iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 17/05/2026

I'm back. Have some BattleMechs. 'Mechs from Shadow and Miku lances prepare for a raid on enemy satellite transmitters. #battletech #macross #robotech #dougram

A Phoenix Hawk 'Mech and a Warhammer in red-and-black are flanked by a Griffin and Thunderbolt in teal-and-grey, with a background of icy hills.

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 20/11/2025

Through us, they will never be silenced. 🕯️🩵🩷🤍🩷🩵🕯️

A blue-haired, bearded person in a black latex maid dress holds a glass of wine and a banner with the transgender flag. Their expression is somber. A caption reads "Transgender Day of Remembrance 2025".

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 09/10/2025

My partner: “What do you call the, uh, the Warhammer 40K drugstore receipt strips?” Me (without missing a beat): “Purity seals.”

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 24/09/2025

It has been explained to me that I am not getting up until she allows it. #CatsOfMastodon

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 12/09/2025

PROTECC Sharma the adorable singing pilgrim bug in Silksong

An underground tunnel with a gated doorway. A small wide-eyed bug in a cloak and broad flat hat is ringing prayer chimes, as a taller bug in a red cloak looks on impassively.

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 07/09/2025

An image from the 80s anime “Dirty Pair,” a series about two unlucky intergalactic troubleshooters. I TOTALLY did not have sexual fantasies about this situation.

A red-headed woman in a halter top, booty shorts, and calf boots is holding a a man in a guard uniform at gunpoint. He is lying on the ground and her boot is on his chest.

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 25/08/2025

Me researching what the old Marathon game would have looked like on a Mac SE (which couldn’t have run it). For reasons.

A dark spaceship hallway with a lit wall terminal at the end. The hall is rendered in an early-1990s flat polygon style, then displayed in a black-and-white bitmap the way a 1986 Macintosh computer would.

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 24/08/2025

We are apparently going to see a co-op version of Battletech soon, where the tabletop players team up against (I assume) a dice-and-tables-driven opposing force. This could be a fun way to play, and I’m looking forward to it!

A custom Battletech miniature made in the 1990s. It uses the rules for 3025 Inner Sphere technology and combines the bird-like legs and missile pods of a “Catapult” mech with the low-slung laser arms of a “Marauder” mech; it was dubbed the “Miffed Cat”.

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 27/07/2025

A picture of my cat Willow asleep on my wrist, for Day After Caturday.

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 19/07/2025

Going back and forth between MacOS 15 and MacOS 9 is messing with my visual cortex Yes, there are reasons

The same window on a shared volume, viewed my MacOS 15 and MacOS 9 respectively. The OS 9 type is clear but shows jagged bitmapping, and the icons are medium resolution; while in OS 15, the type and icons are smoothly rended in high-definition.

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/07/2025

I think I’m going to do Ray Dunakin’s old graphics + text adventure “A Mess O’ Trouble” on my YouTube channel after Excalibur. It won’t be edge-of-the-seat action, but I’ll have fun.

A screenshot of an original 9” black-and-white Macintosh display. On the left of the screen is a narrow window showing a galaxy and the title “A Mess O’ Trouble”, and on the right is a text box describing the background of the game world.

“Not too long ago, in a nearby galaxy, a strange spatial anomaly was discovered. More convoluted than a cosmic string, more massive than a black hole, able to leap tall galaxies at a single bound, this new anomaly was something unaccounted for by any theories of quantum physics.
Within the anomaly was a new universe, a patchwork quilt of bits and pieces from millions of worlds in billions of different, alternate universes. The very physical laws of nature are alien within this twisted universe, and vary from world to world.
---(click NEXT to continue)
This knot in the fabric of space was discovered by a mysterious being known only as "Ray". He quickly filed a claim for the anomaly and became the owner and operator, charging adventurers and fortune hunters a fee to enter it.
The anomaly and the mixed up universe it contains are known as Ray's Maze.

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 10/07/2025

How To Build A Castle (requires Mac OS9) This is one of the levels I worked on for the "Excalibur: Morgana's Revenge" game. Looks a lot like making a D&D map... I think that's part of what I liked about it. It's a minor thrill getting the old map-making tools running in emulation!

A screenshot of the SheepShaver emulator running a Mac OS9 install. The application "Forge" is at the front, which was used to make maps for the "Marathon" game and others using the "Aleph One" engine. Here's it's viewing a map from "Excalibur: Morgana's Revenge".

