I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
i heard that - i'm contacting your employer, mr atrios,
and getting you fired (/steno)
I think that at least some portion of the readership is leaving in protest because the unsigned editorials often seem like they could have been written for the Washington Times or the WSJ. I read the paper online because it's my hometown, but feel no compulsion to put one penny into their coffers since they took a hard right.
Have things always been this Corrupt in America? Or has it just gotten lots worse?
If only Kaplan could train newspaper readers.
Kaplan can probably train them to be housebroken, using their flagship daily paper on the floor.
Well at least they had a good editorial today on Prisoner Abuse and its being whitewashed.
But Steno sue still draws a paycheck...
re the Kaplan connection: wow, doesn't that suddenly make it all clear.
ding ding ding fucking ding.
What's with the little free WaPo that they hand out near all the metro stations? I must be missing some bit of advertising genius, because I can't figure out how that doesn't hurt their sales.
The WaPo has a terrible editorial voice, no really exciting reporters, a limpid metro section, and for the past few years the worts restaurant reviewer in the world. And movie reviewers who just don't get scifi or fantasy, but who go ahead and review it anyway.
wow, and here I am jealous that readers in D.C. have a decent paper available for home delivery. Try living in NYC.
~sigh~
worts=worst
Need coffee.
I'm confused, I admit. The Kaplan connection makes nothing clear to me. 1) Kaplan doesn't make the tests (that's ETS in New Jersy). 2) so the fuck what? 3) Of course Kaplan makes more money--they serve a purpose, unlike the Post. 4) Is the resentment here because everybody bombed on their SAT or something? I just fail to see the test prep connection. I must be dense.
And, clearly, to cut costs, the WaPo is now just using whatever picture the NYT pastes on its front. Wasn't that weird this morning?
Hecate, does the worts restaurant reviewer specialize in brewpubs? [/rimshot]
Kaplan, by prepping students for standardized testing, plays into the current academic fad of "accountability". Essentially, it's a way of deflecting the energy of teachers away from teaching and toward the test--if your kids don't pass, you as a teacher have failed. It's a way of weakening teacher's unions and controlling innovation in the classroom.
I taught high school for a while and was responsible for getting an entire class of 11th graders through their standardized state testing in my subject area. 98% passed, though primarily it was because I stopped teaching in April and we did nothing but The Test for the last two months.
GWB, as part of his "no child left behind" plan, advocated testing every child, every year. Good business for a company like Kaplan, who got in on the ground floor of the testing game, primarily with SAT prep.
For what it's worth, they're now attempting to push this process into colleges: in New York, we have a new thing "outcomes assessment"--a mandate from the (Rethug-controlled) board of Regents which advocates standardized testing at the college level. I wonder how much of this is pushed by private companies like Kaplan, which, so far, have only managed to crack the post-secondary market with the standardized tests, like the MCATs and the LSATs. Imagine the new markets....
Did anyone else notice that the Dow fell below the 10,000 threshold yesterday?
Have you seen my Bush Boom?
kaplan makes no child left behind type accountability tests for schoolkids. and prep materials for them.
ot/ has anyone heard about richard shelby. msnbc reports that hes under inv. for leaking 911 docs. or something. was half asleep, did not catch what thay said.cant find anything on the net.
"Have things always been this Corrupt in America? Or has it just gotten lots worse?"
I woke up this a.m. with the same thought. The fact that Dennis Miller can sit on his podium day after day and make fun of Edwards and Kerry... He's not worthy of wiping their brows, and he knows it, and everyone knows it. And yet he sits there spewing shit, because he knows he can get away with it, that all the bullies are on his side.
Have "we" all internalized the rules so thoroughly that this has been allowed to happen?
Christ.
No wonder we love Moore.
What I find most unforgiveable in the WPost empire is Newsweek. As Robin Williams said in Dead Poets Society: Excrement.
OTOH, my appreciation (tempered by steno sue and a few others) of the Post has grown enormously over the past year, almost to the same degree that my appreciation of the NYtimes has fallen in the same period.
Kaplan does test prep, but do they prep for the No Child Left Behind stuff? I used to teach for them, SAT, GRE, LSAT stuff, and I don't remember them offering anything below the SAT level stuff - no Standards of Learning or anything (VA's state testing acronym is indeed SOL). Has this changed?
