Special Interests // The Weather Issue // 50 kr
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THE WEATHER ISSUE
WORDS FROM ABOVE
#1
”THE MORE YOU READ, THE MORE THINGS YOU WILL KNOW. THE MORE YOU LEARN, THE MORE PLACES YOU WILL GO.”
- DR SEUSS
As Swedes we are used to discussing the weather, and not in an exciting way, but in a repetitive mutual wish for sunny skies and degrees above 15 celsius. In our first issue we want to open your eyes to the opportunity to learn something new. Specifically learn something new about weather. Like my mother always says, no information is useless, if you have the oppurtunity to learn something, always embrace it. Welcome to Otaku #1.
I believe there is a will in all of us to learn. And we will become someone new because of what we’ve learnt. I can easily classify myself an information junkie. I always have my smartphone close by if I need to google something to understand a reference, or just satisfy a sudden need to know the exact length of Sweden in kilometers. We, the creators of Otaku paper, share this obsession for information with each other. We believe that we are not alone in this. We believe that any subject has the potential to become interesting when explained by passionate people.
Malin Åkerskog, Editor
OTAKU, originally a japanese term describing someone who is very informed about a specific subject. Now a subjective word where the meaning changes depending on context. 3
E D ITOR I A L TEA M
From the right: Allseeing editor & Snow ruler: Malin Åkerskog Grid master and Sun chaser Victor Camnerin Wordsmith and Rain dancer Louise Kjeldsen Layout artist and Storm rider Merima Mešić Pic wiz and Chilly laxer Daniel Emilsson
THE WEATHER ISSUE
INDEX
3 Word from above
10 Birth of hurricanes
6 Cloud poem by Karin Boye
7 Weather gone wild
12 Cloud poster
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20 SAD + weather related effects on people
Making clouds with Berndaut Smilde
21 Weather Sites
22 Weather related books and music
REFERENCES 3. The cloud poem is translated and interpreted by Louise Kjeldsen and is originally from Karin Boye’s swedish poem ”Moln”. 7. Weather gone wild is originally published in National Geographic by Peter Miller. 10. Birth of hurricanes is taken from Nasa’s article ”How do hurricanes form?”
14. Making clouds with Berndaut Smilde is originally published in InstallationMag and written by A.Moret. 20. The ”SAD article” is originally published in Huffington post by Carolyn Gregoire. 22. Information about the weather related books is taken from each individual book’s Amazon page.
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CLOUD POEM
OTAKU PAPER
Meet those mighty clouds, which far-flung high tops proud, shimmer as they tower, white as white snow. Calmly glide forward and lastly calmly bow, resolving in a downpour of cool drops. Majestic clouds - through life, through death they move through a effulgent suns shine. Without obscuring anxiety in ether so clear fine, move with a grandiose, silent contempt for its fate. I would be granted to proudly as them rise, to where the earths bustle do not reach. And however vexed around me the storms roar moves, wear the suns shimmering golden wreath around my head. By Karin Boye
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THE WEATHER ISSUE
W E AT H E R GONE WILD Rains that are almost biblical, heat waves that don’t end, tornadoes that strike in savage swarms—there’s been a change in the weather lately. What’s going on? By Peter Miller
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WEATHER GONE WILD
OTAKU PAPER
TORONTO. More than a month’s rain falls in less than two hours. The epic rainfall that drenched highways was an extreme weather event.
OKLAHOMA. Downed utility poles block the road after the massive tornado that hit Moore, Oklahoma, on May 20, 2013.
