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Does Your Favorite Movie Pass the Bechdel Test?/
I thought since March is Women's History Month, I would do a few posts to celebrate the amazing women in film, both real and fictional who have inspired me. To kick things off will be a post looking at how women are represented in the industry in general. Especially considering all that came to light this past year about how women in the industry have been treated, hopefully, these posts will get you thinking and talking more about how women are considered both on and off screen.
In my later years of college, I began filling all of my remaining credits with film studies classes, but the one that opened my eyes the most (and even inspired my senior thesis) was one about women in film. It was in this class that I first learned about the Bechdel Test. For those of you who may not know, the Bechdel test is just a tool to help gauge how well women are represented in a certain film. In order for a movie to pass, it must meet these three requirements:
- The movie must have two women with names
- The women must speak to each other
- They must talk about something other than a man
Seems pretty simple right? But you would be surprised by how many famous and beloved films do not pass this test. Now, that is not to say that in order for a movie to be good it has to meet all of these requirements or it should be disregarded. In fact, the creator herself, Alison Bechdel has stated that the test should not be the end all be all of how we look at film, but more so just a reminder of how we should be treating women on screen. For example, the extremely popular and Oscar-nominated film Dunkirk released last year would not pass the test. But that is okay because that was a true story about a group of stranded male soldiers trying to get to safety, so inserting women into it just for representation would have been a disservice to the story. However, some other films from the past year could have maybe given more consideration to this idea before writing their females roles. To see what I mean, let's take a look at how many major blockbuster films last year would pass the test.
To do this, I am going to look at the top 20 best grossing films from 2017, and see how many pass the Bechdel test. They will be graded by Pass, Barely Pass, and Fail. I feel like I need to distinguish between meaningfully passing, and barely passing, since some films may pass if looking at it literally, but not in the sense of what the test actually represents. For example, Fate of the Furious would technically pass, because Ramsey and Letty talk, but their lines to each other consist of:
Ramsey: Tell me we're going to be okay!
Letty: We got this!
Not exactly what we are looking for, but as far as passing on a technical note, it does. So I felt I needed to distinguish the difference in my voting. On that note, here we go!
1. Star Wars: The Last Jedi: Pass
2. Beauty and the Beast: Pass
3. Wonder Woman: Pass
4. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2: Pass
5. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle: Pass
6. Spider-Man: Homecoming: Barely Pass
7. It: Barely Pass
8. Thor: Ragnarok: Fail
9. Despicable Me 3: Pass
10. Justice League: Barely Pass
11. Logan: Barely Pass
12. The Fate of the Furious: Barely Pass
13. Coco: Barely Pass
14. Dunkirk: Fail
15. Get Out: Pass
16. The Lego Batman Movie: Barely Pass
17. Boss Baby: Fail
18. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales: Fail
19. Kong: Skull Island: Fail
20. Cars 3: Barely Pass
So let's total this up:
Pass: 7/20
Barely Pass: 8/20
Fail: 5/20
So that means if we are looking at films that meaningfully passed the test, it is only 35% of the top 20 films last year. And while this is defiantly better than in the past, and it is amazing that the top three films do have women in the leading roles, it still says a lot about what we are supporting at the box office. For example, many of the popular films that pass the test with flying colors such as Pitch Perfect 3, Girls Trip, Atomic Blonde, Ghost in the Shell, and Lady Bird did not even make the top 25 films. Now as I said, we should not take this test to be our bible when watching movies, but it just helps put into perspective a little more how we could be doing a better job of both showing women on screen, and showing up to support women on screen if we want things to change.
Does your favorite movie pass the Bechdel Test? Let me know in the comments below! And let me know your thoughts on how women were shown in movies last year, I can't wait to hear your views!
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Woman Wants To Have The Biggest Hips Even If It May Be Harmful To Her Health
May 16, 2019 17:59 By Fabiosa
Some people achieve fame by playing an unforgettable part in an Academy Award-winning movie. Some become known for their achievements in the science field. And then, there are people who become famous for their looks. Well, Bobbi-Jo Westley's look you'll never forget!
READ ALSO: Brazilian TV Presenter And Actor Loses 165 Lbs In 4 Years And Says That It Saved His Life
The biggest hips
Bobbi-Jo is a woman, living in York, Pennsylvania, and striving to have the world's biggest hips. She weighs 542 pounds and has hips that measure 93 inches. The current Guinness World Record is held by Mikel Ruffinelli, whose hips were 99 inches.
You wouldn't believe it, but Bobbi-Jo has a huge fan base. Many men admire her shape, and some of them even proposed to the woman. She even has so-called "crushing sessions", where fans pay her to have Bobbi-Jo sit on them. Westley comments on her body:
My hips are what makes me unique. It's what makes me 'me.' When I realized that there were men out there who like my shape, I was kind of surprised. I get all kinds of presents and messages from my fans, some of them ask 'will you marry me?,' which is kind of hard because I'm already married.
READ ALSO: 842-Lb. Man Awaited Life-Saving Weight Loss Surgery But Died Of A Heart Attack
Expert's point of view
Bobbi-Jo was diagnosed with an underactive thyroid around seven years ago. The woman is quite sure that it is a reason for her weight gain. However, the nutritionist, Nadia Sharifi, states that this is just a self-protective mechanism:
It's literally a life-or-death choice at this point. Hormones, or thyroid issues, or blood type or ancestry might play a little part, but ultimately it's down to what we put into our mouth.
Nadia also calls Bobbi-Jo a "ticking time bomb", as her veins can block very easily on any day. However, Bobbi-Jo is not planning to stop. Although she realizes the risks, the woman is dedicated to achieving her goal.
The thinnest waist
It is not the first time people are doing radical things for beauty, love, and fame. Ethel Granger was the opposite of Bobbi-Jo. Ethel was born in the early 1900s and holds the Guinness World Record for the smallest waist.
The woman's waist was only 13 inches (33 cm) with normal stature. Unlike Bobbi, Ethel did this for her husband who loved corsets and thin waists. She went from 22 inches (56 cm) to the record numbers in 10 years.
Beauty is not only about body shape, clothes or make-up. The true beauty is always about one's personality. Healthy body – healthy mind, and vice versa.

subset: commoncrawl


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Decentralize What?
The Phenomenal World
What do technologists mean by decentralization?
What do technologists mean by decentralization?
A look at p2p, ownership, sovereignty, and a troubling political philosopher
The counterfactual politics of simulation, inspired by radical cartography
Sabotage in the age of machine learning
An interview with Helen Hester on Xenofeminism
A system that algorithmically generates potential new drug compounds for a set of target receptors and estimates their therapeutic use. The generated compounds function as prior art, keeping them in the public domain away from predatory pharmaceutical business practices. W/ Sean Raspet for Rhizome's Seven-on-Seven (2018, Beijing). Write-up here
A proof-of-concept for p2p collaborative text editing using the Dat protocol, so groups can work together without relying on Google. Currently only supports plain text editing; rich text support is experimental/unstable
A whitepaper describing a collective computing project for the atomic simulation of a single human cell and distributing subsequent medical research revenue, w/ Sean Raspet for Rhizome's Seven-on-Seven (2018, NYC)
A transit demand model for the Institute for Applied Economic Research, part of the PolicySpace model. Simulates public transit and private vehicle usage given a city's GTFS feed and available OpenStreetMap data
An open agent-based model with three markets and a tax scheme that empirically simulates 46 Brazilian metropolitan regions, developed with Bernardo Furtado at the Institute for Applied Economic Research.
A Javascipt framework for creating management and system simulation games, developed for my Simulation & Cybernetics class at The New School
A Monero miner for using excess computing power and crypto-speculation to collectively post bail for low-income people, developed with Grayson Earle, Maya Binyam, JB Rubinovitz, Sam Lavigne, Rachel Rosenfelt, Madeleine Varner, Devin Kenny, and the rest of Dark Inquiry. Download here
A simulation to interact with the Cybernetics Conference Library, w/ Dan Taeyoung
A conference and library in NYC, 11/18/2017, on cybernetics, informatic systems, and social organization; organized with Sam Hart, Melanie Hoff, Sarah Hamerman, David Isaac Hecht, Dan Taeyoung, Charles Eppley, and Alexis Convento
A bot that generates conspiracy theories by watching the news and being oversensitive to patterns (apophenia). For The New Inquiry. Technical breakdown here
A predictive policing app for white collar crime. "Unlike typical predictive policing apps which criminalize poverty, White Collar Crime Risk Zones criminalizes wealth." Collab w/ Sam Lavigne & Brian Clifton for The New Inquiry
Tool for designing social-spatial simulations with an example project. Collab w/ Fei Liu & Dan Taeyoung
Tool for designing equations by drawing them
A collection of introductory machine learning guides, w/ Gene Kogan
A reading list around speculative fiction, technology, and politics
A participative agent-based economic simulation for speculating alternative economies, w/ Fei Liu
A simple agent-based modeling framework, supporting distributed computation
A dystopian business simulator - found a startup, pursue unbounded growth, and accidentally dystopia. Play here
A large set of notes introducing people with modest math backgrounds to artificial intelligence
Digital community design notes for the Coral Project and taught as a New School Journalism+Design course
An introductory workshop to machine learning, around a dystopian sci-fi narrative
A randomly-generated pokemon slack battling system
The Tao Te Ching as "interpreted" by a recurrent neural network, trained on 94 English translations
It seems like the next Avalanches album is never coming out, so here is a program that will create mix-based music for you
A New School Journalism+Design course on journalism, algorithms, and automation
A graph-based clustering approach which does not require specifying the number of clusters
A very lightweight markdown note management platform
A very lightweight markdown blogging platform
Pasture is a tool for teaching Python without needing to deal with development environments (bleh)
Massive communication - simulated chat rooms of hundreds to thousands of automated participants (Twitch chat simulator)
Argos (prototype) is an automated system that keeps up with the news for you
An exploration into translating network topology into VR space, inspired by Neuromancer
Outsource your social media personality to an algorithm
A pseudo-intelligent NLP (naive bayes) bot that learns your (re)tweeting habits
A music project from 2009-2011, once featured as Stereogum's "Band to Watch"
A steganographic tool for encoding and decoding sensitive information into images using "context keys" (i.e. memes and inside jokes)
The video for Handsome Furs' "Serve the People", from their album Sound Kapital (Sub Pop)
engineering ethics technical approaches adversarial methods explainability


