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Samir Varma

@samirvarma.bsky.social
120 followers 80 following 693 posts

Physicist, author, inventor, hedge fund manager, green tech pioneer. Beatles & Pink Floyd fan. I love AI, physics, science, markets, economics, squash, guitar.

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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 16h
Street musician unknowingly duets with Chris Martin on Coldplay song | CNN www.cnn.com/2026/09/22/e...
cnn.com
Street musician unknowingly duets with Chris Martin on Coldplay song | CNN
Coldplay singer Chris Martin has surprised a street musician in central London for an impromptu performance of the British band’s hit “Viva la Vida.”
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Octopuses Hitching Rides on Dolphins, the Largest Viking Silver Hoard Discovered, and Daily Sugary Drinks Could Raise Stomach Cancer Risk www.discovermagazine.com/octopuses-hi...
discovermagazine.com
Octopuses Hitching Rides on Dolphins, the Largest Viking Silver Hoard Discovered, and Daily Sugary Drinks Could Raise Stomach Cancer Risk
Discover the top stories from Sept. 5 to Sept. 11, 2026, including photos of an octopus riding a dolphin and how a daily sugary drink could increase your stomach cancer risk.
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
India Outsourcing Shifts Upmarket as AI Reshapes Jobs, ING Says www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
bloomberg.com
India Outsourcing Shifts Upmarket as AI Reshapes Jobs, ING Says
India’s outsourcing industry is showing little sign of losing ground to artificial intelligence as the country moves up the value chain into services that are harder to automate, according to ING…
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Are Phones Really to Blame for the Rise in Childhood Anxiety? www.wsj.com/lifestyle/re...
wsj.com
https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/relationships/childhood-psychology-anxiety-phones-common-core-peter-gray-88c92394?mod=author_content_page_1_pos_1
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
How Apple gets iOS 27 onto iPhone 18 Pro units in time for launch | Cult of Mac www.cultofmac.com/news/ios-27-...
cultofmac.com
How Apple gets iOS 27 onto millions of iPhone 18 Pro units in time for launch
Apple released iOS 27 only days ago, but it'll be on millions of iPhone 18 Pros by launch. Here's how Apple pulls off that trick.
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Why a Top Hedge Fund Manager Isn’t Panicking About the Economy | Samir Varma www.youtube.com/watch?v=BifL.... As always, I loved chatting with Eric.
youtube.com
Why a Top Hedge Fund Manager Isn’t Panicking About the Economy | Samir Varma
Physicist and hedge fund manager Samir Varma returns to the World XP Podcast to break down why he isn’t buying the constant predictions of an imminent financial collapse. We discuss why Americans can…
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
The factor zoo has hundreds of exhibits. Its star, momentum, is a bet on the others. The fourth Emperor essay asks whether finance has found the market’s building blocks—or just named its moving parts. samirvarma.substack.com/p/the-empero...
samirvarma.substack.com
The Emperor Has No (Prime) Factors
The fourth in a series auditing the stories quantitative finance tells itself.
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Scientists develop new method for deciphering ancient scrolls - Ars Technica arstechnica.com/science/2026...
arstechnica.com
Scientists develop new method for deciphering ancient scrolls
Even a handheld XRF scanner is sufficient to determine most promising scrolls for further analysis.
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
@ATabarrok: My guess is that it is almost already the case that ideas matter more than execution. It used to be the reverse. The Price of Intelligence is Falling Rapidly marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevo...
marginalrevolution.com
The Price of Intelligence is Falling Rapidly - Marginal REVOLUTION
An amazing Epoch AI report from Emberson and Roodman: Over the past three years, the cost of a given level of AI performance has fallen an average of some 47% per quarter. That is a 13-fold drop…
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Dogs Show a Surprising Speech-Processing Skill Once Thought Unique to Humans www.discovermagazine.com/dogs-show-a-...
discovermagazine.com
Dogs Show a Surprising Speech-Processing Skill Once Thought Unique to Humans
Learn how researchers found that dogs’ brains use consonants to pick out patterns in speech, and what that could mean for the way your dog hears you.
