Oz's Lindt Chocolate Cafe Hostage Situation

A Lindt Chocolate Cafe is the focus of a terrorist hostage situation in Oz. The exact filming location of some of the scenes in Matrix are where this event is occurring.

A major police operation was under way on what is Monday morning, December 15, 2014, at the Lindt Chocolate Cafe, on the corner of Elizabeth Street and Martin Place, Sydney, Australia.

An armed man was filmed with black headband with Arabic writing (see below). A black Arab flag was seen flying inside the cafe. Witnesses described seeing cafe staff and shoppers pinned up against the building’s front window, with their arms raised and a black and white Islamic flag in the window (as shown at top).

As many as 13 hostages were being held in the Lindt Cafe. At least two gunmen took over cafe just before 10 a.m. Customers and staff locked in David Jones in Elizabeth Street. Davy Jones' Locker, also Davy Jones's Locker, is an idiom for the bottom of the sea: the state of death among drowned sailors and shipwrecks.

It is believed six Black Hawk helicopters with troops on board are headed to the city. Castlereagh Street is swarming with hundreds of shocked onlookers and media personnel.

Lindt & Sprüngli AG, more commonly known as Lindt, is a Swiss chocolate and confectionery company, dating back to 1845. Rudolf Lindt, (July 16, 1855 – February 20, 1909) was a Swiss chocolate manufacturer and inventor.

Lindt has opened eight chocolate cafes in Australia, four in Sydney and four in Melbourne. The first one opened in 2004 at Martin Place in Sydney.

The name Lindt is derived from the Upper German word lind, which means "tender," "gentle hearted." The similar phonetic name Linde comes from "Linden," which is a type of tree. It is generally known as a sacred, hallowed tree in Slavic and Germanic cultures, and in England is called a "lime tree."

The symbol found on the logo is of a dragon.

Imprinted on individual chocolates is the logo's dragon. But, intriguing, turned...

...upside down, the head of the dragon looks like a machine gun. This was discovered and noted here, and mentioned in a blog in 2012.

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A rundown of the current breaking news follows. First, a bit of history:

In September 2014, the Australian Federal Police made "a host of arrests after allegedly uncovering a plot to abduct a random Australian and execute them by beheading in a public place, possibly Martin Place and post the act on social media."

Source.

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Is There Racism In Reporting School Shootings?

Deciding what was racist use to be so easy. Today, the media, sometimes due to law enforcement, sometimes not, is putting out confusing messages.

Take for instance news out of Portland, Oregon on Friday.

Four students were shot in front of a peace mural just outside of their alternative Rosemary Anderson High School in Portland, Oregon, at a North Killingsworth location. The gunmen fled the scene, prompting panic and a massive search on an otherwise quiet Friday on December 12, 2014.

Portland Police Department spokesman Sgt. Pete Simpson told the media that it could be “gang related.”

Describing those involved as AfricanAmericans, Simpson said, "The suspect may be affiliated with a gang but it's not known if the shooting was gang-related or 'a personal beef.'"

One victim, Taylor Zimmers, 16, was in critical condition. Two more, David Jackson-Liday, 20, and Labraye Franklin, 17, were in fair condition. Olyvia Batson, 17, was treated at the scene after a bullet grazed her foot.

The family of one of the victims told KATU News that he has “no gang affiliations.”

Confusing reports of a "drive-by" shooting turned into eyewitness accounts that the gunman or gunmen had "run away" from the scene.

Was it a school shooting or not? The media appears confused by how to handle shootings at schools involving blacks.

Portland, Oregon, police arrested a 22-year-old man, Lonzo Murphy (pictured), early Saturday in connection with the shooting.

Okay, let's review: The Friday shooting appeared to be gang-related, police said. Witnesses told authorities there may have been a dispute outside Rosemary Anderson High School just before the shooting occurred at a street corner. The victims are students or in affiliated job training programs.

Gang investigators "feel comfortable saying this is a gang-related shooting based on some of the people involved," Sgt. Pete Simpson said. Police believe the shooter has gang ties. 

But there's no real evidence of any of those statements.

