, who were unhurt, a safety talk. - JustDuckie - -

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The Forgotten Man Behind William Carlos Williams’s ‘Red Wheelbarrow’ - The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/20... http://static01.nyt.com/i... )

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"For decades, much has depended on his red wheelbarrow, streaked with rain, next to some white chickens, even if no one has known — or perhaps even wondered — exactly who he was. But now, the owner of the humble garden tool that inspired William Carlos Williams’s classic poem “The Red Wheelbarrow” will finally get his due. On July 18, in a moment of belated poetic justice, a stone will be laid on the otherwise unmarked grave of Thaddeus Marshall, an African-American street vendor from Rutherford, N.J., noting his unsung contribution to American literature." - JustDuckie - -

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"Meanwhile, Mr. Leith, the Rutherford historian, has tracked him a bit farther in the real world. He located a great-granddaughter, Teresa Marshall Hale, of Roselle, N.J., who grew up in the house on Elm Street and recalled family stories about her great-grandfather selling eggs and vegetables. Growing up in Rutherford, she had learned about Williams (who was the doctor at her father’s birth and also signed her grandmother’s death certificate) in school, but was unfamiliar with the poem. “I’m in awe,” Ms. Hale, 69, a compliance officer for the New Jersey Turnpike Authority, said of the connection. “To think that the real person who inspired it was my great-grandfather, and that I lived in the same house he lived in, and looked out the same windows at the same yard, is overwhelming.”" - JustDuckie - -

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Aboriginal shaman passes rite to younger generation - Taipei Times (http://www.taipeitimes.co... http://www.taipeitimes.co... )

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"A Truku Aboriginal traditional ritual connected to the utux rudan (ancestral spirits) was on the verge of dying out with the tribal elders when 84-year-old shaman Chien Chin-mei (簡金美) found a young successor to pass her knowledge on to. Chien is an eighth-generation shaman and has served the community in Hualien’s Taroko Gorge for more than five decades. The shaman uses a small bamboo tube called a daran to ask ancestral spirits for their blessing, answer questions or heal people, Chien said. The ceremony itself is also named daran, she said." - JustDuckie - -

"Chien said she had been increasingly worried that the age-old tradition would end with her, as she was getting older and had recently had a stroke. However, her grandson, Ho Ying-hui (何盈暉), 14, discovered this year that he was able to communicate with ancestral spirits via the duran, Chien said. Chien said she would now focus on passing on all her knowledge of the utux rudan to Ho in the hopes that he shoulders the responsibility for the sake of the Truku. Ho said he is proud of his grandmother for helping people, and while he was not able to communicate with ancestral spirits every time, he is confident that with time and under his grandmother’s tutelage he would succeed her and become a ninth-generation shaman of his people." - JustDuckie - -

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Dance Legend Debbie Allen on What Ballet’s Big Moment Means for Race in America | TakePart (http://www.takepart.com/a... http://www.takepart.com/s... )

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"Allen is living proof of why Copeland’s accomplishment is such a big deal. The country has changed quite a bit since Allen, 65, got her start at the Houston Ballet Foundation. She became the company's first black dancer in 1964 after initially being denied admission—her mother believed it was based on racial prejudice. Allen later graduated with a BFA from Howard University and appeared in several Broadway productions before landing the role that would bring her international fame in the 1980 movie Fame and its subsequent TV spin-off. “When I traveled the world and saw people emulating [my Fame character] everywhere from India to South Africa to Spain, it was like, ‘Whoa.’ That's powerful. That’s powerful,” Allen said. In the series, she played the tough-talking, no-nonsense dance instructor Lydia Grant, who stressed the importance of pain, sweat, and dedication to her students at a performing arts high school in New York. Allen’s real life mirrored her role as a teacher: She taught choreography to stars such as Paula Abdul, choreographed the Oscars 10 times, and in 2001 founded her own nonprofit dance school, the Debbie Allen Dance Academy. " - JustDuckie - -

"Allen recalls a time long before Copeland when being a black ballet dancer was even more of an anomaly than it is today. “I remember when I was the first black dancer at the Houston Ballet Foundation, and there was no one else,” Allen said. “The board was upset when they heard there was a black girl, and when they saw me dance, they said, ‘OK.’ ” Decades later, in 1990, Lauren Anderson made history when she was named principal dancer of the Houston Ballet, becoming the first black woman to achieve the honor at a major American ballet company." - JustDuckie - -

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My new glittery hair ties arrived yesterday. Today's ice skating class will be conducted at full sparkle.

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Annotating The Rock (http://the-toast.net/2015... http://17rg073sukbm1lmjk9... )

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"0:02 – “Hey, what’s up, ladies?” Do you have any idea how difficult it is for a man in a muscle tank to say “Hey, what’s up, ladies” in a manner that is neither suggestive nor condescending? It is very nearly impossible; The Rock achieves it in the first two seconds. This is a man who genuinely wants to know what is up with these ladies. No one ever told The Rock what sexism is, so he has never once committed an act of it. Please do not tell him about it now. He would be absolutely crushed if he knew." - JustDuckie - -

"Has The Rock just promised to save himself for the heterosexual, unpartnered members of the U.S. women’s soccer team? I believe that he has. I believe that he has just offered them his hand in marriage, and that he will remain faithful until their triumphant return." - Soup - [ 1 ] -

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15 Years of Center Stage: A Personal History - The Toast (http://the-toast.net/2015... http://17rg073sukbm1lmjk9... )

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"On an afternoon not long ago, I sat in a bright and airy coffee shop with some version of these words in the foreground of my laptop screen as Center Stage played quietly in the background. I knew every beat, every change in pace, every important musical moment. I tapped out words as I silently mouthed “I am the best goddamn dancer in the American Ballet Academy. Who the hell are you? Nobody.”" - JustDuckie - -

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Couple reunited with old wedding car - Taipei Times (http://www.taipeitimes.co... http://www.taipeitimes.co... )

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"After several decades and changes in ownership, a 36-year-old vintage limousine ended up in the garage of a couple it had served 31 years ago in Pingtung County." - JustDuckie - -

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Heroic sandwich makers | Manfeels Park (http://www.manfeels-park.... http://www.manfeels-park.... )

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Texas - Alligator attacks and kills 28-year-old man (http://www.kfdm.com/share... https://i.kinja-img.com/g... )

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""I asked him please do not go swimming, there's a bigger alligator out here, just please stay out of the water," Wright, an employee at the restaurant, said. Workers report they spotted a ten-foot gator in the waters of Adams Bayou this week, prompting them to post a warning sign reading "No Swimming Alligators." Investigators said Woodward didn't pay attention to the posted warnings and pleas from Wright. "He said blank the alligators and thereupon jumped into the water," Orange County Justice of the Peace Rodney Price said. " - JustDuckie - -

"It's a warning investigators want others to heed. "Whether it's a speed limit sign on a freeway, a fireworks message, whatever, heed the warning sign, follow that because a failure to heed that can result in a terrible tragedy for your family," Judge Price said. " - JustDuckie - -

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