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WEEKEND LISTENING: Why an Eco-warrior Left the Movement—and Became a Christian Bari Weiss

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A seventeenth-century French engraving by Sébastien Le Clerc I (1637–1714), depicting the Resurrection. (Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

If the First Industrial Revolution used water and steam to fundamentally change the nature of work, this industrial revolution—the disruption of automation, information, the internet, and now AI—is transforming everything about the way we work, connect, and interact with the natural world. 

These changes have largely been regarded as a net good. After all, poverty across the world has fallen precipitously in the last 100 years. Life expectancy has nearly doubled. Literacy is four times higher. Hunger, malnutrition, war—all down. All good things.

But today’s Honestly guest, writer Paul Kingsnorth, thinks that the way in which this progress has been achieved is detrimental not only to the environment but to our own mental and physical well-being—and that underneath the extreme wealth built by human society is a massive sense of human and spiritual loss.

Paul is someone who has gone through a profound transformation over the past decade, and in a very public way. He was once considered one of the West’s most radical and prominent environmentalists—even chaining himself to a bridge in protest of road construction and leading The Ecologist, a left-wing environmental magazine. But he became disillusioned with an environmental movement that he says is now obsessed with cutting carbon emissions by any means, and getting captured by commercial interests in the process.

Paul and his family eventually left urban England to live off the land in rural Ireland, where they currently grow their own food; the children are homeschooled. 

One more thing of note on this Easter Sunday: Paul converted from a practicing Buddhist and Wiccan to an Orthodox Christian—which is about as traditional as it gets.

As you’ll hear in this conversation, Paul explains why he intentionally “regressed.” In short: in our modern, hyper-connected, tech-obsessed world—what he calls “the age of the machine”—Paul and his family are trying to live wildly. We talk about what that looks like for him, and for any of us trying to be free; we talk about how the left has strayed from its original principles; why the West has abandoned God; and how to fight everyday to live. . . simply.

To listen to our conversation, click below. Or scroll down for an edited transcript.

On how he got involved in the environmental movement:

Paul Kingsnorth: It was really a question of joining the dots. If you love the natural world, you look out and you see the natural world being destroyed, you try to stop it. But then the question you ask is, why are they building these motorways? Why do they want to increase traffic levels? Why do we need to drive faster? Why do we have this developing economy? And you start to join the dots and you start to see how consumerism works and how capitalism works and how industrialism works. And really, what I was realizing over all of that time is that—and I still believe this to be the case now—that the modern industrial economy, which brings us plenty of material benefits, is also a giant colonial machine that destroys the natural world and turns that bounty into product for us. And I could see that going on everywhere, and I became very passionate about it. And being very young and strong-willed, I thought we could save the world. 

Back in the 1990s, climate change was not on the front page of all the papers. People didn’t even really know what it was. Nobody talked about sustainability. There was no “net zero.” There was none of this stuff. It was long before all the corporations and the politicians decided they were going to run with this agenda, which back at the time we would have dreamed of happening. It didn’t quite turn out the way we thought.

Bari Weiss: If I had bumped into you in a pub at that time, and I had said to you, “What political party do you support?” or “Do you identify as a Marxist or an anti-capitalist?” would those terms have even resonated with you? How would you have described yourself at the time?

PK: Well, I would describe myself as a Green. It’s not quite right and it’s not quite left. So I suppose I certainly would have regarded myself as a man of the left. But I was never a Marxist. I was always very suspicious of top-down solutions, ideological programs, because fundamentally, like most other Greens, I was a localist. And so I had this notion that certainly capitalism was a monster. Industrialism was a monster. What we needed to do was to live as locally as we could and live as simply as we could. I still think that’s a good idea, although I’m much less naive about the possibility of doing it now. But really, environmentalist politics, Green politics arose as a kind of challenge to both the capitalist right and the socialist left. I think since then it’s been very much swallowed by the left.

On leaving environmental activism:

BW: So, like any good story, yours has a turn, and at some point you start to become—well, you’ll tell me, but the word I would use would be disillusioned. What were the seeds of that change for you?