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Search engine optimization can be a tricky subject to comprehend. There's a lot that goes into proper search engine optimization and even more people claiming they know how to best succeed in it. You are about to be given some crucial SEO information.
You can get a little more SEO performance by taking your website into the blogging world. Start a blog of your own, and get involved with other blogs that cover related topics. Search engines are attracted to blogs with innovative content and specific information. If you want a high search engine ranking, backlinks are really important.
There are many different strategies to optimize your site for search engines. When the system is efficient, results will be more relevant. User experience will be greatly improved as a result of increased performance.
Include a site map to optimize your search results. With a site map, you will make it easier for spiders to index your site. If you have a large website, you might want to break your site map into multiple sections. You should generally limit the number of links on any given site map to 100.
Using keywords at a certain density is important when fitting your page to be optimized by search engines. To avoid this from happening, keep the total number of keywords on a certain page under 20%.
Providing transcripts for any media content on your site will make it more accessible and make it visible to search engines. When you make the effort to include the transcripts, the search engine crawlers will be able to read and rank your page.
Anchor Text
Blogging is a great way to add more keyword rich content to your site, and improve your search engine ranking. Of course this leads to increased visitor numbers viewing your website.
Use keyword-friendly anchor text for links between pages on your website. You should describe what the page is about and give a good reason for your reader to click on your anchor text link. Ensure the right text is used as the keyword, so you receive a rise in ranking. It is vital you use the correct keywords, since anchor text allows crawling spiders to notice you.
You must research your keywords before attempting to optimize your site. When you are building your site, find what keywords work for you. By doing this keyword research, you are able understand what people are looking for related to you. To boost your search engine rankings, make sure these key items are highlighted throughout your site.
To reach your SEO goals, use meta description tags to describe every page on your website. These description tags are a great value, as they are easy to add and improve ranking. Make the meta tag content valuable and concise. Descriptive tags will go a long way in bringing visitors to your website. Your descriptions can lure visitors away from higher-ranking pages, so do not skip this important step.
To keep out of spam filters of search engines, do not use duplicated content on your sites. You might not even realize that you are using the same material over and over. For example, if you have the same product description up on several pages, a search engine may "read" that as spam.
Ask an educational website or a non-profit to link to your content. This will allow you to establish a trustworthy name. Ensure that the quality of your content is high, and you may attract reliable, professional organizations who want to feature a link to your site on their own. These companies must find your content informative.
One way to boost your SEO is by integrating videos into your website. Also, be sure to include a video sitemap. Videos are a great introductory tool for your company or staff as well as for demonstration purposes. Keep the video posted on your site with proper labeling using keywords. Google Webmaster Tools will allow you to submit your URL. Next, post the video on YouTube, Metacafe, Yahoo and other video websites. This will attract a large amount of new customers.
After choosing which keywords are best for your site, get as many as you can in your web page's title. The title should be both relevant and easy to remember. Although, at times an off the wall title will work, if it leaves an impression on the reader. In this manner, your website link will be followed because it fits the search the best.
Your title tag important so give it plenty of thought. This may be the first thing someone sees when they land on your site. This should be a description that is unique to your website's content with keywords that are relevant. Also make sure it isn't too long.
Add a site directory if you want to get more visitors. All your webpages will receive equal attention. This will boost your site traffic, as people will visit the links at the side.
Be aware that Javascript does not interact well with all search bots. When they see Java, they see the site differently.
Search Engines
Try to integrate keywords and phrases into your title tag to get a higher SEO. When analyzing your site, search engines place heavier emphasis on keywords that are included in title tags. Calculate your use of keywords to achieve greater search engine standing and increase the number of visitors on your site.
Including relevant keywords in your webpage's URL will help it be more easily identified by search engines. If a URL has symbols or numbers that won't be searched for, it is unlikely to rank highly in search engines. Including keywords that are important and relevant to the site can really improve rankings and traffic.
If you want to increase your SEO, try using off-site links that will bring visitors to other quality websites. This is the best way to increase reputability of your site. You will find that off-site links provide you with a much higher ranking than internal ones. Be sure to look for options that allow links back to your website, so you can maximize the effects of your rank.
Learn all you can about social media and how it can benefit your SEO planning. This includes many more than Facebook, Twitter and Yelp. Special interest sites offer many networking opportunities for your business as well. Join other relevant people in the business. Use this method for promoting services and products and boosting your search engine rankings.
Anchor text is important on your site. Avoid words that won't help optimize your website. Consult an expert to help you craft your anchor text.
Blog on your site so you can increase your ranks on a search engine. Of course this leads to increased visitor numbers viewing your website.
Think like a customer when you are coming up with tags to include. Try and find out what terms people are using when they search.
An effective site map will include your keywords. With all the main pages and links available on one page, it is not only great for search engine optimization, but also for the convenience of your visitors who may be looking for something on your site. Search engines like Google consider the ease of access of your website in their algorithms so including a site map will have a positive effect on your ranking.
Search engine optimization requires patience and consistency. It's normal to want to get immediate, fast results. Creating and maintaining your presence on the web will take commitment and an investment of time. Even when things don't seem to be happening fast enough, it's important you stay on track. You will reap the reward and climb the ranks in the search engine results over time with hard work and dedication.
Don't duplicate any content on your pages. Know that you could use duplicate content and not even know. Using the same description is easy, but could be flagged as spam.
Always add new content to your site through resources like blogs. This keeps the search bots happy. People will also share your articles if they are good. Those who appreciate your content will make the effort to bookmark your site for regular visits in the future.
You can optimize your website using captions. Captions with rich keyword descriptions for these articles and images is going to help you increase your site visibility.
If your content is not written in English, you will want to use the language meta tag in the code of your site. That's because search engines will rank you higher when people do a search for your content in that language.
You can make your site more visible to search engines by getting local listings on Google and Yahoo. You get more visibility and visitors with this service. The value of free advertising should never be overlooked.
Use Google Analytics. It can track your SEO progress and better your results. For instance, this tool permits you to see which keywords are utilized the most frequently to get people to your site. Then, you can adjust your website to focus more directly on these keywords.
Image Links
You have to provide a vast amount of content across lots of various topics if you want to increase your search engine rankings. However, you must make sure you are remaining in your niche. If you have a football blog, you could offer informative articles about football cards, NFL teams and players. By providing a wide array of articles centered around specific subjects, you increase the likelihood that your site will appear near the top of search results.
Those websites which are set up the best way possible for search engine optimization don't use image links. Image links do not offer search engines any more than a URL for the linked file.
This will seriously improve the ranking given to your site by the search engines. A good meta description is like a call for action, as it convinces people to click your link when they find your site on a search engine results page. Many content management systems give you the opportunity to adjust your meta description in the editing area for the individual page.
You can give your SEO a boost by using off-site linking to reputable websites. This signals that your site is a credible source of information. Search engines like their top sites to have a nice mix of internal and off-site links, typically weighing those off-site links even more than the internal ones. Look for options that will also link to your website; this will help your site rank highly and increase your traffic.
All the links on your site should use a keyword phrase. Use specific words rather than vague phrasing. It will help with your SEO.
A good way to get your site a better ranking through search engine optimization is to sign up with the BBB or the Chamber of Commerce. These organizations link to their member businesses, so you can get more local visitors. Additionally, people place more faith into your website if your rating from the Better Business Bureau is good.
Keeping your content unique and fresh is the most important aspect of SEO. If you are months behind the curve, readers will just click away from your site and never come back.
Search Engine
If you have trouble writing quality content while performing optimization, you might need to choose one or the other. Focusing on quality content is more important. You can worry about your optimization later. You will not have returning visitors if there is nothing but a litany of keywords in your site.
Bring your search engine to its full potential by making it have defined parameters. You should strive to have your search engine find results that are the most relevant when you are creating a search engine.
You can definitely use SEO techniques and strategies to help bring more visitors to your website. The ideal goal for most is to get high rankings in the free search engines: you then have a continuous stream of free targeted traffic. But, this doesn't come about with no effort at all. It takes time and work to do this. The fastest method is to submit to the engines that are pay per click. This will get your listing indexed within days if not minutes. However, you will have to pay for this on a regular basis. You need to continuously regulate and monitor your bids when you need to.
Search engines will know that you are fixing your site to cheat the system and will take appropriate action. Top search engines have been known to ban sites from appearing in their results for engaging in fraudulent activity. With that advice, use an ethical guideline as you develop the search engine optimization for your website!
Relevant RSS feeds should be included on your site. These feeds are always new content if they are regularly updated. Be creative. If you don't see the right RSS feed already out there, make your own. Be sure that your visitors know that subscribing to your RSS feed is a really good thing!
Use phrases instead of single keywords. Most internet users do not search for just one keyword. You have to pick out phrases that will get you customers that want your goods and services. Include information that helps to put a location in the text, such as "Check out the sale at our Toronto location! " instead of "We're having a sale! "
To keep your ranking high on Google and other search engines, refrain from putting the same content throughout your site. Rather than repeating content, come up with a new idea to discuss what will draw in new visitors.
There's lots of ways SEO can help you, and there are many tips to start with to help. By applying the information in this article, you can create an effective strategy to market your webpage and your business.