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
The Roman telescope has enough gas for 22 years, double NASA's expectations arstechnica.com/space/2026/0...
arstechnica.com
The Roman telescope has enough gas for 22 years, double NASA's expectations
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is the first NASA observatory designed for in-space refueling.
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Pandemic Preparation is AI Safety - Marginal REVOLUTION marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevo...
marginalrevolution.com
Pandemic Preparation is AI Safety - Marginal REVOLUTION
I am not a big fan of the “now more than ever” post, which interprets recent events to support—surprise!—something the writer already believed. And yet…is it not obvious that AI risk increases the…
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Guinness World Records 2027: Narrowest car, most tattooed person - UPI.com www.upi.com/Odd_News/202...
upi.com
Top News, Latest headlines, Latest News, World News & U.S News - UPI.com
UPI delivers the latest headlines from around the world: Top News, Entertainment, Health, Business, Science and Sports News - United Press International
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Your thermostat knows when to do nothing. The Fed doesn’t. My new Business Economics paper argues for silence inside a sensible band—and clear, public alarms at the edges. samirvarma.substack.com/p/your-therm...
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Is There Anything Google’s Fruit Fly Brain Can’t Do? www.nytimes.com/2026/09/15/t...
nytimes.com
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/15/technology/fruit-fly-brain-map-google.html?unlocked_article_code=1.BlE.nuBX.48rpmwLEeo1-&smid=url-share&utm_source=tldrnewsletter
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
@PinkFloyd's Gold ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ Guitar Pick Can Be Yours for $7,800 ultimateclassicrock.com/pink-floyd-d...
ultimateclassicrock.com
Pink Floyd's Gold ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ Guitar Pick Can Be Yours for $7,800
British Royal Mint’s latest addition to collectable range can be admired or actually used.
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
The online shopping trend where you buy nothing restofworld.org/2026/south-k...
restofworld.org
The online shopping trend where you buy nothing
On South Korea’s “dopamine sites,” the pleasure comes from aspirational shopping rituals like browsing, curating, and tracking — not from a delivery.
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
bloomberg.com
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Shout it from the rooftops (of the data centers) - Marginal REVOLUTION marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevo...
marginalrevolution.com
Shout it from the rooftops (of the data centers) - Marginal REVOLUTION
Data-center investment has become one of the largest capital-expenditure cycles in financial markets, with U.S. hyperscalers expected to deploy roughly $700 billion in 2026. This investment boom has…
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
This 3,000-Year-Old Pottery May Have Been One of History's First Brands www.discovermagazine.com/this-3-000-y...
discovermagazine.com
This 3,000-Year-Old Pottery May Have Been One of History's First Brands
Discover how potters in the walled oasis of Qurayyah exported what may have been some of history's earliest “branded” goods across the Levant.
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
33 years ago, I published a paper in Physics Letters B. Last week, I published its sequel. This is the story. samirvarma.substack.com/p/the-price-...
samirvarma.substack.com
The Price of an Assumption
Everyone knew it was an approximation. Nobody had computed the error.
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
This is what a supercar was like a century ago arstechnica.com/cars/2026/09...
arstechnica.com
This is what a supercar was like a century ago
When the average car could only do 40 mph, this Bentley could break 100.
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Uber beats Waymo as first to launch robotaxis in London www.theverge.com/news/988415/...
theverge.com
Uber beats Waymo as first to launch robotaxis in London
No geofence, no lidar, but not driverless.
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
The Mystery of Why Snake Embryos Curl To The Right Could Lie In Their Digestive Tract | Discover Magazine www.discovermagazine.com/the-mystery-...
discovermagazine.com
The Mystery of Why Snake Embryos Curl To The Right Could Lie In Their Digestive Tract
Learn how a slower-growing gut helps snake embryos curl into a spiral, allowing their long bodies to develop inside an egg.
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Some Scientists Have ‘Magic Hands’ in the Lab. This A.I. Is Learning Why. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/27/s...
nytimes.com
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/27/science/scientists-experiments-replication-ai.html?unlocked_article_code=1.81A.4o19.56RdaMM_l7sw&smid=url-share&utm_source=tldrnewsletter
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Do Minimum Wages Help Workers in Poor and Low-Income Families? | NBER www.nber.org/papers/w35628
nber.org
Do Minimum Wages Help Workers in Poor and Low-Income Families?
Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers,…
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
EconPapers: Tax-Induced Emigration: Who Flees High Taxes? Evidence from the Netherlands econpapers.repec.org/paper/cesces.... Someone please tell Piketty, Saez, Zucman and all the other shills for high taxes! Of course, they won't listen--evidence is not uppermost in their thinking.
econpapers.repec.org
EconPapers: Tax-Induced Emigration: Who Flees High Taxes? Evidence from the Netherlands
By José Victor C. Giarola, Olivier Marie, Frank Cörvers and Hans Schmeets; Abstract: We study a policy change in the Netherlands that unexpectedly reduced the duration of preferential tax treatment…
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Last week I explained to you why YOU CANNOT tax Scrooge McDuck. This week Scrooge goes to Stockholm and learns something about their supposedly "socialist" economy. samirvarma.substack.com/p/scrooge-mc...
samirvarma.substack.com
Scrooge McDuck Goes to Stockholm
(And no, he didn't get a Nobel!) Part 2 of two. The real case for capital taxes exists — and it is far narrower than the proposals pretend.
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Scientists explain how the ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism copied the Moon's changing speed without modern technology | - The Times of India timesofindia.indiatimes.com/science/scie...
timesofindia.indiatimes.com
Scientists explain how the ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism copied the Moon's changing speed without modern technology
The Moon does not travel across the sky at a constant pace. Its speed changes throughout each orbit, a detail ancient astronomers noticed long before they had the mathematics to explain it fully.
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
'My best shot': Nasa astronaut shares image of 2025 Maha Kumbh taken from space - The Times of India timesofindia.indiatimes.com/science/my-b...
timesofindia.indiatimes.com
'My best shot': Nasa astronaut shares image of 2025 Maha Kumbh taken from space
NASA astronaut Donald Pettit has shared image of Prayagraj glowing at night during the 2025 Maha Kumbh Mela, offering a striking view of the massive religious gathering from the International Space…
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
The ‘tax on the City’ fuelling the stock market’s collapse: www.aol.com/articles/tax.... The UK continues to destroy its own economy. I really don't understand why.
aol.com
The ‘tax on the City’ fuelling the stock market’s collapse - AOL
When US hedge fund Elliott Management moved to buy a stake in BP last year, there was more to the purchase than met the eye.
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
He’s the Last Great Land Artist You’ve Never Heard Of www.nytimes.com/2026/07/22/a...
nytimes.com
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/22/arts/design/charles-ross-star-axis-land-art.html?campaign_id=190&emc=edit_ufn_20260818&instance_id=180557&nl=from-the-times&regi_id=168807750&segment_id=224968&user_id=77dddeadf63367909fe4e3e3e981873f
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Humans Love Having Pets. Seems Like Some Other Primates Do, Too. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/18/s...
nytimes.com
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/18/science/primates-pets.html?campaign_id=60&emc=edit_na_20260818&instance_id=180551&nl=breaking-news&regi_id=168807750&segment_id=224965&user_id=77dddeadf63367909fe4e3e3e981873f
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
DP19721 Initial Match and Career Outcomes: Evidence from the NFL Draft cepr.org/publications...
cepr.org
DP19721 Initial Match and Career Outcomes: Evidence from the NFL Draft
A growing literature argues that firms contribute to worker inequality, but a persistent challenge is that similar workers are typically not randomly matched with different firms. We exploit the…
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
There is a giant "pile of wealth" among all the billionaires. So why don't we just tax them to solve all our problems? samirvarma.substack.com/p/you-cant-t...
samirvarma.substack.com
You Can't Tax Scrooge McDuck
Part 1 of 2. A fortune is not a pile of idle goods — and a flat tax rate on capital hides a bite that grows with the horizon, under every design on the table, and under the one we already have.
