Benjamin Morgan @morganbenjamin Twitter profile

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

6 years

I am the mean judge on a Chinese reality TV show, and my life is complete.

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

5 months

As a new cat owner I have noticed that most “cat advice” is advice about how to change your behavior to accommodate the cat

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

1 month

aren't we all

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

4 years

Meetings lately are mostly like this: -we don’t know much -what we do know we can’t really tell you -everything is going to change -given the above, please make a plan

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

5 months

@PamelaKGilbert haha, yes, my mistake. i’m learning!

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

4 years

i cannot go back to emailing and zooming all day

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

4 years

—mostly of college staff members—

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

2 years

pedagogy today is helping students understand that a reaction to something is not an interpretation of it

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

3 years

weird how writing becomes easier when you follow the advice you give to your students

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

4 years

I may be alone in this but I find it super weird when an employer asks its employees for donations

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

2 months

In Anna Karenina, Levin’s dog thinks in human language for an entire chapter. Are there other C19 novels with dog consciousness?

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

4 years

academic twitter is 50% subtweets and 50% everyone asking what the subtweets are about

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

5 months

@8x_Infinity My kitty also does not like closed doors!

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

1 year

I really want to teach a class with zero technology—just books and notebooks and chalkboards and talking. Would my students kill me?

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

4 years

I just got an email announcing that the UChicago econ department will be renamed the /r/wallstreetbets Department of Economics

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

2 years

I should probably know this as a professor of Victorian literature, but is there a term for when the plot pauses so that the narrator can comment generally on human nature for a few sentences? (This is a tweet about George Eliot)

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

1 year

The best “question that is actually a comment” I have ever witnessed was at a Victorian studies conference when an old man stood up and recounted having met Oscar Wilde’s lover Lord Alfred Douglas—and sitting on his lap—as the prize for winning a poetry contest

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

5 years

The students have discovered David Brooks is an alum and they are mercilessly dragging him on the UChicago memes page

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

3 years

the boring truth is that good pedagogy depends much less on being charismatic and brilliant, and much more on being organized and transparent--sticking to your syllabus, giving assignments far in advance, returning stuff on time, etc etc etc

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

9 months

Why did every grandma have this exact clock when I was a kid?

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

5 months

@OnSophiaStreet Orange sink kitty!

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

2 years

Ok, Middlemarch really is a great novel

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

5 months

@CheribirdCanFly She loves a trickle of water!

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

1 year

realtor just asked me "are you liquid" and it felt like an ontological question

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

2 years

Stumbled on a website that auto-generates posters from quotes people have saved, and the Thomas Hardy section is amazing

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

4 years

do other universities have words they say about themselves as often as uchicago says "rigor"?

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

4 months

Ok fine lay here but then you are going to need to write the article

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

5 years

I have now learned that if you draw attention to a problem, you get put on a committee to solve the problem

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

1 year

It’s 2023 and the king of England has canceled his trip to France because of the political uprising

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

1 year

🍆🍆🍆🍆

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

5 months

@lostchyld1 she's perfect!

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

5 months

@schauffd22 Twin sink kitties!

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

3 years

Having given a lot of extensions over the years, I would now like to request a one week extension of winter break

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

8 months

OK, I know I am 23 years late to this conversation but OMG the plot twist at the end of ATONEMENT!??

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

2 months

Why would I read a novel written in the twenty-first century when I could instead read one written in the nineteenth century?

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

2 years

Just finished reading/listening to all of Thomas Hardy’s novels in one summer; ask me anything!

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

2 years

Guillory: the university is set up to make us think that we are being rewarded for our astute criticism of society, when in fact the most useful thing an English professor can do is teach someone to read well

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

5 years

Have reached the point in the quarter where my teaching plan is to ask “hey, what did you think of the reading?” and hope for the best

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

3 years

Raise your hand if you, too, were once a grad student whose path was irreversibly changed by this collection

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

5 years

Turns out that 80% of my teaching method is thoughtfully touching my face

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

3 months

I was just thinking that my building has so many quirky characters and then I realized it’s me, I’m the English professor who walks his cat on a leash

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

4 years

Picked up Lukacs's Theory of the Novel to try to get some work done and he is immediately like this book "was written in a mood of permanent despair over the state of the world" and I originally intended it to be written as a series of dialogues taking place during a plague.

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

4 years

Charles Dickens would like to have a word with the New York Times

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

3 years

Reviewer 1: 🟩🟩⬜️🟨🟩 Reviewer 2: ⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

7 months

I know we all know this but wow, Virginia Woolf really did understand what it’s like to be a person

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

2 years

Huge missed opportunity that UChicago didn’t put the sociology department in Stuart Hall

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

4 years

Our first online faculty meeting is going exactly as expected

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

1 year

Just became a homeowner after 22 years of renting! 🥂

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

4 years

the email from a former student who apologizes for bothering you with a question about something you said in class years ago--when in fact they are making your day

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

4 years

I very much want this poster

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

4 years

Struggling to understand the psychology of people who are panicked enough to hoard toilet paper and also relaxed enough to hang out in a bar

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

4 years

that awkward moment after you say goodbye but before you leave the zoom meeting

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

4 years

my students just emailed me a trophy, which I am definitely going to include in my annual review documents

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

4 years

My new area of specialization is The Return to Campus; my course offerings next year will be "Introduction to the Return to Campus," "Intermediate Return to Campus," and a special topics seminar, "Returning to the Return To Campus"

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

1 year

The MLA should give book awards in Oscar-style categories: Best original neologism Best supporting argument Best copyediting Best documentary evidence Best adapted idea Best discursive footnote Best cover design Best concept mixing

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

11 months

topic of my current meeting is: "how do we assess that our assessments are accurately assessing students?"