PK: I think it’s worth saying, for starters, that my feelings about the natural world are still fairly similar to the ones I had when I was young. It’s not as if I’ve suddenly decided that nature doesn’t matter and we can dig it all up and burn it. But what I started to see was a couple of things. One, I realized that this belief I had that we could create a radically different world wasn’t actually going to happen. It had been tried many times before, and it wasn’t possible. The momentum of this thing was just largely unstoppable. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing good to be done, but the kind of progress of what I call “the machine” now is very wedged in. But then also something else happened to the Green movement, which is that the mainstream of the Green movement got captured by commercial interests. It also got captured by the progressive left. What it also did was it became obsessively focused on climate change, which is certainly a real thing and an important issue, but it’s only one of a suite of problems that arise from the industrial economy destroying the earth. But we got absolutely obsessed with it, and the whole of the Green movement became reduced to a kind of mission to cut carbon. That’s all it was about now. We were just going to reduce carbon emissions, and it didn’t matter how people did that.

So suddenly, these beautiful mountains I was walking on as a child were being covered in enormous industrial wind farms, and I was being told that this was the solution to saving the planet, even though the energy they created was going straight back into the consumer economy. And I was saying, no, this is not environmentalism, and neither is covering the farmland with giant mirrors, and neither is filling the seas full of wind farms and neither is corporate sustainability. The kind of activist optimism that I had when I was in my 20s started to look a bit unrealistic, shall we say. And I started to look at the Green movement and think, I don’t recognize this anymore. 

BW: Was there a break in the way that people inside of movements sort of become heretical and then have a dramatic break with their tribe? Was there anything like that for you? Or was it a kind of slow peeling away into this new brand of environmentalism?

PK: Well, you know this yourself better than anyone. The process of getting disillusioned is probably, for most people, a process rather than an event. 

BW: Yes.

PK: It’s not as if you just wake up one day and realize everything’s wrong and you’ve radically changed. It takes years, because you don’t want to necessarily break with it. Tribalism is very important to people. I was quite tribal about being a Green. I thought this was a great movement and I wanted to be part of it. And I was probably very egotistical about being some great Green writer as well. So it was important to me. It was part of my identity, I suppose. And I still consider myself a Green in many ways, but it was a process of just getting to the point where I thought, I can’t actually support this. I can’t in good conscience go out and campaign for these wind farms on the mountain.

On moving to Ireland to live off the land:

PK: My wife and I had wanted for a long time to get out of the rat race, find a bit of land, try and homeschool our children, try and grow our own food as much as we could. And so we did that in 2014. My wife was a doctor. She gave up her job. We left England. We came to Ireland where land was more affordable, and we bought the place we’re in now. And we thought, well, we’re going to just try this out because if we don’t, we’re going to regret it. So the last 10 years, really, have been an experiment where two people who’d grown up in urban and suburban England decided to dump themselves in rural Ireland and try and learn how to do everything from planting trees to building chicken houses to growing vegetables to all the other things that you do when you’re trying to live like that.

On his religious path to Christianity:

PK: When I was younger, I felt like the Earth was alive. I had a really strong sense of that. And so I felt like I was in some ways a sort of vague pagan and pantheist, and I was worshipping nature or worshipping through nature or something. When I got into my 40s, I decided I was going to go on a Zen Buddhist retreat. And actually, it was a very powerful experience, and I practiced Zen for quite a few years after that. And I had in mind that I’d become a sort of practicing Buddhist, and I did in a very ill-disciplined way, and I got a lot out of Buddhism but there was still something missing. And it felt like I’m just going through a series of stages of trying things. It’s never quite enough. There’s still something I’m reaching for, and I’m reaching and reaching and stumbling on an inch at a time toward something—I didn’t know what it was or what I was really even looking for. 

BW: You really hit every station of the cross, as it were. It’s Buddhism and it’s Daoism and it’s Sufism and it’s Wicca and it’s mythology. And I’m sure you got something from each of those things. But why do you think you prioritized these Eastern religions before the one that had been practiced in your ancestral homeland for centuries?