THERE’S BEEN A CHANGE in the weather. Extreme events like the Nashville flood—described by officials as a once-ina-millennium occurrence—are happening more frequently than they used to. A month before the Nashville disaster, torrential downpours dumped 11 inches of rain on Rio de Janeiro in 24 hours, triggering mud slides that buried hundreds. About three months after Nashville, record rains in Pakistan caused flooding that affected more than 20 million people. In late 2011 floods in Thailand submerged hundreds of factories near Bangkok, creating a worldwide shortage of computer hard drives. And it’s not just heavy rains that are making headlines. During the past decade we’ve also seen severe droughts in places like Texas, Australia, and Russia, as well as in East Africa, where tens of thousands have taken refuge in camps. Deadly heat waves have hit Europe, and
ships, buoys, deep-ocean probes, and balloons, show that a long-term buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is trapping heat and warming up the land, oceans, and atmosphere. Although some places, notably the Arctic, are warming faster than others, the average surface temperature worldwide has risen nearly one degree Fahrenheit in the past four decades. In 2010 it reached 58.12°F, tying the record set in 2005. When it comes to individual storms, scientists are even less certain what effect global warming might have. In theory extra water vapor in the atmosphere should pump heat into big storms such as hurricanes and typhoons, adding buoyancy that causes them to grow in size and power. Some models have predicted that global warming could increase the average strength of hurricanes and typhoons by 2 to 11 percent by 2100. But the jury’s still out on whether any increase
record numbers of tornadoes have ripped across the United States. Losses from such events helped push the cost of weather disasters in 2011 to an estimated $150 billion worldwide, a roughly 25 percent jump from the previous year. In the U.S. last year a record 14 events caused a billion dollars or more of damage each, far exceeding the previous record of nine such disasters in 2008. What’s going on? Are these extreme events signals of a dangerous, humanmade shift in Earth’s climate? Or are we just going through a natural stretch of bad luck? Natural cycles can’t by themselves explain the recent streak of record-breaking disasters. Something else is happening too: The Earth is steadily getting warmer, with significantly more moisture in the atmosphere. Decades of observations from the summit of Mauna Loa in Hawaii, as well as from thousands of other weather stations, satellites, 8
has occurred yet. And the same models that predict bigger hurricanes also say we could get fewer of them in the future. The picture is murkiest with tornadoes. A hotter, wetter atmosphere should promote more severe thunderstorms, but it might also reduce the wind shear needed for those storms to spawn twisters. More tornadoes are being reported in the U.S., but there are more people looking for them with better instruments—and there’s been no documented increase in the past half century in the number of severe tornadoes. The spring of 2011 was one of the worst tornado seasons in U.S. history, with monster twisters roaring through Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and Joplin, Missouri. But scientists don’t yet have the data or the theoretical understanding to say whether global warming was to blame. In the case of some weather extremes, though, the connection is pretty clear.
THE WEATHER ISSUE
WEATHER GONE WILD
SYDNEY. Residents along Australia’s east coast awoke to an orange, glowing sky as winds swept millions of tonnes of red dust and dumped it on Sydney.
The warmer the atmosphere, the more potential for record-breaking heat waves. In the U.S. high-temperature records are being set these days twice as often as lowtemperature ones; around the world 19 countries set national records in 2010. As moisture in the atmosphere has increased, rainfall has intensified. The amount of rain falling in intense downpours—the heaviest one percent of rain events—has increased by nearly 20 percent during the past century in the U.S. “You’re getting more rain from a given storm now than you would have 30 or 40 years ago,” says Gerald Meehl, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. Global warming, he says, has changed the odds for extreme weather. The rising cost and frequency of natural disasters can be blamed only partly on the weather. Disasters are also on the rise because more people are located in harm’s
way. In states like Texas, Arizona, and sprung up across the state, and in 2002 California the buildup of neighborhoods the state government created the Citizens in former woodlands has exposed more Property Insurance Corporation, which properties to wildfires, just as coastal has become Florida’s largest provider of development in states like Florida, North homeowner’s insurance. Whether this Carolina, and Maryland has exposed new system has the resources to survive a expensive beach houses and hotels to big storm isn’t clear yet, Nutter says. “It’s hurricanes and other storms. At the same an untested experiment. They haven’t time, the rapid growth of megacities in had a major hurricane there since 2005.” developing countries in Asia and Africa Meanwhile some governments have has made millions more vulnerable to taken small but important steps to better heat waves