iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Book launch! MONSTER, MONARCH, MAIDEN! Come see Rae! And possibly me! Tiffin, Ohio! Saturday, August 22 at 1pm! (or 12:30 if you want to grab a drink with Rae) For more information and to reserve a book, visit: panyanbooks.com/RAECARSON

Poster: Meet Rae Carson, Saturday, August 22nd, 1pm at Pan Yan Bookstore, 144 S. Washington St., Tiffin, Ohio

Book cover: Icy white background with large, ominous wolf eyes. Super-imposed is an image of a brooch pin, with an amulet with a twined goddess and dragon. RAE CARSON, MONSTER MONARCH MAIDEN

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 03/11/2025

I was still in bed when Monday Morning said "Wake up, sleepyhead."

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

New story day! "The Matador and the Labyrinth" is up at Diabolical Plots. Borges meets Hemingway. www.diabolicalplots.com/dp-fiction-1... The image is from a kylix drinking cup, c. 515 BC. The inscription around the edge reads "The boy is beautiful."

The image of a black mintoaur crouches in the center of an rust-orange circular cup in a kylix tondo from c. 515 BC. The inscription around the edge reads "The boy is beautiful." Courtesy of Marie-Lan Nguyen and wikimedia. Link: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tondo_Minotaur_London_E4_MAN.jpg

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 23/01/2025

Due to extreme cold, we experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly of a water pipe and now have several inches of standing water in our basement and no running water at all while we wait for the plumber. But here's a picture of Agatha, an absolute knockout of a cat who is visiting us temporarily.

An absolutely gorgeous female cat with light brown stripes and a face that is vaguely like an Abyssinian. She is standing on a bed with a white quilt and white fabric headboard, placed against a peach colored wall. Her face is turned toward the camera, and the window behind, and panes of bright sunlight drape across her body. Her golden eyes gaze into the distance, her expression regal and mysterious. You know, normal cat stuff.

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 15/01/2025

It snowed yesterday. This is what our side yard looks like today. Those are all animal tracks. It's like we're a superhighway for wildlife and stray cats!

Trees cast long shadows over fresh white snow criss-crossed by hundreds of animal tracks.

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

A tiny buck ghosting through our front yard at 2am.

Picture taken from inside a dark house through an old paneled window. A single street light outside makes the snow shine bright across the curving driveway that cradles the front yard. Centered in the window is a small deer, antlers visible only as blurs. The streetlight casts the buck's elongated shadow across the snow.

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

Here I am in New Mexico last week, talking to the next generation of spec fic novelists at @catrambo.bsky.social's Wayward Wormhole workshop. Photo by Robert Chang.

A man with a big white beard and long white hair, sits at a kitchen table, clinging to a mug of hot coffee with both hands like it's the last headboard from the Titanic. Light pours in through the glass doors behind him, creating a sorta halo of soft evil around his head. How do we know it is evil? We don't, but it pays to be careful.

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 12/10/2024

The last few raspberries in October feel like a blessing. The walnuts feel like an effing chore.

a close-up picture of a couple bright red raspberries on a stem in October, with a brick house in the background

a handful of bright red raspberries in October

a blue 5-gallon bucket full of green-shelled walnuts sitting in some brown grass littered with lots of other walnuts

a red wheelbarrow full of green-shelled walnuts sitting next to a blue 5-gallon bucket also full of walnuts

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 14/09/2024

These haunted clowns tried to follow us home from the antique store yesterday. Fortunately, they were only two feet tall so we outran them.

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 28/07/2024

Pink ladies in the house! Rae invited them inside last night, but there's still a whole mob outside in the yard. They smell pretty amazing.

A close-up shot of about two dozen freshly cut pink lady flower stems in a glass vase.

A photo of a foyer with a glass vase full of pink lady flowers in a marble niche next to a small painting of a town in Nova Scotia hanging on the wall.

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 07/07/2024

While I was mowing the yard this afternoon, I had a visit from the City Lawn Inspector.

a young make deer with a mouthful of clover stands in a slightly overgrown backyard staring at the photographer with an attitude like "what are you doing in MY yard, buster"

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 01/07/2024

So this is 60! I celebrated by staying up until 7am to reread one of my favorite Robin Hobb books. Now, I'm haunting Kindle waiting for the new Bujold Penric novella to drop. While I have your attention: There are open spots in my editing calendar for July and August... 1/2

A 60-year-old Caucasian man with wavy gray hair down past his shoulders, standing in a brightly lit room in from of bookcases filled mainly with genre books. He looks kinda smug, for a 60-year-old dude. Not sure what that's about.

