iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

📢 Platypus, the CASTAC blog, is seeking a new Managing Editor! Two-year term starting Jan 2027, ~5 hrs/week, two-person teams welcome. If you work at the intersection of anthropology and STS, we want to hear from you. Apps due Nov 1: blog.castac.org/cfa-platypus...

blog.castac.org

Call for Applications: Platypus Managing Editor (ME) | Platypus

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Male infertility is often understood through deficit, loss, and vulnerability. But what might become visible if we also attended to men's capacities, relationships, resources, and reproductive futures? New on Platypus. Read and listen: blog.castac.org/2026/09/beyo...

Collage of Australian media and digital representations of male fertility, including sperm testing and donation, declining sperm counts, and reproductive optimisation.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Today on Platypus, Lucy Pei examines how gig worker activists claim the global scale. Corporate elites often dominate debates on the future of work; here, labor organizing builds alternate transnational imaginaries: blog.castac.org/2026/09/tran... #STS #Anthropology

A sample book cover proposal featuring an illustration of the Earth with silhouettes of gig delivery workers (on bicycles, motorcycles, and foot) positioned across the top of the globe. At the top and center, Spanish slogans and titles read: "Una explotación con una nueva economía", "Si la precarización es mundial, la lucha es internacional", and "La precarización en las empresas de plataformas digitales a nivel mundial", listing editors Yuli Ramírez, Carolina Hevia, and Lucy Pei at the bottom.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Catherina Wilson shows us how while WhatsApp can promote the inclusion of highly relevant analyses and insights by potential authors who feel excluded by academic (English) jargon, we need to critically reflect on its use and ethical implications. New on Platypus.

A woman in a colorful top leans over her smart phone, looking at an image of a group of people.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Ambar Reyes studies the lives and labor of delivery workers in New York City. She explores how systems designed for labor extraction are repurposed as infrastructures of care, accountability, and collective knowledge, connecting neighbourhoods and communities across national borders.

A coloured photograph of a hand holding a red bag with medicines in it, next to the shadow of a delivery bike.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

How does "digital immanence" reframe intimacy with the divine? This post thinks with the linguistic anthropological notion of "chronotope" as it relates to the digital and the future of our ever-mediated religious practices. New on Platypus. Read and listen: blog.castac.org/2026/09/time...

A grainy, red-tinted night-vision shot of a person crouching in a dim room, wearing a VR headset, crying with one hand raised.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

What happens when we measure aesthetic experience with an electroencephalogram? Two workshops by the Interspecifics collective show that art and science produce productive friction, not synthesis. New on Platypus.

Screenshot of the Scope software showing the XY-plane tracking of three regions of a Paenibacillus vortex colony, used to modulate sound synthesizer parameters.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

In Mexico, the word quelite comes from the Nahuatl kilitl. New on Platypus, Aldo Palafox argues the declining use of quelites is best understood as a conflict between political ontologies, offering a critical perspective on narratives that reintegrate them into Mexican diets as native "vegetables."

A plant with vibrant green leaves, alongside some clovers and thin, dry stems on the ground.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Lucy Pei, Joy Ming, Kim Fernandes, and @rsteup.bsky.social open the series on Reclaiming the Future of Work by examining how Global South, global majority, and decolonial lenses can help us to break out of dominant points of view. New on Platypus. Read and listen: blog.castac.org/2026/09/recl...

A colorful graphic summarizing themes from the Reclaiming the Future of Work panels at 4S 2025 — inevitable tech change, prefiguring and reimagining, direct action and resistance, collective sensemaking, care, and the role of researchers.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

On the surface, due diligence and ethnography share the same toolkit - the candid question, the pre-read, listening for what goes unsaid. This week on Platypus, Al Lim draws on his dual role as ethnographer and VC investor to trace where the two might split.

A building with a large dark tiled sloped roof, strung with warm string lights, stands at dusk in a plaza flanked by high-rise towers.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

In this post, Sridhar Raghavan traces coasts (karai) as produced by silt, sea and coastal engineering. As an agent of history, siltation in the Kaveri Delta renders the karai, where (post-)colonial engineering attempts control, as a site of dialectic of land and water.

A woman in a saree standing on the shore surrounded by boats, bending into a blue bag of fish.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

What happens when a horse enters a biometric archive? In a multimodal essay, A Horse in the Archive, Kayah explores the fragments, anomalies, and incompleteness produced when bodies become data. New on Platypus. Read and listen: blog.castac.org/2026/08/a-ho...