Sylvan Learning centers would cover that stuff maybe, but Kaplan?
The fact that Dennis Miller can sit on his podium day after day and make fun of Edwards and Kerry... He's not worthy of wiping their brows, and he knows it, and everyone knows it. And yet he sits there spewing shit, because he knows he can get away with it, that all the bullies are on his side.
but they're paid to be on his side, remember.
Someone should do studies and see if papers which become part of larger corporations ever keep their journalistic souls. I can't think of one which has, can anyone else?
Educational testing like all "intellegence" testing should have only one purpose, to help people find their weak points IN ORDER TO FIX THEM. Let's repeat the most important part of that IN ORDER TO FIX THEM. Anything else turns into a method of class oppression.
Standardized testing should only be done on children after it is done in the food supply and consumer products.
Course, the conservatives see our children as consumer products to begin with. That or market.
jenniebee, see this on the kaplan site:
Proven Methods for Measurable Gains
Kaplan K12 Learning Services offers effective, research-based programs to help schools raise K-12 state assessment scores, improve graduation rates and demonstrate the adequate yearly progress required by No Child Left Behind.
Someone asked about Richard Shelby. The guy who wanted anybody who leaked anything locked up?
Dennis Miller will find out the value of his switch to the dark side when his contract option comes up...
Then its buh-bye!
His rating is 0.1 for christ sakes.
Far more people read this blog than watch that smarmy asshole.
Do CNBC and MSNBC make money?
Dennis Miller will find out the value of his switch to the dark side when his contract option comes up...
Sorry forgot to add the "Chachi!" at the end of the last post.
Bauer-When I was in the Peace Corps we used to receive free Newsweeks. I ate them up because I was starved for reading material in English, but I noticed that it was mostly marketing disguised as news. Its articles kept taking Indians to task for their challenging a sweet heart deal their government struck up with a wonderful company called Enron.
they don't do external test prep classes -- they provide prep materials to schools.
If this every child, every year testing thing ever gets off the ground, you can bet Kaplan will be on it. Sylvan advertises to the younger set, but imagine how many more customers would be available (My child is getting a 70 in social studies! How will he ever pass the test? He needs help!)
The problem here is the idea that all children learn the same way, all teachers teach the same way, and the tests should know that. A recent CNN story called this scientifically based education, and it's not too hard to see how this could result in a gradual privatizing of education--a huge can of worms.
-a mandate from the (Rethug-controlled) board of Regents which advocates standardized testing at the college level. I wonder how much of this is pushed by private companies like Kaplan
I imagine about 110% of it.
The problem starts with the owner, Donald Graham, who is a Pataki-style GOPer. He has turned the Post away from investigative journalism to one which eagerly repeats the spin of the Georgetown cocktail circuit.
In turn, the Post probably has among the least talented and most lazy editorial staff in the business.
Is the Guardian UK still planning on doing an American paper? ... or was it a weekly...
When georgie loses in November, there goes *NO Child Left Behind* and Rod Paige who imagines terrorists in the classroon.
Too bad.
Is the Guardian UK still planning on doing an American paper? ... or was it a weekly...
It was to have been a weekly or maybe monthly magazine, but the plans have been canceled.
My sister's an education reporter for the Post and does lots of tough stuff on the school "accountability" movement. If the Washington Post Co. is protecting Kaplan's interests, the conspiracy hasn't made it to her desk.
Could it be that WaPo's readership is down because its market in the metro DC area is now heavily populated by R's, who read the Moonie Times instead?
If, like CNN and others, they try to remedy this situation by trying to compete for the shrinking right wing conservative market, it won't get them anywhere. Why the media ignores the lucrative and underserved center to left market is beyond me.
Once Kerry is in the WH, they should see demand pick up again.
Rick,
It's a good question, to which I don't have much of an answer. It's a huge issue in education, obviously. How much editorial pressure do you think she's getting one way or another?
Once Again, those pesky little facts get in the way of an otherwise wonderfully deluionary liberal rant.
"President Clinton's national security adviser, Samuel R. Berger, rejected four plans to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, worrying once that if the plans failed and al Qaeda launched a counterattack, "we're blamed."
OK - Now which Administration ran the country with nightly polls?
LOOOOSERSS!
