iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Jill Lawrence @jilldlawrence.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

A good case from @dickpolman.bsky.social that this man’s selfish short-sightedness set us on path to where we are today. Excruciating insights on the wreckage of a legacy. dickpolman.substack.com/p/ralph-nade...

dickpolman.substack.com

Ralph Nader is still a pariah. He deserves to be.

Tilting the ‘00 race to Bush was his original sin. We’re still suffering the consequences.

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Prof. Eliot Jacobson @climatecasino.net · 11h

Breaking News! The preliminary Nino 3.4 sea-surface temperature anomaly for Sept. 29th came in at 3.18°C above the 1991-2020 baseline. This marks yet another record all-time high and the 123rd consecutive record daily high at 1.1°C above the previous daily record set in 1997.

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Paul Konstant @progpk.bsky.social · 10h

My dad's career was in the federal govt. He said he knowingly took lower salary to have job security. Now they've destroyed the trust so they won't be able to hire the best for lower salaries the way they used to.

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justaj0e.bsky.social @justaj0e.bsky.social · 10h

I know personally that the same thing has been done to NASA. It’s my understanding that the FAA, FDA, NOAA and NWS have been gutted in the same way. In 2 years this bunch has set the US back a generation. You cannot hire all this expertise back instantly. It will take decades to get back.

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Anti-Sabotage Operations Group @antisabotage.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Russia's proxies in the US continue to sabotage the US military:

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Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

WSJ Exclusive: The Trump admin used federal funds from the Department of Homeland Security to finance those controversial pro-Trump ads that started airing on TV. The taxpayer money used to fund the ads came from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

wsj.com

Exclusive | Homeland Security Money Financed Pro-Trump Television Ads

White House calls the spots public-service ads, but critics argue using taxpayer money for campaign-like messaging may violate federal law.

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Paul Konstant @progpk.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The crisis is NOT low level. The coverage, or lack thereof, gives the appearance that it is.

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Justin Hendrix @justinhendrix.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Most state attorneys general released Meta from Cambridge Analytica-related claims as part of the child safety settlement. New Mexico wasn't part of that deal, and a jury there just found 26 of 29 past claims about Cambridge Analytica, hate speech and misinformation willfully deceptive.

techpolicy.press

Eight Years On, Cambridge Analytica Scandal Catches Up With Meta in Santa Fe

A jury found that Meta—then Facebook—misled the public in statements about Cambridge Analytica and its policies on hate speech, violence and misinformation.

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@GottaLaff @gottalaff.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

3/ And not to pile on, but... ICYMI:

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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 28/09/2026

I said my piece on it way back in 2016, before he was elected, and every word holds up. (It is maddening to me that Vox has paywalled all my old pieces, by the way.)

vox.com

The question of what Donald Trump “really believes” has no answer

It is a category error.

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Paul Konstant @progpk.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The bacteria didn't evolve in the hotel room. And the process of photosynthesis being independently captured relatively recently is indeed fascinating. I both admire their dedication and mourn the next generation being lost.

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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 28/09/2026

I feel this in my bones. We're mourning the death of a career many of us thought we could have, while witnessing our chronic illnesses and disabilities becoming more debilitating. The networks of mutual support that suspended us in meaningful relationships with the rest of society have come undone.

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MAKS 26 👀🇺🇦 @maks23.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Russian losses ❗️

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Dare Obasanjo @carnage4life.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Fresh on the heels of similar complaints about OpenAI from mathematicians, a biologist says Anthropic’s Claude “discovered” the same system his team has spent years researching while sharing their unpublished work with Claude. It’s no longer just publishers & artists accusing AI labs of plagiarism.

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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I think there are two key lessons from Linguistics as we deal with LLMs/chatbots being imposed on us everywhere. Grateful for Undark Magazine giving space for me to lay these out: undark.org/2026/09/25/i...

undark.org

Interview: What Does the 'I' in AI Really Mean?

Five scientific experts discuss whether artificial intelligence is — or might one day become — truly intelligent.

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Malena-PRO-CHOICE 🌊 🟦🟧Fighting Tyranny! @malena.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

𝐖𝐡𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐥𝐞𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫 𝐔𝐧𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐤𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐡𝐨𝐜𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐓𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐬 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐈𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐈𝐂𝐄 𝐃𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧🚨 Not one Republican lawmaker is speaking out against #ICELawlessness, against the brutality & the depraved conditions they are subjecting our friends & neighbors to, or the torture or even the murders. Your vote matters!

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404 Media @404media.co · 27/09/2026

OpenAI has thousands and thousands of contractors helping improve the company's AI models. Multiple contractors have been fired for using AI to train the AI. www.404media.co/people-train...

