Public Service Technologist. Open Educator. #clonmeldigital Audioblog: https://t.co/hW32KTJhph Txt: +353861743369 https://t.co/rHzG36WDPi
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Continue to be impressed by @otter_ai

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TG 530 memory mic

I KNOW IT'S important to offer more than one way of consuming educational material and that's why I'm trying to perfect a workflow that ensures I've a quick-hitting text version of my course materials.

t-bone

I've discovered it's important to use a good microphone if I want to ensure better than 80% accuracy when getting a transcript from my spoken content. While a studio mic works well, it's also handy to record on the fly in the classroom and that's where the Sennheiser Memory Mic performs brilliantly.

I made a Topgold Audio Clip to show how this process works in real time. I think I need to make a video tutorial of the same process because I know several colleagues who would like to see how my workflow might complement theirs. My workflow succeeds when it integrates with my mobile desk.

Working tray table on Irish Rail

This entire process is grounded in my belief that I need to offer four lanes leading into my educational material. Lane One is text.

Business End of the Sennheiser Memory Mic

To get the text from the clip in this blog post, I started with a Sennheiser Wireless memory mic clipped to the collar of my shirt. I recorded the clip in a garage filled with echoes.

The Memory Mic can produce content for Lane One (text from the speech) and Lane Two (audio for podcast consumption). For the record, lane three is rewound video and lane four is live video.

If you tap into the audio recording and it sounds legible, it means both Lane One and Lane Two of my production have worked out. If you want to see what the uncorrected transcipt for Lane One looks like, you need to tap into the info section of the audio clip where you'll see the transcipt is better than 90% correct.

My goal is to extract my audio podcast material from my video recordings and the to create a separate five minute teaser with the Sennheiser Memory Mic. If you want to see how this unfolds during our upcoming fall semester of blended learning, feel free to subscribe to my Topgold Audio Clips or to follow my Inside View blog.

[Bernie Goldbach teaches creative media for business on the Clonmel Digital Campus of the Limerik Institute of Technology. He has been using Otter.ai for free for nearly a year.]

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topgold
1579 days ago
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Learned while trying to increase the flow of content into four separate lanes of blended education.
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15,000+ academics oppose international student ban

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Earlier this week, the US government announced a new policy that would prevent international students from staying in the country if their universities offered entirely online courses. This policy was designed to force universities to reopen, even if doing so is unsafe and against public health advice. Harvard and MIT have already sued to prevent the policy taking effect and other universities have condemned the policy.

Sociologist Heba Gowayed organized the below open letter for faculty to express their opposition to this cruel policy. More than 15,000 academics have signed the letter so far. You can sign the letter here and view the list of signatories here. Another petition (for anyone, not just faculty) has garnered almost 200,000 signatures and can be signed here.

Open Letter Against the Student Ban

We, faculty at institutions across the United States, condemn the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) decision, announced Monday July 6th, that stipulates that International Students with F-1 and M-1 visas, “attending schools operating entirely online may not take a full online course load and remain in the United States.” Further it states that students with F-1 visas may not take a fully online course load even if their university is adopting a hybrid model.

As Universities do the work of figuring out how to keep our communities safe during the COVID-19 pandemic, while ensuring the integrity of our pedagogy, our administrators have made difficult decisions. To protect our university staff, students and workers, some universities have chosen to go entirely online. And universities that have chosen a hybrid model may also be forced to go online, if the pandemic’s impact worsens. This ICE decision means that not only will our international students not be allowed to stay in the country, but that even if they do, they will not be allowed to make decisions to keep their family safe from the pandemic by taking an online course load. If universities change course based on this ICE decision, it would mean putting their other students and faculty at risk, forcing all back into classrooms during a pandemic.

This policy is discriminatory. It fails to take into account the profound social and financial investments that international students have made in their often difficult decisions to embark on their educational journeys in the United States. Like all students, international students have created relationships, rented apartments, and invested in communities as they work towards building their futures. For our graduate students, who may have moved here along with their families, and who receive university stipends, this poses additional obstacles around their education and stipends. This policy would uproot their lives during their studies, and force a return to their countries of origin with uncertain prospects. For countries with which the United States has an imposed travel ban, and in a moment of limited global mobility with increasing border restrictions, it is unclear if these students will be able, in the future, to return to the United States. In all of these ways, this policy comes at great financial and emotional expense to our students, and puts their futures in unnecessary limbo.

