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Mitchell Mebane

@mitchellmebane.bsky.social
491 followers 596 following 511 posts

Jack of all trades software developer/infosec guy. He/him. Mastodon: @mitchellmebane@infosec.exchange Twitter: @mitchellmebane

PostsRepliesMedia
Reposted by Mitchell Mebane
404 Media @404media.co · 7h
BREAKING: The Trump administration is using a grant program from the 1980s to force cities around the US to funnel their ongoing collection of Flock, Axon, and other ALPR data into large federal surveillance centers that fall under the White House’s jurisdiction, 404 Media has learned
404media.co
How Cities Are Forced to Funnel License Plate Data to a Massive Federal Surveillance Program
How the federal government built a massive database of license plate reader data through an anti-drug trafficking program.
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Sean Casten @seancasten.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Protecting child predators, facilitating extra-judicial murders, jacking up everyone's prices through tariffs and military misadventures all so that Donald Trump can get rich and he doesn't yell at you is a hell of a closing message. But totally on brand for Mr. Johnson.
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Chris Geidner @chrisgeidner.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
If executive branch creates a system so that people under government control can be located and then just stops listing some people in that system — despite their still being under government control — that should be a five-alarm fire for the other branches, the states, and the public.
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Jeff Lazarus @jlazarus.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
I had very studiously avoided putting too much credence in these allegations before there was some independent verification, but Ratzlaff's comment fits the bill. Read the entire thread - this is more than just a sex scandal.
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Joseph Cox @josephcox.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
New: we are starting to get data showing what cops are using Axon's license plate cameras for, which are replacing Flock around the country. But we need your help: is your city using Axon? We have written the request you need to get this data yourself. Get it here: www.404media.co/is-your-city...
404media.co
Is Your City Using Axon License Plate Cameras? We Need Your Help
404 Media is filing public records requests around the country to find out how cops are using Axon's ALPRs. Here is how you can do that too.
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steven monacelli @stevanzetti.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Scooplet: after Texas State Representative Brian Harrison and megadonor Monty Bennett publicly complained about the University of North Texas having a large archive of primary sources related to LGBTQ history in North Texas, UNT has taken down a website about it, and Rep. Harrison is taking credit.
First Brian Harrison post Second Brian Harrison post Monty Bennett postHarrison takes credit
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Ian Coldwater 🧊🚫 @lookitup.baby · 20/09/2026
Amtrak didn’t tell us about this exposure, so heads up: if you took an Amtrak train last week through Chicago or anywhere on the Southwest Chief, Coast Starlight, or California Zephyr routes like we did, you may have been exposed to measles! Please let the train people in your life know about this
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Sophie E. Hill @sophieehill.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
I'm a Meta-Effective Altruist™️ I believe that Effective Altruism needs to be redistributed from where it is least effective (Silicon Valley sex cultists) to where it would be most effective (British pensioners who leave their life savings to the Donkey Sanctuary).
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Jessica Valenti @jessicavalenti.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
The EPA will test America's drinking water for abortion medication & birth control—caving to a years-long pressure campaign from anti-abortion extremists.
jessica.substack.com
BREAKING: EPA Will Test Drinking Water for Abortion Pills & Contraception
The federal agency just caved to years of anti-abortion pressure
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David Kaye @davidakaye.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
my guess is that most americans do not perceive these deportations for what they are -- systematic crimes, under a framework directed at the highest levels of government, the evidence of which is in this defiance (inter alia). the rest of the world would rightly call this crimes against humanity.
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James Downie @jamescdownie.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
It's official: Per MS NOW's Mychael Schnell, the House is canceling tomorrow's votes. They're going home until after Election Day, to avoid voting on Thomas Massie's impeachment resolution against Pete Hegseth.
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Michael Clemens @mclem.org · 12/09/2026
The US President's new proposal to tax international students has been approved by the White House for release this week. It's an unprecedented $100,000 tax on int'l grads who stay to work after graduation on Optional Practical Training (most grads do), a crucial bridge to remaining by any channel.