Another school shooting occurred about six months earlier in the Portland area. A 14-year-old freshman at the school, named Emilio Hoffman, was killed. A male teen gunman with a semi-automatic weapon (reportedly an AK-15) and one victim were both dead after shots were fired at Reynolds High School in Troutdale, Multnomah County, Oregon on June 10, 2014. The killer was identified as Jared Michael Padgett.

The Portland, Oregon, shooting of December 12, 2014, comes just two days shy of the second anniversary of the Sandy Hook massacre in Connecticut.

The syncs between the Aurora, the Clackamas, and the Sandy Hook shootings were strong. Most school shootings are traditionally seen as "white male students" killing their classmates or students at their former schools.

The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting occurred on December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut, when 20-year-old Adam Lanza fatally shot 20 children and 6 adult staff members. Prior to driving to the school, Lanza shot and killed his mother at their Newtown home. As first responders arrived at the scene, Lanza died by suicide by shooting himself in the head.

On December 11, 2012, a shooting occurred at the Clackamas Town Center in unincorporated Clackamas County, outside the city of Portland, Oregon. The gunman, 22-year-old Jacob Tyler Roberts, ran into the shopping center wearing tactical clothing and a hockey mask and opened fire on shoppers and employees with a stolen Bushmaster M4 Type Carbine. He fired a total of seventeen shots, killing two people and seriously wounding a third person before shooing himself, dying by suicide.

Did everyone really think that racism would disappear just because an AfricanAmerican was elected President?

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The media loves the simplistic phrase "school shooting" to whip up interest in their stories. The problem is, they don't exactly know what to do when the shootings involve non-whites.

In the fall of 2005, there was a nonfatal "school shooting" in Saginaw, Michigan. According to the media, a probable "gang-member" Clarence Russell III, 15, was accused of shooting fellow sophomore Daniel Foster, 15, October 20, near a stairwell inside Saginaw High School. Foster did not die of his injuries, and some speculation occurred that it was a "gang-related shooting" (translate this from the media as "African-American"*). Days later, on October 24, in a drive-by shooting, three teens were targeted, with two hit. The one teen who was not shot was the 17-year-old half brother of Clarence Russell III.

On October 10, 2007, Asa Coon (above), a 14-year-old student at SuccessTech Academy high school in Cleveland, Ohio shot four people, including two teachers and two students. Asa H. Coon was a Caucasian going to a predominantly AfricanAmerican school. His was a face and personality that was the different one in that enviornment. He was a "death Goth" Columbine copycat in a trenchcoat, according to some media accounts. His shooting resulted in only one death - his own when he turned the gun on himself.

In 2007, I made these observations:

I've written in recent years of the diverse and ethnic underpinnings that must be acknowledged in these school shootings, and the shifting trend from white rural to white suburban to more ethnicities taking on the mantle of Columbine, over and above their own cultural background. This school shooting cries out for further analysis on that level too.
The [Cleveland's] shooter had a name that hardly can be ignored, and must have been a burden to carry. "Coon" is an insulting term for a black person. "Coon" is known as a derogatory term for AfricanAmericans, and is similar to the n-word. Its origins are traced back to a shortened form of the word "raccoon," used in reference to the animal. The black eye masks and noctural habits of the animal paralleled the characteristics of typical robbers and thiefs. The stereotype was then applied to black people. It was used extensively in the South, but then followed blacks into the Northern urban areas where they settled.
This young man named Coon was a white student living alone with a Goth Columbine mentality among AfricanAmericans. He is said to have liked Marilyn Manson versus God. Allegedly, the fight that resulted in his suspension was related to an argument about his Devil worship. Simplistic ways to describe a life, I know, but that is what you get from the media after a shooting.

*"Gang-related" incorrectly means "black teens," to the media: In 1996, 50 percent of gang members were juveniles (i.e., younger than 18) and 50 percent were adults (i.e., 18 and older). In 1999, these numbers were 37 percent and 63 percent, respectively. In 1999, respondents reported that 47 percent of gang members were Hispanic, 31 percent African American, 13 percent white, 7 percent Asian, and 2 percent "other" (Source: National Youth Gang Survey Trends From 1996 to 2000, 2002).