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I am so impressed with this thing. It's a twin to LionZoo's. 2013 GX. It won't stay stock for long.
I'll have to start posting over at O&E now. We will probably keep it pretty mild at first (similar to the 470 below) but in a few years I might expand the build.


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Plan your trip to Mandurah and Peel - from water sports to off-road adventures and local flavours.
Stretching from the blue waters of the coast to the rugged terrain of the Darling Scarp, Mandurah and the Peel is a natural adventure playground. Located less than an hour south of Perth by train or by car, the region offers a range of activities from exploring vast waterways and national parks, to visiting wineries and bush walking through vast Jarrah forests.
Plan your trip to Mandurah and Peel and view the full list of tourism businesses located in the region below.
Plan your trip to Perth
See all accommodation, tours, attractions, food and drink and retail in Perth.


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Join the Lake Erie Council on Wednesday, August 1, 2018, at Cleveland State University for an informative kick-off rally for a realigned unit funding model (popcorn) and a new member family engagement model to join Cub Scouts.
This is a great way to gather all the information about Scouting events coming up this fall.
To learn more about the new models, register now!


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Question: Aside from the gastric pacemaker, what are the current treatment options for someone with gastroparesis? I have had the stimulator x2, Botox, pyloroplasty and balloon dilitation without success.
Question: Aside from the gastric pacemaker, what are the current treatment options for someone with gastroparesis? I have had the stimulator x2, Botox, pyloroplasty and balloon dilitation without success.
The sequence of events that permit normal peristalsis, the automatic process that moves food through the digestive system, is complex and usually well organized. In contrast, patients who suffer from gastroparesis have a condition in which the stomach's ability to empty its contents is impaired. This impairment is unrelated to obstruction. Instead, delayed gastric emptying is related to abnormalities in the coordinated muscular and neurological functioning of the stomach.
The cause of gastroparesis is unknown, but disruption of nerve stimulation to the intestine may be responsible. The condition is a common complication of diabetes. In fact, diabetes accounts for about a third of cases. The condition can also be a complication of some surgeries and is associated with diabetes mellitus, scleroderma and other rheumatologic conditions, prior viral intestinal infections, medications, familial syndromes, known neurologic disease (such as strokes, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's). However, in one-third to half of the cases, there is no known cause.
Treatment for this condition is varied. Initial testing should exclude anatomic obstruction and electrolyte imbalances. We also suggest limiting fat and fiber intake, which can exacerbate the condition. Medications available in the U.S. are limited to Reglan and erythromycin, which are used for limited periods of time. Botulin toxin injection, commonly known as Botox, where the food exits the stomach has been tried with mixed success.
In refractory cases, surgically placed feeding tubes are also considered. Another treatment technique involves placing electrodes in the wall of the stomach to create gastric neurostimulation. This procedure is allowed by the FDA as a humanitarian use devise and has been specifically used for patients experiencing severe nausea and vomiting for 12 months.
Patients with gastroparesis may explore all of these treatment options, which address this condition. Perhaps most hopeful, in some cases gastropareisis improves spontaneously.
Dr. Yen Chen practices internal medicine with a specialty in gastroenterology at Pocono Gastroenterology in East Stroudsburg.


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9/16/18: The Power of Words, James 3:1-12
The Power of Words
Sixth in the series: Practicing Community
First Lesson: Isaiah 50:4-9a
Second Lesson: James 3:1-12
Rev. Scott Dickison
Last week we took a look at the second and probably most famous chapter in James when he challenges the church not just to speak but to act on their convictions: What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you sayyou have faith but do not have works?
Now in our passage for today, which comes in just the next chapter, James turns his attention from the power of actions back to the power of words.
Just like a horse's entire body can be controlled and directed by a bit in its mouth, or a massive ship is guided through the water by a small rudder, he says, "So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts great things," as one translation puts it. Just like a whole forest can be set ablaze by a single spark, a tongue too can set things on fire—things like friendships, marriages, communities, lives and livelihoods. We all know this intimately.
As we've seen over the last couple of weeks looking at James, his outlook on the world and humanity and even Christian community is what some would call bleak, and others would say is realistic—again the power of language. But he's speaking from within in an entire biblical tradition that attests to the power of words that can be summoned for good and ill—"to bless God and curse those made in the image of God," as he puts it. In fact, scripture suggests there may be no greater power in the world than the power of words.
From the opening chapter of Genesis we're told it was the power of words that created the world. In the beginning God speaks and calls creation into existence.
Let there be light! And there was light!
Let the waters be separated and let there be dry land!
Let there be animals and plants and finally humans—and it was all so.
Let all of this be good, and even very good, we're told,and it was so.
The Gospel of John tells us it was that same Word, that same force of creation and imagination, "through whom all things came into being," that became flesh and lived among us in the person of Jesus—recreating, reshaping the world to be more in God's image.
And the same is true of our speech. The language we use, the words we choose, shape our world—how we see and understand it. Who we understand ourselves and others to be. This is so essential a truth that it's difficult for us even to see the ways it's true.
It's like that story about the two young fish swimming through the water who happen upon a slightly older, wiser fish, who says to them, Top of the morning boys! How's the water today?And the two younger fish kind of give him that half smile and a nod that younger fish give older fish. They keep swimming for a minute when one of them leans to the other and says, What the heck is water?[1]
Our language is the water we swim in—sometimes we're not even aware of the ways it shapes our world and how we experience it. This is especially true for us here in the church. As people of faith we have a language all of our own that we use to describe a world that's often very different from the one described by those around us. For instance, in the church we speak not just of "the natural world" but "creation"—the air we breath, the light we see, the food we eat, the dirt upon which we walk aren't just "natural"—they didn't just appear. They were created, with purpose and intention and beauty and brokenness
And so animals and insects aren't just "organisms," but "creatures"—thing who were and are created. Our identity as "humans" actually preserves our scriptural origins though we don't often think of it: we are "ones who come from the humus," the soil, the dirt. The work of God's hands, the bearers of God's image. And for Christians, other people aren't just other people, they're our neighbors. Isn't that word powerful? It forces us into relationship. As a Christian person we're not permitted to see people as other, they're always neighbor. Even when they're an enemy, they're still a neighbor—we're called to love'em all.
Words matter in the church. They matter in life. Someone was reminding me this week how a couple of weeks ago the night before Anya Silver died—the local poet and teacher and friend of many in our congregation—her husband, Andy, got on facebook and said, "To those of you who pray, Anya could use your prayers tonight And be sure you make them beautiful, because words matter to her."
It reminded me of just before my own father died of cancer just over five years ago, how we all of the sudden started saying, "I love you" to each other—something we'd never done before. I always knew my dad loved me and I'm confident he knew I loved him. But all the same, hearing him say it to me, hearing myself say it to him…
Words matter. They shape our world. Sometimes reshape it. Our faith teaches us they can make all the difference.
We talked about these things this past Wednesday when our newly formed "accessibility servant team" led our program. They'll be leading again this week and perhaps a couple more weeks later on in the fall. But this past week they focused on those with intellectual or developmental disabilities. We're blessed to have several folks within our membership who work with people with people with disabilities and so they were able to share about some of the services available here locally as well as their approach at working with folks with these kinds of disabilities. Amy Alderman shared about her approach to working with autistic children at Woodfield Academy, where she teaches. Greta O'Dell shared about her work at River Edge, where she's the director of services for folks with intellectual and developmental disabilities. And Greta in particular spoke about the importance of the language we use to speak of those with disabilities.
Language has the power to humanize or dehumanize and unfortunately until recently most language used about folks with disabilities has been pretty dehumanizing, often defining people by their limitations and inadvertently shaping how we see and treat them, which is often as people who are somehow less than fully human. And this is sadly true even within the Bible, in ways that are problematic. The gospels constantly report how Jesus healed "a cripple" or a man with a "withered hand" or "the lame"—words we would never use today. And of course, scripture was written in a much different time and the language reflects that culture, but even so, we need to be mindful of it, because it shapes our world. Elizabeth Hastings, a disability rights activist said once, "…with all due respect to the ten lepers, the various possessed, and the sundry blind, lame, and deaf, I reckon people who have disabilities may have been better off for the last two thousand years if our Lord had not created quite so many miraculous cures but occasionally said, "your life is whole as it is given to you—go ye and find its purpose and meaning.'"[2]
We show that we value words in the way we choose them in our personal relationships, how we talk to each other. But we in the church also show that we value language when we're thoughtful about the words we use together, particular words we use together in worship.
There's an old axiom in the church that in Latin reads: lex orandi, lex credendi, which translates roughly to "as the church prays, so it believes," reminding us of the power of worship, that what we do in the context of worship—the words we say, the hymns we sing, the prayers we lift up—it all shapes what we believe.[3]In some ways it's like that classic quote from Churchill, "We shape our buildings and thereafter they shape us," pointing to the power of design to shape our lives. The language of our worship is the same, it shapes what we believe, in ways we're not always aware until we experience something different.
I didn't really think about the power of language in worship until I went to divinity school, where of course I was exposed to different books and ideas and theologies which were all hugely important. But what I remember most is experiencing different language in worship. I attended and then would later serve as student pastor in a small, multi-cultural church in Jamaica Plain, a neighborhood in South Boston. It's an incredible church—so different from any church I've been a part of. I remember the first Sunday I worshipped there. We were meeting in a doublewide trailer park on the church lawn because the 150-year-old sanctuary had burned down from a fire several months before. But there in that "sacred doublewide," as we began to call it, were all different kinds of people: white, black, brown, folks from the neighborhood, folks who'd ridden the train in from the suburbs. Homeless people and seminary professors, and so many different languages.
I remember when it came time to recite the Lord's Prayer the pastor invited us all to say it in the version that was most comfortable for us. I assumed she just meant to pick either trespasses or debts, but when we all began to recite it I realized she was inviting us to something much more expansive.
There were folks speaking in all different languages: English, Spanish, Japanese—so many I couldn't hear them all. But then there was all kinds of language used for God—all of it deeply rooted in Scripture: Our Father, Our Mother, Our Parent…
There were folks who said "thy kingdomcome, thy will be done," and others who said "thy kin-domcome" as in kinship—"the time when all will be family" come. And of course there were trespasses and their were debts—maybe even a few "sins" thrown in to boot—It was a holy cacophony of prayer! And it was beautiful…eventually.
At first it was a little disorienting and even made me a little uncomfortable. Could we do this? Was the language of worship really this malleable?But as it washed over me week after week, it occurred to me that maybe it's not such a bad thing for the language of worship to unsettle us from time to time—to challenge us, to dislocate, ever so slightly, us from our rhythms and habits and assumptions and open us up to new possibilities to experience the mercy of God and remind us that God is so much more than any imperfect language we have for God. God can of course be father, but isn't God also mother? And when we lift up both of these aren't we pointing to the fullness of God that is so beyond speech, but that we get closer to the more language we make available to ourselves? And I remember sitting in that little doublewide trailer, week after week and feeling how gradually and in ways that are difficult to explain, the words I was saying and the words they were saying slowly became the words wewere saying. And they began to matter in ways they hadn't until then. And I realized my God was getting bigger, so much more beyond me than God had been before. It was powerful. The tongue can set a forest ablaze, but it can also plant a seed. It can also allow new things to grow.
A community centered on the Word of God incarnate knows and values the power of words to shape our world: our relationships with others, to bless or curse, in include or exclude, to open or to close. To shape how we understand others and ourselves and this creation into which we were made. And the words we use here together are especially powerful in that they shape the gospel: God's message of love and healing and wholeness for the world—even our understanding of who this God is. Our words involve us in the work that God has been up to since the beginning: calling creation into being, bringing light to dark places, seeing us through the raging waters, looking at the world and the people and things who live within it and saying, You are God's beloved. In a word, our words make us God's people. And to that we say, Amen.
[1]David Foster Wallace tells this story in This Is Water.
[2]Found in Darla Schumm, Michael J. Stoltzfus, Disability In Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: Sacred Texts, Historical Traditions, and Social Analysis, 85
[3]Gail Ramshaw cites this tradition in her argument for gender-inclusive language in God Beyond Gender: Feminist Christian God-Language, 1


