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Scott Ross, animate candy corn

@skort.bsky.social
340 followers 623 following 254 posts

lecturer, wustl | africanist anthro | humanitarianism, infrastructure, war, media, sound | gwu phd | hella left | he/him | arizonan in exile | wants to be your friend

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Scott Ross, animate candy corn @skort.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
Recent Anthropology News special issue in the aftermath of federal funding cuts, program closures, and political attacks on higher ed. What can no longer be researched? What of the anthropology that could have been? www.anthropology-news.org/issue/defund...
anthropology-news.org
Defunded - Anthropology News
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Scott Ross, animate candy corn @skort.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
"The most dangerous threat to Black studies right now is not coming from the federal government. It is coming from institutions that have decided, in advance, that accommodation is the same thing as survival." www.chronicle.com/article/the-...
chronicle.com
Opinion | The Erasure of Black Studies
A report from the undoing of a field.
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Scott Ross, animate candy corn @skort.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
"Every weapon developed by Elbit Systems is first “tested” on Palestinians, before being sold on to international governments, expanding the empire built off the destruction of Palestine." From activists who burned down an Elbit factory in Czech Republic: earthquakefaction.net/one/
photo of a burning building
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Scott Ross, animate candy corn @skort.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
Multiple county police departments have recently signed 287(g) agreements with ICE, formalizing the cop-to-ICE pipeline in the St. Louis area. Majority of deportations from the area have started via local PDs: www.firstalert4.com/2026/03/18/m...
firstalert4.com
More local police departments signing ICE cooperation agreements
More local police departments are signing agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, with financial incentives and expanded enforcement authority among the reasons cited by department l...
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Scott Ross, animate candy corn @skort.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
“AI can never be AI without humans. It is not artificial intelligence. It’s African intelligence... Most of these are dirty jobs and most of these jobs have been done here in Africa.” Kenya's data labelers and content moderators are getting organized: www.404media.co/ai-is-africa...
404media.co
'AI Is African Intelligence': The Workers Who Train AI Are Fighting Back
Kenyan workers are still the underpaid labor behind AI training, moderation, and sex chatbots. The Data Labelers Association is fighting back.
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Scott Ross, animate candy corn @skort.bsky.social · 10/03/2026
While covert ops and diplomatic sleights to divide enemies & foment sectarianism are still part of Israel's strategy, its approach is that of "a power not acting according to a ‘Western’ rational and humanist approach to politics but a fanatical ideology." newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...
newleftreview.org
Ilan Pappé, On the Warpath — Sidecar
Israel’s regional stategy.
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Scott Ross, animate candy corn @skort.bsky.social · 10/03/2026
Here's a @theguardian.com report on the latest news regarding RSF atrocities in Darfur: www.theguardian.com/global-devel...
theguardian.com
‘Extraordinary cruelty’: images show longterm ‘starvation strategy’ in Sudan
Experts argue sensor and satellite data reveal targeted attacks by the Rapid Support Forces on farming communities were intended to prevent villages producing food
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Scott Ross, animate candy corn @skort.bsky.social · 10/03/2026
And @oonahathaway.bsky.social and @tomdannenbaum.bsky.social argue that the HRL report's evidence of the RSF's strategy of intentional starvation amounts to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Sudan: www.justsecurity.org/131508/repor...
justsecurity.org
Report Offers New Evidence of Starvation Crimes in Darfur
Two leading international law scholars analyze a report from the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab on evidence of starvation crimes in Darfur.
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Scott Ross, animate candy corn @skort.bsky.social · 10/03/2026
New @hrl-yalesph.bsky.social report uses remote sensing data to reveal RSF's intentional, systematic attacks aiming to depopulate area around El-Fasher and raze surrounding farmland to starve the city: medicine.yale.edu/lab/khoshnoo...
medicine.yale.edu
Special Report: Rapid Support Forces intentionally targeted agricultural communities to starve people in El-Fasher
A new food security study by HRL corroborates findings that RSF razed at least 41 farming communities in the first months of their siege on El Fasher, North
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Scott Ross, animate candy corn @skort.bsky.social · 10/03/2026
Great @truthout.org report on faculty, students, and staff still fighting ongoing repression around Palestine—and their wins: truthout.org/articles/the...
truthout.org
The Fight to Defend Pro-Palestine Speech on Campus Isn’t Over
Targeted for pro-Palestine speech, these academics are refusing to back down.
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Scott Ross, animate candy corn @skort.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
Yes! I still mostly use Twitter but lament what it was - a different vantage on the same phenomenon - but also struggle to feel at home on here for the reasons you gesture at
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Scott Ross, animate candy corn @skort.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
I really like the formulation of "Twitter-that-was/X-that-is"
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Scott Ross, animate candy corn @skort.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
Also very demographic - I've seen lots of immigrant (esp East Asian and Middle Eastern) communities claim this as absolutely a thing (and I agree that it is)
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Bethany Letiecq @bletiecq.bsky.social · 20/02/2026
Why is collective bargaining important to higher ed workers, you ask? Thanks Commonwealth Institute for this breakdown! It sucks to be kicked out of HB 1263 — the collective bargaining bill. There’s so much we could improve thru collective power @aaup.org @aaupmason.bsky.social @aft.org
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Scott Ross, animate candy corn @skort.bsky.social · 20/02/2026
"The Pentagon is sending the largest force of American warships and aircraft to the Middle East in decades." apnews.com/article/us-m...
Map of US airbases, destroyers, aircraft carriers, and combat ships in the region.
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Scott Ross, animate candy corn @skort.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
very glad to hear!
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Aaron Clauset @aaronclauset.bsky.social · 13/02/2026
My employer, Univ. Colorado will pay OpenAI $2M/year under the banner of “equity”. That’s 54 full scholarships / year. Plus, our IT will be able to read our chatGPT logs, and our chats can be requested under public records law. No thanks. Surveillance is not equity www.axios.com/local/boulde...
axios.com
CU signs $2M OpenAI deal for ChatGPT access
Students and faculty will gain access to ChatGPT Edu starting in March under a three-year deal.
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Scott Ross, animate candy corn @skort.bsky.social · 12/02/2026
Wow, such esteemed company! Thanks for letting me know, hope it went well! 🙂
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Coyle "Barricade Material" Boron @fack.bsky.social · 24/01/2026
There's a prison revolt at a concentration camp in Texas in solidarity with Minneapolis:
21 minutes ago