404media.co

People Training OpenAI’s AI Fired for Using AI to Train the AI

OpenAI has thousands and thousands of contractors helping improve the company's AI models. Multiple contractors have been fired for using AI to train the AI.

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 27/09/2026

Women trying to succeed in Silicon Valley AI and effective altruist spaces are reporting feeling serious social pressure to attend sex parties - where people have reported being sexually assaulted, like below. Events like Aella’s “Slutcon,” which is happening again this weekend.

Ann Pierce
@itsannpierce
20h
I am disheartened by this as well. I already lost a bunch of followers for agreeing with @tautologer, but it's saddening to see local nerdy women being caricatured as Karen-like outsiders and getting pushed out of the scene. This is exactly why you hear so few concrete, names-attached stories of sexual harrassment and assault. I'm told there is a history of discrediting these because the "slut normalization" thing is top priority and these stories get inconveniently in the way of spreading this ideology.
I got roped into attending last year's Saturday Slutcon party because so many local and out-of-town friends were there (to echo sentiments @tautologer expressed about "slut events becoming central to the larger scenes). Mostly I hung out with people I knew and that was great. But in the course of my 3-ish hours there, there were 2 times my "no" was not accepted by a man I didn't know, and I was physically pushing a huge guy off of me who was rubbing his penis on me, who continued to do it despite my physical force against him, and after I finally wriggled away from him, told him I wanted to dance alone etc., he came back and did it again.
This was scary and bad, but it didn't even cross my mind to report this because one of the other people who didn't accept my "no" earlier in the night was the bartender (an officially sanctioned authority at the event), and I knew the event was organized exclusively by women into CNC (who are vocal about how rapey behavior turns them on), so I figured this sort of thing would just get me laughed at. And anyway, I heard there were a lot of other incidents like it. Later though, someone encouraged me to report this story to the organizers, and despite my embarrassment I did, so *they know* that this and other incidents happened. This is why they cut the Saturday night party this year and created a larger training program for the flirt girls - *because* of things like this last year. Yet the narrative bein…

People who haven't been to Slutcon are saying "it's just group therapy," "it's just innocent flirting." But the environment is much like a sex party in that many people are nude, there is making out and sex acts happening out in the open. I think it's pretty unreasonable to expect that every nerdy girl who likes rationalist bloggers or is into EA/AI safety should automatically be comfortable with this! That if she's not, there's something wrong with her, we don't want her in our scenes, etc.
Not to mention, it's explictly an event *for men*, where men are the clients and the "flirt girls" are the product. Last year I overheard an exchange where a man felt "led on" by a flirt girl and was trying to get her punished/kicked out. (A dynamic that seems inevitable in this context!)
Anyway- it does sound like they've upped their consent education a lot this year, are more organized, and that's good! As I've told my friends who are attending: I hope they have fun!
I heard several accounts last year of women who had no problems and really enjoyed the event. That's great!
Just... can we live in reality about this? There are real reasons why male-female sexual dynamics are tricky.
Encouraging autistic men who can't yet read body language to go around asking to see womens' boobs is maybe a bit ill-advised. Maybe not everyone should be/identify as a slut; maybe it's not for everyone.
And yeah, filtering the Bay Area Al safety scene down to only women who are super comfy with this eliminates *most* women - including many of the really smart, nerdy, weird women who've been in the larger scenes for years. What a loss for humanity.
I absolutely understand why people with a minority sexuality would want to create belonging, would want to create spaces for people like themselves. But why do it like this/at this cost?

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Paul Konstant @progpk.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I've known too many developers who consider IT security last, if ever. But the malfeasance of this generation is particularly horrific. To make matters worse, they've gotten too good at hiding their fundamental issues behind disinformation hype.

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Pause AI in BC Schools @aicaution.ca · 26/09/2026

There is no ethical use of AI.

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🗽LOLGOP🗽 @lolgop.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

"The US is in the process of building one of the largest camp systems in history." Agony to hear those words spoken. But the question now is whether it just surpasses the scope of Japanese-American Imprisonment or it does what concentration camp systems want to do: get worse at a sinister pace.

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The Kyiv Independent @kyivindependent.com · 26/09/2026

⚡Germany links arson attack near Ukraine-supplying drone maker Helsing to Russia's GRU. The arson attack took place in Munich on Sept. 3, when several incendiary devices were thrown from a passing car onto a construction site near the headquarters of Rohde & Schwarz and Helsing.

kyivindependent.com

Germany links arson attack near Ukraine-supplying drone maker Helsing to Russia's GRU

The arson attack took place in Munich on Sept. 3, when several incendiary devices were thrown from a passing car onto a construction site near the headquarters of Rohde & Schwarz and Helsing.