text:
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It is with great difficulty that I look so closely into something.
That splinter that has calloused over so long ago.
Look so closely that I have dug a hole clear through to the other side.
A hole so big, a vulture can fly through.
Look at it and figure out how it got there.
But the trick is to resist damaging further.
Leave it be, so you can live on….better with the splinter than with a gaping hole.


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A Government consultation has been launched to see if vehicles over 40 years old should become exempt from the annual MoT test. This would mean all Series I, SII and SIIA, and Series III, Range Rover Classic and 101FC models built before 1977 would no longer require the annual safety test.
Under current British and EU law, all vehicles manufactured before 1960 are exempt from the MoT. The Government is proposing extending this to cars aged 40 or over, referred to as vehicles of historic interest (VHI), on a rolling annual basis.
The Government's preferred option is to 'exempt 40-year-old 'VHIs' from annual testing and introduce a 'VHI' certification process to ensure a vehicle has not been substantially changed (could be based on self-certification or independent inspection or a combination).' This means you could self-certify your Land Rover and head onto the roads. It also asks whether 40+ year old vehicles should have their annual mileage restricted...
LRO doesn't support the current MoT exemptions and believes extending them further would be bad for road users and owners of classics. As these proposals are at the consultation stage, you have the opportunity to voice your concerns up until 11:45pm on 2 November 2016.
Not quite sure what to say? We have devised answers to the questions posed by the Government in their consultation so that you can either copy and paste them into the boxes provided on the Government's online form, send in an email or post them in a good old fashioned letter.
Ways to voice your concerns:
- You can attach our letter in email and send to email@example.com
- Head to http://tinyurl.com/hadzg2v and fill out the online form
- Post the letter to:
David Pope
Department for Transport
Freight, Operator Licensing and Roadworthiness
Zone 3/28, Great Minster House
33 Horseferry Road, London
If nothing is done, then the Government's preferred option will likely come into force. This would reclassify certain Land Rovers as classic cars. Aside from the obvious safety concerns, without an MoT certificate or paying VED it could be claimed that classic car owners have no right to a say in matters such as congestion charges and suitable fuel availability – or when and where they can be driven.
As a Land Rover owner, doing nothing is not an option. Filling out the form takes just a few minutes and it could prevent changes that might impact how you use your Land Rover in the foreseeable future.
Download the letter here – don't forget to sign it at the bottom!


text:
Daisies lead to new leukaemia drug
Scientists could be on their way to creating a new leukaemia therapy extracted from a daisy-like plant, a new report has indicated.
According to an article from the University of Rochester, published in the journal Blood, laboratory studies with dimethylamino-parthenolide (DMAPT) have shown that it can attack "the roots of leukaemia".
DMAPT is a modified form of parthenolide (PTL), which is derived from a plant known as Feverfew or Bachelor's Button. The scientists are now hopeful that human clinical trials with DMAPT will show that it can be developed as a leukaemia therapy by attacking the disease at stem-cell level.
If successful it would kill the blood cancer "at the roots" without damaging healthy blood cells and prevent relapses, which current treatments such as chemotherapy are unable to do as they do not strike deep enough.
Monica L Guzman, PhD, the lead researcher on the DMAPT project, commented: "Once we begin seeing evidence from the clinical trials, it will give us more insight into the pharmacological properties of DMAPT and it will be easier to figure out its potential for other cancers."


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We are giving for free 20 of the LIQUI MOLY Speed Shooters! Just pay a delivery.
State-of-the-art, ash-free combination of agents with acceleration-enhancing, cleaning, dispersing and material-protecting properties. The product has been formulated using state-of-the-art additive and fuel technologies in accordance with the requirements of today's engines, fuels and running conditions. Ensures increased driving enjoyment due to optimised performance. The engine starts easier and also runs smoother.
For 2-stroke and 4-stroke gasoline engines (aspirated and injection). 80 ml is sufficient for up to 10 liters of fuel. Recommended for use at each refuelling.
Dzisiaj w sklepie za darmo (po oplaceniu przesylki) LIQUI MOLY SPEED SHOOTER - dodatek do paliwa zwieksajacy moc.