What’s more, this policy is economically dangerous for our country, particularly in the context of the current financial crisis. The almost one million international students in the United States are drivers of our national economy. The Commerce Department puts international student contributions to the United States economy at $45 billion in 2018. A 2019 report shows that 62% of all international students receive the majority of their funds from sources outside of the United States. And, not only do international students come with their own resources, but they also effectively subsidize higher education, making substantial contributions to the costs of public universities and their domestic students. Finally, international students make up the majority of graduate STEM enrollment, a crucial field in which the United States aims to become a “global leader.”

International students are students. They are also contributors to the growth of higher education in the US. We as educators reject the artificial distinction between foreign and domestic students, which undermines the pursuit of both knowledge and justice. We call on ICE to rescind its decision, and on our university leaders to join us in prioritizing this issue, advocating for our students, and coming up with a quick response that minimizes the impact on international students so they do not have to make the impossible choice to return to their home countries in the context of a global pandemic.



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topgold
1583 days ago
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It makes _no_ financial sense to ban international students.
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My White Friend Asked Me on Facebook to Explain White Privilege. I Decided to Be Honest

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Yesterday I was tagged in a post by an old high school friend asking me and a few others a very public, direct question about white privilege and racism. I feel compelled not only to publish his query, but also my response to it, as it may be a helpful discourse for more than just a few folks on Facebook.

Here’s his post:

To all of my Black or mixed race FB friends, I must profess a blissful ignorance of this “White Privilege” of which I’m apparently guilty of possessing. By not being able to fully put myself in the shoes of someone from a background/race/religion/gender/nationality/body type that differs from my own makes me part of the problem, according to what I’m now hearing. Despite my treating everyone with respect and humor my entire life (as far as I know), I’m somehow complicit in the misfortune of others. I’m not saying I’m colorblind, but whatever racism/sexism/other -ism my life experience has instilled in me stays within me, and is not manifested in the way I treat others (which is not the case with far too many, I know).

So that I may be enlightened, can you please share with me some examples of institutional racism that have made an indelible mark upon you? If I am to understand this, I need people I know personally to show me how I’m missing what’s going on. Personal examples only. I’m not trying to be insensitive, I only want to understand (but not from the media). I apologize if this comes off as crass or offends anyone.

Here’s my response:

Hi, Jason. First off, I hope you don’t mind that I’ve quoted your post and made it part of mine. I think the heart of what you’ve asked of your friends of color is extremely important and I think my response needs much more space than as a reply on your feed. I truly thank you for wanting to understand what you are having a hard time understanding. Coincidentally, over the last few days I have been thinking about sharing some of the incidents of prejudice/racism I’ve experienced in my lifetime—in fact I just spoke with my sister Lesa about how to best do this yesterday—because I realized many of my friends—especially the white ones—have no idea what I’ve experienced/dealt with unless they were present (and aware) when it happened. There are two reasons for this: 1) because not only as a human being do I suppress the painful and uncomfortable in an effort to make it go away, I was also taught within my community (I was raised in the ’70s and ’80s—it’s shifted somewhat now) and by society at large NOT to make a fuss, speak out, or rock the boat. To just “deal with it,” lest more trouble follow (which, sadly, it often does); 2) fear of being questioned or dismissed with “Are you sure that’s what you heard?” or “Are you sure that’s what they meant?” and being angered and upset all over again by well-meaning-but-hurtful and essentially unsupportive responses.

White privilege in this situation is being able to move into a “nice” neighborhood and be accepted not harassed.

So, again, I’m glad you asked, because I really want to answer. But as I do, please know a few things first: 1) This is not even close to the whole list. I’m cherry-picking because none of us have all day; 2) I’ve been really lucky. Most of what I share below is mild compared to what others in my family and community have endured; 3) I’m going to go in chronological order so you might begin to glimpse the tonnage and why what many white folks might feel is a “where did all of this come from?” moment in society has been festering individually and collectively for the LIFETIME of pretty much every black or brown person living in America today, regardless of wealth or opportunity; 4) Some of what I share covers sexism, too—intersectionality is another term I’m sure you’ve heard and want to put quotes around, but it’s a real thing too, just like white privilege. But you’ve requested a focus on personal experiences with racism, so here it goes:

1. When I was 3, my family moved into an upper-middle-class, all-white neighborhood. We had a big backyard, so my parents built a pool. Not the only pool on the block, but the only one neighborhood boys started throwing rocks into. White boys. One day my mom ID’d one as the boy from across the street, went to his house, told his mother, and, fortunately, his mother believed mine. My mom not only got an apology, but also had that boy jump in our pool and retrieve every single rock. No more rocks after that. Then mom even invited him to come over to swim sometime if he asked permission. Everyone became friends. This one has a happy ending because my mom was and is badass about matters like these, but I hope you can see that the white privilege in this situation is being able to move into a “nice” neighborhood and be accepted not harassed, made to feel unwelcome, or prone to acts of vandalism and hostility.