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Strange Days in LA: From Magnolia to Inherent Vice

"It is in the humble opinion of this narrator that this is not just 'something that happened.' This cannot be 'one of those things'...This, please, cannot be that. And for what I would like to say, I can't. This was not just a matter of chance.…These strange things happen all the time." ~Magnolia

A small tornado hit South Los Angeles on December 12, 2014

 

Frogs fall from the sky in Magnolia, an American drama film written, produced, and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, narrated by Ricky Jay, was released on December 17, 1999.

Meanwhile, what new film was released on 12.12.14? Something novel (as in a novel from Thomas Pynchon) turned into a movie from Paul Thomas Anderson, Inherent Vice:

Location of the plot of Pynchon's novel: "The setting is Los Angeles in 1970; the arrest and trial of the Manson Family is featured throughout the novel as a current event. Larry 'Doc' Sportello, private investigator and 'pothead,' receives a visit from his former girlfriend Shasta Fay Hepworth, now having an affair with the real-estate mogul Mickey Wolfmann."

Shasta Fay Hepworth links to the Fayette Factor, of course.

Someone wrote this about Magnolia at Wikipedia: "The film has an underlying theme of unexplained events, taken from the 1920s and 1930s works of Charles Fort. Fortean author Loren Coleman has written a chapter about the film, entitled "The Teleporting Animals and Magnolia," in one of his recent books [Mysterious America]. One of Fort's books is visible on the table in the library and there is an end credit thanking Charles Fort."

Several of the actual film prop frogs from Magnolia 

are at the International Cryptozoology Museum.

Of course, Los Angeles became the Z-target of sharks from the sky when Skarknado was released on SyFy, July 11, 2013.

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Eyes Wide Furry: Foreshadowing the Future

Does opening oneself to synchromysticism result in predicting future "coincidences" and "syncs"?

Early on December 7th, I posted "Déjà Vu, Sync Quick News, and Hanging Man," here at this Twilight Language blog.

In that examination of syncs tied to Heath Ledger, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Robin Williams, I detailed my discovery last week of a weird clip from Tosh.0's episode on furry characters. Two furry costumed "celebrities" were identified as "Robin Williams" and "Philip Seymour Hoffman." Bizarrely, the "Hoffman" character was shown hanging himself. (Autoeroticism aside, the gesture was suicidal, as well.)

In my posting yesterday (December 6, 2014), I said that Tosh.0's scenario took place at a party, "which is sort of a furrie déjà vu version of Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut."

I found an old blog article that agreed with me today. Writing September 5, 2013, at the Furry News Network, Markos Sinister observed in "Kusa the Arctic Fox gets Web Redemption on Comedy Central’s Tosh.0":

The clip ends with Daniel taking Cody to a “Furry Party” spoofing Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, where he and Cody encounter celebrities having sex in mascot costumes.

"Robin Williams" identifies this pink furry as "Philip Seymour Hoffman."

I have no idea why I thought it was important to post this at that time. I was going to be on Coast to Coast AM at 1:00 Eastern Standard Time, talking about different news. I did want to get this "furry" item out of my head - I'd been "writing" it in my mind since mid-week - and wished to move on.

I finally got it posted at 12:33 A.M. EST. Here's the time stamp.

At a Facebook group, KitchenSync/SyncBookPress/The Conscious Collective, I shared the link later on the 7th.  One member, Jason Barrera, wrote, perhaps somewhat truthfully but definitely humorously, a comment, "Look what you did, Loren."

Barrera added a link to news from the Chicago area, "Chemical leak at Hyatt Regency during furry festival deemed intentional."

I was startled by what I read. I was in the midst of an overlapping sync.

Furry conference goers mill about outside the Hyatt.

"Nineteen people were hospitalized early Sunday after an intentional chlorine leak at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare during the 2014 Midwest FurFest," noted the Chicago Sun-Times.