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David Corn @davidcorn.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
This is stochastic terrorism. Ted Cruz is an extremist encouraging violence.
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onion person @junlper.beer · 11/09/2026
it’s wild that the heritage foundation wrote in text that the assault on trans woman particularly in sports is their first step in their efforts to completely abolish all Title IX protections and liberals still don’t believe it’s about more than trans women in sports
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Tim Rooney @urbaneturtle.com · 15/04/2026
A pretty comprehensive takedown of JD Vance by a Catholic priest, Msgr. Arthur Holquin open.substack.com/pub/liturgya...
Arthur Holquin • Follow
9h • 0
When the Neophyte Corrects the Vicar of Christ
On JD Vance, Theological Hubris, and the Gospel He Has Yet to Learn
There is a particular arrogance that takes root in the newly converted - the zeal of the autodidact who, having just discovered the tradition, mistakes enthusiasm for mastery. JD Vance, who received baptism into the Catholic Church in 2019 at the age of thirty-five, has now committed the singular error of instructing the Bishop of Rome to
"be careful when he talks about matters of theology!"
We should sit with the full weight of that sentence.
The Vice President of the United States - seven years a Catholic, formerly an evangelical, before that a self-described atheist - stood before a Turning Point USA audience in Georgia and publicly admonished Pope Leo XIV about theological precision. "If you're going to opine on matters of theology," Vance informed the successor of Peter, "you've got to be careful, you've got to make sure it's anchored in the truth."
The audacity is breathtaking. The irony is almost comic.
While Vance was dispensing theological warnings from a stage in Georgia, Pope Leo XIV was standing at the archaeological site of Hippo in Algeria - the episcopal see where St. Augustine served as bishop until his death in 430 A.D.
Vance, who claims Augustine as his patron saint and frequently invokes him in speeches, was lecturing on Augustinian just war theology to a political rally audience. The pope he was lecturing
- who served as Prior General of the Order of St.
Augustine for more than a decade and holds a doctorate in Canon Law from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas - was planting an olive tree at the very ground where Augustine lived, prayed, wrote, and died. If God governs history with a sense of irony, this moment surely pleased Him.
The occasion for Vance's correction was Pope Leo's statement that "God is never on the side of those who wield the sword." Vance responded by invoking the thousand-year tradition of Just War theory as if the pope were unaware of it. But Leo did not say war is never permissible. He said God is not simply enlisted as a combatant on any nation's side. That is not a negation of Just War doctrine. That is its foundation. The Catechism at
§2309 is unambiguous about the conditions that must all be simultaneously met for a war to be just. Archbishop Broglio stated plainly on Easter Sunday that the war against Iran does not meet those criteria. Cardinals Cupich, Mcelroy, and Tobin, along with Archbishop Coakley, have spoken with notable unanimity. Cardinal Tobin put it plainly: Pope Leo "will continue to speak clearly against war and other offenses against human dignity and to call for authentic dialogue, because the Church's witness is grounded in the peace of Christ, not in partisan interests." That is episcopal fidelity. What Vance offered was its precise opposite.The deeper problem is not merely that Vance is wrong about just war. It is the ecclesiological framework he is importing from American Christian nationalism into a tradition that explicitly rejects it. Vance told Fox News that "in some cases it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality, to stick to matters of what's going on in the Catholic Church, and let the president of the United States stick to dictating public policy." Let that formulation stand naked for a moment. The pope — who holds a universal pastoral office precisely because the Gospel speaks to every dimension of human life — is being instructed to confine himself to the sacristy, while the president is assigned the role of
"dictating" the political world. This is not a Catholic understanding of faith and public life.
Catholic Social Teaching from Rerum Novarum onward has always insisted that the Gospel is not a private spiritual comfort but a public moral claim. When Vance tells the pope to stay in his lane, he is not defending Catholic doctrine. He is betraying it.JD Vance's forthcoming book on his Catholic faith is titled Communion. Its cover features a United Methodist church. I do not say this merely to mock. Symbolism matters in Catholic theology, and the symbolism here is telling. A book about Catholic unity, bearing Protestant ecclesial architecture on its cover, written by a man who publicly contradicts the pope on Just War doctrine - this is not communion. This is confusion dressed in piety. Archbishop Coakley said it plainly: "The Pope is not Trump's rival, nor is the Pope a politician. He is the Vicar of Christ who speaks from the truth of the Gospel and for the care of souls." Communion, in Catholic theology, is not a feeling of spiritual warmth. It is a participation in the Body of Christ that carries radical obligations — to the poor, the stranger, the enemy, to peace. It is a table the powerful do not preside over. They are guests at it, like everyone else.