and floods. prepare for extreme weather. French Instead of defending themselves against cities set up air-conditioned shelters and climate change, many communities appear identified older people who would need to be leading with their chin. In Florida, transportation to the shelters. Similarly, where hurricanes, wildfires, and drought after a tropical storm killed as many as pose enormous risks to insurers, several 500,000 people in Bangladesh in 1970, national firms have stopped writing new the government there developed an early policies altogether or pulled back in other warning system and built basic concrete ways. They’re afraid of another disaster shelters for evacuated families. When like Hurricane Andrew in 1992, which cyclones hit today, the death count cost the industry an estimated $25 billion. stays in the thousands.Weather disasters To fill the gap, small companies have are like heart attacks, says Jay Gulledge. 9
“When your doctor advises you about how to avoid a heart attack, he doesn’t say, Well, you need to exercise, but it’s OK to keep smoking,” he says. The smart approach to extreme weather is to attack all the risk factors, by designing crops that can survive drought, buildings that can resist floods and high winds, policies that discourage people from building in dangerous places—and of course, by cutting greenhouse gas emissions. “We know that warming of the Earth’s surface is putting more moisture in the atmosphere. We’ve measured it. The satellites see it,” Gulledge says. So the chances for extreme weather are going nowhere but up. We need to face that reality, Oppenheimer says, and do the things we know can save lives and money. “We don’t have to just stand there and take it.” ■
BIRTH OF HURRICANES
OTAKU PAPER
OF
Hurricanes are the most awesome, violent storms on Earth. People call these storms by other names, such as typhoons or cyclones, depending on where they occur. The scientific term for all these storms is tropical cyclone. Only tropical cyclones that form over the Atlantic Ocean or eastern Pacific Ocean are called �hurricanes.� Whatever they are called, tropical cyclones all form the same way.
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BIRTH OF HURRICANES
THE WEATHER ISSUE
OUTFLOW
EYE OF THE STORM
WARM OCEAN WATER
≈ 8 5 %
1 1
0 2 4
0 0 6 4 K M
OF ALL MAJOR HURRICANES (CATEGORY 3-4-5) ORIGINATE FROM AFRICAN EASTERLY WAVES
LONGEST DISTANCE TRAVELED, HURRICANE FAITH 1966.
1 9 8 3
2 0 0 5
9 5 %
THE YEAR WITH FEWEST NAMED STORMS IN MODERN RECORDS, 4
THE YEAR WITH MOST NAMED STORMS IN MODERN RECORDS, 28
OF ALL INTENSE HURRICANE ACTIVITY OCCURS FROM AUGUST TO OCTOBER
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For a fleeting moment, Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde controls clouds, an intangible natural phenomenon, by pressing a single button on a remote control. Triggering a smoke machine into an environment where variables like temperature, humidity and light are carefully monitored, Smilde creates a picturesque, billowing cloud that assumes a natural density and airiness in a surreal, vacant space. TIME Magazine named Smilde’s technique
of creating indoor clouds among the best inventions of 2012. The artist’s signature effect inspires the imagination and seduces the senses. The displacement of the cloud from its natural environment as condensation floating aimlessly in the sky, becomes a tangible object that is momentarily contained indoors and then photographed to insure its permanence. By A. Moret
BERNDNAUT SMILDE
OTAKU PAPER
NIMBUS PORTLAND PLACE. Berndnaut Smilde, 2014, London
”I can control the space, but the clouds will be different everytime.”
Your artwork employs a multi-disciplinary practice combining performance, installation and photography as a means of documenting an ephemeral moment. Do you take the photographs yourself? If not, whom do you collaborate with? I work in whatever medium necessary to complete the work or tell the story. I am not a photographer. For the Nimbus series, I worked with a local professional photographer. What do you consider the “real” art- the cloud itself or the photograph? Is it the moment or the evidence? For me, a photograph is the best way to present the work. I am not as interested in the process of making it. The work is really about the idea of a cloud inside a space, and what meanings people project on it. This is best represented by an image. The physical aspect is important, but, in the end, the work only exists as a photograph. The photo functions as physical evidence of something that happened at a specific location and is now gone. How did you develop the process to produce clouds? What role does scientific inquiry play in your practice? The first problem I came across was how to materialize them. When I was researching on how to make clouds, I found really interesting materials such as aerogel. Eventually, I simply started experimenting with smoke because of its visual similarity with clouds. After testing variations of temperature and humidity, I got the hang of it. It’s not a high tech process at all. I can control the space, but the clouds will be different every time. It always takes awhile to get them where I want. The most exciting part of my process is that every space works in a totally different way. When was the process developed? I made the first cloud for a project in a small-scale space at the end of 2010. I started to work in conventional size spaces early 2012.