PK: That’s the question, and it almost answers itself. It’s because it’s the one that’s been practiced in our ancestral homeland for centuries, and we’re growing up in a time where the culture we’re living in is what I’ve called, in some of my essays recently, a “culture of inversion.” So we’re turning everything on its head. We react against absolutely everything we used to be. And the fundamental thing we react against is the faith we used to have, which is Christianity. And so the Christian church can be held up as the fount of all evil.

It’s very interesting in England to see that Christianity is regularly treated as this oppressive patriarchal religion, whereas a stronger, more patriarchal, more traditional religion like Islam is regularly kind of soft-soaped. It’s very interesting. And the reason for that is very simply that Islam comes from somewhere else, and it’s practiced by minorities, whereas Christianity is what we used to be. And so there’s a reaction that’s been going on since at least the 1960s against the church. And I grew up with that, believing all of that. The church—certainly Britain, anyway—has lost faith in itself. It doesn’t have a strong spirituality. So if you go into a church, you’re not going to get much from it. It feels like a sermon by a liberal NGO or something. It’s fine, but it doesn’t feel like there’s anything to it. And that’s why people in the West, I think at least since the 1960s, always go East if they’re looking for faith, unless they’ve grown up in a strong faith environment themselves. 

My wife comes from a Sikh family. Her family were from India. She walked away from it, became quite secular like me, but she’s gone back to it around the same time that I became a Christian. But I didn’t have anything to go back to. And we don’t go to Christianity, we go to Zen, or we go to exotic things that seem exciting, but we don’t really understand them and they don’t have the cultural baggage that the church has. I think that’s probably the key thing. We think that the Christian church has certain things; in some ways, it is that. And so we want a spiritual path that doesn’t have the baggage of our own ancestry. That’s what a lot of people do, and that’s certainly what I did. But it wasn’t giving me what I was looking for. What I was looking for turned out to be God, actually. Or maybe he was looking for me, which is more likely. I didn’t know, but there was always a void and it turned out to be God-shaped.

On the meaning of Easter:

PK: In the church, this Resurrection is the biggest, most astonishing, weirdest thing that’s ever happened to humanity. And it is exactly something that happens when all hope is gone, when your Messiah has just been crucified and buried. Then this astonishing, impossible, and unexpected thing happens, which not only brings him back, but also completely rewires your understanding of what the world is and how it works. And that’s what my coming to Christianity did to me. And every Easter—or Pascha, as we call it in the Eastern church, which is a corruption of [the word] Passover, actually—the story deepens for me. It’s interesting because I used to think that you become a Christian and that’s that and you’re sorted. But it’s not that. It’s the beginning of a journey, and every year the journey gets deeper. So every time you go through this cycle of 40 days of fasting and then a feast at Easter, something else deepens. It’s like you just dropped a couple of inches deeper into this thing that you’re in. And as I say, the world changes shape. So that is the kind of steady hope, and it’s always there. It doesn’t matter what humans do, and not everything is under our control. And that’s okay. There’s always something else. There’s always somebody holding you. That’s how it feels. And it’s rather wonderful. It doesn’t remove the struggles from your life, but it means that they’re in the bigger context of you always being held and watched by something much bigger that’s happening. So yeah, Easter is a pretty wonderful time.

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Things Worth Remembering: ‘A Game Most Like Life’ Charles Lane

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It feels like only yesterday I called up my friend Douglas Murray with a strange idea: What if you wrote a column for us about poetry?

We had no idea if anyone would be interested in it. I still wasn’t sure many people would be interested in The Free Press itself. But I knew I didn’t want this institution we were building to focus solely on what was wrong with the world. As I wrote at the time: “If ours is an era of building and rebuilding, what things are worth saving?”

In the two years since this column began, the world has changed so much. We have a new president. One war has started—and perhaps is now ending. Another still rages.

The Free Press has covered it all. And so has Douglas himself, reporting from Israel and Ukraine, and speaking across the globe. Meantime, he has written nearly 100 editions of Things Worth Remembering—an unbelievable feat. Somehow he also found time to write a forthcoming book about the future of the West.