And Berger (hmmm....Berger and Ketchup. Nice!) was outed by one of Clintoon's cronies. How violently incestuous!
David: National Review is insinuating that the whole hoopla about who leaked this to the AP reporter could be settled by posing the question to Mr. Davis. They've suggested that since he cites the same reporter in his book and his articles about public relations . . .
Davis: (laughter)
Chavez: I think we're getting a response, David.
David: . . . that he may be the one that may have leaked this, since this is his favorite reporter.
Chavez: . . . Lanny Davis, did you leak this?
Davis: Well first off, thank you caller for asking me that. I've heard about that. The caller is absolutely correct; I wrote a chapter in my book about one of the great reporters who covered the White House, John Solomon of the Associated Press. I always get him into trouble by saying he's a great reporter, because people think he treated us with a soft touch. In fact [he] killed us almost all the time. But I'm afraid that if I asked John Solomon "Who leaked it to you?" he would give me the same answer that he's always given me when I ask that question, which is, "None of your business."
Chavez: Well, OK, Lanny, but David was asking you; he wasn't asking John Solomon: Did you leak this information to John Solomon in order to get the bad news out first?
Davis: Oh, did I? (laughter) Well, let me put it this way: Had I been asked last October by my old friend Sandy Berger, who is a great man, an honest man, and has done something that he sincerely regrets--I would have suggested to Sandy that we call John Solomon and that he sit down with John Solomon and tell him the whole story and get the story out last October. Because sure as the sun rises in the east, Linda, there were enough people who knew about this that this particular week out of 52 weeks in 2004 is not surprising as the week that somebody chose to leak the story.
Rick, from my experience in the news business I doubt the managers of a paper like the Post would ever think of meddling with the work of an individual reporter, nor give editorial direction to senior editors. I could be wrong but I just doubt this is a Fox kind of situation. (I also don't go along with the blanket Post-bashing we sometimes see, and I'm sorry if my post up top suggests otherwise -- there continue to be some fine reporters there, and others who aren't so good, same as with most any news organization. Why certain stories seem to get buried is a bit puzzling sometimes, though. OK, more than sometimes.)
Where I do see signs of "conspiracy" is in the house editorials, which do tend to support the Bush administration, often making arguments at odds with the facts reported in the Post's own news pages. The house editorials ultimately are controlled by the publisher/corporate ownership, which in acting in shareholders' fiduciary interests might be inclined not to bite the hand that feeds them big time. I don't think that's too much of a stretch.
Thi is why Freedom of the PRess is wrong.
without it, we could mandate that all newspapers be owned independant companies, and can not become aquired by any corporation from any business.
They don't have Freedom of the Press in the vast majority of democracies on this planet, at least not as we understand it. And they all work just fine. We don't, and some of you still defend this elitist clause of our constitution.
you only need freedom of Speech, the rest of it is just the right to lie, slander and make shit up.
Jaffe does not know how to read a SEC 10Q filing.
http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/brows...&
CIK=0000104889
It is true that most of the Washington Post Corp. revenue comes from Kaplan, it does not follow that their profits come from Kaplan. So far as I am aware Kaplan has had exactly one profitable quarter since 1985.
The Washington Post is pouring money into Kaplan and bleeding its profitiable media properties to pay for the expansion. That is why they are so desparate to bust their Washington Post Unions. Because they need ever more money to pour into the Kaplan money pit.
As I understand their SEC filings, the Washington Post remains their most profitable property with their Florida and Texas TV stations second.
I invite others to study the 10Q filings.
Forget training their readers; it's their reporters and editors who need training. WaPo gets an A+ for Stenography as taught by Rove and F's for Critical Thinking and Good Citizenship.
People have a misimpression that the Post is a liberal paper because it took the lead on Watergate. In truth, unlike the NYT, its a moderately conservative paper, exs. less taxes, anti-government, critical of regulations, pro hard line foreign policy, anti universal healthcare, never advocated for the safety net.
They heavily tilted against Gore in the last election & have a number of reporters who almost never give liberal officials a break. For a good indication of their stance, look at their selected bevy of op ed columnists (a good way to determine which way they tilt). They have so many wackos its unbelievable.