Jazmine Ulloa

Hundreds of immigrant mothers and children detained at a South Texas facility on Saturday protested the killing of a 37-year-old man in Minneapolis, chanting "Let me out" and "Libertad," or "Liberty," according to an immigration lawyer who witnessed the demonstration.

Eric Lee, the lawyer, said he had been waiting for his client in the visitation area of the family detention center in Dilley, Tex., when detention officials abruptly asked him to leave. Once outside, he peered through a chain-link fence and saw hundreds of women and children walking out of the facility and chanting in protest.

Lee said his client later told him on the phone that he and other detainees were outraged over the latest killing in Minneapolis and the detention of Liam Conejo Ramos, the 5-year-old boy from Ecuador detained with his father in Minneapolis and sent to Texas.
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Free DC @freedcproject.bsky.social · 25/01/2026
HAPPENING NOW: A massive crowd is gathered in freezing temperatures outside ICE headquarters in DC to demand ICE OUT OF ALL COMMUNITIES NOW.
An office building lit up in the dark with a crowd of people holding signs in front of it.
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Jeff Rueter @jeffrueter.bsky.social · 25/01/2026
Kare 11 local news just read, in full, this statement from Michael and Susan Pretti, the parents of Alex Pretti. "Please get the truth out about our son."
Statement from Michael and Susan Pretti
Parents of Alex Jeffrey Pretti

“We are heartbroken but also very angry.