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 03/07/2025

Battling dinosaurs in episodes 2 and 3 of my playthrough of our old game "Excalibur: Morgana's Revenge." It's weird playing this on a PlayStation controller, which was NOT possible in the 90s. I even found a secret I don't remember finding in playtesting all […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

An image consisting of two cropped screenshots from a 90s-era first-person shooter game. One shows the player using a chain gun to fire at a flying reptile, the other shows the player using a pistol to fire at green bipedal dinosaurs.

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 30/06/2025

I'm thrilled to find out that the video game I worked on decades ago is running on Mac, Windows, and Linux again. I designed levels, wrote story text, and play-tested “Excalibur: Morgana’s Revenge” – a 90s-era shooter game where you chase the famous sorceress […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

Startup splash screen for the video game “Excalibur: Morgana’s Revenge” showing characters and monsters from the game with a list of play options.

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 20/06/2025

An image of salt grains under a scanning electron microscope. (h/t to @epiceneVivant It’s the Pandorica! Quick, set Auton Rory over them!!

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 18/06/2025

Mistral, I understand you're talking about the MMO you're playing, but you don't know the half of it. (Another dot/Hack screenshot.)

A room in an organic-themed video game "dungeon". In the game-within-a-game, the wall show sign of data corruption. A magician character named Mistral is saying to the rogue player character, "Well anyway. It seems strange things have been happening everywhere in "The World." - referring to the MMO you and she are playing. It's meta!

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 06/06/2025

Sneak preview peek. You’ve seen the Catgirls of Battle, but are you ready for the Mikumarine?! Detail still to be added. I had to remind myself that it’s a 3D print; if I’m unhappy with it, I can always print another!

A Warhammer 40K Space Marine with the head of Hatsune Miku - impossible pigtails included. The marine armor is grey with black legs and blue shoulder pads, and Miku’s hair is her expected blue.

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 02/06/2025

As pretty as a game like Elden Ring is, PS2 graphics were plenty enough to get our imaginations going back in the day. Wanted to see how well my laptop ran dot/Hack, and it's great! Even doubled the resolution! (And oh, Yasuhiko "Orca", if only you knew...)

A screenshot of the PlayStation 2 game "dot/Hack" running in emulation. A rogue in green leathers faces another player, his friend "Orca", who is a barbarian-styled game character. Orca is saying, "People do have a life, you know. We're not online 24/7!"

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 27/05/2025

Coming soon to YouTube: a playthrough of a game released for Mac in 1997, updated to run on Open Source in 2007, and currently only playable on Windows using the 2011 version of the engine. Stay tuned…

Aboard a video game spaceship, two humanoid combat robots beam into a transporter room to attack the player, who has a Gatling gun strapped to his chest. The graphics are blocky and very turn-of-the-century.

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 25/05/2025

Okay, I got one of the apps to run pretty well… now I just need a slightly newer OS from 2005 to run the other one. Lordy I hope the sound is working.

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 25/05/2025

I've decided to hell with all modern operating systems and am going back to the good old days of 1999.

A screenshot of MacOS9 installing. The installer has reached the stage where it is updating the hard disk drivers and is displaying a progress bar estimating 5 minutes for the task.

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 10/05/2025

Kesshite tomarana Hadō-hō o nusumu Sono jū o hakai suru Uchū sensuikan Rabendaaaaa!

A spaceship looking like a cross between the Space Battleship Yamato and the Yellow Submarine. It is captioned with the Japanese text for “Space Submarine Lavender”

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 26/04/2025

Found in some stuff from my mom's old house in Roanoke. These are official TSR Dungeons and Dragons dice dating from sometime in 1979 or 1980, when they had to be bought separately from the boxed set. They were my first gaming dice and I was sure they'd gone to Dice Heaven decades ago!

A set of five plastic polyhedral dice, one for each Platonic solid: a yellow 4-sided, a red 6-sided, a green 8-sided, a blue 12-sided, and a white 20-sided. They have black numbers on the faces which are worn away in places. The plastic on the edges on the dice is rounded and white from wear.

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 15/04/2025

This is a character I designed for a Magical Girls (Women) project, and she's giving me life this week. Dove Grey is DONE with your GARBAGE and she's a-COMIN' for you.