2. When my older sister was 5, a white boy named Mark called her a “nigger” after she beat him in a race at school. She didn’t know what it meant, but in her gut she knew it was bad. This was the first time I’d seen my father the kind of angry that has nowhere to go. I somehow understood it was because not only had some boy verbally assaulted his daughter and had gotten away with it, it had way too early introduced her (and me) to that term and the reality of what it meant—that some white people would be cruel and careless with black people’s feelings just because of our skin color. Or our achievement. If it’s unclear in any way, the point here is if you’ve never had a defining moment in your childhood or your life where you realize your skin color alone makes other people hate you, you have white privilege.

I remember some white male classmates were pissed that a black classmate had gotten into UCLA while they didn’t.

3. Sophomore year of high school. I had Mr. Melrose for Algebra 2. Some time within the first few weeks of class, he points out that I’m “the only spook” in the class. This was meant to be funny. It wasn’t. So, I doubt it will surprise you I was relieved when he took medical leave after suffering a heart attack and was replaced by a sub for the rest of the semester. The point here is, if you’ve never been ‘the only one’ of your race in a class, at a party, on a job, etc. and/or it’s been pointed out in a “playful” fashion by the authority figure in said situation, you have white privilege.

4. When we started getting our college acceptances senior year, I remember some white male classmates were pissed that a black classmate had gotten into UCLA while they didn’t. They said that affirmative action had given him “their spot” and it wasn’t fair. An actual friend of theirs. Who’d worked his ass off. The point here is, if you’ve never been on the receiving end of the assumption that when you’ve achieved something it’s only because it was taken away from a white person who “deserved it,” you have white privilege.

5. When I got accepted to Harvard (as a fellow AP student, you were witness to what an academic beast I was in high school, yes?), three separate times I encountered white strangers as I prepped for my maiden trip to Cambridge that rankle to this day. The first was the white doctor giving me a physical at Kaiser:

Me: “I need to send an immunization report to my college so I can matriculate.”

Doctor: “Where are you going?”

Me: “Harvard.”

Doctor: “You mean the one in Massachusetts?”

The second was in a store, looking for supplies I needed from Harvard’s suggested “what to bring with you” list.

Store employee: “Where are you going?”

Me: “Harvard.”

Store employee: “You mean the one in Massachusetts?”

The third was at UPS, shipping off boxes of said “what to bring” to Harvard. I was in line behind a white boy mailing boxes to Princeton and in front of a white woman sending her child’s boxes to wherever.

Woman to the boy: “What college are you going to?” Boy: “Princeton.”

Woman: “Congratulations!”

Woman to me: “Where are you sending your boxes?” Me: “Harvard.”

Woman: “You mean the one in Massachusetts?”

I think: “No, bitch, the one downtown next to the liquor store.” But I say, gesturing to my LABELED boxes: “Yes, the one in Massachusetts.”

Then she says congratulations, but it’s too fucking late. The point here is, if no one has ever questioned your intellectual capabilities or attendance at an elite institution based solely on your skin color, you have white privilege.

6. In my freshman college tutorial, our small group of 4–5 was assigned to read Thoreau, Emerson, Malcolm X, Joseph Conrad, Dreiser, etc. When it was the week to discuss The Autobiography of Malcolm X, one white boy boldly claimed he couldn’t even get through it because he couldn’t relate and didn’t think he should be forced to read it. I don’t remember the words I said, but I still remember the feeling—I think it’s what doctors refer to as chandelier pain—as soon as a sensitive area on a patient is touched, they shoot through the roof—that’s what I felt. I know I said something like my whole life I’ve had to read “things that don’t have anything to do with me or that I relate to” but I find a way anyway because that’s what learning is about—trying to understand other people’s perspectives. The point here is—the canon of literature studied in the United States, as well as the majority of television and movies, have focused primarily on the works or achievements of white men. So, if you have never experienced or considered how damaging it is/was/could be to grow up without myriad role models and images in school that reflect you in your required reading material or in the mainstream media, you have white privilege.