Given how much is on his plate, for the time being Douglas is stepping back from this incredible column he’s helped to build. He’ll continue to be a beloved contributor to, and friend of, The Free Press. And fear not: Things Worth Remembering will carry on every Sunday.

Over the years, fans of this column have said to me: “If I had to choose one thing worth remembering, it’d be. . . . ” It made me realize most writers have a poem they return to when they feel lost, a song they replay, or a snippet of some great book that materializes again and again. So we are expanding the column to bring in new voices and choices. I think you’ll love what they have to say.

Today, on Super Bowl Sunday, we start with our deputy editor, Charles Lane, who knows exactly what Americans should remember on this important date: a speech given multiple times, in the late ’60s, by the greatest football coach in the world, Vince Lombardi. It touches on a lot of things we care a lot about at The Free Press: courage, hard work, and excellence. I hope you like it as much as I do—don’t forget to leave your thoughts in the comments.

Happy Super Bowl Sunday, everyone!
—BW

“I sometimes wonder whether those of us who love football fully appreciate its great lessons,” said Vince Lombardi, in what friends and family called “the speech.”

The greatest professional football coach of the twentieth century, Lombardi tried and tested various versions of this talk as an in-demand public speaker during the late ’60s. The text quoted here is from “a representative version” of the speech, which his son Vince Jr. compiled and published in 2001. Lombardi’s words are undeniably magnificent, even to those who might have no interest in tonight’s Super Bowl.

Lombardi acknowledged that his was “a violent game,” suggesting that it would be “imbecilic” to play it otherwise. But this “game like war,” he believed, was also “a game most like life—for it teaches that work, sacrifice, perseverance, competitive drive, selflessness, and respect for authority are the price one pays to achieve worthwhile goals.”

Lombardi’s is not quite the household name it was—time does that to fame. To the extent he is remembered today it is often as the originator of a ruthless coaching doctrine—“Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing”—that someone else actually coined.

Still, every year the Super Bowl restores him, at least for a moment, to popular awareness: The winning team tonight will take home the Vince Lombardi Trophy, a brilliant 20.75-inch–high, seven-pound prize made out of pure sterling by Tiffany silversmiths.


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February 8, 2025 Heather Cox Richardson

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Yesterday the National Institutes of Health under the Trump administration announced a new policy that will dramatically change the way the United States funds medical research. Now, when a researcher working at a university receives a federal grant for research, that money includes funds to maintain equipment and facilities and to pay support staff that keep labs functioning. That indirect funding is built into university budgets for funding expensive research labs, and last year reached about 26% of the grant money distributed. Going forward, the administration says it will cap the permitted amount of indirect funding at 15%.

NIH is the nation’s primary agency for research in medicine, health, and behavior. NIH grants are fiercely competitive; only about 20% of applications succeed. When a researcher applies for one, their proposal is evaluated first by a panel of their scholarly peers and then, if it passes that level, an advisory council, which might ask for more information before awarding a grant. Once awarded and accepted, an NIH grant carries strict requirements for reporting and auditing, as well as record retention.

In 2023, NIH distributed about $35 billion through about 50,000 grants to over 300,000 researchers at universities, medical schools, and other research institutions. Every dollar of NIH funding generated about $2.46 in economic activity. For every $100 million of funding, research supported by NIH generates 76 patents, which produce 20% more economic value than other U.S. patents and create opportunities for about $600 million in future research and development.

As Christina Jewett and Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times explained, the authors of Project 2025 called for the cuts outlined in the new policy, claiming those cuts would “reduce federal taxpayer subsidization of leftist agendas.” Dr. David A. Baltrus of the University of Arizona told Jewett and Stolberg that the new policy is “going to destroy research universities in the short term, and I don’t know after that. They rely on the money. They budget for the money. The universities were making decisions expecting the money to be there.”

Although Baltrus works in agricultural research, focusing on keeping E. coli bacteria out of crops like sprouts and lettuce, cancer research is the top area in which NIH grants are awarded.