A seven-year Catholic who tells the pope to watch his theology, while defending an administration that posted an Al image of the president as Jesus Christ and refused to apologize, is not in communion with the tradition he claims to be writing about. He is in communion with power.
And that, as Augustine himself understood deeply, is a very different thing.
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Mark Chadbourn @chadbourn.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
This is big: Yemen’s Houthis today captured the Red Sea port of Mocha after government forces pulled out. Their control of the coast gives them power to threaten Bab el-Mandeb and access to the Red Sea.
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🗽LOLGOP🗽 @lolgop.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Just to note: we definitely already have concentration camps. Gitmo may not meet your definition (it does mine), but Camp East Montana, Dilley, and so many others, including Delaney Hall and the Baldwin ICE camp here in Michigan, clearly meet any fair rubric for a concentration camp.
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Mary Tuma @marytuma.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
The TX Department of State Health Services has pushed the deadline for the latest MMRC report from Sept. 1 to Dec. 1 – until after the midterm elections and just a month before the legislative session, giving even more reason for advocates and lawmakers to suspect political influence. Bkgrd here:
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Micah @rincewind.run · 09/09/2026
a little maddening to be doing corporate code of conduct training in this day and age "it is illegal to bribe people" is it though, is it really
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steven monacelli @stevanzetti.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Today I'll be reporting live from the GOP midterm convention in Dallas, Texas, for @dmagazine.bsky.social, which applied for press access but never received a response. Consequently, I will have the general admission experience. First step: drive ~30 minutes outside of Dallas to Grand Prairie. 1/
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Micah @rincewind.run · 08/09/2026
"everything is run by the most horribly corrupt and awful people alive" being normal to a lot of people is actually the problem here
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Mike Stabile @mikestabile.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Act 372 allows police to arrest librarians if they allow children to access "material harmful to minors." Librarians, fearing arrest, have been forced to cut off access to LGBTQ+ resources, sex ed and literature that deals with sex, sexuality, race or gender. And in some cases, the whole library.
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Ben Raderstorf @raders.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
I’d encourage everyone to read @rickhasen.bsky.social’s explanation of the USPS case. No one knows what this SCOTUS will do, but a ruling for the administration would essentially be a declaration of war against elections electionlawblog.org/2026/distric...
electionlawblog.org
District Court, as Expected, Issues Preliminary Injunction in Trump/USPS Mail-In Ballot Case: Why This Should Be an Easy Case for the Supreme Court to Deny a Stay #ELB
As expected, the federal district court in Massachusetts that had enjoined the Trump executive order directing USPS to limit mail in voting and then issued a temporary restraining order against the US...
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Jason Scott @textfiles.com · 05/09/2026
You know, honestly, more than monetary donations, if somebody worked at a company that had access to a lot of 18 terabyte and larger hard drives and could talk to us, that's where we are really suffering. The internet archive has no special priority in buying hard drives and those things are insane.
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Naomi Klein @naomiaklein.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
In our new essay for the @financialtimes.com (you read that right), @astra.bsky.social and I link the extreme weather events we have all been living through to the rise of a new iteration of futureless fascism, wherein the rich and powerful plan for their bunkered survival behind fortressed borders.
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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
“The administration wrote to several grantees working on maternal health that while ‘maternal and infant health are important issues,’ their work ‘does not advance minority health with regards to OMH’s current priority areas.’” we don’t loathe these people enough.
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 04/09/2026
Life comes at you fast. One minute you're an unknown health economist rushing to publish a hasty study of COVID incidence in Santa Clara and the next thing you know you're signing away a good fraction of the NIH's budget to the Department of Defense.
Bhattacharya post on X. 