The Chicago Tribune recorded the time: "The incident happened around 12:40 a.m. at the Hyatt, at 9300 West Bryn Mawr Avenue in Rosemont, according to a statement from the Rosemont Public Safety Department. First responders were called to investigate a noxious odor that was spreading across the ninth floor of the hotel, where a high level of chlorine gas was discovered in the air."

Okay, this incident began at 12:40 a.m., which would have been Central Standard Time in Chicago. Almost exactly the "same time," 12:33 a.m., but Eastern Standard Time, and thus technically an hour earlier, I posted my "furry" notes. (You will see that I misspelled it "furrie," because I had never written about the subject before!)

The intentional gassing at the furry convention is a sync that is beyond amazing, personally.

It happened in Rosemont, Illinois, a tiny city of 4000 people.  Rosemont derives from the mount (hill, incline, mountain) of roses (traditionally red flowers). I've visited Rosemont, because that's where my brother Jerry use to live. 

Being neither paranoid nor psychic, I do remain, very curious about this process.  Do predictable moments occur on a level not yet understood? There are no coincidences, right? What is this then, when this happens?

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UPDATE

On the Facebook group Synchronicity, member Ronald Christopher Walker left this comment regarding the above posting:

Chlorine, atomic number 17. Very esoterically appropriate & the "least random number." John Lennon is murdered two 17 year cycles ago, tomorrow, the 8th. 17 years & 17 days after the assassination of JFK. Ah, 34 years ago, & Robin Williams was Popeye, who is "34 years old." Nicole Kidman stars in Fur after Eyes Wide Shut, as photographer of the damned Diane Arbus, making love to freakishly hairy Robert Downey Jr., & Kubrick's Grady twin girls are not only straight from the Arbus photo, but Arbus kills herself in a bathtub on Kubrick's 43rd birthday, July 26, 1971. The naked old lady lifting herself out the bathtub in Room 237 has the haunting eyes of Diane.

December 8th is the anniversary of the death of my father, at 64 in 1985, in Illinois. John Lennon's music would play all day on the radio, throughout 12.8, as a reminder of his death, for years. December 8th, of course, is the anniversary of the death Lennon, at 40, in 1980. By "coincidence," Paul McCarthy's vocals were recorded for "When I'm Sixty-Four" on December 8, 1966. The recording was one of the first sessions for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. It is a song McCarthy wrote when he was 16.

My father seemed to wait until Pearl Harbor Day came around again to die, in Decatur, Illinois. He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, in the Pacific theater.

Lennon was killed by Mark David Chapman, outside the Dakota, infamous as the site of where Rosemary's Baby was filmed.

The replica of the Dakota.

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Déjà Vu, Sync Quick News, and Hanging Man

For fans of Alan Abbadessa-Green's rather addictive frequent (usually on Thursdays) short video Sync Quick News, from Sync Book Press, the one on December 4, 2014, was, well, provocative. The Sync Quick News' "Cops Cameras and Cards" clicked on all pistols.

Mixing nicely with the content, I was struck by Green's use of a word - déjà vu - early in his news that I also found had popped up in the news I was following on the 3rd of December. It was that kind of week. 

Déjà vu, from the French, literally "already seen," is the phenomenon of having the strong sensation that an event, feeling, or perception currently taking place has been experienced in the past, whether it has actually happened or not.

As it turns out, I was looking into a report of five people being shot outside a restaurant in Newport News Tuesday night, at about 8:20 pm, December 2nd. The telling name of the location: Déjà Vu Restaurant and Lounge, Newport News, near Norfolk, Virginia. The Déjà Vu site is attached to Wynnwood Plaza Hotel. The victims were ages 28, 32, 42, 45, and 59, and were together. One was a Navy sailor, and now the Déjà Vu is off-limits to Navy personnel.

Had I just heard some news from Newport? Or Newport News (oh ya, on November 28th)? Or Newtown? Or Newton? Was this the same story or another? And that restaurant name? Whoa. Oh, and yes, I was recently in Newport, Connecticut. 

"It is in the humble opinion of this narrator that this is not just 'something that happened.' This cannot be 'one of those things'....This, please, cannot be that. And for what I would like to say, I can't. This was not just a matter of chance.…These strange things happen all the time." ~ Magnolia, 1999.