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Bosque del Apache
For as long as I can recall I had heard about Bosque del Apache. It was always described, with extreme reverence, as being one of the very best areas to photograph birds, especially snow geese and cranes in November and December. Well, I found myself slotted to be in Las Vegas in early November so I located a workshop that fit perfectly with my schedule and off to New Mexico I went to spend four days photographing tens of thousands of birds as they rocket into the sky, almost in unison, at sunrise and, on cue, stagger into one of several ponds at sunset.
The area, and photo opportunities, certainly lived up to its billing. The birds, the light, the terrain, the predictability, the accessibility all created an extraordinary photographic experience. If you like taking pictures of birds, this is a place you absolutely have to visit. Below are some of the images I made in mid November 2015.


text: Hello, this is just a proof-of-concept implementation for storing the domain xml description with the xml snapshot data. This is needed for Qemu, since restoring a Qemu domain after changing the "virtual hardware" (like changing RAM size, number of CPUs, controllers) is not possible: The "loadvm" command will fail to restore the saved state. My idea was to save the domain XML data with the snapshot XML data, which currently just contains a reference to the domain UUID. On snapshot-restore that domain description is restored to overwrites the current domain description. I descided to store a reference to the parsed domainObj with the domainSnapshotObj, since my goal was to detect on revert, if resuing the currently running Qemu process is possible, or the the process needs to be restartet with different arguments to revert changes to the "virtual hardware". I hadn't had time to implement this yet, so currently the Qemu process is restarted on every revert, which disconnects any VNC session and is also a lot slower then simply calling "loadvm". For this implementation I needed to pass "virCapsPtr" down to virDomainSnapshotDefParseString(). I only implemented that correctly for Qemu, so vbox and esx might be broken currently. An alternative (and simpler) implementation would be to just store the unparsed XML description with the runtime domainSnapshotObj. This would simplify copying the domain description, but would complicate detecting if "loadvm" is possible or Qemu must be restarted. The implementation currently works very well for me, but I noticed some memory leak, which might be related to this patch (or some other, since my version of libvirt contains several other patches as well). Philipp Hahn (3): Swap virDomain / virFomainSnapshot declaration snapshot: save domain description with snapshot Snapshot: restore domain description from snapshot src/conf/domain_conf.c | 27 +++++++++++-- src/conf/domain_conf.h | 102 ++++++++++++++++++++++++----------------------- src/esx/esx_driver.c | 2 +- src/qemu/qemu_driver.c | 43 +++++++++++++++++++- src/vbox/vbox_tmpl.c | 2 +- 5 files changed, 117 insertions(+), 59 deletions(-)


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My new Punk Rope!
I know I am supposed to post these updates on Mondays, but this week, my first back at uni, was pretty gross. I felt so unaccomplished yesterday that I decided to allow myself an extra day before summarizing the week. Today I feel wonderful, but I have realized that I had too many goals I thought I had to be working towards last week. Consequently, I was overwhelmed, especially when I allowed myself to think about the pile of homework I had already been assigned. From now on, I want to limit myself to two goals per week.
Still, I lost one pound. I ran in place for much, much longer than I ever have, than I thought I could. I found that hooping was suddenly fun. I biked to school twice, something I thought I would never feel collected-enough in the morning to do. I had one panic attack, rather than ten (really, I am astounded that I continue to function without any medication. I am calmer than I have been in over a year). I rode the bus to buy groceries, a trip which would have put me over the edge a few months ago. I brought nuts and apples with me to school. My jump rope arrived, and I tried it out.
(see last week's post)
I did lose one pound. Only one, but that is alright.
I did hoop for three minutes straight.
I did take my vitamins every day.
I did take care of my emotions.
I did not run all the way around the block without stopping, but I did it with one stop in the middle of about twenty seconds.
I did not clock five hours of activity, but I came darn close.
This week I would like to do five push-ups in a row, and lose another pound.
Weight: 158 pounds (down one pound)
Time I can run in place: 6 minutes (up two minutes)
Distance I can run: .25 km
Number of push-ups I can do in a row: 4
Time I can hoop: 3 minutes
Total activity: 4.5 hours


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U.S. Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission
Novelty Gift Company Failed to Accommodate and Fired Employee Due to Disability, Federal Agency Charges
HICKORY, N.C. - Spencer Gifts, LLC (Spencer), a Delaware corporation that operates novelty gift stores throughout the United States and Canada, violated federal law when it denied extended disability leave to one of its employees and then fired her, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charged in a lawsuit filed today.
According to the EEOC's lawsuit, Spencer employed Cindy Sykes as the store manager of its Hickory, N.C. store since early 2009. In 2013, Sykes was diagnosed with Marfan Syndrome, a genetic disorder of the body's connective tissue, a condition which Spencer was aware of. In December 2016, Sykes informed Spencer she required surgery on her knee and would need to be out for approximately four to six weeks to recover. Spencer refused to provide Sykes with the necessary leave or with any other accommodation that would allow her to keep her job. Spencer fired Sykes on January 14, 2017, when she exhausted her short-term disability benefits.
Such alleged conduct violates the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with a disability unless doing so would be an undue hardship. The EEOC filed suit in U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, Statesville Division (EEOC v. Spencer Gifts, LLC, Civil Action No. 5:18-cv-00155) after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement through its conciliation process. The EEOC seeks back pay, compensatory damages and punitive damages, as well as injunctive relief.
"The obligation to accommodate an employee with a disability so he or she can keep their job is a fundamental aspect of the ADA," said Kara G. Haden, acting regional attorney for the EEOC's Charlotte District. "Leave can be a reasonable accommodation. An employer cannot ignore its obligations under the ADA simply because an employee has exhausted leave he or she is otherwise entitled to under the employer's policies."
The EEOC advances opportunity in the workplace by enforcing federal laws prohibiting employment discrimination. More information is available at www.eeoc.gov. Stay connected with the latest EEOC news by subscribing to our email updates.


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Entries for the 30th annual Bookmark Contest at San Gabriel Library, 500 S. Del Mar Ave., can be submitted until Oct. 30.
Children can enter their designs in the following groupings: kindergarten through second grade, third grade through fifth grade, sixth through eighth grade and ninth through 12th grade.
The winners will be announced in November and will be entered into a regional judging.
Winning bookmark designs will be printed by Pentel of America Ltd., and be available at county libraries during National Library Week in April.
For more information, call (626) 287-0761.


text:
Mall: Crossiron Mills
Address: 261055 CrossIron Blvd, Rocky View, Alberta T4A 0G3, Canada (map)
Coordinates: 51.202748, -113.993522
City & State: Rocky View, Alberta
Phone: 403.984.6800
Email: email@example.com
Store rating:
Sunridge Nissan outlet store in Crossiron Mills, address and location: Rocky View, Alberta - 261055 CrossIron Blvd, Rocky View, Alberta T4A 0G3, Canada. Hours including holiday hours and black friday deals, coupons. Don´t forget to write review about your visit at Sunridge Nissan in Crossiron Mills ».
Useful links: Other stores in Mall | Deals&Coupons | Holiday&Black Friday hours
There are no reviews yet.


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Alabama governor signs vital law protecting free speech on public college campuses
Thursday, June 06, 2019
"Public colleges and universities are meant to be free and open to the exchange of ideas—a place where our future teachers, lawyers, doctors, judges, community leaders, and voters can exercise their constitutionally protected freedom of speech. This new law ensures that public universities remain places where intellectual diversity flourishes and all students are able to engage in the exchange of ideas rather than being censored on campus or banished to tiny so-called 'free speech zones.' We commend Gov. Ivey and the Alabama Legislature for protecting students' First Amendment freedoms."
- Pronunciation guide: Fiedorek (Fuh-DOHR'-eck)


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…when they say "We don't want to ban your hunting guns"? Well…
What gun nuts don't want you to know is many target and hunting rifles are chambered in the same round (.223/5.56mm) that Lanza's assault weapon was. Even more guns are chambered for more powerful rounds, like the .30-06 or (my personal "favorite") 7.62x54R…
Remember the beltway sniper back in 2002? The one who killed a dozen odd people? Even though he used a bushmaster assault rifle, he only fired one round at a time before moving. He could have used literally any rifle sold in the US for his attacks.
The only way we can truly be safe and prevent further gun violence is to ban civilian ownership of all guns.
The first thing out of my mouth to Sabra when I read that?
"Liberals are STUPID."
Why? Because we have been pointing certain things out this entire time, namely that
A. bolt-action hunting rifles are chambered in more powerful calibers than .223 Remington, and
B. the Beltway snipers could have pulled off their reign of terror just as easily with a bolt-action hunting rifle (aka high-powered sniper rifle) as they did the semiautomatic rifles that they were using. (That "assault weapons" "ban" we had in effect then worked pretty well, didn't it?) I know I have pointed out this very thing in this space on numerous occasions.
(And the author doesn't think there'd be widespread civil disobedience over an immediate national ban on concealed carry just as there would be over a ban on all guns? It might not be on the same level, but it'd still be there.)
As for the rest of it…well, it's all the proof you need as to why gun owners loudly protest things like what we're seeing proposed by Dianne Feinstein. In other words, why do we protest the small things? Because enough small things add up to big things. And they spell this out, just as they have done so many times before. You'd think they'd learn sooner or later.
But then, it's not as if they haven't already shown their hand on numerous occasions…
Tags: politics


text:
KaSa K99®
Potassium Chloride for Application in Animal Feed
- as feed material in the compound feed industry
- feed material certified in accordance GMP+ and recognised by QS
- premium quality and natural origin
- used in feed for pets and livestock
Product composition
- potassium chloride, approx. 99 % KCl
- contains 52 % K
DIN EN ISO 9001ff. certificate Kassel (pdf)
GMP+ certificate Kassel (pdf)
GMP+ certificate Zielitz (pdf)