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THE WEATHER ISSUE
BERNDNAUT SMILDE
NIMBUS THOR. Berndnaut Smilde, 2014
” ... Nimbus, which is the name for a rain cloud but can also mean an aura surrounding something or someone.”
Do you feel that your work engages in a conversation with traditional Dutch paintings of landscapes, nature and the heavens? You could say my work is in line with the Dutch tradition. I’m still fascinated by old seascape paintings and their impressive skies. The cloud series is titled Nimbus, which is the name for a rain cloud, but can also mean an aura surrounding something or someone. In Classical mythology, a “nimbus” is a shining cloud that surrounds a deity when he or she is on Earth. Your practice is site-specific and you work in various types of spaces. What architectural elements attract you to a particular space? Are they typically abandoned or currently under construction? Any elements that stand out such as beautiful floors, ceilings, walls and tiles. Most spaces are empty and are being used as exhibition spaces as well. This way I try to keep a relation to the artwork itself and the history of that location. The spaces are important, as they give the clouds a specific context. For example, the chapel in Hotel MariaKapel emphasizes the divine and transient connotations of the work. Although it is an exhibition space, I really like the architecture and the element of time in this 15th century chapel. The architecture also plays an important role in Nimbus D’Aspremont, where the contrast between the original D’Aspremont-Lynden Castle in Rekem, Belgium and its former use as a military hospital and mental institution is still visible. In my recent works, the architecture is becoming more prominent as a representation of an ideal space. Nimbus Green Room in San Francisco is a copy of the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles. The spaces, in a sense, function as a plinth for the work.
COLOGNE. Berndnaut Smilde creating new Nimbus work Kunst Station Sankt Peter, 2014. Photo by Annegret Kellner
Are any elements of the space constructed? I adjust the spaces where necessary. For example, I sometimes stick colored film on the windows to capture the light or atmosphere I am going for. NIMBUS II. Berndnaut Smilde, 2012, Hotel Maria Kapel, Hoorn, NL 17
BERNDNAUT SMILDE
OTAKU PAPER
In order to achieve the full effect, does the climate in the space have to be controlled at a particular temperature? The space needs to be as cold as possible. How long does it take to set up the machinery before you can create a cloud? It typically takes a couple of days for preparing the space, finding the right settings and testing it. What is the duration of the smoke effect? A couple of seconds and sometimes longer depending on the space. In Nimbus 57, the smoke kept its position for a relatively long period of time. Installation art has often been compared to theater because it is fully immersive and is subject to the passage of time. Do you identify with this idea? Do you feel that your works are theatrical? I definitely see the similarities between my work and the theater. Like the theater, I direct the mise-en-scène and use “props” to question the reality of what I capture. Is there a spiritual, supernatural or religious aspect to the cloud work? People have always had a strong metaphysical connection to clouds and have projected lots of ideas on them over time. There is something you just cannot grasp about clouds, and that is what I find interesting. The black and white tiled floors in Nimbus D’Aspremont are reminiscent of a motif founder in Jan Vermeer’s paintings. What artists have inspired your practice? Contemporary artists Olafur Eliasson and Gregor Schneider are artists that I admire. At the 49th Venice Biennale, I saw Gregor Schneider’s work Totes Haus u r, and the expwerience impacted me greatly.
“They can be interpreted as a symbol of loss or becoming, though I see my work dealing more with duality. Just as clouds build up and fall apart at the same time, my work functions in between reality and representation, that it has potential, but will never truly function.”