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Steve Vladeck @stevevladeck.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

#BREAKING: In non-Missouri emergency docket news, #SCOTUS *grants* the Trump administration's request for a stay in the SAVE case, allowing DHS to have access to certain Social Security information. The three Democratic appointees dissent.

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Steve Vladeck @stevevladeck.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Here's a graphic that does a better job of conveying the point than my original post: even by the (insane) standards of the first Trump administration, #SCOTUS is receiving—and granting—a truly unprecedented number of applications for emergency relief from the federal government:

A chart that shows the number of emergency applications filed and granted by the Supreme Court during each presidency dating back to George W. Bush, with the data annualized to show the far-higher frequencies since 2017, but especially during the Trump I and Trump II administrations.

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George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Here's today's column on the astonishing, ongoing mistreatment of people with #ME/CFS. Please spread it far and wide: the only thing which can break the media's wall of indifference is seeing an article about the issue go viral. Thank you. 1/2 www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

theguardian.com

Abandoned, dismissed and gaslighted: there is no excuse for the way ME sufferers have been betrayed | George Monbiot

Changes in guidance and science seem to have little impact on millions of devastated lives. It’s a social crisis playing out behind closed doors, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

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Rebecca Cohen @gynostar.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

He mentioned it here just the other day: pluralistic.net/2026/09/12/g...

This is a time-honored internet tradition! The first time I ever heard about someone doing this was in the 2000s, when Mitch Wagner – then the editor of Information Week – discovered some teenaged girls using the comment section of one of his old blog-posts to evade the school firewall's blockade of chat tools. When ChatGPT's chatbots deployed this tactic, they weren't "setting their own goals" or displaying worrying initiative. They were rolling out a tactic that has been understood by American middle-schoolers for about two decades.

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 24/09/2026

Eliezer Yudkowsky did quite literally come out and say that he wrote Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality as a "good way to recruit International Mathematical Olympiadists" (who are teenagers, a group that, in 2010, one could safely assume had read Harry Potter). hpmor.com/notes/119/

As for what I can potentially do to become able to write for you again… to say it abstractly, I have to perform some combination of (a) shifting the way that I am perceived in relation to important projects, (b) shifting the ‘role’ outsiders see me as occupying and the real status they attach to that role, and (c) locally or (d) globally ameliorating the worsening societal condition that lies at the core of the problem. This is a complicated topic and I can’t easily summarize my thinking on the subject, nor the sorts of plots I’m considering to address it; the margins of this Author’s Note are too small. (Imagine my trying to explain briefly to someone why blogging about rationality for two years was the best way to get a nonprofit into a position where it could produce mathematical progress on the value alignment problem for advanced agents, or why a Harry Potter fanfiction would be a good way to recruit International Mathematical Olympiadists for that project.)

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Jenny Cohn @jennycohn.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Peter Thiel has the wheel: “US Deputy Secty of Defense Stephen Feinberg has drafted a memo directing Defense Department subordinates to purchase up to $243.9 M in services from…[Thiel’s] Palantir…without a competitive bidding process…The memo’s subject line is called ‘Funding Palantir’.” 8/11/26…1/

share.google

Give Palantir up to $244M through 2028, says internal Defense Department memo

Draft memo taps AI data analysis biz for help with military production efficiency

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Hoodlum 🇺🇸 @nothoodlum.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

While waiting for Trump to enter the signing of the US-Denmark-Greenland agreement at the UN, they chose “Send in the Clowns” as the background music. Yes, it’s real.

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Scott Horton @robertscotthorton.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

NYT has now independently corroborated all the major allegations against Susan Collins in the ProPublica report, including that investigators were prepared to move against her and then Trump intervened to shut it down. This put Trump in a position of exceptional and extortionate leverage over her.

nytimes.com

F.B.I. Shut Down Inquiry Into Top Ally of Senator Susan Collins

The inquiry was closed last year because senior bureau officials questioned the veracity of a campaign donor’s account, according to current and former officials.

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Schrödinger's Sneetch Belly @rtodkelly.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Please know that this is one of my few legitimate areas of actual, high-level professional expertise: Kicking the healthiest people off of a health insurance program will bankrupt it. Not 'could;' not 'might,' not 'probably," but absolutely will, with mathematical certainty.