It is pro choice, environment & fiscal responsibility but this is not much, given the full array of policy issues in need of address. When the Guardian, UK was contemplating coming to the US, I wrote them recommending they become a Washington based daily. Given that the readership of the Post is decidedly liberal & repulsed by their editorials, I figure the Guardian had a good chance of knocking out the WP.
Could it be that WaPo's readership is down because its market in the metro DC area is now heavily populated by R's, who read the Moonie Times instead?
Greater Washington is one of the most Democratic areas in the country, DC and all the surrounding municpalitites are goverened by Democrats.
I cannot believe that Graham would ever be as crude as Murdoch in sending out memos. More like a grey emininece, making it clear by who is promoted and who is laid off, what sort of stories he considers "newsworthy".
ALL the papers have these connections, that's why this "let's just create a counter-wieght in the press" idea won't work. They aren't just pulled to the right by Fox and the Wall Street Journal, they are skipping merrily to the right on their own free will.
In addition to firing Steno Sue and Ceci Connolly, they also need to drop Novak, and have Mike Allen and Dana Priest report everything they know about the betrayal of the CIA Case officer. The CIA is in their home delivery market for God sakes!
on education.... I remember stumbling upon some information regarding "obedience" schools in the poorer black southern towns, that were enrolling the black kids in military like elementary and secondary schools and the parents were/are forever grateful...like they are specially privileged for being selected.
Does anyone have any information about these schools and who is funding them,and what is happening to these children as they are processing through them? Are they privately owned or owned by the state or feds? And are our tax dollars training potentially conditioned poor kids to fight (who?)in whose armies?
I will try to google it and see what I can find, but this conversation just reminded me that there are some strange things going on here in America that are not in the mainstream view but may be effectively using tax dollars in partisan ways.
we are not supposing to be grooming children for a war footing in a future made up by intentional folks with reconstruction in mind. or do we do that now too?
Why are the wingers still running against Clinton? Are they so desperate? Every time I mention Bush to my father in law he rants about Clinton. I tell him, so what? Clinton's not the president and his imaginary crimes do not excuse Bush's real ones.
Did anyone else notice that the Dow fell below the 10,000 threshold yesterday?
Yes.
they can't keep their circulation up? despite the high penetration?
sounds like they could use Cialis.
And what about the NYT, which I cannot believe is adding readers. Job one for the NYT would be to stop giving premium front page space to such stories as Bush's preposterous, tone-in-cheek appeal to Urban League to abandon Democratic Party.
Wapoo
still living on its Watergate reputation and recycling loser reporters
I am embarrassed for them
"Scientific" education, eh? Sounds like they're drawing their "science" from Frederick Winslow Taylor.
I thought we'd discredited this stuff by now, but my Google search results indicate otherwise. "Early century management consultant"?!?! Sheeee...
Kaplan and ETS and the like are parasites feeding off a dysfunctional US educational system. I never had to write a standardised exam to get into university, but then again, I live in Canada, where we have overarching curriculum guidelines (written by some of my teachers, even). Remember, regulation is always bad...unless it makes corporations a lot of money.
If Nixon were President today, Woodward and Bernstein would have been packed off to reporting city council meetings for a suburban section of WaPo long before they would have met Deep Throat.
My letter to Jaffe:
Dear Mr. Jaffe,
May I posit that the reason the Washington Post has declining circulation is because of their viciously unbalanced editorial page and their even more vicious lying liars who act as "reporters". Perhaps you might have asked Downie about serving as stenographer to Torquemada Starr and his minions or propping up an unelected fraud of a pResident or beating the drums for an immoral war.
How about because Steno Sue Shmidt, Cece "Foxsnooze" Connelly, that walking and talking conflict of interest Ho Kurtz and Sally "homewrecker" Quinn are corrupt GOP hacks? Are you familiar with how Steno Sue tried to get readers of a progressive Web site (MWO - now defunct) fired from their jobs for writing letters critical of her sloppy "journalism'? Downie thought that was fine and dandy. Steno Sue still has her job but her critics almost lost theirs. Ah, the first amendment at work. She's at it again, most recently, confusing Iran and Iraq in her latest propagandistic diatribe, still taking sloppy stenography from right wingnut mouthpieces. Of course Connelly lied repeatedly and with impunity about Al Gore, Kurtz trashes Dems and props up his GOP consultant wife constantly and Quinn, who had the nerve to reflect on the Clinton's morality after she slept her way to the top, trashing Bradlee's other marriage and reinventing herself in the process as the hostess with the mostest. Remember when she said of the Clintons, "they came to town and trashed the place." She is and will never be the arbiter of anything except her own elite echo chamber.