Seven irregularly shaped fragments from two wisdom teeth, arranged from largest to smallest, with an intact equine incisor between the fourth and fifth fragments.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

What does it mean when a game promises to listen? In China's romance games, virtual boyfriends hang on your every word, and the game studios say they do too. New on Platypus, Cathy Naijia Liu writes on how "being heard" turns into a demand players make on the companies behind the games.

Drawing of a women-oriented, romance simulation game studio.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Children are not passive recipients of new technology. New on Platypus, Manar Naser chronicles her experience with elementary-age students, who understand AI's taboo nature, call low-effort ideas AI slop, and reject data centers in their communities. Read and listen: blog.castac.org/2026/08/the-...

A large group of people gathers on a grassy field with tents, tables, chairs, and activities for children.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

In June, emerging STS scholars gathered in Seoul to workshop draft manuscripts, encountering charismatic objects and a "concrete fish tank". Lachlan Hensey reflects on the 2026 ST&HV STS School. New on Platypus. Read and listen: blog.castac.org/2026/08/disp...

A stream, shaded by trees, flows through an urban area. On the left, people gather on the sidewalk, while a road runs along the right.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Today on the blog, Tanu Biswas revisits the Boaventura de Sousa Santos case through autoethnography, interrogating her own response to encountering a citation of de Sousa Santos' work. New on Platypus. Read and listen: blog.castac.org/2026/08/in-t...

The author Tanu Biswas looks back while walking through a corridor on an academic institution.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

How can medicalization create spaces for women to freely explore their sexuality? New on Platypus, Neslihan Sen uses vaginismus as a lens in Turkey to analyze the paradoxical relationship between sexual agency and the medicalization of sexuality. Read and listen: blog.castac.org/2026/08/from...

Yellow, pink, and white candles are laid out on a white patterned plastic bag on a table, in different sizes, carved and shaped.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

In Networks of Knowledge Sharing, Jennifer Foley shares her personal journey of exploring mycelial logics and how they resonate with her experiences of resource sharing, writing, care work, and decentralized collaboration in academic spaces. Read and listen: blog.castac.org/2026/08/netw...

Close-up of delicate, branching white fibers resembling frost or mold, set against a soft blue-gray gradient background.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Today on Platypus, Megan MacGregor examines at-home "smart bathroom" technologies, showing how visions for continuous microbiome monitoring emerge from the human genome sequencing era and its focus on personalized medicine. Read and listen: blog.castac.org/2026/08/micr...

An image of the GutLab™ toilet and monitoring technology, which appears as a rectangular machine attached to the toilet with buttons on top.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Can data centers learn to sweat? New on Platypus, Miriam Fahimi explores AI, heat, and cooling, asking what alternative futures for computing might look like. Read and listen: blog.castac.org/2026/08/can-... Project: cryocultures.org

Several server racks filled with stacked servers and networking equipment, interconnected by dense bundles of cables with glowing indicator lights in a dimly lit data center.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

What does it take to return to a field site, year after year? Mayline Strouk traces the fragile alignments between seabirds, researchers, and funding that sustain long-term ecological monitoring in Iceland. blog.castac.org/2026/08/frag...

The picture shows a woman sitting in the grass and a man standing with his hands behind his back, looking in the same direction, towards a burrow. She is holding a plastic pole stuck in the grass. The sea is in the background, and puffins are flying around.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

The first post in Labor Tech India's series on Platypus presents union organisers' perspectives on researchers' contributions to movement spaces, with suggestions to minimize research fatigue and facilitate collaborative engagements.

The picture is composed of three separate images. The first shows a woman with medium length black hair in a blue saree. The second shows a man with black hair and a white patterned shirt holding a mike. The third shows a man with a white shirt and grey trousers addressing a gathering.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

What do AI systems miss when they learn African languages? New on Platypus, Mpho Primus and Siri Lamoureaux explore why language is more than text - and why context, culture, and relationships matter for ethical AI. Read and listen: blog.castac.org/2026/07/auto...

An image representing tones of Sesotho speech in waveform.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Why aren't disease "hotspots" neutral descriptions of who is getting sick? New on Platypus, Katharina Rynkiewich examines the U.S. measles outbreak alongside frontline healthcare providers in South Florida to show how hotspot maps are sociotechnical and political objects.

The image shows part of a map of the contiguous United States with red and green pins in different places.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

What does it mean to feel stuck when your field has already succeeded? New on Platypus, Sumin Myung follows South Korean forest scientists confronting a professional anxiety rooted in the very success of the country's reforestation since the 1970s. Read and listen: blog.castac.org/2026/07/stuc...