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article info a b s t r a c tKeywords: The M4 competition is the continuation of three previous competitions started moreForecasting competitions than 45 years ago whose purpose was to learn how to improve forecasting accuracy, andM Competitions how such learning can be applied to advance the theory and practice of forecasting. TheForecasting accuracy purpose of M4 was to replicate the results of the previous ones and extend them intoPrediction intervals (PIs) three directions: First significantly increase the number of series, second include MachineTime series methodsMachine Learning (ML) methods Learning (ML) forecasting methods, and third evaluate both point forecasts and predictionBenchmarking methods intervals. The five major findings of the M4 Competitions are: 1. Out Of the 17 most accuratePractice of forecasting methods, 12 were ''combinations'' of mostly statistical approaches. 2. The biggest surprise was a ''hybrid'' approach that utilized both statistical and ML features. This method's average sMAPE was close to 10% more accurate than the combination benchmark used to compare the submitted methods. 3. The second most accurate method was a combination of seven statistical methods and one ML one, with the weights for the averaging being calculated by a ML algorithm that was trained to minimize the forecasting. 4. The two most accurate methods also achieved an amazing success in specifying the 95% prediction intervals correctly. 5. The six pure ML methods performed poorly, with none of them being more accurate than the combination benchmark and only one being more accurate than Naïve2. This paper presents some initial results of M4, its major findings and a logical conclusion. Finally, it outlines what the authors consider to be the way forward for the field of forecasting. © 2018 Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of International Institute of Forecasters.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijforecast.2018.06.0010169-2070/© 2018 Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of International Institute of Forecasters.
Please cite this article in press as: Makridakis, S., et al., The M4 Competition: Results, findings, conclusion and way forward. International Journal ofForecasting (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijforecast.2018.06.001.2 S. Makridakis et al. / International Journal of Forecasting ( ) –
majority of the methods submitted (33 of the 50), whose competition (see below), which is a huge improve-accuracies were lower than that of the statistical bench- ment. It is noted that the best method in the M3mark used, and will outline what we consider to be the way Competition (Makridakis & Hibon, 2000) was onlyforward for the field. Second, we briefly discuss some pre- 4% more accurate than the same combination.dictions/hypotheses that we made two and a half months • The second most accurate method was a combina-ago (detailed in a document e-mailed to R. J. Hyndman tion of seven statistical methods and one ML one,on 21/3/2018), predicting/hypothesizing about the actual with the weights for the averaging being calculatedresults of the M4. A detailed appraisal of these predic- by a ML algorithm that was trained to minimize thetions/hypotheses will be left for the special issue. forecasting error through holdout tests. This method We would like to emphasize that the most important was submitted jointly by Spain's University of Aobjective of the M4 Competition, like that of the previous Coruña and Australia's Monash University.three ones, has been to ''learn how to improve the fore- • The most accurate and second most accurate meth-casting accuracy, and how such learning can be applied ods also achieved an amazing success in specifyingto advance the theory and practice of forecasting'', thus the 95% PIs correctly. These are the first methodsproviding practical benefits to all those who are interested we are aware of that have done so, rather thanin the field. The M4 is an open competition whose series underestimating the uncertainty considerably.have been available since the end of last year, both through • The six pure ML methods that were submitted in thethe M4 site (https://www.m4.unic.ac.cy/the-dataset/) and M4 all performed poorly, with none of them beingin the M4comp2018 R package (Montero-Manso, Netto, more accurate than Comb and only one being more& Talagala, 2018). In addition, the majority of the par- accurate than Naïve2. These results are in agreementticipants have been requested to deposit the code used with those of a recent study that was published infor generating their forecasts in GitHub (https://github. PLOS ONE (Makridakis, Spiliotis, & Assimakopoulos,com/M4Competition/M4-methods), along with a detailed 2018).description of their methods, while the code for the ten Our conclusion from the above findings is that the ac-M4 benchmarks has been available from GitHub since the curacy of individual statistical or ML methods is low, andbeginning of the competition. This will allow interested that hybrid approaches and combinations of method areparties to verify the accuracy and/or reproducibility of the the way forward for improving the forecasting accuracyforecasts of most of the methods submitted to the compe- and making forecasting more valuable.tition (for proprietary methods/software, the checking willbe done by the organizers). This implies that individuals 2.1. The comb benchmarkand organizations will be able to download and utilizemost of the M4 methods, including the best one(s), and to One innovation of the M4 was the introduction of tenbenefit from their enhanced accuracy. Moreover, academic standard methods (both statistical and ML) for benchmark-researchers will be able to analyze the factors that affect ing the accuracy of the methods submitted to the compe-the forecasting accuracy in order to gain a better under- tition. From those ten, we selected one against which tostanding of them, and to conceive new ways of improving compare the submitted methods, namely Comb, a com-the accuracy. This is in contrast to other competitions, like bination based on the simple arithmetic average of thethose organized by Kaggle, where there is actually a ''horse Simple, Holt and Damped exponential smoothing models.race'' that aims to identify the most accurate forecasting The reason for such a choice was that Comb is easy tomethod(s) without any consideration of the reasons in- compute, can be explained/understood intuitively, is quitevolved with the aim of improving the forecasting perfor- robust, and typically is more accurate than the individualmance in the future. To recapitulate, the objective of the methods being combined. For instance, for the entire set ofM Competitions is to learn how to improve the forecasting the M4 series, the sMAPE of Single was 13.09%, that of Holtaccuracy, not to host a ''horse race''. was 13.77%, and that of Damped was 12.66%, while that of Comb was 12.55%. Table 1 shows the sMAPE and the overall2. The five major findings and the conclusion of M4 weighted average (OWA) – for definitions, see M4 Team (2018) – of the Comb benchmark, the 17 methods that Below, we outline what we consider to be the five performed better than such a benchmark, and the two mostmajor findings of the M4 Competition and advance a logical accurate ML submissions. The last two columns of Table 1conclusion from these findings. show the percentage that each method was better/worse than Comb in terms of both sMAPE and OWA. • The combination of methods was the king of the M4. Of the 17 most accurate methods, 12 were ''combi- 2.2. The six methods with the lowest OWA and the six ML ones nations'' of mostly statistical approaches. • The biggest surprise was a ''hybrid'' approach We planned originally to discuss only the five best that utilized both statistical and ML features. This methods submitted for the competition, but later decided method produced both the most accurate forecasts to increase the number to six, as the difference between the and the most precise PIs, and was submitted by fifth and sixth was miniscule (0.005). Of these six methods, Slawek Smyl, a Data Scientist at Uber Technologies. the most accurate one was the hybrid approach proposed According to sMAPE, it was close to 10% more accu- by Smyl of Uber, which mixed exponential smoothing for- rate than the combination (Comb) benchmark of the mulas with a ''black-box'' recurrent neural network (RNN)
Please cite this article in press as: Makridakis, S., et al., The M4 Competition: Results, findings, conclusion and way forward. International Journal ofForecasting (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijforecast.2018.06.001.Forecasting (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijforecast.2018.06.001.Please cite this article in press as: Makridakis, S., et al., The M4 Competition: Results, findings, conclusion and way forward. International Journal of
Table 1 The performances of the 17 methods submitted to M4 that had OWAs at least as good as that of the Comb.
) Other Ibrahim, M. Georgia Institute of Technology 13.677 10.089 13.321 4.747 12.198 0.805 0.890 0.921 1.079 0.880 13 2.8% 2.0%
– Combination Kull, M., et al. University of Tartu 14.096 11.109 13.290 4.169 12.496 0.820 0.960 0.932 0.883 0.888 14 0.5% 1.1% Combination Waheeb, W. Universiti Tun Hussein Onn 14.783 10.059 12.770 4.039 12.146 0.880 0.880 0.927 0.904 0.894 15 3.3% 0.4% Malaysia Statistical Darin, S. & Stellwagen, E. Business Forecast Systems 14.663 10.155 13.058 4.041 12.279 0.877 0.887 0.887 1.011 0.895 16 2.2% 0.3% (Forecast Pro) Combination Dantas, T. & Oliveira, F. Pontifical Catholic University of 14.746 10.254 13.462 4.783 12.553 0.866 0.892 0.914 1.011 0.896 17 0.0% 0.2% Rio de Janeiro Best ML Trotta, B. Individual 14.397 11.031 13.973 4.566 12.894 0.859 0.939 0.941 0.991 0.915 23 −2.7% −1.9% 2nd Best ML Bontempi, G. Université Libre de Bruxelles 16.613 11.786 14.800 4.734 13.990 1.050 1.072 1.007 1.051 1.045 37 −11.4% −16.4% a Rank: rank calculated considering both the submitted methods (50) and the set of benchmarks (10). b Com: the benchmark is the average (combination) of Simple, Holt and Damped exponential smoothing. c sMAPE: symmetric mean absolute percentage error. d OWA: overall weighted average of the relative sMAPE and the relative MASE.
34 S. Makridakis et al. / International Journal of Forecasting ( ) –
forecasting engine. It is also interesting that this forecasting of estimating the forecasting uncertainty. Once again, themethod incorporated information from both the individual hybrid and combination approaches led to the most correctseries and the whole dataset, thus exploiting data in a hi- PIs, with the statistical methods displaying significantlyerarchical way. The remaining five methods all had some- worse performances and none of the ML methods man-thing in common: they utilized various forms of combining aging to outperform the benchmark. However, it shouldmainly statistical methods, and most used holdout tests be mentioned that, unlike the best ones, the majority ofto figure out the optimal weights for such a combination. the methods underestimated reality considerably, espe-The differences in forecasting accuracy between these five cially for the low frequency data (yearly and quarterly).methods were small, with the sMAPE difference being less For example, the average coverages of the methods werethan 0.2% and the OWA difference being just 0.01. It is also 0.80, 0.90, 0.92 and 0.93 for the yearly, quarterly, monthlyinteresting to note that although these five methods used and other data, respectively. These findings demonstratea combination of mostly statistical models, some of them that standard forecasting methods fail to estimate the un-utilized ML ideas for determining the optimal weights for certainty properly, and therefore that more research isaveraging the individual forecasts. required to correct the situation. The rankings of the six ML methods were 23, 37, 38,48, 54, and 57 out of a total of 60 (50 submitted and the10 benchmarks). These results confirm our recent findings 3. The hypotheses(Makridakis et al., 2018) regarding the poor performancesof the ML methods relative to statistical ones. However, we We now present the ten predictions/hypotheses wemust emphasize that the performances of the ML methods sent to the IJF Editor-in-Chief two and a half months agoreported in our paper, as well as those found by Ahmed, about the expected results of the M4. A much fuller andAtiya, Gayar, and El-Shishiny (2010) and those submit- more detailed appraisal of these ten hypotheses is leftted in the M4, used mainly generic guidelines and stan- for the planned special issue of IJF. This section merelydard algorithms that could be improved substantially. One provides some short, yet indicative answers.possible direction for such an improvement could be thedevelopment of hybrid approaches that utilize the best 1. The forecasting accuracies of simple methods,characteristics of ML algorithms and avoid their disadvan- such as the eight statistical benchmarks includedtages, while at the same time exploiting the strong features in M4, will not be too far from those of the mostof well-known statistical methods. We believe strongly in accurate methods.the potential of ML methods, which are still in their infancy This is only partially true. On the one hand, theas far as time series forecasting is concerned. However, to hybrid method and several of the combinationbe able to reach this potential, their existing limitations, methods all outperformed Comb, the statisticalsuch as preprocessing and overfitting, must be identified benchmark, by a percentage ranging between 9.4%and most importantly accepted by the ML community, for the first and 5% for the ninth. These percentagesrather than being ignored. Otherwise, no effective ways of are higher than the 4% improvement of the bestcorrecting the existing problems will be devised. method in the M3 relative to the Comb benchmark. On the other hand, the improvements below the2.3. Prediction intervals (PIs) tenth method were lower, and one can question whether the level of improvement was exceptional, Our knowledge of PIs is rather limited, and much could given the advanced algorithms utilized and the com-be learned by studying the results of the M4 Competition. putational resources used.Table 2 presents the performance of the 12 methods (out 2. The 95% PIs will underestimate reality consider-of the 18 submitted) that achieved mean scaled interval ably, and this underestimation will increase as thescores (MSISs), (see M4 Team, 2018, for definitions) that forecasting horizon lengthens.were at least as good as that of the Naïve1 method. The last Indeed, except for the two top performing meth-two columns of Table 2 show the percentages of cases in ods of the competition, the majority of the remain-which each method was better/worse than the Naive1 in ing methods underestimated reality by providingterms of MSIS and the absolute coverage difference (ACD); overly narrow confidence intervals. This is especiallyi.e., the absolute difference between the coverage of the true for the low frequency data (yearly and quar-method and the target set of 0.95. The performances of terly), where longer-term forecasts are required,two additional methods, namely ETS and auto.arima in and therefore the uncertainty is higher. Increases inthe R forecast package (Hyndman et al., 2018), have also data availability and the generation of short-termbeen included as benchmarks, but Naïve1 was preferred forecasts may also contribute to the improvementsdue to its simplicity, low computational requirements and displayed in the case of the high frequency series.intuitive understanding. Some of the results in Table 2 are It is also verified that underestimation increasedimpressive. The improvements in the performances of the on average at longer forecasting horizons for thetop five methods range from almost 50% for the first to yearly, quarterly and monthly data, while it re-nearly 34% for the fifth. Moreover, the coverages achieved mained rather constant for the rest of the data.by the methods of Smyl and Montero-Manso et al. are 3. The upward/downward extrapolation of the trend0.948 and 0.960 respectively (compared to a perfect score will be predicted more accurately when it isof 0.95), meaning that both of them did an excellent job damped for longer horizons.
Table 2 The performances of the 12 methods submitted to M4 with MSISs at least as good as that of the Naïve.
) Systems, Inc. (AutoBox) Statistical Wainwright, E., Butz, E. & Oracle Corporation 58.596 12.426 9.714 31.036 22.674 0.295 0.100 0.056 0.028 0.120 13 5.7% −39.6%
– Raychaudhuri, S. Combination Segura-Heras, J.-V., Universidad Miguel 52.316 15.058 11.220 33.685 22.717 0.132 0.039 0.014 0.052 0.049 14 5.6% 43.1% Vercher-González, E., Hernández & Universitat Bermúdez-Edo, J. D. & de Valencia Corberán-Vallet, A. a Rank: rank calculated considering both the submitted methods (18) and the set of benchmarks (3). b Naive: the benchmark is the Naïve 1 method. c MSIS: mean scaled interval score. d ACD: absolute coverage difference, i.e., the absolute difference between the coverage of the method and the target (0.95).
56 S. Makridakis et al. / International Journal of Forecasting ( ) –
This is verified through the performances of This prediction/hypothesis is related closely to the the respective M4 benchmarks. Holt exponential following two claims (9 and 10). If the character- smoothing displays an OWA of 0.971 (30th position), istics of the M3 and M4 series are similar, then while Damped has an OWA of 0.907 (21st position), the forecasting performances of the various partic- thus improving the forecasting accuracy by more ipating methods will be close, especially for eco- than 6.5% when extrapolating using damped instead nomic/business data, where the data availability and of linear trends. frequency of the two datasets are comparable. How- 4. The majority of ML methods will not be more ever, excessive experiments are required in order to accurate than statistical ones, although there may answer this question, and therefore no firm conclu- be one or two pleasant surprises where such sion can be drawn at this point. We can only state methods are superior to statistical ones, though that this is quite true for the case of the statistical only by some small margin. M4 benchmarks. This was one of the major findings of the competi- 9. We would expect few, not statistically important, tion, the demonstration that none of the pure ML differences in the characteristics of the series used managed to outperform Comb and that only used in the M3 and M4 Competitions in terms of one of them was more accurate than the Naive2. their seasonality, trend, trend-cycle and random- The one pleasant surprise was the hybrid method ness. introduced by Smyl, which incorporated features An analysis of the characteristics of the time se- from both statistical and ML methods and led to a ries (Kang et al., 2017) in each of the two datasets considerable improvement in forecasting accuracy. demonstrated that the basic features of the series 5. The combination of statistical and/or ML methods were quite similar, though the M4 data were slightly will produce more accurate results than the best more trended and less seasonal that those of M3. of the individual methods combined. However, a more detailed analysis will be performed This is a major finding, or better, a confirmation, to verify these preliminary findings, taking into from this competition, the demonstration that com- consideration possible correlations that may exist bination is one of the best forecasting practices. between such features. This conclusion is also sup- Since the majority of the participants who combined ported through claim 10, as time series character- various methods used more or less the same pool istics are related closely to the performances of of models (most of which were the M4 statistical forecasting methods (Petropoulos, Makridakis, Assi- benchmarks), an interesting question is, ''which fea- makopoulos, & Nikolopoulos, 2014). tures make a combination approach more accurate 10. There will be small, not statistically significant, than others?'' differences in the accuracies of the eight statisti- 6. Seasonality will continue to dominate the fluctu- cal benchmarks between the M3 and M4 datasets. ations of the time series, while randomness will Similarities were evident when the performances remain the most critical factor influencing the of the M4 benchmarks were compared across the forecasting accuracy. M3 and M4 datasets. Not only did the ranks of Having correlated the sMAPE values reported per se- the benchmarks remain almost unchanged (Spear- ries for the 60 methods utilized within M4 with the man's correlation coefficient was 0.95), but also the corresponding estimate of various time series char- absolute values of the errors (sMAPE, MASE and acteristics (Kang, Hyndman, & Smith-Miles, 2017), OWA) were very close. This is an indication that such as randomness, trend, seasonality, linearity and both the M3 and M4 data provide a good repre- stability, our initial finding is that, on average, ran- sentation of the forecasting reality in the business domness is the most critical factor for determining world. the forecasting accuracy, followed by linearity. We also found that seasonal time series tend to be easier to predict. This last point is a reasonable statement 4. The way forward if we consider that seasonal time series are likely to be less noisy. Forecasting competitions provide the equivalent of lab 7. The sample size will not be a significant factor in experiments in physics or chemistry. The problem is that improving the forecasting accuracy of statistical sometimes we are not open-minded, but instead put our methods. biases and vested interests above the objective evidence After correlating the sMAPE values reported for each from the competitions (Makridakis, Assimakopoulos et al., series with the lengths of these series, it seems that in press; Makridakis & Hibon, 1979). The M1 Competi- the forecasting accuracy is related weakly to the tion (Makridakis, Andersen, Carbone, Fildes, Hibon, et al., sample size. Thus, we conclude that statistical meth- 1982) proved that simple methods were at least as ac- ods are not influenced heavily by data availability curate as statistically sophisticated ones. M2 (Makridakis, (though this finding needs further confirmation). Chatfield, Hibon, Lawrence, et al., 1993) demonstrated that 8. There will be small, not statistically significant, the use of additional information and judgment did not differences in the forecasting accuracies of the improve the accuracy of time series forecasting. M3 re- various methods on the economic/business series confirmed the findings of M1 and introduced a couple of in the M3 and M4 datasets. new, more accurate methods. Furthermore, even after it
Please cite this article in press as: Makridakis, S., et al., The M4 Competition: Results, findings, conclusion and way forward. International Journal ofForecasting (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijforecast.2018.06.001. S. Makridakis et al. / International Journal of Forecasting ( ) – 7
ended, it still led other researchers to experiment with Hyndman, R., Athanasopoulos, G., Bergmeir, C., Caceres, G., Chhay, L., &the M3 data and propose additional, more accurate fore- O'Hara-Wild, M. et al., (2018). Forecast: Forecasting functions for time series and linear models. R package version 8.3.casting approaches. The major contributions of M4 have Kang, Y., Hyndman, R. J., & Smith-Miles, K. (2017). Visualising fore-been (a) the introduction of a ''hybrid'' method, (b) the casting algorithm performance using time series instance spaces.confirmation of the superiority of the combinations and the International Journal of Forecasting, 33(2), 345–358.incorporation of ML algorithms for determining their M4 Team (2018). M4 competitor's guide: prizes and rules. See https://weighting, and thus improving their accuracy, and (c) the www.m4.unic.ac.cy/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/M4-Competitors- Guide.pdf.impressive performances of some methods for determin- Makridakis, S., Andersen, A., Carbone, R., Fildes, R., Hibon, M., et al. (1982).ing PIs. The accuracy of extrapolation (time series) methods: results of a Rationality suggests that one must accept that all fore- forecasting competition. Journal of Forecasting, 1, 111–153.casting approaches and individual methods have both ad- Makridakis, S., Assimakopoulos, V., & Spiliotis, E. (2018). Objectivity, re- producibility and replicability in forecasting research. Internationalvantages and drawbacks, and therefore that one must be Journal of Forecasting, 34(3) (in press).eclectic in exploiting such advantages while also avoiding Makridakis, S., Chatfield, C., Hibon, M., Lawrence, M., Mills, T., et al. (1993).or minimizing their shortcomings. This is why the logical The M2-competition: A real-time judgmentally based forecastingway forward is the utilization of hybrid and combination study. International Journal of Forecasting, 9(1), 5–22.methods. We are confident that the 100,000 time series of Makridakis, S., & Hibon, M. (1979). Accuracy of forecasting: an empirical investigation. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A (General),the M4 will become a testing ground on which forecasting 142(2), 97–145.researchers can experiment and discover new, increas- Makridakis, S., & Hibon, M. (2000). The M3-Competition: results, con-ingly accurate forecasting approaches. Empirical evidence clusions and implications. International Journal of Forecasting, 16(4),must guide our efforts to improve the forecasting accuracy, 451–476. Makridakis, S., Spiliotis, E., & Assimakopoulos, V. (2018). Statistical andrather than personal opinions. machine learning forecasting methods: concerns and ways forward. PLOS ONE, 13(3), 1–26.References Montero-Manso, P., Netto, C., & Talagala, T. (2018). M4comp2018: Data from the M4-Competition. R package version 0.1.0.Ahmed, N. K., Atiya, A. F., Gayar, N. E., & El-Shishiny, H. (2010). An empirical Petropoulos, F., Makridakis, S., Assimakopoulos, V., & Nikolopoulos, K. comparison of machine learning models for time series forecasting. (2014). 'Horses for courses' in demand forecasting. European Journal Econometric Reviews, 29(5–6), 594–621. of Operational Research, 237(1), 152–163.
Please cite this article in press as: Makridakis, S., et al., The M4 Competition: Results, findings, conclusion and way forward. International Journal ofForecasting (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijforecast.2018.06.001.


