Page 108 & 109 Discussion

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Arioch
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Re: Page 108 & 109 Discussion

Post by Arioch »

Carl Miller wrote:Not even administratively? I, at least, think it would make sense to divide Perrein's year into 29 eight-tibos "weeks" (and four or five more days). *shrug*
Any planet with a significant population/culture will use its own calendar. Shipboard crews live on a schedule that has nothing to do with any calendar. The "standard" calendar is mainly a point of reference, for which weeks and months are irrelevant.
GeoModder wrote:Now, I wonder if, in case she 'graduated' there, Beryl would make cheeky additions with Mezan's year.
Nah, Beryl is not nostalgic in any way about her time on Mezan.

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Re: Page 108 & 109 Discussion

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Arioch wrote:
GeoModder wrote:Now, I wonder if, in case she 'graduated' there, Beryl would make cheeky additions with Mezan's year.
Nah, Beryl is not nostalgic in any way about her time on Mezan.
That sounds... potentially sad. :|

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Re: Page 108 & 109 Discussion

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Eluvatar wrote:
Arioch wrote:
GeoModder wrote:Now, I wonder if, in case she 'graduated' there, Beryl would make cheeky additions with Mezan's year.
Nah, Beryl is not nostalgic in any way about her time on Mezan.
That sounds... potentially sad. :|
Or she might just have hated the climate there. ;)
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Re: Page 108 & 109 Discussion

Post by icekatze »

hi hi

Perhaps Beryl is one of those revolutionary, out of the box thinkers that is interested in aliens and alien technology, much to the chagrin of her proper instructors who could never quite get it through to her that Soia era technology is the only worthwhile area of study. Or something like that. ;)

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Re: Page 108 & 109 Discussion

Post by CrimsonFALKE »

icekatze wrote:hi hi

Perhaps Beryl is one of those revolutionary, out of the box thinkers that is interested in aliens and alien technology, much to the chagrin of her proper instructors who could never quite get it through to her that Soia era technology is the only worthwhile area of study. Or something like that. ;)
Well if the site has anything to say about our tech then she must be like that chick who like 8 track and cassette players in cars from the 1980s not that its a bad thing.

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Re: Page 108 & 109 Discussion

Post by Krulle »

Arioch wrote:Any planet with a significant population/culture will use its own calendar. Shipboard crews live on a schedule that has nothing to do with any calendar. The "standard" calendar is mainly a point of reference, for which weeks and months are irrelevant.
Any sufficiently large culture will retain its own calendar.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calenda ... ars_in_use
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Re: Page 108 & 109 Discussion

Post by Jeremy »

Well, so far we're only seeing things from a Loroi perspective. Of COURSE they'll make themselves sound the better, more sensible party. The Umiak would do the same.

To make a truly sound judgement, Alex would need to see both sides.

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Re: Page 108 & 109 Discussion

Post by Argron »

Jeremy wrote:Well, so far we're only seeing things from a Loroi perspective. Of COURSE they'll make themselves sound the better, more sensible party. The Umiak would do the same.

To make a truly sound judgement, Alex would need to see both sides.
Not really, the Orgus gave us the Umiak perspective and it sucks donkey balls.

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Re: Page 108 & 109 Discussion

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Argron wrote:Not really, the Orgus gave us the Umiak perspective and it sucks donkey balls.
The handful of Orgus that escaped aren't exactly the most unbiased of sources either though. Remember that neither the Umiak nor Loroi tolerate neutrality, and if the Orgus had ticked off the Loroi they wouldn't have been enslaved, they'd be smoking ash. From a certain point of view the Bugs are the merciful ones, since at least they let their defeated enemies live. At the very least we can assume the Loroi wouldn't have hesitated to invade a neutral faction if it would give them an advantage, just like the Umiak.

Not that this makes them good people or anything, since apparently 'allying' with them basically means surrendering and letting them take over. Client species aren't exactly treated well. This isn't as bad as it seems when you consider how they treat their own citizens though. EVERYONE is expendable and downtrodden, including their own people. From the Umiak's perspective, they likely think they're treating their Clients just fine.