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 09/06/2024

Jacob Lawrence, The Legend of John Brown. I remember seeing it right around the same time I was reading W.E.B. DuBois's biography of Brown, so that probably heightened my appreciation.

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 05/06/2024

Grabbed the season's first raspberries off the bush today. The wild strawberries we dug up from the yard and planted around the patio as an evergreen border plant are also doing gangbusters.

A hand full of ripe raspberries held in front of a bush full of soon-to-be-ripe raspberries planted beside an old brick house with big white doors full of windows.

A mound of bright green wild strawberry foliage covered with tiny red berries.

A strip of bright green wild strawberry foliage covered with tiny red berries between a patio and a house.

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 02/04/2024

When we say we have a herd of deer living in our yard, it's because we look out the window and see THIS. (Please ignore the weedy patio, please and thank you.)

Looking out from the window of a house, across a patio, and there are six white-tailed deer grazing in the narrow yard, with a brick house just behind them.

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 01/04/2024

I keep getting these ads, and to me it all sounds something like "Do you wish sex was over in just two minutes? Wouldn't you rather swallow a pill than eat a bowl of ice cream? Have you ever wanted to visit a whole country in just ten minutes?" Jfc.

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 30/03/2024

Weird. I checked the list of Duolingo languages and can't find "Beast" anywhere. But here we are.

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 23/03/2024

The views from the solarium (where I sip my first cup of coffee) and my desk (where I go to work) this morning. Someone did not get the memo about spring!

Interior, a bay of windows is filled with plants. Outside the glass, a dusting of snow covers the ground, the trees, all the bushes, and the spring flowers that were trying to come up.

Interior, looking through tall windows, over the tops of boxwoods, covered with snow, to a large lawn covered with a dusting of snow, across the street to houses where the rooftops are white with snow. It's springtime, people!

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 21/03/2024

I spied Sidequest spying on me during my morning walk. First time I've seen her in a couple weeks, and, once again, in a whole new part of the nature preserve.

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 29/02/2024

This morning's walk was delayed until late this afternoon. The air was vast and clear, the sun icy bright. our shadows stretch over a fast flowing river - the sunset comes soon

Vast, clear sky. Sun icy bright. A fast-flowing river, with winter trees on the far bank The author's shadow barely reaches off the bank and across the rocks to lie across the water.

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 26/02/2024

Spotted Sidequest in a new part of the Nature Preserve and from a very great distance on my walk this morning. She ran off into a thicket before I could get close. I called her "a void" but she must have thought I said "avoid!"

A muddy path with patches of grass in a nature preserve under a pale blue sky. A thicket of winter bare shrubs on one side, and naked trees in the rear. Way down the path, so small as to be a detail-less void, is the silhouette of a tiny black cat.

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 22/02/2024

QT with a little you *bonus sister and a pair of cousins

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 07/02/2024

I was looking for an author picture to send someone for a thing I'm doing that's going to be announced soon, and I found these old pictures: me at 21, me nineteen years later at 40 (with Jim Kelly), and me nineteen years later again at 59. Live comes at you slowly, then suddenly.

A black and white photo of the author as a grinning, feckless 21-year-old. Wearing tie and jacket and khakis, arms crossed, leaning up against a brick wall.

A black and white photo of the author at 40, sitting next to Jim Kelly, and looking remarkably like Alan Tudyk. He's sitting Ryker style, arms crossed over the back of the chair. Still pretty feckless tbh.

The author in a recent photo, bearded, with long white hair hanging down over his face and shoulders. He peers through this mess over the top of his glasses. Full of feck.

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 01/02/2024

Yes, there is a cat in this picture. It's Sidequest, but maybe I should call her Waldo.

A brown winter thicket full of fallen branches, dead leaves, trees, and sticks and shadows. One of the shadows is a black cat.

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 28/01/2024

In 1943, Peter Kien and Viktor Ullmann, two Jewish prisoners in a Nazi concentration camp, wrote the one-act opera "Der Kaiser von Atlantis" about a mythical regime so murderous and brutal Death himself goes on strike. Which has been adapted as a graphic novel DEATH STRIKES: THE EMPEROR OF ATLANTIS!

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 28/01/2024

Was busy thinking about story and grabbed the wrong spice from the cabinet, which resulted in oatmeal over-seasoned not with cinnamon but with... *dunh dunh dunh* cayenne red pepper.

An stainless steel pot on a black glass stovetop, with a wooden spoon sticking out of it, and two spice jars containing similar (if you squint a bit) reddish-brown powders -- one labeled "Saigon Cinnamon" and the other "Cayenne Red Pepper."