Alan Green's video news also, in and of itself, gave me a déjà vu feeling because it spent time talking about this Twilight Language's and the Mask of God's recent discussions of the Hanging Man Tarot Card.

My images were of the Hanging Man card and Heath Ledger's last character as a hanging man.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus: Heath Ledger's final role.

This all linked to more syncs coming my way.

Heath Ledger and Andrew Keegan starred in 10 Things I Hate About You (1999).

This is the week when celebrities and syncs became news.

According to Vice, actor Andrew Keegan started a new age temple and spiritual movement in Venice, California, called "Full Circle." (Venice Beach? Venice Beach? See here and here.)

"Synchronicity. Time. That's what it's all about," Keegan told Vice. "Whatever, the past, some other time. It's a circle; in the center is now. That's what it's about."

Andrew Keegan's last film role is an uncredited policeman in The Dark Knight Rises (2012), which, of course, starred Heath Ledger as the Joker.

What occurred also earlier in the week is that I randomly stumbled across a repeat broadcast of a Tosh.0 episode about "furries" (people who dress up as furred animals for fun, frolic, and sometimes sexual encounters). It gave me a deep déjà vu feeling watching Tosh's creepy scenario. But not because I had seen this Tosh.0 episode before, for I had not.

Originally broadcast on September 3, 2013, this specific one was noted as being from Season 5, Episode 5. You can see the video entitled "Furries-Kid," here.

In one of his "web redemptions," Tosh decides to stage a "celebrity" furries party. The associated identities assigned to various characters in the sketch are, well, coincidentally bizarre and déjà vu.

Tosh, on the left above, with skin-colored tights on, and elaborate fake body fur, says he is "Robin Williams."

At the "party," which is sort of a furrie déjà vu version of Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, the "Williams" character goes around identifying the costumed "celebrities."

Coming to the pictured pink furrie above, who is engaging in motions suggestive of masturbation and hanging himself, "Williams" identifies this is furrie as "Philip Seymour Hoffman." What?

This was prophetic, in a way, as far as these two characters exchanging behaviors.

[Little did I know how "prophetic." See "Eyes Wide Furry."]

Back to what took place after Tosh's fiction was produced, in an act of parasuicide, the real Philip Seymour Hoffman, 46, died February 2, 2014 (Groundhog Day), with a syringe in his arm. Hoffman's death was caused by "acute mixed drug intoxication, including heroin, cocaine, benzodiazepines and amphetamine," according to the New York City's Medical Examiner's office. 

This all seemed a bit of déjà vu, for Hoffman's friend, Heath Ledger's autopsy result of February 6, 2008, from the same medical examiner's office said Ledger had died "as the result of acute intoxication by the combined effects of oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, temazepam, alprazolam and doxylamine." Heath Ledger was 28, when he died January 22, 2008. 

By the way, the film Groundhog Day (1993) is the ultimate cinematic treatment of déjà vu, when the same day repeats over and over again.

A few months after Hoffman's death, on August 11, 2014, the real Robin McLaurin Williams, 63, died in his Paradise Cay, California, home. The Marin County Sheriff's Office deputy coroner stated Williams had hanged himself with a belt and died from asphyxiation.

Williams hanged himself (in the real world). Not Heath Ledger nor Philip Seymour Hoffman (who both, through film and in Tosh's fiction, did hang). The fiction foreshadowed the reality, however, among friends, in a strange twist of programming. 

(L-R) Clifton Collins Jr, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bennett Miller, Heath Ledger, and Abbie Cornish.

Heath Ledger (far right) next to Philip Seymour Hoffman, at the 2006 Oscars with George Clooney, Joaquin Phoenix and Jake Gyllenhaal.

Above and below: Philip Seymour Hoffman and Robin Williams in Patch Adams (1998).

On December 1st, just by "coincidence," I found myself watching Magnolia again. And there was Philip Seymour Hoffman again.

Phil Parma [Philip Seymour Hoffman]: "Why are frogs falling from the sky?" ~ Magnolia, 1999. 