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Excellent from @ATabarrok. Data Centers and the Open Access Order - Marginal REVOLUTION marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevo.... This is the same disease that has led to the UK having one of the largest per capita housing shortages in the world. "Planning Permission" is this same stupidity.
marginalrevolution.com
Data Centers and the Open Access Order - Marginal REVOLUTION
The US discussion over datacenters is depressing. Datacenters do not use a lot of water, they produce very useful outputs, they are not a blight on the landscape. All of this is obvious. But I don’t…
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Researchers devise a full-color night vision goggle - Ars Technica arstechnica.com/science/2026...
arstechnica.com
Researchers devise a full-color night vision goggle
Wavelength and intensity in the infrared are translated into colors in the visible.
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
This ‘It’ Girl Really Is That Cool www.nytimes.com/2026/08/13/s.... Great to see ~15% of humanity finally re-joining the world! Without the 1991 reforms (samirvarma.substack.com/t/1991reforms), none of this would have happened!
nytimes.com
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/13/style/diya-joukani-india-influencer.html
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Scientists just created female clones of male mice www.technologyreview.com/2026/08/12/1...
technologyreview.com
Scientists just created female clones of male mice
The sex reversal technique could be used to help rescue endangered species, say the researchers behind the work.
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
We've flown a radiation-blocking vest to the Moon and back, and it worked - Ars Technica arstechnica.com/science/2026...
arstechnica.com
We've flown a radiation-blocking vest to the Moon and back, and it worked
Let's shield the astronauts instead of the spacecraft.
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
theregister.com
This JCB doesn't dig – it does 406 mph
Pair of reworked production-based engines carry the Hydromax into the record books
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
I accidentally ran a 21 year experiment on myself. What did I learn? samirvarma.substack.com/p/i-read-my-...
samirvarma.substack.com
I Read My Own Filing Cabinet
I accidentally ran a twenty-one-year experiment on myself. Here is what the subject revealed.
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
She Makes the Impossible Happen for Her Ultrarich Clients www.nytimes.com/2026/08/09/s...
nytimes.com
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/09/style/olivia-ferney-top-tier-travel.html?algo=lda_excl_sensitive_headline_tags&block=8&campaign_id=142&emc=edit_fory_20260812&fellback=false&imp_id=249596541630597&instance_id=180243&nl=for-you&nlid=168807750&rank=1&regi_id=168807750&req_id=2118894663316041&segment_id=224628&surface=for-you-email-subject-line-algo&user_id=77dddeadf63367909fe4e3e3e981873f&variant=0_lda
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Do Faculty Affect Student Partisanship? - Marginal REVOLUTION marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevo...
marginalrevolution.com
Do Faculty Affect Student Partisanship? - Marginal REVOLUTION
We study whether Democratic college professors make their students more liberal. We link voter data to salary records from 33 state flagships and show that faculty skew Democratic, especially in the…
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Home water harvesting is being supercharged by Nobel Prize-winning tech www.ft.com/content/74b0...
ft.com
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Residents of the Barbican in London Are Battling a New Tower www.nytimes.com/2026/08/07/w...
nytimes.com
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Apple Builds iPhone Production Capacity in India to Hedge Its China Risk - Bloomberg www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...
bloomberg.com
How Apple and India Built an Alternative iPhone Production Hub
A yearslong partnership between Indian policymakers and electronics manufacturers has shifted supply chains away from China.
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Pink Floyd - Live in Dortmund, DE (February 14th, 1981): www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lFN...
youtube.com
[Super8] Pink Floyd - Live in Dortmund, DE (February 14th, 1981) - [NEW]
Pink Floyd Westfalenhalle Dortmund, DE February 14th, 1981 The Pink Floyd Research Group is proud to unveil a BRAND NEW Super 8mm of the second German Wall show in captured by filmmaker Ole Frausing…
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
What exactly is a "quantum computer" good for? It turns out just one thing: being itself! open.substack.com/pub/samirvar...
open.substack.com
The Only Thing a Quantum Computer Is Good At Is Being One
Why the honest case for quantum computing is the one nobody makes — and why it runs through my thesis advisor.
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Samir Varma @samirvarma.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Meet the Man Who Oversees the Sorting and Shipping of NYC’s Library Books www.nytimes.com/2026/07/31/n...
nytimes.com
Meet the Man Who Oversees the Sorting and Shipping of NYC’s Library Books
For 20 years, a retired Police Department captain has overseen the shipping of books to library branches. Tens of thousands of books are sorted each day.
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