A landscape with a foregrounded forest and background mountains covered in forests.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Today on Platypus, @abhigya.bsky.social discusses contestations around the EU Nature Restoration Law in Czechia and shows how these debates highlight the contradictions of interest-group mobilisation in scientific controversies. Read and listen: blog.castac.org/2026/07/char...

An image of a protected landscape area, the Czech Karst. It shows limestone rocks, light open deciduous woods and forest-steppes with flowering rocks and the canyon valley of Berounka River.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

In League of Legends, the economy doesn't end at Riot's store. New on Platypus, Iván Flores follows the informal markets for skins, accounts, and coaching that make up its "digital porosity" - proof that corporate platforms are powerful, but never fully closed.

Close-up of stacked gold and silver coins on various currency notes, symbolizing wealth and savings.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

At Mumbai's Deonar dumping ground, the monster is not a swamp man. It is the unstable assemblage of plastics, marsh, damaged ecologies, and the labor of those who work there. New on Platypus, Adwaita Banerjee follows the ground that moves. Read and listen: blog.castac.org/2026/07/the-...

A white waste truck moves across a vast, layered slope of accumulated refuse at Mumbai's Deonar dumping ground. Mountains of compacted waste rise in the background against a hazy sky.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

AI will transform education. We've heard that for decades. New on Platypus, Martin Oliver and Jade Vu Henry use the lenticular cloud - stationary in appearance, constituted by continuous movement - to rethink EdTech's stuckness as a practice of repair rather than a failure of progress.

Two lenticular clouds resembling lens-shaped discs hover over a rocky, snow-covered landscape at Arctowski Station.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Microbiome science begins with cold hands and a barcode that has to survive the wind. New on Platypus, @victor.secco@bsky.social follows sampling expeditions on the Belgian coast to trace the invisible labour that turns soil and water into data — and asks who gets the credit.

Three samplers collecting sediment samples using green gloves and plastic sampling cores in a muddy coastal environment.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Can anthropology's colonial legacies be reassembled on crip time? A new post on Platypus by Seon Shim traces disability anthropology as a practice of taking up space where and how it is not expected — arriving late, moving slowly, and building toward crip futures.

Flyer for the SANDS Disabled Grad Student Meet Up, featuring a pastel blue-and-white wavy checkerboard background, announcing an online gathering for disabled and neurodivergent graduate students.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

🎙️ New Platypod episode! Dr. Ana Carolina de Assis @anthrotechana.bsky.social talks with Dr. Luis Felipe R. Murillo about Common Circuits, his book on minor computing communities and the alternative futures they make possible against AI's enclosure of knowledge. 🎧 blog.castac.org/2026/06/plat...

Book cover titled "Common Circuits: Hacking Alternative Technological Futures" by Luis Felipe R. Murillo, featuring a pink and orange circuit board design.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

Why study smell in clothes? A new RAFeCT post on Platypus explores smelling someone else's garments as a way of approaching absence, memory, and intimacy. blog.castac.org/2026/06/why-...

The image shows two young women, seated at a table, each smelling a piece of clothing.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

Today on Platypus, Şafak Kılıçtepe and Emine Onculer Yayalar explore the governance of bodies in Türkiye's hybrid medical landscape. blog.castac.org/2026/06/betw...

A health clinic lobby features a sign promoting slimming and wellness programs, with packages and free consultations. A plant and coat rack are nearby.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

Today on #Platypus, Vageesh Vishnoi (@vageesh.bsky.social ) asks what ethnographic fieldwork looks like in a platform economy.

The PVR Anupam multiplex building. People in groups of 2-5 members are standing around the building and chatting.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Today on #Platypus, Jennifer Foley, Dani Dilkes and Mandy Penney introduce Becoming-With Mushrooms, a Multispecies Collective Autoethnography for Reworlding Educational Environments.

A white mushroom with multiple delicate branches and a lace-like structure. The background shows areas of dense white mycelium.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

Today on #Platypus, Prerna Gupta explores how India's first commercial nuclear plant turned early patriotic pride into generations of local precarity, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Maharashtra. Read the full post: blog.castac.org/2026/06/a-pr...

abandoned concrete buildings overgrown with vegetation, with a motorcycle parked near the entrance of one structure. The weathered, moss-covered walls and surrounding dense greenery suggest long-term neglect.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Today on #Platypus, Nga Shi Yeu reflects on Malaysia's 1999 Nipah virus outbreak through the lens of his childhood and asks how a village sustains itself when its name becomes a global synonym for a zoonosis. Read the full post: blog.castac.org/2026/06/vira...