Anthropologist Erin Kane figured out what the new NIH policy would mean for states by looking at institutions that received more than $10 million in grants in 2024 and figuring out what percentage of their indirect costs would not be eligible for grant money under the new formula. Six schools in New York won $2.4 billion, including $953 million for indirect costs. The new indirect rate would allow only $220 million for overhead, a loss of $723 million.

States across the country will experience significant losses. Eight Florida schools received about $673 million, $231 million for indirect costs. The new indirect rate would limit that funding to $66 million, a loss of $165 million. Six schools in Ohio received a total of about $700 million; they would lose $194 million. Four schools in Missouri received a total of about $830 million; they would lose $212 million.

Lawmakers from Republican-dominated states are now acknowledging what those of us who study the federal budget have pointed out for decades: the same Republican-dominated states that complain bitterly about the government’s tax policies are also the same states that take most federal tax money. Dana Nickel of Politico reported yesterday that Republican leaders in the states claim to be enthusiastic about the cuts made by the Department of Government Efficiency but are mobilizing to make sure those cuts won’t hurt their own state programs that depend on federal money. Oklahoma governor Kevin Stitt told Nickel that governors can provide advice about what cuts will be most effective. “Instead of just across the board cutting, we thought, man, they need some help from the governors to say, ‘We can be more efficient in this area or this area, or if you allow block grants in this area, you can reduce our expenditures by 10 percent.’ And so that’s our goal.”

Yesterday, Tim Carpenter of the Kansas Reflector reported that Senator Jerry Moran (R-KS) is concerned about the Trump administration’s freeze on food distributions through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). USAID buys about $2 billion in U.S. agricultural products a year, and farmers are already struggling with rising costs, low prices, and concern with tariffs.

Their spokespeople urge the continuation of USAID: the senior director of government affairs at the American Farm Bureau Federation said that “USAID plays a critical role in reducing hunger around the world while sourcing markets for the surplus foods America’s farmers and ranchers grow.” Moran added: “Food stability is essential to political stability, and our food aid programs help feed the hungry, bolster our national security and provide an important market for our farmers, especially when commodity prices are low.”

Meanwhile, federal employees are telling the stories of the work they’ve done for the country. Yesterday, a public letter whose author claimed to be an employee of the Federal Bureau of Investigation whose job is at risk in Trump’s purge of the agency wrote an amalgamation of the FBI agents being purged: “I am the coach of your child’s soccer team,” the letter read. “I sit next to you on occasion in religious devotion. I am a member of the PTA. With friends, you celebrated my birthday. I collected your mail and took out your trash while you were away from home. I played a round of golf with you. I am a veteran. I am the average neighbor in your community.”

But there is another side to that person, the author wrote. “I orchestrated a clandestine operation to secure the release of an allied soldier held captive by the Taliban. I prevented an ISIS terrorist from boarding a commercial aircraft. I spent 3 months listening to phone intercepts in real time to gather evidence needed to dismantle a violent drug gang. I recruited a source to provide critical intelligence on Russian military activities in Africa. I rescued a citizen being tortured to near death by members of an Outlaw Motorcycle Gang. I interceded and stopped a juvenile planning to conduct a school shooting. I spent multiple years monitoring the activities of deep cover foreign intelligence officers, leading to their arrest and deportation. I endured extensive hardship to infiltrate a global child trafficking organization. I have been shot in the line of duty.”

“[W]hen I am gone,” they wrote, “who will do the quiet work that is behind the facade of your average neighbor?”

Less publicly, Joseph Grzymkowski expressed on Facebook his pride in 38 years of service “with utmost dedication, integrity, and passion. I was not waste, fraud, and abuse,” he wrote. “Nor was I the “Deep State…. We are the faces of your Government: ordinary and diverse Americans, your friends and neighbors, working behind the scenes in the interest of the people we serve. We are not the enemy.”

Wth his statement, Grzymkowski posted a magazine clipping from 1996, when he was a Marine Analyst working in the Marine Navigation Department for the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA), located in Bethesda, Maryland—now known as the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) in Springfield, Virginia. That office provides maritime intelligence for navigation, international obligations, and joint military operations.