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 26/01/2024

It's been a few years since I posted a dentist office selfie, but I was here long enough to get bored today. Here am I, right after the Joy and Wonder starts to wear off. DID YOU KNOW? An abscess is not the nun in charge of an abbey!

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 24/01/2024

"No, seriously, I'm a stray cat. You can let me in there where I will only eat stray cat things and not all your plants."

Picture taken inside. A small white-tail deer stands outside the solarium window, looking at all the plants growing inside.

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 20/01/2024

Sunwoo Jeong @translunarytree.bsky.social was one of our students at Clarion last year. "David Lewis Says" in the December issue of Split Lip Magazine @splitlipthemag.bsky.social is her first piece of published fiction. So excited to see what she writes next. splitlipthemag.com/flash/1223/s...

Screencap from the December 14, 2023 issue of Split Lip magazine. "David Lewis Says" by Sunwoo Jeong.

The day Yumi got her eighth piercing—a semicolon on her left eyebrow—her mother pulled her into the kitchen and gave her an ultimatum.

“No more holes on your body,” she said.

They’re the cause of your misfortune, she meant. She believed that good luck leaked out of man-made orifices. It helped her rationalize her daughter’s misery.

Yumi didn’t tell her that the holes were a reaction, not the cause. That they helped her stave off other nameless compulsions. That revisiting...

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 20/01/2024

We thought all the ferals were safely inside the catio or the house, but I saw prints in the snow so I took some kibble out for them, and then took some pictures on the way in. Light on the snow makes it look almost like daytime.

A snowy small town landscape at night. A driveway curves away to the left toward the street, with a light casting shadows from the plants and shoveled snow. Across the street, the silhouettes of houses and trees.

A red brick house with a large chimney with a snow-covered roof and yard, lit up by landscaping light. There are winter bare trees in front and the silhouettes of more trees in the back.

Snowy steps on the backdoor of a red brick house on the right, with an ornamental snow-covered tree on the left.

A snow-covered path into a garden framed with a decorative low brick wall on the left of the path, backed by rising steps and a hedge, and giant arborvitae on the right.

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 13/01/2024

How It Started (2022), How It's Going (2024) When we moved into the new house I took a picture of my t-shirt drawer to show some concerned friends that was expanding my sartorial palette. The new picture is to reassure them that it has stayed expanded.

The middle drawer of a red IKEA bedroom dresser is open to show three rows of t-shirts in tidy little Marie Kondo rolls. All the shirts are black except one dark red shirt.

The middle drawer of a red IKEA bedroom dresser is open to show three rows a chaotic tumble of black t-shirts shoved in at random, with one red t-shirt in the same tidy little Marie Kondo roll it had two years ago.

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 12/01/2024

Side Quest was lurking by the trail when I went for a walk along the river this morning. I did not follow her off into the weeds.

A tiny black cat with green dots for eyes sits in the midst of a bunch of dead brown weeds some distance away from the photographer.

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 11/01/2024

NEW YEAR, NEW EMAIL For various reasons, I am using a new email address starting in 2024. If any of you have emailed the old one and not heard back, or if you need the new one, let me know and we'll reconnect. In the meantime, enjoy these two magnificent cats!

A curving staircase with a dark wood banister is covered with pumpkin colored carpet. Halfway up the stairs a large ginger cat sprawls comfortably across the width of a step. Near the bottom, a smaller ginger cat sits up straight, looking over his shoulder at the camera.

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 06/01/2024

Tango the Mighty Hunter in repose. She's either recounting the adventure of how she caught a mouse in the pantry this morning or complaining that I took it away from her and released it outside in a brush pile. Or both. I'm not sure. Either way, she gobbled up the churro treat I gave her as reward.

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 05/01/2024

Whiskey and Odin look through the catio window to check in on Cleo (she's doing fine but would like Rae to come outside and play with her).

Two orange cats, one Big Ginger Boi and one Little Ginger Boi, sit atop a cat tree and look out the window.

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 02/01/2024

On the second day of 2024, my good luck Side Quest is hiding from me in a thicket.

A small black cat looks at the photographer from the safety of a dense thicket.