NIH funds should be used to improve the health of Americans.

Far from siphoning money away from research, this partnership between @NIH and @ DeptofWar focuses on research projects that will drive discoveries to improve the health of American citizens and members of the military.
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Courtney Milan @courtneymilan.com · 04/09/2026
Oh my god, this is AWFUL
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Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
This is what shutting down scientific debate actually looks like
bloomberg.com
A Top Virus Scientist Stared Down Covid Lab-Leak Proponents. Now His Life’s Work Is at Stake
The battle over Covid’s origins has come for Bob Garry, who’s faced some of the world’s deadliest viral threats.
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Signs that you might be living in an authoritarian state
Federal prosecutor fired after investigating ICE officer for civil rights offenses in Minnesota shooting, sources say
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Mike Konczal @mtkonczal.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
BLS this morning, with revised 2Q data: "The labor share, which is the percentage of output that accrues to workers in the form of compensation, was 52.8 percent in the second quarter of 2026, the lowest level in the series, which begins in the first quarter of 1947."
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 03/09/2026
you should have to pay 10 million dollars for every agent that hacks out of your sandbox and an extra 100 million every time a group of them forms a civilization
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Predictable and predicted: "revenue from audits plunged 35% in fiscal year 2025, meaning billions of dollars in taxes went un-collected. The drop coincides with a 27% cut in enforcement and collection staffing at the IRS, as part of Elon Musk's campaign to boost government efficiency."
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Natalie Weiner @natalieweiner.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
for all the paxton talarico voyeurs this is what we talk about when we talk about texas voter suppression bsky.app/profile/jswa...
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Jen Fifield @jenafifield.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
1/ Just in: An anonymous federal worker has filed a whistleblower disclosure warning that the U.S. Postal Service's attempt to create a system to regulate mail voting for the midterms has been "rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed." @propublica.org has the details 👇
Screenshot of the top of a whistleblower disclosure titled "USPS Rushed Implementation of New and Untested IT Systems Threatens U.S. Ballot Mail Delivery." Addressed to Senator Blumenthal, the first point details how the whistleblower has "significant concerns about the USPS's secretive, rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed process for the creation and implementation of an entirely new and untested set of IT systems" intended for the 2026 midterms.
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The New York Times @nytimes.com · 01/09/2026
Breaking News: A whistle-blower at the U.S. Postal Service said Trump officials were defying court orders with a “secretive, rushed” effort affecting voting by mail.
nyti.ms
Whistle-Blower Says Trump Officials Are Defying Court Orders on Voting by Mail
A report detailed “grave concerns” that a new system being rushed into use by the U.S. Postal Service could imperil millions of mail ballots ahead of the midterm elections.
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The Fig Economy @figgityfigs.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
My concern before had been ok, let’s say courts all rule against him and his guys just say fuck it we ball and do it anyway. And uh.
nytimes.com
Whistle-Blower Says Trump Officials Are Defying Court Orders on Voting by Mail
A report detailed “grave concerns” that a new system being rushed into use by the U.S. Postal Service could imperil millions of mail ballots ahead of the midterm elections.
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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
It's like a parody, but it's deadly serious; the Commerce Department (which includes Census, NOAA, and others) has outright deleted "don't alter or suppress scientific findings for political reasons" from its scientific integrity rules. Seriously.
Protecting against "inappropriate influence" is no longer a "hallmark" of scientific integrity

The Commerce Department updated its policy for promoting a "culture of scientific integrity" in January 2025, days before Trump's second inauguration.