Alex was a kindhearted soul who cared deeply for his family and friends and also the American veterans whom he cared for as an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital. Alex wanted to make a difference in this world. Unfortunately, he will not be with us to see his impact.

I do not throw around the ‘hero’ term lightly. However, his last thought and act was to protect a woman. The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting. Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump’s murdering and cowardly ICE thugs. He had his phone in his right hand and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down, all while being pepper sprayed. 

Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man. Thank you.
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Scott Ross, animate candy corn @skort.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
It strikes me that at least some of the asylum parolees ICE is targeting to detain in northern cities and shipping to Texas detention centers may themselves have been bussed out of Texas border facilities to DC, NYC, and other cities beginning in 2022. Just a horrific cycle of state trafficking.
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Scott Ross, animate candy corn @skort.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
“You can only preach against ICE for so long before God calls you to get out of the pulpit and get to the streets.” Hundreds of clergy from across the country mobilized in Minneapolis—and will be taking lessons learned back with them: religionnews.com/2026/01/22/h...
religionnews.com
Hundreds of clergy descend on Minneapolis and go on lookout for ICE
MINNEAPOLIS (RNS) — The faith leaders, who hail from across the country and represent a range of religious traditions, deployed to neighborhoods with significant immigrant populations, where DHS agent...
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Scott Ross, animate candy corn @skort.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
Really great interview with Robin D.G. Kelley on state violence, popular resistance to it, the reformist distraction, and the abolitionist imperative, in @bostonreview.bsky.social : www.bostonreview.net/articles/ren...
bostonreview.net
Renee Good's Murder and Other Acts of Terror
An interview with Robin D. G. Kelley on how to think about ICE—and the broader history of police violence.
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Scott Ross, animate candy corn @skort.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
"ICE Watch works because it surrounds men seeking approval with people loudly expressing their disapproval. And the noise has the added benefit of drawing large crowds of bystanders who can quickly outnumber the ICE agents." www.ms.now/opinion/minn...
ms.now
Opinion | I'm a Minneapolis sociologist who studies violence. Here's how ICE observers are helping.
Research into how violence occurs shows that disapproval from the people around you can help reduce it.
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Scott Ross, animate candy corn @skort.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
The community warning, defense, and mutual aid we're seeing in Minneapolis is the product of years of responding to state violence. Amazing essay from @nplusonemag.com : www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/...
You can’t walk for ten minutes in my neighborhood without seeing them: boxy SUVs, mostly domestic-made, with tinted windows and out-of-state plates. Two men riding in front, dressed in tactical gear. Following behind is a train of three or four cars, honking. Sometimes there are bikers, too, blowing on neon-colored plastic whistles that local businesses give out for free. Every street corner has patrollers on foot, yelling and filming when a convoy rolls by.

If the ICE vehicles pull over, people flood the street. Crowds materialize seemingly out of nowhere. The honking and whistling amps up, becoming an unignorable wail, and more people stream out of their houses and businesses. When agents leave their cars they’re met with jeers, mostly variations on “Fuck you.” Usually someone starts throwing snowballs. Agents pull out pepper spray guns, threatening protesters who get too close. If there’s enough of a crowd, they use tear gas.Well before Kristi Noem announced DHS operations in Minnesota, the neighborhood got ready. It started with rapid response preparation in the park’s recreation center and legal observer trainings at a church. Then it was block-by-block meetings. Small networks that formed in 2020 were reactivated to distribute 3D-printed whistles and practice scenarios for confronting agents. When ICE deployed in December, Signal threads for local alerts quickly surpassed the thousand-user limit, and an extensive mutual aid ecosystem of grocery runs and rideshares emerged overnight. After Good’s murder and Noem’s announcement that the number of ICE agents in Minnesota would triple, everyone I know cancelled their social plans. Lots of people called off work.