Why, indeed?

***

See also, update, here.

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Orion: From Spacecraft to the Son of Poseidon

Orion? Sirius? Poseidon? Helios? Scorpio? Apollo? Why is the simple name of a spacecraft more than meets the eye?

Like in the Philae name game, the twilight language of the Orion spacecraft is linked to a deeper meaning than is obvious from your cable news highlights.

The Delta rocket that launched Orion appeared to be a fiery trident to correspondent RPJ.

The Orion spacecraft was launched on the morning of December 5, 2014, from Cape Canaveral in Florida and finished its first test flight by falling safely into the Pacific Ocean, supported by a trio of parachutes. It was picked up by Navy personnel in a Zodiac (of course).

The details are easy to find in the mainstream media. The Orion blasted off at 7:05 a.m. EST, circled the globe twice, reached 3,600 miles above Earth, then landed in the sea off Baja California. The flight lasted about 4.5 hours, and served as a test of a spacecraft, similar to a large-sized Apollo capsule, which will take humans to asteroids and Mars.

But what is the name game behind the moniker Orion?

Orion (Ancient Greek: Ὠρίων or Ὠαρίων, Latin: Orion) was a giant hunter in Greek mythology whom Zeus placed among the stars as the constellation of Orion.

In the works of Homer and Hesiod we have linkages of some interest in this quest.

Orion is mentioned in the oldest surviving works of Greek literature, which probably date back to the 7th or 8th century BC, but which are the products of an oral tradition with origins several centuries earlier. In Homer's Iliad Orion is described as a constellation, and the star Sirius is mentioned as his dog. In the Odyssey, Odysseus sees him hunting in the underworld with a bronze club, a great slayer of animals; he is also mentioned as a constellation, as the lover of the Goddess Dawn, as slain by Artemis, and as the most handsome of the earthborn. In the Works and Days of Hesiod, Orion is also a constellation, one whose rising and setting with the sun is used to reckon the year.

The legend of Orion was first told in full in a lost work by Hesiod, probably the Astronomia; simple references to Hesiod will refer to this, unless otherwise stated. This version is known through the work of a Hellenistic author on the constellations; he gives a fairly long summary of Hesiod's discourse on Orion. According to this version, Orion was likely the son of the sea-god Poseidon and Euryale, daughter of Minos, King of Crete. Orion could walk on the waves because of his father; he walked to the island of Chios where he got drunk and attacked Merope, daughter of Oenopion, the ruler there. In vengeance, Oenopion blinded Orion and drove him away. Orion stumbled to Lemnos where Hephaestus — the lame smith-god — had his forge. Hephaestus told his servant, Cedalion, to guide Orion to the uttermost East where Helios, the Sun, healed him; Orion carried Cedalion around on his shoulders. Orion returned to Chios to punish Oenopion, but the king hid away underground and escaped Orion's wrath. Orion's next journey took him to Crete where he hunted with the goddess Artemis and her mother Leto, and in the course of the hunt, threatened to kill every beast on Earth. Mother Earth objected and sent a giant scorpion to kill Orion. The creature succeeded, and after his death, the goddesses asked Zeus to place Orion among the constellations. Zeus consented and, as a memorial to the hero's death, added the Scorpion [as Scorpio] to the heavens as well. Source.

Sirius, the star of Isis, takes us full circle to other connections. Isis was the primary goddess of the isles of Philae. NASA is not unaware of the names they are bestowing on their craft.

The youthful Walter O'Brien (played by Daniel Zolghadri) on CBS's hit series Scorpion is wearing a sweater that mirrors, in a fashion, the Apollo 11 USA sweater being worn by Danny in The Shining. (For more, see here.)

Cory Panshin reminds us: "So Orion was 'the lover of the Goddess Dawn' -- which would be Aurora, of course."

In the official feed to the news media, at splashdown, NASA launch commentator Mike Curie is heard to say, in his (seemingly scripted) enthusiasm that this moment was "the dawn of Orion in a new era of American space exploration!"

So many syncs, of late, seem to be foreshadowing events, as well as reflecting them.

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