A new Trump administration order bans the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis from using statistical “noise,” or data for fuzzing survey results, to protect people’s privacy in their statistics.

The 2025 version included bans on attempts to shape or interfere in data collection, statistical analysis and other scientific activities "against well-accepted scientific methods and theories or without scientific justification."

The department's policy, the 2025 version said, involves ensuring scientific findings at its agencies "are not suppressed, delayed, or altered for political purposes and are not subjected to inappropriate influence," as well as making sure there's "independent review of facilities, methodologies, and other scientific activities as appropriate to ensure scientific integrity."

That language is missing, however, in the Trump administration's revision of the policy, according to an NPR analysis of text posted on the Commerce Department's website.

And while the revision adopts a definition for "scientific integrity" that is similar to the previous version, it no longer says that "protection from inappropriate influence" is among the "hallmarks of scientific integrity."
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Gil Durán @gilduran.com · 31/08/2026
He doesn't get enough attention, but Coinbase's Brian Armstrong is one of the most radicalized billionaires in the USA. He's part of the Network State cult that seeks to build new tech nations. Now he's leading the crypto cartel's takeover of our electoral system newrepublic.com/article/1857...
newrepublic.com
The Most Powerful Crypto Bro in Washington Has Very Weird Beliefs
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong says the U.S. is in “decline” and embraces a cultish tech movement to build “network” societies beyond the reach of nation-states—and he’s got Congress eating out of his h...
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Alex Ip 葉清霖 @alexip718.com · 31/08/2026
This week is the first time I'm endorsing the assertion that America's brain drain, the largest since 1930s Nazi Germany, has crossed the point of no return. I no longer think the next Democratic President, even be it AOC, can get the talent, funding, facilities, and reputation back.
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rahaeli @rahaeli.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Holy shiiiiiiit if you know anyone in North Carolina who may even know anyone who knows anyone who's been to an event by these people, get them to go get the rabies post-exposure prophylaxis shots RIGHT THE FUCK NOW, DO NOT WAIT, YOU CANNOT TREAT IT AFTER SYMPTOMS START
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CrimethInc. Ex-Workers' Collective @crimethinc.com · 27/08/2026
When an army carries out an attack on a village, the first thing they do is cut the communication lines that connect it to the outside world. We have to understand the attack on the web services provider Autistici/Inventati the same way. They are preparing an assault. crimethinc.com/noblogs
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John Carl Baker @johncarlbaker.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
This is a machine to ethnically cleanse the country - and anyone who pretends otherwise is kidding themselves
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W.E.D.em Boyz @leftistwonk.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Probably unintentionally, the Trump administration played the perfect strategy for our broken media and "opposition" party. They did all the most boisterous, spectacle-driven stuff early and now that they're just casually running an immigrant exterminationist regime the press is bored by it.
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kat cosgrove @kat.lol · 26/08/2026
ALRIGHT I'M GOING TO THE ONLY PLACE NEWS OF BELOVED CELEBRITY DEATHS CAN'T FIND ME: SPACE
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Lindsay @neomeruru.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Trust me, click through.
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Daniel Radosh @radosh.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Republicans have spent the last year trying to defund Dolly Parton
article about proposed GOP cuts to Imagination Library in Indianaarticle about proposed GOP cuts to Imagination Library in Kentuckyarticle about proposed GOP cuts to Imagination Library in Missouriiarticle about proposed GOP cuts to Imagination Library in Washington
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Sarah Taber @sarahtaber.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Tired of shitting yourself because the GOP's trying to steal votes? Here's info from a veteran. I live in the US capitol of ballot fraud! The good ol' NC-09. I've personally been hit by two (2) NATIONAL NEWS-level GOP attempts to steal elections. BOTH 👏 FAILED 👏 because we WORKED. Here's how.
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