A black woman with brown-feathered wings, brown dreads, wearing a toga-like garment over a tube top and leggings. She holds a baseball bat high, and is charging at someone or something off-camera, with a gleefully fierce yelling expression.

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 09/04/2025

Little robots time! A free-for-all with stock 3025 mechs: Phoenix Hawk, Centurion, and Griffin

A game table covered in green felt printed in hexes. Green and blue poker chips are placed to indicate hills and water. Three 2” tall miniatures representing 30’ mechs are scattered among the chips.

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 25/03/2025

I apologize for this. I was up well after midnight cleaning the kitchen and the Adderall has kicked in. Made of course with the Death Generator by @foone at deathgenerator.com/#zerowing

Two edited panels from the infamous "Zero Wing" video game opening. Panel 1: a panicked technician is captioned "Atlantic: We get signal!" Panel 2: an evil cyborg is captioned "Hegseth: And so does everybody... Ha ha ha..."

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 15/03/2025

Didja hear about Stephan March, the famous barnstormer? He made quite a bit of money giving local townspeople rides in his old biplane, but the thing really wasn’t safe. People were hurt by flying debris, one person even fell out. Soon everyone knew: “Beware the rides of March.”

Pilot and passenger posing in front of a biplane in a vintage photo of unknown date.

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/03/2025

Once upon a time I thought my stars had aligned Now I think I’ve spoken too soon Nothing I can do Total Eclipse Of The Moon!

Photo of a total lunar eclipse taken on Friday, March 14th with an iPhone 14. Blurry, but at least no clouds!

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 08/03/2025

Taught a lovely class today. Everyone had a good time and was super interested in the subject! If you want to know what it was about, you need to follow one of my After Dark socials, lol. But I will say nothing occurred that was not PG-safe!

Michael in a black and white dress, black leggings, and blue pigtails. He’s motioning off camera as if replying to a point. He is wearing Vanessa’s necklace of the skulls of her enemies 😁

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 07/03/2025

[SpaceX (noun) - See also orbital, atmospheric, and terrestrial pollution] @fuzzface Came down over the Gulf of Mexico, it seems. There’s a short vid here: youtube.com/shorts/7V64oLDY8r0

Fiery fragments of the most recent SpaceX starship launch, coming down over the Gulf of Mexico.

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 05/03/2025

Moved little robots ‘round the table tonight. Teaching session; 4 players, 1 light / 1 medium each, 3025 rules. Maya’s Panther won the “How is that thing still standing?” award.

Michael (in blue pigtails and grey t-shirt) sits behind a small collection of light and medium Battletech miniatures for his players to pick from.

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 01/03/2025

Last early 90s Shadowrun minis for tonight! Meet Tina and Terry, the “Sirens”: skilled, expensive “troubleshooters” *you* can hire. They wear magically-transparent combat armor with little else because they like the reactions and it gives them initiative […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

A woman with long dark hair and another with short puffy red hair pose with energy pistols. They appear to be wearing little besides transparent jumpsuits with gold foggy areas over naughty bits, and bells with pouches and holsters. Beside them: a man in a quasi-military sailing outfit with visored cap, long, high-collared blue coat, navy pants and double-breasted jacket over a white cable-knit sweater. He sports sunglasses and a smile, and carries an assault rifle.

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 01/03/2025

More early 90s minis! Experiments in modifying figures: I didn't see why dedicated furries wouldn't access the extreme surgical technologies of Shadowrun, and also I just wanted to paint a Starfleet mouse. Used Squadron Green (extinct, much like Bondo) to […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

A Starfleet mouse, probably adapted from a gnome or halfling figure. She wears a uniform that’s a cross of the first-season skant and third-season long-sleeved top, in Operations colors. She holds a PADD and has a com badge. Next to her, male and female cat anthros made from standard Shadowrun figures. The male has black fur, white hair, a tan armored jacket, grey pants, black boots, an ammo bandolier, and a heavy rifle. The woman has dark hair, grey fur, jeans, tan boots, a pink top showing cleavage, and a black armored jacket. She holds a pistol.