What does it mean that you can create a cloud? What does that say about the power of the artist? Even though a cloud eventually disintegrates, I am able to place its image inside a foreign space, even though it is only for a brief moment. That kind of power allows me to freeze time for people to take it in and start making new connections. As the smoke clears and the cloud fades away, the viewer becomes aware of the passage of time, and perhaps, by extrapolation, of his own mortality. Does your work confront death explicitly? The Nimbus works present a transitory moment of presence in a specific location. They can be interpreted as a symbol of loss or becoming, though I see my work dealing more with duality. Just as clouds build up and fall apart at the same time, my work functions in between reality and representation, that it has potential, but will never truly function.
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THE WEATHER ISSUE
BERNDNAUT SMILDE
NIMBUS WATERSHEI. Berndnaut Smilde, 2014
We have addressed your cloud installations, and they have received accolades and press as of late, but what about your other work?Unflattened is also an ephemeral installation. In Unflattened, I projected a colour spectrum onto a photo mural, making the idealistic landscape even more desirable than the original. The suggestion of a rainbow can be read as a sign of perfection and promise. But seeing the rainbow placed upside down, you start questioning these values again. What looks at first as an ideal sunrise could also be interpreted as an apocalyptic image when you realize the rainbow is upside down. Cumulus is made of frozen smoke. What is its relationship to your other pieces? What inspired its creation? In my research on how to make clouds, I ran into this magical looking substance called aerogel. It is also known as “frozen smoke,” and consists of 99.8% air and is the lightest solid material on Earth. NASA used it for collecting interstellar dust. You can look right through it, and it has a magical blue-ish shine because of the breaking of light. I placed it onto small scale models of exhibition spaces. They resemble the idea of the Nimbus works, as they are also basically air on empty spaces. What I like about this artificial material is that it’s just a little bit more dense than air, and, for me, it represents our human urge to compete with nature. What narrative structure drives your work? There is no beginning or end. I am interested in the the moment of friction between construction and deconstruction. In such a moment, there is no finished outcome we can relate to. It shows both traces of history and visions of the future. In these transitional situations, you are not really sure about what you are looking at, nor does it have a clear function — and it is therefore open for interpretation. ■
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SAD + WEATHER RELTED EFFECTS ON PEOPLE
OTAKU PAPER
+W EATHE R R E LATE D E FFEC TS ON PE OPLE SEASONAL AFFECTIVE DISORDER (SAD) is a real affliction -- though many of us joke about having it during the winter months -- and it can make living in colder climates a challenge for many people. It’s thought that those who suffer from SAD may be particularly affected by the lack of light during the darker winter months -- studies have found that when SAD sufferers are exposed to light, particularly during the morning hours, they tend to feel better. SAD is a relatively uncommon condition, but even those who don’t suffer from it may experience drops in mood levels and well-being during the winter months or in colder climates. But we also might be overestimating how much the cold weather affects our mood: Some research has found that incidences of ”wintertime blues” are widely exaggerated, and that most people are not affected by seasonal mood changes. “It is clear from prior research that SAD exists,” Oregon State University psychologist David Kerr said in a press release. “But our research suggests that what we often think of as the winter blues does not affect people nearly as much as we may think.”
Extreme weather can bring out our empathy. From little things like leaving a bigger tip for the delivery guy when the weather is nasty outside to donating to homeless shelters during the coldest days of winter, the shared hardships of severe weather
Scientist notes, considering that global temperature is expected to rise by at least two standard deviations by 2050. In Chicago, violent crime (particularly murder) has been found to spike when the weather heats up in late spring. It may be that in the summertime, more people are out on the streets and the days are longer, so there is more opportunity for crime. ”Shootings go way down in winter,” Charlie Ransford, a data analyst for CeaseFire, told Huffington Post Chicago. ”There are half or less than half [the number of shootings] than there are in the summer time. Weather does make a difference. [With a] warmer Spring, its natural to think there will be an increase in homicides and shootings.”
can serve to bring communities together and draw out people’s empathy. And in the cases of more extreme weather events and other traumatic events, one of the sole upsides may be the communal spirit and acts of kindness that emerge in the event’s aftermath. Look no further than these heroes of Hurricane Sandy and stories of kindness in postKatrina New Orleans. ”Although there’s a mentality that disasters provoke frenzied selfishness and brutal survival-of-the-fittest competition, the reality is that people coping with crises are actually quite altruistic,” TIME Healthland wrote.