Alex sums up the difference between the two pretty well on Page 93. It doesn't answer the original question ("Why exactly do the Umiak think the war started?"), but we still don't have an unbiased answer on the Loroi perspective either. Our current explanation has come from a member of the Loroi Secret Police. Big Sister is watching you...
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Re: Page 108 & 109 Discussion

Post by fredgiblet »

I'm not sure where you get the idea that losing the Loroi means destruction joe. It's true that they have genocided twice that we know of, but I don't think we're privy to the Umiak's history in that regard and in both cases there was obvious reasons for it to happen (Long-term antagonism and simple survival). I have no doubt that if your existence poses a threat to the survival of the Loroi species then they will destroy you, but that's kind of the way species get to the top of the food chain so it's hardly surprising. If we declined to join them willingly they would likely just send a destroyer and troop transport, wipe out all our armed ships and say "Look at me. I'm the captain now." On the other hand if we agreed to ally with the Umiak they would likely go out off their way to destroy us, but that's simply because of the lotai.

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Re: Page 108 & 109 Discussion

Post by GeoModder »

joestej wrote:
Argron wrote:The handful of Orgus that escaped aren't exactly the most unbiased of sources either though.
You expect unbiased viewpoints from people whom's nation has been invaded?
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Re: Page 108 & 109 Discussion

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GeoModder wrote: You expect unbiased viewpoints from people whom's nation has been invaded?
Naturally not, that's kind of the point. The Orgus were invaded by the Umiak, so anything they say about the Umiak is likely going to be negative. I'm not expecting them to be objective, just pointing out that the Umiak's invasion of the Orgus is no more or less evil than some of the stuff the Loroi have pulled throughout the course of the war.

Of course, it's pretty obvious who the 'good guys' are supposed to be just based off the shape of the narrative. Like the weird-talking bug creatures that use swarm tactics and practically enslave their allies were ever going to be the heroes.
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Re: Page 108 & 109 Discussion

Post by Krulle »

Yet I've read quite a few books where the narrative was misleading using this tactic. In the end the "unsocial, bullying, and aggressive bugs" were the good guys....

It is what is captivating me in this story too... :)
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Re: Page 108 & 109 Discussion

Post by dragoongfa »

That's actually what pissed me off about Ender's game and the subsequent series, which uses this trick; for all intents and purposes the Formics were the evil bugs that in universe humanity portrayed them as. They may not have known that they were killing sentient life in human form but they did so, in a genocidal way that would end in the complete annihilation of humanity if not for the actions of a single man. How many other species weren't so lucky in the millennia that the Formics wandered the universe and colonized the planets that the humans took after their extermination?

All I know is that Ender's universe is almost completely barren in regards to sentient life, something that does make sense since the Formic queens probably annihilated everyone who was sentient because they didn't know they were killing sentient beings. How many times was their 'mistake' repeated in the past until Ender Wiggin used the MD device to put a permanent stop to them?

Good and Evil isn't pure black and white; someone we consider good will have plenty of black and someone we consider evil will have plenty of white. It's the actions that really matter but that particular book seem to forget this for an imho cheap shot against 'the end justify the means' when in fact the story is a perfect example that evil is the one who acts evil and the one who stops that evil isn't necessarily good and flawless.

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Re: Page 108 & 109 Discussion

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Krulle wrote:Yet I've read quite a few books where the narrative was misleading using this tactic. In the end the "unsocial, bullying, and aggressive bugs" were the good guys....

It is what is captivating me in this story too... :)
As have I, but Outsider seems to be playing the Space Opera tropes straight far more than it's subverting them. Still, it's a possibility, and at least the Loroi have enough gray to them that the war isn't just a Good v. Evil showdown. Would have made diplomacy a bore, that's for sure.
dragoongfa wrote:That's actually what pissed me off about Ender's game and the subsequent series, which uses this trick; for all intents and purposes the Formics were the evil bugs that in universe humanity portrayed them as. They may not have known that they were killing sentient life in human form but they did so, in a genocidal way that would end in the complete annihilation of humanity if not for the actions of a single man. How many other species weren't so lucky in the millennia that the Formics wandered the universe and colonized the planets that the humans took after their extermination?

All I know is that Ender's universe is almost completely barren in regards to sentient life, something that does make sense since the Formic queens probably annihilated everyone who was sentient because they didn't know they were killing sentient beings. How many times was their 'mistake' repeated in the past until Ender Wiggin used the MD device to put a permanent stop to them?

Good and Evil isn't pure black and white; someone we consider good will have plenty of black and someone we consider evil will have plenty of white. It's the actions that really matter but that particular book seem to forget this for an imho cheap shot against 'the end justify the means' when in fact the story is a perfect example that evil is the one who acts evil and the one who stops that evil isn't necessarily good and flawless.
None, so far as we can tell. The Formics learned about our sentience by fighting with us. Assuming they were leaving a trail of annihilated species behind them, they would have caught onto the idea of individual sentience long before they met us when someone else pulled the same stunt we did during the Bugger War.