I am an avid newspaper reader and would never soil my fingers on that yellow rag, not even good enough for wrapping fish. The Whore Post is a smelly toilet and Downie is its inept attendant. Just once I'd like him to be forced to defend the actions and tactics of his star "reporters." The reason circulation's declining is because they're a rotten paper, filled with lies in the same league as that Moonie rag, the Washington Times. If you ever get a chance to get spun by Downie again, maybe should ask him about Steno Sue and company. Discredited, unfair and filled with conventional regurgitated opinion, ignorant of facts, peopled with crappy prevaricating columnists like Cohen and Krauthammer, nothing would make me happier than seeing that birdcage liner go under and the whole lot of them joining the unemployment lines that have grown so long.
Maybe if they hadn't beaten the drums for a coup d'etat against President Clinton (our last elected president) or for a war predicated on lies and deceit (I guess lying about a blow job is infinitely more serious than lying about war and peace), than they might have some credibility. Like Smirk, they're totally discredited and the highly overrated Ms. Graham is spinning in her grave. Ten years of lies, stenography and right wingnuttery have cost them. That's the reason circulation is declining and
and the rest:
That's the reason circulation is declining and rightfully so. The corporate media is nothing but a handmaiden to power and the Whore Post is about as corporate as they come.
Tell Downie to stop printing lies! For a real take on why the Post is going down, may I direct you to my play "Media Whores" (I'm a playwright) and perhaps you might direct Downie to it as well. You can read it online here: http://dumbya.blogspot.com/ . A sinking ship can't be righted with corporate tools behind the wheel.
Hi, I am a regular poster here, but posting anonymously today.
I work at Kaplan at a low level job. I can tell you that this statement is dead wrong.
>>>Kaplan likey the Bush administration.
man what is up with the comments today? Here's the rest of my comment.
From what I can tell of the executives of Kaplan, most are Democrats. Some with ties to the party. If I ever get invited to the White House, it will be during a Kerry Administration and it will be from the personal connections of someone who worked down the hall from me.
Kaplan did a mentoring guide a few years back. Hillary Clinton introduced it at the White House.
Did anyone else notice that the Dow fell below the 10,000 threshold yesterday?
Holden
You mean the Dow that was at 11,500 when Bush took office?
Sorry, make that 11,000.
Annual rate on return of Dow during Bush years: minus 2.4 percent.
Remind me why business likes Bush again?
Oh, and I read that the unemployment in Iraq is now at 70%.
I'd imagine people switching to online reading have a lot to do with the decline. My parents dropped their subscription forever ago in favor of net-only reading.
On another note, the Post has possibly the worst movie reviewers of any publication today. They come up with the stupidest goddamn excuses for hating movies. (Bourne Supremacy: 'he spends a lot of time traveling! Who would possibly want to watch a movie in which several different international locations are visited by the main character?!' No, seriously.) Also, they're obsessed with moaning 'what does it mean' (when they're really in high dudgeon, they'll work themselves all the way up to 'raison d'etre').
They're actually so awful, it's sort of worth reading them, because the more they hate a movie and the more idiotic their reasons for hating it, the better it'll be.
I've worked for Kaplan for 5 years, and the traditional test prep (SAT/MCAT/GRE, etc.), online law school/college, and professional services (tax, securities, real estate exam prep) divisions all make a ton of money. Most of the cash goes into acquisitions.
And yes, I'm sure our company lobbied Congress to get NCLB passed, but so did every other test prep provider. NCLB under Kerry would be even better, because then school districts might actually HAVE THE MONEY TO PAY THEIR INVOICES.