Violent crime rises with the heat. Could high temperatures be a contributing factor when it comes to acts of violence? The research suggests it could, in fact, be that climate plays a role, alongside other factors. Researchers from the University of California at Berkeley analyzed 60 previous studies on U.S. violent crime rates, historical uprisings and empire collapses,recent wars and lab simulations testing police decisions of when to shoot -- and what they found was a link between violence and heat (Was well as extreme rainfall). For every standard deviation of change, occurrences of ”intergroup conflict” rose by a whopping 14 percent, while instances of ”interpersonal violence,” which includes rape and domestic violence, increased by four percent. This is particularly disconcerting,The
Warm climates have a lower risk of death. Despite the higher rates of violent crime, some research has suggested a correlation between warmer climates and lower death rates. According to death rate data from 89 counties across the U.S., collected by researchers at Stanford, warmer weather is linked with lower death rates. A German report published in the International Journal of Biometeorology also found that colder weather was associated with a higher death rate in Germany. Still, other research has suggested that warmer global temperatures as a result of climate change would actually increase rates of disease and death. ■ By Carolyn Gregoire
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THE WEATHER ISSUE
WEATHER SITES
W E AT H E R S I TE S Monsoons in Bangladesh Monsoons are seasonal rain storms that are often associated with the Indian ocean. The winter and summer monsoons decide the climate for India and southeast Asia. To experince this phenomenon we recommend visiting India between July and September. This image was captured by a crewmember aboard the International Space Station during expedition 4 and shows monsoon clouds over Hatia Island and Bangladesh.
Aurora in Scandinavia The Aurora, or commonly called the northern lights, are a display of natural light caused by charged particles, mainly electrons and protons, entering the atmosphere from above causing ionisation and excitation of atmospheric constituents, and consequent optical emissions. To experience this we reccomend visitng northern Scandinavia or Canada during clear winter nights. This image was captured in northern Sweden.
Sandstorm in Dubai Sandstorms happen wherever there is sand and storms. Its really that simple. However to experience an eerie clash of nature and human accomplishment we reccomend to visit Dubai during the summer when the �shamal� winds hit the city.
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WEATHER RELATED BOOKS AND MUSIC
OTAKU PAPER
B OO KS ON WEATHE R Storm Chasing Handbook by Tim Vasquez The Storm Chasing Handbook is the definitive bible on storm chasing, packed with nearly 300 pages of storm chase history, philosophy, technique, and travel information. Learn about tornadoes, hail, gustnadoes, lightning, thunderstorms, and much more. Includes nearly a dozen illustrations and cartoons by pioneer and storm artist David Hoadley, some of which were commissioned especially for this book.
Man vs Weather by Dennis Diclaudio For as long as man has walked upon this earth, he has been forced to survive under the cruel tyranny of weather. Lets face it: there is no escape. Now, in Man vs. Weather, humorist Dennis DiClaudio offers up the knowledge to beat weather at its own game. Have no fear: By the time you make your way through this book, you will be able to read, understand, and defend yourself against the elements!
WEATHER SONGS Stormy Weather by Etta James Purple Rain by Prince
Weather Whys: Facts, Myths, and Oddities by Paul Yeager
Here comes the sun by The Beatles Riders of the Storm by Snoop Dogg ft. The Doors
Weather enthusiasts (or just the weathercurious) will discover surprising facts, myths, and oddities in this fascinating book of useful (and sometimes useless) information. With his expertise as a meteorologist and editor, Paul Yeager takes readers on a journey through the curious world of weather, revealing myths and misconceptions, sharing weird phenomena, and explaining how weather has affected history.
Chocolate Rain by Tay Zonday Sweather Weather by The Neighborhood Rain by Madonna Sandstorm by Darude Sunshine by Matisyahu Kentucky Rain by Elvis Presley
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