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 24/12/2023

Merry Christmas Eve! Pan Yan Bookstore is open today until 4pm, when I go load up my sleigh. We have copies of THE REINVENTED DETECTIVE in the store right now, which includes "The Best Justice Money Can Buy" -- my only new story for 2023, which was just released. So that's kinda cool!

the white bearded author in an ill-fitting Santa hat stands in front of a shelf full of Christmas books inside a cheerful well-lit indie bookstore

the same author and bookstore person holds up a copy of the recently released short story collection THE REINVENTED DETECTIVE edited by Cat Rambo and Jennifer Brozek

a stack of THE REINVENTED DETECTIVE sits on a table nested between stacks of ANY SIGN OF LIFE by Rae Carson and A STRANGER IN THE CITADEL by Tobias S. Buckell

the Table of Contents of THE REINVENTED DETECTIVE

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 21/12/2023

Yes, it is, Storybook Trail, yes it is. Well played. A little farther down the Storybook Trail I saw my GOOD LUCK FREND again. She let me get within about ten feet of her this time, but still no side quest.

In the distance, a black cat sits on the edge of a nature trail between the paths and some winter naked trees.

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 20/12/2023

I think it's a thicket. If the sticks form a picket and stems have a prick-it, you can't kick a wicket, and ticks make you sick-it... then surely it's purely upfront or obscurely but never demurely a thicket.

a close-up shot of a thicket in winter, in which small bare branches crowd the whole frame of the picture, lines of brown and light and shadow, as deep in the picture as the eye can see. .

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 18/12/2023

MISSING: WHITE CHICKENS a little deep-cut mid-century poetry humor for all my fellow literary nerds. That's all I got today.

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the...

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 14/12/2023

Lately, wherever I go, black cats -- sitting in yards, dashing across streets, strolling along sidewalks, or waiting on nature trails. I encountered three in three different parts of town just this morning. Either bad luck has its eye on me or some kind of witch is working hard to get my attention.

A paved bike trail curves from the front of the picture away to the left, lined by grass on one side and bare winter trees on the other with bright blue sky above. Halfway down the path, sitting in the middle, a black cat.

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 12/12/2023

monkeyballs aka Osage orange, mock orange, hedge apple, horse apple (not to be confused with the road apple variety of horse apple), West Virginia grapefruit, devil's testicle, Hulk nuts, mastodon pistachio, bigfoot biscuit, Harbaughs, and shenanigan. aka Maclura pomifera, a native Ohio fruit

a not particularly good close-up photo of two lumpy green osage orange fruit sitting in the dry grass and dead leaves

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 08/12/2023

I had a very pleasant walk beneath gray skies. But these three large Misfit Toys, desperate to escape, flung themselves off the high bank, hoping to float downstream to the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway until they reached the North Atlantic, where they might find an Island all their own.

The camera looks upward through the bare branches of winter trees, spread like a spider web across the gray sky.

In the foreground, next to a large gray rock, the gray branches of a broken, dying tree, shaped like a checkmark. Behind it, like a shadow or an echo, the dark brown branches of living tree make the same shape. Behind them, the distant, naked trunks of more trees along the horizon form bars across the gray sky.

In the foreground, bright red honeysuckle berries. In the background, on the steep bank across the creep, the vertical lines of tall bare trees and in the understory, a mist of red berries.

Three large stuffed bears, one brown, one dirty white, and one pink, are stuck in the branches between the top of the creek bank and the water below.

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 08/12/2023

Today was beautiful, so I headed outside for a walk. There was still corn in some of the fields, waiting for harvest, which is the latest in the year I've ever seen that. The ditches were also littered with hedge apples, but there ain't nobody gonna harvest them.

Dry corn stubble in the foreground, leading back to a low hill covered with unharvested corn. The big sky is pale blue, with high thin clouds.

A hilltop field with corn, waiting for harvest, under a blue sky with fluffy white clouds.

Three lumpy green hedge apples, or osage oranges, lie on top of dry brown leaves on the side of a ditch leading up to a fence line of trees.

A big blue sky with curling clouds, reflected in the deeper blue of the river. Bare trees lift their branches upward and downward on either bank, and on a mudbar in the middle of the current.

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 30/11/2023

We were thrilled when this absolute stunner of a bluebird showed up at our Bird Buddy. It's been months since we've had a new species show up.

A gorgeous North American bluebird sits on the edge of a feeder and gives a saucy look at the camera.

A gorgeous North American bluebird sits on the edge of a feeder with all the spectacular plumage of its butt angled toward the camera as its looks out hopefully over what might possibly be its new domain.

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 15/11/2023

I've seen does and fawns in our yard, but I've never seen a buck. Didn't think there was one around. Then this afternoon I found this and I guess I was a buck short.

The trunk of a medium sized tree, surrounded by other trees and ivy. The bark is scratched off by a deer rubbing its antlers.

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C.C. Finlay @ccfinlay.bsky.social · 15/11/2023

surround yourself with thirst traps and you will have built yourself a desert #senryu #orBadFortuneCookie #idunno (unrelated picture from this morning's walk along the river)

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