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 01/03/2025

Some early 90s Shadowrun minis, as promised! I didn't know from shading - I was just glad if the colors went where I wanted them to. Here are a decker with her cyberdeck, a heavily-cybered rockergirl from an early module, and her manager/boyfriend. Happy […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

Three cyberpunk gaming minis. On the left, a dark-haired woman in a blue jackert, short red skirt, and red armored boots carries ad great cyberdeck; in the middle, a very slender woman with short brown hair wears a shimmering white dress and four chrome cyberlimbs; on the right, a man with very short curly hair in a brown suit and tan vest has a pistol at the ready and his other hand on his hip.

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 28/02/2025

Late-night surtpost. Keldia Weber is having a weird shift up there on Null Station, in the system where Managlitch City used to be. I think maybe three people will get all the references.

Futuristic wall screen, announcing “Incoming Traffic” and “Unidentified Vessel”. The screen shows several data windows, including: a column of unreadable text, a strange symbol, heavy equipment both antique and advanced, and an odd space-going sailing vessel seemingly dating back to the advent of steam technology.

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 26/02/2025

More pictures of old Battletech minis. It's true, I only got into the game because I was a Macross fan, and some of my paint jobs show it. It's hard to tell the difference between the Stinger and the Wasp without looking for a right hand. (I hate that I used […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

Four Battletech game miniatures. The top row shows a Stinger ‘Mech in blue and white trim, and a Wasp ‘Mech in red and white trim. The bottom row shows minis demonstrating the “Land-Air-Mech” transformation of both: what looks like an airplane with arms and legs.

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 24/02/2025

After a lengthy period of "review" because their auto systems didn't like something, my "What's Your Target Number, Babe?" t-shirt design is published. Applicable to many D6-based game systems, and available in a range of colors and styles. Link: cat-force.myspreadshop.com

A blue t-shirt is printed with a scatter of eight green six-sided dice that is captioned “What’s Your Target Number, Babe? Because I’m Seeing Successes”

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 18/02/2025

"Revved-Up Sentai Boonboomger" has wrapped, and "No. 1 Sentai Gozyuger" has begun. It's a "50 years of sentai" celebration, and even with my limited fandom I'm already seeing callbacks. I have to say, the first episode did not charm me as much as […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

A woman with anime-red hair walks before five armored guards. She wears a lavender-and-white dress that while short, is furred and wrapped for winter. She also wears a furry hat through which horns protrude. Subtitles show that she is saying, “I am Bouquet the Lovely, the Bridan Technical Captain of No-One World.”

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 18/02/2025

SERIOUS score thanks to Maya tonight, and she darn well did not pay retail! While these will have to wait their turn in my Pile of Grey Shame, they'll be fun to paint… and no one can tell me I may only use them in a Ranger game, either. Heh, heh, heh.

Boxed set of 28mm scale Power Rangers minis, including the original five MMPR plus Green and White additions; also included are three figures from Power Rangers Zeo and two from Power Rangers Turbo.

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/02/2025

Really, I think I’m having more fun making canon-offensive Warhammer figures than I ever would playing the game. We’ll see how she paints up.

A 3D-print of a Warhammer 40K Space Marine with the head and pigtails of Hatsune Miku. The grey resin is not yet primed or painted.

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/02/2025

"IT'S THE END OF EVERYTHING - oh, no, guess not. Well, shovel the dead out of the way and let's get back to our office jobs."

Text over the Command Center for the "Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers": "Ranger / Sentai shows are superior to Marvel movies and even Doctor Who season finales in this way at least: I’m not meant to take seriously the regular world- or universe-ending threats that everyone just brushes off afterwards like it’s no big deal. Ranger shows know they are silly, thank you very much."

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 12/02/2025

Also, hooray for 35-year-old cyanoacrylate glue! (Honestly, it's a miracle it went back together correctly with the first try.) *Someone* didn't want to show for their photo session…

A gaming miniature for Battletech. It is a ‘Mech called a “Marauder” in the design that was still usable by FASA in 1990; a slanted pod on tooplengthy bird-like legs, with two low-slung arms mounting massive cannons. Another cannon is on a swivel mount atop the ‘Mech. The design is based on the “Glaug Officer’s Pod” used by the alien Zentraedi in Macross / Robotech. The legs have broken off at the hips, and one has broken again at the ankle. Repairs were happily not too difficult at an industrial hub.

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Usagineko, Catgirl of Battle @mikailborg.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 12/02/2025

My pink Marauder from 1990 salutes your camo! (Internet points to anyone who recognizes the anime paint scheme.) dice.camp/@miquel/113992248729051990

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