The Buggers were never in it to exterminate anyone, and if they had fought another species in the past, once they found out whoever it was they annihilated had no queens they would have caught onto what they'd done very quickly. They would have made sure not to repeat their mistake. After all, once they realized how badly they hurt Humanity they effectively sent Ender a written psychic invitation to wipe them out as penance. They say specifically in the books that if the Buggers had been trying they'd have put Queens on dozens of FTL ships and sent them as far away as they could instead of clustering them so he could deliver the death blow. Ender wasn't stopping them from doing anything: the Buggers had already stopped. We just couldn't see it.
fredgiblet wrote:I'm not sure where you get the idea that losing the Loroi means destruction joe. It's true that they have genocided twice that we know of, but I don't think we're privy to the Umiak's history in that regard and in both cases there was obvious reasons for it to happen (Long-term antagonism and simple survival). I have no doubt that if your existence poses a threat to the survival of the Loroi species then they will destroy you, but that's kind of the way species get to the top of the food chain so it's hardly surprising. If we declined to join them willingly they would likely just send a destroyer and troop transport, wipe out all our armed ships and say "Look at me. I'm the captain now." On the other hand if we agreed to ally with the Umiak they would likely go out off their way to destroy us, but that's simply because of the lotai.
Sorry I missed this earlier, didn't mean to ignore your post!

While I agree that the Loroi may not necessarily have genocide as their default setting, the scenario you've described is exactly what the Umiak did to the Orgus. Thus my original point: the Loroi aren't really much better than the Umiak in terms of morality. In the case of Humanity, we are definitely a threat to them because we are immune to the Lotai (as you yourself mentioned). The Umiak WILL invade once they figure that out (assuming their story about having a technological bypass is false). If there's even a chance of Humanity falling or siding with the bugs the Loroi might decide to kill us all themselves just so the Umiak can't vivisect us to learn why we're immune.

Whether the Loroi are genocide-happy with other species may be up in the air, but I think we can agree they will most definitely be genocide-happy with Humanity. Frankly, since our forces are so weak letting us exist might be a very bad move from the Loroi perspective. Ending the threat of a psychic-immune race is far more useful than the handful of underpowered ships we could contribute. Alex better talk fast...
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Re: Page 108 & 109 Discussion

Post by dragoongfa »

joestej wrote:
dragoongfa wrote:That's actually what pissed me off about Ender's game and the subsequent series, which uses this trick; for all intents and purposes the Formics were the evil bugs that in universe humanity portrayed them as. They may not have known that they were killing sentient life in human form but they did so, in a genocidal way that would end in the complete annihilation of humanity if not for the actions of a single man. How many other species weren't so lucky in the millennia that the Formics wandered the universe and colonized the planets that the humans took after their extermination?

All I know is that Ender's universe is almost completely barren in regards to sentient life, something that does make sense since the Formic queens probably annihilated everyone who was sentient because they didn't know they were killing sentient beings. How many times was their 'mistake' repeated in the past until Ender Wiggin used the MD device to put a permanent stop to them?

Good and Evil isn't pure black and white; someone we consider good will have plenty of black and someone we consider evil will have plenty of white. It's the actions that really matter but that particular book seem to forget this for an imho cheap shot against 'the end justify the means' when in fact the story is a perfect example that evil is the one who acts evil and the one who stops that evil isn't necessarily good and flawless.
None, so far as we can tell. The Formics learned about our sentience by fighting with us. Assuming they were leaving a trail of annihilated species behind them, they would have caught onto the idea of individual sentience long before they met us when someone else pulled the same stunt we did during the Bugger War.

The Buggers were never in it to exterminate anyone, and if they had fought another species in the past, once they found out whoever it was they annihilated had no queens they would have caught onto what they'd done very quickly. They would have made sure not to repeat their mistake. After all, once they realized how badly they hurt Humanity they effectively sent Ender a written psychic invitation to wipe them out as penance. They say specifically in the books that if the Buggers had been trying they'd have put Queens on dozens of FTL ships and sent them as far away as they could instead of clustering them so he could deliver the death blow. Ender wasn't stopping them from doing anything: the Buggers had already stopped. We just couldn't see it.
That has the plot hole of the Formics not wandering how a species without 'sentient guidance' managed to get technology at the first place. If they really thought that humanity had queens of its own they would have wondered why not only they couldn't talk with them but why they couldn't even 'listen' to the orders that the 'drones' got.

This huge plot hole can be explained in universe only if the Formics never bothered to even consider someone else as 'equal sentient' and just considered everyone but themselves as fodder; only challenging this notion after Mazer Rahkam killed the Queen that was sent to exterminate the pests and colonize Earth. Then there are the Piggies which I have only seen through the comics. Those would certainly not pass as sentient to them.