On January 6, 1996, a historic blizzard dumped snowfalls of 19 to 31 inches on the East Coast. Stranded alone in the station when his relief couldn’t get through the snow to work, Grzymkowsky stayed at the radio. “I realized there were mariners who needed navigation safety messages delivered, and I wasn’t about to jeopardize the safety of life or cargo at sea simply because we were experiencing a blizzard,” he told a journalist. “One doesn’t leave a watch on a ship until properly relieved, and I felt my responsibility at the watch desk as keenly as I would have felt my responsibility for the navigation on the bridge of a ship.”

For 33 hours, he stayed at his desk and sent out navigation safety messages. “I had a job to do and I did it,” he recalled. “There were ships at sea relying on me, and I wasn’t going to let them down. It’s nothing that any other member of this department wouldn’t do.”

Notes:

https://grants.nih.gov/grants-process

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R43341/45

https://report.nih.gov/nihdatabook/report/20

https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/what-we-do/budget

https://www.unitedformedicalresearch.org/nih-in-your-state/alabama

https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/what-we-do/impact-nih-research/serving-society/direct-economic-contributions

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/07/us/politics/medical-research-funding-cuts-university-budgets.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/02/06/trump-usaid-money-american-farms/

https://kansasreflector.com/2025/02/07/kansas-moran-davids-sound-alarm-on-delay-of-usaid-food-aid-to-starving-people-worldwide/

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/07/republican-state-doge-budget-013596

https://southfloridareporter.com/a-trump-policy-change-will-restrict-billions-in-funding-for-medical-research-programs-at-universities/

https://docs.google.com/document/d/12HuhGA67_QPIibLa6nB32BtepQR3zQE_DvDTDGrZ5dU/edit

Grzymkowski article is from a 5th Anniversary Special Edition (1996–2001) of NIMA’s Edge magazine, an authorized, internal information publication published for the National Imagery and Mapping Agency personnel and its customers.

https://msi.nga.mil/

https://msi.nga.mil/whats-new

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The Pot of Gold at America’s Western Edge A.M. Hickman

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The boughs of the pomegranate bush clattered in the morning wind, branches drooping with heavy, frost-bruised fruits. The bush lilted her morning greeting to the rows of olive and grapefruit and palm, nodding to the yerba santa and the blue oaks. My own eyes seemed to be covered in a golden gauze as I rose to survey the variegated domain of fertile hills sprawling out before me. Everything was yellow with the spicy nicotine and ocher diamonds of the impossible California skies.

For those who have never been to California before, picture this: a heady sabbatical in Tuscany with Dr. Seuss. Everything in this westernmost state seems to ebb and flow in brief fits and starts through manicured vineyards, blossoming pastures, ranch roads, and hazardous gravel switchbacks slung high above dusty, half-filled reservoirs. It is America’s shimmering Eden, her promised land, the trophy of our young Republic that stands proudly as proof that every ounce of westerly motion was worth it.

To the pioneers, it was the end of the road. It was as far as a wagoneer could travel, cresting high over the infamous Donner Pass, if they had not yet succumbed to madness or scrofula, nor to hunger, smallpox, or cannibalism. Catching sight of the Pacific Ocean, the good earth bowed for the pioneers and did her curtsy. God Himself was the conductor of this symphony of holy life and sun-kissed valleys and endless deep-green ridgelines—and at the end of His great rhapsody, a frontiersman would build his fence lines and furrows and aqueducts.

In some sense, California is the mother of the very particular, feverishly intense, and unstoppable optimism that makes the United States what it is. All Americans are Californians at heart. We are, at our best, a fanatically optimistic sort of people—who might push for a half-year’s time across rough country just to see if the rumors of gold might be half true.

And in the case of California, the rumors were true: There was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. From the earliest “salad days” of these western farmers to the oil booms, the mining frenzies, the rise of Los Angeles and San Francisco, and later, the heady madness of Silicon Valley’s technological revolution. The incredible winnings of California’s early settlers course through the blood of Americans the whole country over, whether they have each seen California for themselves or not.

It all began the first moment that the pioneers caught sight of the poppies along the Sacramento River.


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