Dennis Miller. Hmmm. Well, here's my stream-of-unconsiousness post for the year. I actually had a dream last night that involved Miller. I was on a talk show (set, oddly enough, in the middle of a Sam's Club, near the tires section... go figure), and the host and I were discussing how many times Miller uses some reference to white bread in his material. Anyway, it comes up that Miller only eats white bread, and the host wonders if that's because he was raised in Kentucky. Hey, I say, I was raised in Kentucky, and we always ate different varieties of bread! But predominantly white bread. About then Miller comes on for his spot on the show, and he's hawking some war dramatization flick that he's been involved with. They show clips of it, mainly showing Arab-looking guys getting cut in half with large-caliber automatic gunfire. I never get to ask Miller if he grew up in Kentucky, but I do get introduced to his beautiful sister, who was raised in Spain. She tells me stories of sweeping the steps in her apartment building, just as the sunlight filters through the window just so. Then, for some reason, I'm looking for a brewpub, when I run into some ex-cow-orkers, one of whom happens to be Allison Janney. Allison asks me if I just tried to call her, and a respond in the negative, but fish out my cell phone to see if I've somehow managed to unlock the phone in transit. One of my other ex-cow-orkers takes the phone from me, opens it up, and pulls its SIM card out. I protest; it seems the ex-cow-orker is under the impression that I've made off with a company phone. Still, they escape with my phone, dammit.
Okay, I don't know what the point of that was. I just thought I should tell somebody before I forgot. 
.
Did anyone else notice that the Dow fell below the 10,000 threshold yesterday?
Have you seen my Bush Boom?
Incredible as it seems, I did hear this (BBC). Which Bush tool (heh!) was it that said that the stock market was the indictor of how well the economy would be doing?
My officemate's spouse works for Kaplan since being laid off from her previous job due to Shit Romney's fiscal gutting of higher ed. She has nothing nice to say about Kaplan as an employer. Nothing. Pay is execrable, treatment of employees sucks, etc.
That said, I don't know if that can be generalized to all franchises (or whatever they are). The anonymous blogger upthread may have a very different experience.
I'm going to law school for free, and kaplan helped me do it. Kaplan's course turned a 165 into a 175, with all the improvement in the games section. Their lsat course %*#@! works. It feels a little bit like buying a better test score.
I recently got a call from the Post, wanted me to take home delivery all week.
I told them I had it at work, so no thanks. The guy replied "We'll give it to you for free then, we need to keep circulation up..." So now its delivered for free every day.
Dear randolph the red,
Hi! Thanks for your comment! Our Dad was on the front page of this morning's Post, not-smiling at Jesse Jackson! Did you see that? You can see that our Dad is a very nice man and would make a very nice dictator, er, deserter, er what-ev-er. If you vote for our Dad, you'll get lots more nice pictures of him not-smiling at black people! Except Robert Marley; our Mom really likes to listen to her LPs of Robert Marley while she doesn't smoke nad doesn't drink locked up all day inside the White House. And Robert Marley is, like, totally a black person. So, thanks for your comment and you should totally vote for our Dad.
As KTPA points out the bulk of Kaplan's money is made outside of their pre-college and grad test prep.
KTPA, do you know the guy with the Kerry connections I spoke about?
If you are ever taking the LSAT prepping for it is a good idea, since the test is so bizarre, just getting fmailiar with it should add some points.
The Washington Post's reputation
Is staked on the administration;
As George goes downhill
So will his main shill,
While newspapers gain circulation.
The Washington Post's reputation
Is staked on the administration;
As George goes downhill
So will his main shill,
While newspapers gain circulation.
My observations as a former employee:
- Kaplan's courses do work. They're relentless about keeping up with new test developments. And they are constantly buying other test-prep companies covering all kinds of exams (e.g., CPA and other professional licensing tests).
- Kaplan courses costs big $$$, yet they pay their employees peanuts. And while there are some nice folks there, there are also some jerks, and the whole place is run with a penny-pinching ethic. It really is about milking every cent out of their operations to increase shareholder profits (a senior VP said this explicitly in an employee meeting).
- Given Kaplan's dominance in the WaPo Company, I would treat any of the paper's (or Newsweek's) reporting on educational matters as highly suspect.
Dear 56k,
Education was the only division of WPO to lose money in 2003, made a modest profit in 2002, and lost money in 2003. But revenue in this area increased about 26% from '02 to '03 and is up over 40% from '01.
Television seems to be the most profitable division.
testing
I work for Kaplan in their sales department. I have to say that this is the most ethical, impressive company I have ever worked for. Whatother company gives such quality customer service and makes the rules and stipulations so clear. What other company has such a all encompassing guarantee policy? People will always look around to find fault in something else. Focus your anger on wall street instead.
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