Them not sending out FTL ships can be attributed to their want to make moral amends but that still doesn't change the fact that what they did to humanity up to that point was a callous act of evil that would only bring retribution until one of the two species was annihilated. Then again, considering how advanced the Formics are, I cannot help but wonder if they had a way to peek into the future and went all eldar Farseer, picking the only solution that would guarantee a future for their species; all the others ending with berserk humans hunting them down to the ends of the universe (but thats my Humanity Fuck Yeah sense tingling).

In the end the Ferengi put it best: Stupidity is not an excuse. Attacking someone with spaceships and genociding their populace twice all because you thought that they weren't sentient is a special kind of stupid action that was probably repeated at nauseum until someone actually died.

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Re: Page 108 & 109 Discussion

Post by Arioch »

If I recall correctly (and it's been a while), the explanation given in the book was that only the Bugger queens were considered sentient, and when they came up against humans, the Buggers assumed that humans were the same, and it was okay to kill humans because it was assumed that they were non-sentient and there was a sentient human "queen" somewhere behind the scenes.

This falls short as an excuse on a huge number of levels; the Buggers are still aggressive conquerors who don't mind depopulating planets full of "non-sentient" organisms or attacking fellow queens and taking their stuff. Even if we buy Card's "philotic" god-particle bullshit about what causes sentience, that's still an appalling disrespect for life, when your first impulse is to exterminate. It's also incredibly narcissistic and unimaginative, not to consider for even a moment that aliens might not be exactly the same as them. We can argue about whether that qualifies as evil, but I think the Buggers deserved every little bit of what they received in terms of retribution.

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Re: Page 108 & 109 Discussion

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joestej wrote:
Argron wrote:Not really, the Orgus gave us the Umiak perspective and it sucks donkey balls.
The handful of Orgus that escaped aren't exactly the most unbiased of sources either though. Remember that neither the Umiak nor Loroi tolerate neutrality, and if the Orgus had ticked off the Loroi they wouldn't have been enslaved, they'd be smoking ash. From a certain point of view the Bugs are the merciful ones, since at least they let their defeated enemies live. At the very least we can assume the Loroi wouldn't have hesitated to invade a neutral faction if it would give them an advantage, just like the Umiak.

Not that this makes them good people or anything, since apparently 'allying' with them basically means surrendering and letting them take over. Client species aren't exactly treated well. This isn't as bad as it seems when you consider how they treat their own citizens though. EVERYONE is expendable and downtrodden, including their own people. From the Umiak's perspective, they likely think they're treating their Clients just fine.

Alex sums up the difference between the two pretty well on Page 93. It doesn't answer the original question ("Why exactly do the Umiak think the war started?"), but we still don't have an unbiased answer on the Loroi perspective either. Our current explanation has come from a member of the Loroi Secret Police. Big Sister is watching you...
From what we have seen allying with the Loroi means cooperation on a reasonable level. Allying with the umiak means slavery and forced labour, not because they are evil but because that's how they treat their own people and their particular psyche accepts it as normal. The evil part they are guilty of is not caring about how very different cultures and species see their monstrous treatment of the individual, and not giving nations a choice in the matter: with them it's voluntary slavery, forced slavery or death.

The loroi have also not initiated all out wars, they only entered wars that were declared on them (like the current umiak war) or came to the help of allies, while the umiak have initiated both of the wars we so far know they have fought. The loroi also don't smoke everyone that looks them badly or else they wouldn't have had several wars with some of their client races, they would have exterminated them the first time they met. The slug-like people were being backstabbing dicks in a war of extermination... good luck to whoever does that to humanity, let alone the umiak.

The orgus could be biased, but all the media and logs they have on board and that humanity has surely analyzed to the tiniest detail most likely isn't as much, and they have no reason to edit it all to make the umiak look worse since they didn't even know humanity was there. And hell, if they are very biased that could be proof in itself of how badly they were treated.