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Hangar B
In 1942, the U.S. Navy began construction of 17 wooden hangars to house K-class airships that would be used for anti-submarine patrol and convoy escort. Two of these hangars were built at Naval Air Station Tilllamook, which was commissioned in December 1942 to serve the Oregon-Washington-California coastal areas.
With WW II well under way, construction of the two hangars was rushed to completion. Hangar "B" was the first one built and was completed in August of 1943. Hangar "A" which was destroyed in a 1992 fire, was completed in only 27 working days! Amazingly, there were no serious injuries or deaths on the whole project.
Stationed at NAS Tillamook was Squadron ZP-33 with a complement of eight K-Class airships. The K-ships were 252 feet long, 80 feet in diameter, and filled with 425,000 cu. ft. of Helium. With a range of 2,000 miles and an ability to stay aloft for three days, they were well suited for coastal patrol and convoy escort. With the surrender of Japan on September 2, 1945 and the Japanese submarine threat eliminated, Naval Air Station Tillamook was reduced to functional status. In 1948, Naval Air Station Tillamook was decommissioned for good, ending a long and proud tradition.
1,072 feet
192 feet
(over 15 stories)
296 feet
120 feet high
6 sections each weighing 30 tons. 220 foot wide opening Sections roll on railroad tracks
Over 7 acres (you could play 6 football games at once)
2 catwalks, each 137 feet above the hangar deck