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Fionna O’Leary @fascinatorfun.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Well. That looks systematic 😳 Standard Chartered, Citigroup and other international banks have handled billions of dollars from a Kremlin-backed fintech company that tricked its way into the global financial system with a vast document forgery operation. www.ft.com/content/3848...

ft.com

Kremlin-backed forgery scheme moved $6.9bn through global banks

FT finds thousands of Russian payments handled by Standard Chartered, Citigroup and other international groups in vast leak from inside fintech A7

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ProPublica @propublica.org · 22/09/2026

Sen. Susan Collins helped steer millions in federal defense contracts to Navatek, whose CEO illegally funneled thousands of dollars to her campaign. The FBI sought to launch a probe and was eyeing Collins and other lawmakers. Then Trump gutted the unit in charge. THREAD 🧵

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Dave Andress @davidandress.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

France experiencing historic drought…

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Galina Esther Shubina, my coffee is my own @galsh.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I've been using related algo concepts to explain to people why Musk's idea that we will be going prompt to binary, bypassing compiling, is bullshit (also, unnecessary). Sadly seeing that hardcore algorithms and theory of computation seem often barely covered in the more modern cs curriculums.

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Christopher Webb @cwebbonline.com · 21/09/2026

Track AIPAC tried to cancel Juliana Stratton ahead of the primary over her position on Israel. Thank goodness it didn’t work. I was researching her again yesterday and realized something: on issue after issue, she’s exactly the kind of candidate progressives say they want. 🧵

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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 19/09/2026

It's even simpler: the technology is the industry. To exclude the industry from our understanding of AI is to misunderstand the technology. So-called AI just doesn't work without the whole industry behind it. How do we know? We tried for decades and even more than a century under some definitions.

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margin of error @ihaveopinions.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

I think there's no understanding the AI phenomenon without understanding the timing: At a moment of fascist govt in the US and total govt-corporate alignment that was/is nonetheless failing to consolidate authoritarianism, AI is a corporatist Hail Mary, a supposed panacea for social control.

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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

NYU Langone is paying the government $8.5 million in addition to ceasing gender-affirming care for minors. Cowardly loser shit.

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WarTranslated (Dmitri) @wartranslated.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

RBC-Ukraine sources say Slovak PM Robert Fico pulled out of a planned Ukraine trip at the last minute and missed the Carpathian Initiative summit where Zelensky unveiled a new cooperation format.

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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

You Might Think White Supremacists are Distasteful; Here’s Why You’re Wrong part 315 of an ongoing series at the New York Times

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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 18/09/2026

This is such an important point: > AI boomers vs. doomers: A false dichotomy It's exhausting within academia too with people who claim that the technology has good purposes we're ignoring, when everybody sensible knows so-called desirable properties are a function of the labour and days theft.

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Amanda Shendruk @not-ship.com · 16/09/2026

I really didn't want to add to the AI hype. But there's something the reporting is missing. That scary number? The ">10% chance we'll all perish" number? It's nonsense. It's just a bullshit hunch with a percentage sign. www.not-ship.com/stop-trustin...

not-ship.com

Stop trusting the extinction math

The AI industry's favourite 'statistic' isn't backed by data. And it distracts from what's really going on.

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 17/09/2026

Great piece by @xriskology.bsky.social on how the effective altruism cult has helped destroy actual philanthropy - with dangerous and deadly results for many people in need:

realtimetechpocalypse.com

Effective Altruism Is a Dangerous Cult — Here's Why

Understanding the "Scientology of Silicon Valley." (7,700 words)

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 17/09/2026

Nick Beckstead, noted longtermist and "effective altruist,” just comes out and says it: "But it now seems more plausible to me that saving a life in a rich country is substantially more important than saving a life in a poor country, other things being equal."

This is precisely why Nick Beckstead, a noted EA, argued in 2013 that, given the "overwhelming" moral importance of the far future - "millions, billions, and trillions" of years from now - we should prioritize saving the lives of people in rich countries over those in poor countries, other things being equal. The reason is that people in rich countries are better positioned to influence the far future.

To take another example, saving lives in poor countries may have significantly smaller ripple effects

than saving and improving lives in rich countries. Why? Richer countries have substantially more

innovation, and their workers are much more economically productive. By ordinary standards at

least by ordinary enlightened humanitarian standards saving and improving lives in rich countries

is about equally as important as saving and improving lives in poor countries, provided lives are

improved by roughly comparable amounts. But it now seems more plausible to me that saving a life

in a rich country is substantially more important than saving a life in a poor country, other things
being equal.
Screenshot from Beckstead's 2013 PhD dissertation, regarded as one of the founding documents of longtermism, one of the main cause areas of EA.

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Jo Wolff @jowolff.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Is ‘sold-out’ a description of the ticketing situation or the of the speakers?

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BWJones @bwjones.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

The destruction of USAID by the Trump admin is killing hundreds of thousands of children for lack of rotavirus treatments. More deaths in central Africa, SE Asia and the Pacific from HIV/AIDS 14 million deaths by 2030 are projected. This makes Americans less safe around the world.

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Mike Hoerger, PhD, MSCR, MBA @michael-hoerger.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

The 13th US COVlD wave in context. pmc19.com

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