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Re: Page 108 & 109 Discussion

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dragoongfa wrote: That has the plot hole of the Formics not wandering how a species without 'sentient guidance' managed to get technology at the first place. If they really thought that humanity had queens of its own they would have wondered why not only they couldn't talk with them but why they couldn't even 'listen' to the orders that the 'drones' got.
The Formics assumed we did have guidance, they just assumed they hadn't seen our queens yet. The very premise of Ender's Game is only possible because the Formics can control their drones when they aren't in the system, so the fact that they hadn't bumped into any in the first war would be odd but not so strange from their point of view.
dragoongfa wrote: This huge plot hole can be explained in universe only if the Formics never bothered to even consider someone else as 'equal sentient' and just considered everyone but themselves as fodder; only challenging this notion after Mazer Rahkam killed the Queen that was sent to exterminate the pests and colonize Earth. Then there are the Piggies which I have only seen through the comics. Those would certainly not pass as sentient to them.
The final Formic queen who Ender saves at the end of Enders game makes contact with the Piggies in Speaker for the Dead. She considers them fully sentient, and actually gets along better with them than she does with the Humans because the Piggies in their tree stage are capable of telepathic communication like she is.

dragoongfa wrote: Them not sending out FTL ships can be attributed to their want to make moral amends but that still doesn't change the fact that what they did to humanity up to that point was a callous act of evil that would only bring retribution until one of the two species was annihilated.

Then again, considering how advanced the Formics are, I cannot help but wonder if they had a way to peek into the future and went all eldar Farseer, picking the only solution that would guarantee a future for their species; all the others ending with berserk humans hunting them down to the ends of the universe (but thats my Humanity Fuck Yeah sense tingling).
While the idea that it was 'evil' is disputable (they didn't understand what they were doing was actually causing any lasting harm, and stopped the moment they realized it was), the Formics knew what they did was going to invite genocidal retaliation. Canon says they didn't have a way of seeing into the future, but considering they managed to put their infant queen on the exact world Ender eventually ended up going to (as opposed to the dozen or so other Bugger worlds he might have become governor of) the plot would actually have made more sense if they did.
dragoongfa wrote: In the end the Ferengi put it best: Stupidity is not an excuse. Attacking someone with spaceships and genociding their populace twice all because you thought that they weren't sentient is a special kind of stupid action that was probably repeated at nauseum until someone actually died.
Arioch wrote:This falls short as an excuse on a huge number of levels; the Buggers are still aggressive conquerors who don't mind depopulating planets full of "non-sentient" organisms or attacking fellow queens and taking their stuff. Even if we buy Card's "philotic" god-particle bullshit about what causes sentience, that's still an appalling disrespect for life, when your first impulse is to exterminate. It's also incredibly narcissistic and unimaginative, not to consider for even a moment that aliens might not be exactly the same as them. We can argue about whether that qualifies as evil, but I think the Buggers deserved every little bit of what they received in terms of retribution.
Can't argue with the idea that Formics were certainly much more aggressive than they should have been, regardless of whether or not they thought they were fighting a harmless proxy war via drone. However claiming that they deserved wiped out down to the literal last (wo)man simply for being aggressive expanders is going a bit far. If we apply that logic to our own race just about every nation on the planet would have earned annihilation two or three times over.
Argron wrote:From what we have seen allying with the Loroi means cooperation on a reasonable level. Allying with the umiak means slavery and forced labour, not because they are evil but because that's how they treat their own people and their particular psyche accepts it as normal. The evil part they are guilty of is not caring about how very different cultures and species see their monstrous treatment of the individual, and not giving nations a choice in the matter: with them it's voluntary slavery, forced slavery or death.

The loroi have also not initiated all out wars, they only entered wars that were declared on them (like the current umiak war) or came to the help of allies, while the umiak have initiated both of the wars we so far know they have fought. The loroi also don't smoke everyone that looks them badly or else they wouldn't have had several wars with some of their client races, they would have exterminated them the first time they met. The slug-like people were being backstabbing dicks in a war of extermination... good luck to whoever does that to humanity, let alone the umiak.

The orgus could be biased, but all the media and logs they have on board and that humanity has surely analyzed to the tiniest detail most likely isn't as much, and they have no reason to edit it all to make the umiak look worse since they didn't even know humanity was there. And hell, if they are very biased that could be proof in itself of how badly they were treated.
Just about everything you've said is true, but recall that one of the central questions for Humanity in this story is which side should they take? If everything where that clear-cut, there wouldn't be much plot tension. The fact that the Loroi are just as likely to decide to exterminate Humanity because we're a threat to them as they are to welcome us as new allies is a big part of the story.
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Re: Page 108 & 109 Discussion

Post by Arioch »

joestej wrote:Can't argue with the idea that Formics were certainly much more aggressive than they should have been, regardless of whether or not they thought they were fighting a harmless proxy war via drone. However claiming that they deserved wiped out down to the literal last (wo)man simply for being aggressive expanders is going a bit far. If we apply that logic to our own race just about every nation on the planet would have earned annihilation two or three times over.
How many times has humanity expanded to a new planet and attempted to wipe out all life there? The answer would be none.

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