What we’re doing now is this: The trainings have evolved into street medic workshops on protecting yourself from chemical weapons and lessons on digital security; there’s a meet-up to sew reinforced umbrellas as shields from mace and a collection spot for barricade materials. And this is what it’s like: Sometimes you’re chasing ICE off your street, maybe you’re buying groceries for a family, but a lot of the time you’re on your phone. Behind every actionable piece of organizing are hours spent coordinating in Signal threads, calling to check up on someone, scrolling live feeds. At night, over dinner, it’s all anyone can talk about. Did you hear? Did you see that post? Did you read in the thread?
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Scott Ross, animate candy corn @skort.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
In solidarity with the statewide shutdown in Minnesota protesting ICE/CBP, I'm sharing some of the most insightful reads about the powerful, beautiful community response there - these pieces should inspire similar collective action everywhere. please link to others.
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Scott Ross, animate candy corn @skort.bsky.social · 22/01/2026
The horrors of ICE/CBP violence are very real - but the scale, organizing, beauty, and bravery of community defense and resistance are too.
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Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · 21/01/2026
If you have read even a single history of fascism, you are already aware that one thing that its rise has in common in every case is an opposition party that refuses to intervene for fear of looking weak or putting the left into power
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Victor Ray @victorerikray.bsky.social · 16/01/2026
They didn’t want a university without cancel culture. They didn’t want to be criticized for their retrograde views so they created a pretend school funding by their rich friends. The only people surprised that this failed were credulous enough to believe the fairy tales these folks told.
politico.com
They Wanted a University Without Cancel Culture. Then Dissenters Were Ousted.
Inside the civil war at the anti-woke university backed by Bari Weiss.
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St. Louis Public Radio @stlpublicradio.bsky.social · 16/01/2026
St. Louis University will now cover the tuition for incoming freshmen whose families earn no more than $60,000 per year and have assets of $50,000 or less.
stlpr.org
St. Louis University offers free tuition to incoming freshmen from low-income households
St. Louis University is offering free tuition for low-income students starting this fall.
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
The scale and speed of state censorship of campus really is amazing. More than half of America's college students attend institutions in states that have passed laws censoring higher education since 2021. From @penamerica.bsky.social pen.org/report/ameri...
Map of state higher ed restrictions
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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 16/01/2026
cold-blooded murder by the state.
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Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
Remember when everyone was concerned about DOGE sharing data between government agencies last year? This app for ICE is built on HHS data.
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ohhleary @ohhleary.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
A reminder that Lewiston, Maine was recently on a list of the ten safest cities in the U.S.
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Scott Ross, animate candy corn @skort.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
How to replicate that and whether that is even desired by rising generation of anthros are two diff questions. The entire social media landscape is just so different now in terms of mood, what one does on it, kinds of engagement imo
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Scott Ross, animate candy corn @skort.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
This is a great back and forth and gets at many of our tensions at SCA - not just about meeting people where they're at (e.g. tiktok, insta). Twitter had a sort of critical mass that then drew people in (many joined Twitter *to join* academic convos).
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Scott Ross, animate candy corn @skort.bsky.social · 12/01/2026
"How does it feel to learn through a genocide? How does one teach on the same campus where student protest is forcibly quelled?" Eager to dive into this experimental dialogue in @amanthro.bsky.social on pedagogy and praxis from the grounds of the Gaza encampments: doi.org/10.1111/aman...
"From Intimacies of Trauma to Intimacies of Struggle: Gaza Solidarity Encampments as Sites of Black Feminist Praxis" by Savannah Shange and Island Gutierrez