7. All seniors at Harvard are invited to a fancy, seated group lunch with our respective dorm masters. (Yes, they were called “masters” up until this February, when they changed it to “faculty deans,” but that’s just a tasty little side dish to the main course of this remembrance). While we were being served by the Dunster House cafeteria staff—the black ladies from Haiti and Boston who ran the line daily (I still remember Jackie’s kindness and warmth to this day)—Master Sally mused out loud how proud they must be to be serving the nation’s best and brightest. I don’t know if they heard her, but I did, and it made me uncomfortable and sick. The point here is, if you’ve never been blindsided when you are just trying to enjoy a meal by a well-paid faculty member’s patronizing and racist assumptions about how grateful black people must feel to be in their presence, you have white privilege.

He was getting stopped by cops constantly because he was a black man in a luxury car.

8. While I was writing on a television show in my 30s, my new white male boss—who had only known me for a few days—had unbeknownst to me told another writer on staff he thought I was conceited, didn’t know as much I thought I did, and didn’t have the talent I thought I had. And what exactly had happened in those few days? I disagreed with a pitch where he suggested our lead female character carelessly leave a potholder on the stove, burning down her apartment. This character being a professional caterer. When what he said about me was revealed months later (by then he’d come to respect and rely on me), he apologized for prejudging me because I was a black woman. I told him he was ignorant and clearly had a lot to learn. It was a good talk because he was remorseful and open. But the point here is, if you’ve never been on the receiving end of a boss’s prejudiced, uninformed “how dare she question my ideas” badmouthing based on solely on his ego and your race, you have white privilege.

9. On my very first date with my now husband, I climbed into his car and saw baby wipes on the passenger-side floor. He said he didn’t have kids, they were just there to clean up messes in the car. I twisted to secure my seatbelt and saw a stuffed animal in the rear window. I gave him a look. He said, “I promise, I don’t have kids. That’s only there so I don’t get stopped by the police.” He then told me that when he drove home from work late at night, he was getting stopped by cops constantly because he was a black man in a luxury car and they assumed that either it was stolen or he was a drug dealer. When he told a cop friend about this, Warren was told to put a stuffed animal in the rear window because it would change “his profile” to that of a family man and he was much less likely to be stopped. The point here is, if you’ve never had to mask the fruits of your success with a floppy-eared, stuffed bunny rabbit so you won’t get harassed by the cops on the way home from your gainful employment (or never had a first date start this way), you have white privilege.

10. Six years ago, I started a Facebook page that has grown into a website called Good Black News because I was shocked to find there were no sites dedicated solely to publishing the positive things black people do. (And let me explain here how biased the coverage of mainstream media is in case you don’t already have a clue—as I curate, I can’t tell you how often I have to swap out a story’s photo to make it as positive as the content. Photos published of black folks in mainstream media are very often sullen- or angry-looking. Even when it’s a positive story! I also have to alter headlines constantly to 1) include a person’s name and not have it just be “Black Man Wins Settlement” or “Carnegie Hall Gets 1st Black Board Member,” or 2) rephrase it from a subtle subjugator like “ABC taps Viola Davis as Series Lead” to “Viola Davis Lands Lead on ABC Show” as is done for, say, Jennifer Aniston or Steven Spielberg. I also receive a fair amount of highly offensive racist trolling. I don’t even respond. I block and delete ASAP. The point here is, if you’ve never had to rewrite stories and headlines or swap photos while being trolled by racists when all you’re trying to do on a daily basis is promote positivity and share stories of hope and achievement and justice, you have white privilege.

Trust me, nobody is mad at you for being white. Nobody.

OK, Jason, there’s more, but I’m exhausted. And my kids need dinner. Remembering and reliving many of these moments has been a strain and a drain (and, again, this ain’t even the half or the worst of it). But I hope my experiences shed some light for you on how institutional and personal racism have affected the entire life of a friend of yours to whom you’ve only been respectful and kind. I hope what I’ve shared makes you realize it’s not just strangers, but people you know and care for who have suffered and are suffering because we are excluded from the privilege you have not to be judged, questioned, or assaulted in any way because of your race.

As to you “being part of the problem,” trust me, nobody is mad at you for being white. Nobody. Just like nobody should be mad at me for being black. Or female. Or whatever. But what IS being asked of you is to acknowledge that white privilege DOES exist and not only to treat people of races that differ from yours “with respect and humor,” but also to stand up for fair treatment and justice, not to let “jokes” or “off-color” comments by friends, co-workers, or family slide by without challenge, and to continually make an effort to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, so we may all cherish and respect our unique and special contributions to society as much as we do our common ground.

With much love and respect,

Lori

This article was originally published by Good Black News. It has been edited for YES! Magazine. 