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

1 year

how do we think my landlord calculated that 13 years of interest on a $500 security deposit works out to $0.18?

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

2 years

I will absolutely never need this pile of notecards I made for my orals exams, but also I cannot bring myself to throw them away

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

3 months

Reading Madame Bovary for the first time and it is really so good

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

1 year

I’m chair of three programs next year, so really I’m more like a sofa

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

4 years

Syllabus time! Super excited to teach our first-year PhD Colloquium this year. The idea is to figure out how and why we do the stuff we do in English departments, balancing theory and history with dabbling and exploration (bits of this are borrowed from generous colleagues!)

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

2 years

(this is not a criticism of Students These Days; the bigger context is that capitalism now extracts value from having a reaction and it’s a hard situation to escape)

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

3 years

I mostly write criticism, but sometimes I write fiction, such as: "I expect to complete the manuscript by Spring 2021."

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

8 months

One thing that will never not be funny to me is that my doctoral diploma is signed by Arnold Schwarzenegger

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

11 months

if they are looking for someone who can manage an unruly and strong-willed caucus with deeply conflicting beliefs, they should recruit the chair of an English department

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

4 years

true fact: my doctoral degree is signed by Arnold Schwarzenegger

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

6 years

moral quandary: on the one hand William Morris was a socialist who devoted his entire life to envisioning a postcapitalist world in which factory labor was obsolete, so an H&M/Morris&Co collaboration is the very definition of perversity. on the other hand i want this shirt.

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

3 years

I just invited newly admitted students to take classes in the Departmentment of English Language and Literature

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

4 years

It’s interesting that “performative” now means fake or mere, when it used to mean effective or binding

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

4 years

My favorite thing about our department course evaluations is that they allow students to check a box labeled "This course was useless to me"

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

3 years

really enjoying this story about self-destructive aesthetic narcissism

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

4 years

NPR news update just asked Elaine Scarry about Trump’s access to nuclear launch codes, what is going on??

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

4 years

Update: Dad got the vaccine today!

Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

4 years

This is my dad, Joe. I love him! Joe is a 67-year-old doctor with a heart condition. Joe’s hospital ignored CDC guidelines to postpone elective surgeries and told him to come to work. Joe stayed home today, but he needs some support. Let’s tell Joe we need him to stay healthy!

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

2 years

Love it when a family in a Victorian novel is like “alas, we are ruined! Henceforth we must make do with only two servants”

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

2 years

@dannybwright @sarahdallison oh, cool! My favorite example of the one-sentence shift is from Jude the Obscure: "But nobody did come, because nobody does"

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

4 years

my mom and dad are walking around their deep-red utah suburb ringing a cowbell and cheering

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

3 years

@adamkotsko I feel like a crazy person whenever I start ranting about this

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

4 years

One morning, as Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed into a Zoom rectangle.

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

5 years

When I started teaching climate change literature five years ago the driving question was "how can literature make something abstract and distant feel present and real?" That framing ("abstract/distant") now seems outdated, I think mainly due to fires in CA, Brazil, Australia.

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

3 years

My rule of thumb is one pie per person

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

1 year

I want the old OED back

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

4 years

it's interesting that using biography to interpret scholarly work is normal practice, but using biography to interpret literary work is seen as reductive

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

3 years

MEN

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

4 years

doing taxes as an unmarried childless person who doesn't own a home is very easy because you have fulfilled none of the state's desires, and therefore none of the benefits apply to you

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

4 years

This is my dad, Joe. I love him! Joe is a 67-year-old doctor with a heart condition. Joe’s hospital ignored CDC guidelines to postpone elective surgeries and told him to come to work. Joe stayed home today, but he needs some support. Let’s tell Joe we need him to stay healthy!

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

8 months

Bf has started bringing me a tray of coffee with a little treat every morning 🥰

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

9 months

@dan_sinykin hahaha of course flipping someone off is the only kind of hand AI can get right

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

4 years

One thing I have learned from quarantine is that people don’t “follow” rules, they take up a relation to rules

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

3 years

Which novels best capture how normal the apocalypse can feel?

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

5 years

I just realized that Stanley Fish and Harold Bloom are not the same person

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

4 years

I went a little crazy and bought this many books from the local bookstore

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

1 year

You would not believe how many people are in my mentions explaining to me what technology is

Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

1 year

I really want to teach a class with zero technology—just books and notebooks and chalkboards and talking. Would my students kill me?

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

10 months

From now on when you come over to dinner at our house you will be eating at a place that has a Michelin star (on the shelf)!

alex

@alax_rang

10 months

I was named chicago sommelier of the year by the michelin guide 🙂

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

5 years

Listening to the thirtieth minute of a twenty minute paper

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

3 years

It would be cool if we recognized the scientists who invented the vaccines instead of the companies that hired the scientists

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

2 years

the high point of my academic career may have been when I took two “Intro to Literary Theory” courses in the same semester, one taught by John Guillory and the other by Barbara Johnson

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

3 years

Petition to change “end meeting for all” to “exeunt”

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

1 year

One of the stranger aspects of buying a house is that it involves begging someone to accept a massive amount of money from you, which you don’t even actually have

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

4 years

a little found poem in the Zoom closed captioning:

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Benjamin Morgan

@morganbenjamin

3 years

When I was a kid growing up (in a conservative place), high school English was a rare space where teachers were honest with you, and you talked about serous adult things, and your discussions were allowed to be subversive—and I wonder if that’s still at all the case?

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