How does it feel to learn through a genocide? How does one teach on the same campus where student protest is forcibly quelled? In this experimental dialogue between an undergraduate student and a faculty member, we answer these questions in a Black feminist call and response rooted in an ethics of mutuality and care. Drawing on Gutierrez's lived experience in a Gaza solidarity encampment collective, we conceive of encampments as antibodies—an adaptive response to the settler sickness of war and genocide. Thinking alongside Dána-Ain Davis, Christina Sharpe, and Tiffany Lethabo King, we argue that intimate pedagogical and political engagement across diasporas produces a necessary pathway to praxis that can disrupt the normativity of both anti-Blackness and Zionism.
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Bill Corbett @billcorbett.bsky.social · 22/12/2025
It’s great that 60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi is coming right out swinging. Not having a second of this bullshit! I think coddled hacks like Bari Weiss have no idea what to do with righteous fury like this except, if anything, somehow play victim. Let’s see!
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Mary Anne Franks @maryannefranks.bsky.social · 22/12/2025
CECOT segment correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi: Bari Weiss giving the government a "kill switch" for stories they don't like transforms 60 Minutes from an "investigative powerhouse to a stenographer for the state." www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...
washingtonpost.com
‘60 Minutes’ correspondent says CBS’s Bari Weiss abruptly pulled segment on Trump deportations
CBS News postponed a ‘60 Minutes’ segment about El Salvador’s CECOT prison one day before it was set to air because the Trump administration declined to participate.
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Scott Ross, animate candy corn @skort.bsky.social · 19/12/2025
"As of December 19, the known death toll from 28 lethal U.S. strikes on civilian vessels [in the Caribbean] is 104." www.wola.org/analysis/fac...
wola.org
Facts to Inform the Debate about the U.S. Government’s Anti-Drug Offensive in the Americas - WOLA
Fact sheet: U.S. military anti-drug strikes have killed at least 104 civilians in the Caribbean. Examines the operations' legal basis, justifications, and effectiveness.
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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 18/12/2025
look, evil aside: his rhetorical strategies seem to hinge on hoping no one compares numbers at the gas station, confuses "TrumpRx.gov" with affordable coverage of their dialysis, or has ever been to Minnesota. if you ask me Trump is moving like a cooked guy moves
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Scott Ross, animate candy corn @skort.bsky.social · 09/12/2025
Horror of horrors, this is absolute evil.
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Stacy Mitchell @stacyfmitchell.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
1. Amazon has become a major force in how cities, counties & schools buy basic supplies. Our new report finds Amazon is using opaque pricing algorithms to drive up costs and eliminate transparency—while harming competition by pushing out better-performing independent suppliers.
ilsr.org
Turning Public Money into Amazon’s Profits | Independent Business
Amazon has quietly captured a growing share of government purchasing. This major report explains how, and what to do about it.
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Julia Carrie Wong @joolia.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
it's not lowering the bar when you do it for men, it's actually a really important step toward addressing the male loneliness crisis
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Scott Ross, animate candy corn @skort.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
Powerful piece about WashU international student frustrations with the university's lack of support in a time of immense uncertainty and potential danger: www.studlife.com/news/2025/12...
studlife.com
Graduate students call on WashU to expand support for immigrant students - Student Life
In the fall of 2024, Qimeng Duan, a third-year anthropology Ph.D. student, unknowingly reversed into a gate at an autoshop. As an international student, Duan was unfamiliar with U.S. reporting require...
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Scott Ross, animate candy corn @skort.bsky.social · 02/12/2025
This article explores the violent and repressive environment at post-encampment UCLA, but a variation of this applies at many university campuses now: jewishcurrents.org/portrait-of-...
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Scott Ross, animate candy corn @skort.bsky.social · 02/12/2025
A new pattern has emerged out of the repression of pro-Palestinian protests: "the Zionist provocateur spoiling for a fight, the police gunning for pro-Palestine students, a protester taken to the ER, and the university adopting wholesale the narrative spun by pro-Israel actors."
Jewish Currents article, "Portrait of a Campus in Crisis"

UCLA capitulated to its own hardline pro-Israel activists long before Trump came calling. As a result, it's students hand repeatedly become targets of vigilante and police violence
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