Read more of on White privilege and racial justice:

10 Examples That Prove White Privilege Exists in Every Aspect Imaginable

The Language of Antiracism

Leveraging White Privilege for Racial Justice

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notadoctor
1614 days ago
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that we still have to do this emotional labor for well-meaning white people can be so exhausting. They are taking this so personally and then ask us to calm them down, expose our pain to them, and hope that we are the last person of color they will ask to perform for them so they can avoid using Google in this the year 2020. BUT THEY MEAN WELL I know, but the IMPACT still hurts. Intention does not alter the impact of emotional pain or labor.
Oakland, CA
topgold
1585 days ago
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Sequestered remoted
zippy72
1613 days ago
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FourSquare, qv
freeAgent
1612 days ago
That Harvard dining experience where the "Master" told the catering staff that they should feel proud of serving the nation's "best and brightest" is exactly the sort of attitude that caused me to avoid even applying to Harvard in the first place. I went on a campus tour when I was in high school and the guide/people I interacted with could not get over themselves. I couldn't wait to get out of there.
acdha
1614 days ago
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Washington, DC
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What did Donald Trump do today?He tried one more time to whistle past the gravey...

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What did Donald Trump do today?

He tried one more time to whistle past the graveyard of COVID-19 in America.

In a pair of tweets today, and in a White House speech, Trump once again insisted that the coronavirus pandemic that has killed considerably more than 132,000 Americans is really just a statistical glitch.

Cases, Cases, Cases! If we didn’t test so much and so successfully, we would have very few cases. If you test 40,000,000 people, you are going to have many cases that, without the testing (like other countries), would not show up every night on the Fake Evening News..... ....In a certain way, our tremendous Testing success gives the Fake News Media all they want, CASES. In the meantime, Deaths and the all important Mortality Rate goes down. You don’t hear about that from the Fake News, and you never will. Anybody need any Ventilators???

It's simply not true that the eventual increase in testing capacity—which Trump famously said was not his responsibility, but is now taking credit for—accounts for the last month's increase in positive results. The percentage of positive tests (the blue line in the graph below) is increasing, too—and fast.

Johns Hopkins University

Put in terms Trump, a former high school baseball player notorious for inflating his stats, might understand: a player's batting average goes up when he gets a hit a higher percentage of the time, not just because he's getting more at-bats to "find" hits with.

Later, in a speech, Trump said that "99%" of positive cases are "totally harmless." It's true that most people survive the virus—but the long-term effects are only just now becoming clear, and they are anything but harmless. Complications already discovered include long-term damage to the brain, lungs, and other organs. 

If the virus ran unchecked through the United States and half of the population contracted it, 99% survival would mean about 1.6 million Americans died from it.

There's also the problem that while young and healthy people generally survive the disease, they don't want to be responsible for passing it on to people more vulnerable to it. Trump, who lives in a protective bubble bought at the cost of his own Secret Service detail's health, appears to be aware of this on some level: he has insisted on measures that make it physically impossible to get anywhere near him without an on-site test.

Why should I care?

  • When a situation is this serious, it really doesn't matter if a president is ignoring it because he doesn't understand it, or because he's incapable of fixing it.
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topgold
1585 days ago
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Trump is an infection worse than a pandemic.
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zippy72
1587 days ago
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FourSquare, qv
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/06/what-if-trump-loses-insists-he-won/Wondering who...

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/06/what-if-trump-loses-insists-he-won/

Wondering who will lead the eviction posse against Trump.

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topgold
1585 days ago
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It seems people are worried that Trump will activate a private army and create an armed bunker at the White House in November.
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Well informed

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I was musing, yet again, over the pros and cons of Facebook this morning. There are days when I feel like closing all of my social media accounts and reverting to just blogging. These thoughts are triggered by the balance of signal to noise in my feeds and also the levels of righteous indignation. Too much noise and too much indignation and I grow wearied with it all.

But there are two reasons that I don’t leave. One is the connection to smart people all around the world that I would be very sorry to lose. The second, and I know this is going to stretch your credibility, is that without my various feeds I would feel less well informed!

Yes, I really said that. Because I make an effort to have a range of views in my networks, and do my best to follow people who have an eye for interesting and well written content, I generally feel up to date and “well informed” on most big issues.

Perhaps more importantly for me the alternatives are increasingly unattractive. I haven’t bought a newspaper in decades and never watch television news if I can avoid it. Admittedly some of the well informed and well written content that I rely on through my networks comes from those sources but the thought of having to wade through all the other badly written, partially understood, and biased rubbish they contain is untenable.



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topgold
1585 days ago
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Deep thoughts by @euan with a surpisingly engaging FB thread: https://www.facebook.com/euan.semple/posts/10156262836834567
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