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Our world is facing challenges that can only be met by increasing the pace of innovation. That means we need to farm smarter – using all available technologies in ways that will enable us to value crop productivity and biodiversity equally.
Dr. Robert Fraley has written a new column at the GMO Answers Forbes.com site, "GMOs Will Only Grow in Impact." He wonders why GMOs and other advanced biotech tools are expected to have an even bigger impact within the next 20 years. The answers? One, the accelerating pace of innovation and two, farming smarter is no longer a luxury, it's a necessity.
He notes,
It has been 20 years since companies like mine first began selling genetically modified (GM) seeds to farmers – soy and cotton in 1996, corn in 1997. If you had told me then that by 2016, 20 seasons later, GM cotton, soybean and corn products would be widely planted by millions of farmers throughout the United States and around the world, I simply would not have believed you. And, if you had also told me that by 2016, GMO crops would be planted in 30 countries and used on an area the size of Alaska, I would have wondered whether you also believed in porcine flight.
No, none of us who were there from the start with GMOs ever dreamed they would be this successful. We knew we had something with considerable potential to improve agriculture, but who would have predicted that our biotechnology advances would be the most rapidly adopted innovation in recent agricultural history?
It's hard to predict the future, but odds are biotechnology is here to stay. To read Dr. Fraley's entire post, please visit the GMO Answers page at Forbes.com


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Women's Beacon Clinic
Monday, December 10th | 9am - 12pm | Albion Grill, Alta Ski Area | FREE with pre-registration***
Alta Community Enrichment, SheJumps and the Utah Avalanche Center are hosting a women's beacon clinic. Join us at Alta Ski Area to learn how to properly use your rescue gear. We will go over efficient beacon search, proper probing techniques and strategic shoveling practices. Whether you are just getting started or are a backcountry veteran, this is a great way to help refresh your skills!
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With an ever expanding product line and precise inventory control, we aim to always have what you want in stock or available in a timely manner. Honesty, quality and up front business practices are something we pride ourselves in.
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18, Coledale Drive, Weir Views, VIC, 3338
SoldSold on 3/14/2019 $570,000 House
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text: I was lucky enough to catch the second night of this incredible tour at Starland Ballroom November 19th, 2017. I've seen half of the tour, Circa Survive and Balance and Composure, before a handful of times but this is the first time I got to see Thrice and CHON. Balance and Composure kicked off the night, they've always had this unforgettable rooted tone that brings me back to the first time I saw them. CHON was an experience, there are few bands that leave me completely stunned like CHON did. CHON wants nothing to do with the age-old cookie cutter alt song and I don't blame them. Their completely instrumental set kept me more on my toes than any 10-year tour would. Next up Circa Survive took the stage, it's always a pleasure to see Anthony Green go buckwild. This band has always had something that took them beyond the normal limitations of the band on stage/crowd behind barricade dynamic. Green has a way of tapping into this hidden energy and making sure it touches every single inch of the venue. Thrice closed out the show and the weekend. This was my first time seeing Thrice, my 7th grade self was screaming the entire time.


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