A photograph of four overlapping printed photographs laid on a wooden table. The photos document a pig burial pit, one shows several people standing near an excavated area, another shows a fenced pit or trench, and the bottom photo shows a large number of pig carcasses piled together in a pit.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Today on #Platypus, Leonardo Thibau presents a multimodal critical cartography of the "Canal do Búfalo" forum, tracing how Brazil's early manosphere used toponymic aliases to frame belonging, resentment, and masculinist truth-making online. Read the full post: blog.castac.org/2026/06/cart...

A herd of bison buffalo grazes across an open grassland landscape.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

Today on #Platypus, Aylar Abdolahzadeh traces what ancient campfire debris reveals about human resilience. From striking sparks to keeping a flame alive, fire is a learned skill, and archaeological evidence shows that Neanderthals used it flexibly. Read the post: blog.castac.org/2026/06/trac...

A french chateau in the countryside with a hot air balloon rising over it.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

Today on #Platypus, Alejandro Cerón examines how epidemiologists navigate the tension between technical expertise and political objectives towards outbreak mitigation, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Guatemala and the enduring myth of John Snow. Read the post: blog.castac.org/2026/06/outb...

This is a collage with a triangle in between and a photo of a man in the center. The man's photo has been divided into four parts. There are splashes of yellow, blue, and red in the background. There is an orbit drawing on one side of the triangle and a crown on another side.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

Today on #Platypus, Cristian Gustavo Gutiérrez asks: are emerging biotechnologies transforming disability into something to be prevented, corrected, or eliminated?

Translucent anatomical heart model with tube-like connectors displayed against a dark background.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

Today on #Platypus, Ana Paula Perrota, @leodupin.bsky.social and Rosângela Cintrão explore how industrial sanitary norms render traditional food cultures illegal in Brazil, and what that reveals about whose knowledge counts in global food safety regimes Read the post: blog.castac.org/2026/06/food...

A wooden table with different kinds of cheese cut and displayed

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

Today on #Platypus, Debjani Chakraborty explores how mobile phone affordances are reappropriated across rural Indian contexts, sometimes as tools of navigation and aspiration, and at other times as mechanisms of surveillance and moral scrutiny. Read the full post: blog.castac.org/2026/05/dome...

Three young girls in a rural setting gather around a smartphone, closely watching content on the screen together.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

Starting in 20 minutes! We are ready to start the conversation of this year with Kalpana Shanker, David Nemer & Lilly Irani! follow this thread for the latest conversations on #CASPR2026!

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

Today on #Platypus, Clarissa Reche reflects on the vital work of building collective knowledge in Latin America. Through care, territory, and embodied knowledge, she asks why feminist anthropologists of science and technology weave networks. Read the full post: blog.castac.org/2026/05/why-...

A colorful hammock, with red tones, is centered in the image and tied between two trees, in a forest setting, with a green hill and a blue sky with white clouds in the background.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

📣 The 2026 Call for Nominations is open — deadline June 1. Self-nominations welcome for the #DianaForsythePrize Check the requirements: castac.org/castac-award...

castac.org

Diana Forsythe Prize | CASTAC

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

📣 Nominations open for the GAD Awards deadline July 1! 🏆 New Directions Award ($1,000): expanding anthropology in the 21st century 🏆 Cross-Field Award ($1,000): exemplary interdisciplinary peer-reviewed scholarship (last 3 years) Send nominations to reddy@mines.edu gad.americananthro.org/awards/

gad.americananthro.org

Awards — General Anthropology Division

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

Today on #Platypus, @sanlambert.bsky.social introduces Citizen Technology — technologies that are governable by and for citizens — drawing on ethnographic fieldwork at a makerspace in Barcelona's Sants neighborhood. Read the full post: blog.castac.org/2026/05/intr...

An old building with colorful lights projected on its façade.

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CASTAC @castac.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

Today on #Platypus, Kaitlyn Kathleen Rabach explores how homeowners in County Donegal, Ireland became experts in concrete chemistry and geoscience to counter their government's misdiagnosis - and fight for 100% redress for 30,000 crumbling homes. Read the post: blog.castac.org/2026/05/beco...

$Photograph of a building corner showing extensive wall damage with large cracks and exposed underlying material. The white exterior wall has multiple vertical and horizontal fractures, with visible rust stains and deterioration near the base.$

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