The Education of Axel Heyst

Where are you and where are you going?
7Wannabe5
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

“AxelHeyst” wrote: Do you have thoughts on ERE values which are aligned with adult feminine energy?
Well, INTJs aren’t known for being super nurturing, but subtext of “ERE” would be something like Earth Care which is also one of the 3 ethics of permaculture. As you implied, the value of Freedom is associated with the Juvenile Masculine quadrant, but must be supported by Authority/Dominance/Firm Stance or Boundaries in the Adult Masculine quadrant. The Adult Feminine Quadrant is diagonal to the Juvenile Masculine Quadrant, so can be in conflict at lower level of development/functioning. Obvious example being that it is difficult to feel very free when you are literally caring for an infant. The expression “Don’t take responsibility where you don’t have authority” has to do with functional balancing of Adult Feminine vs Adult Masculine in relationship to Juvenile Quadrants of others. Co-dependency usually involves one partner who is bloated-dysfunctional in Adult Feminine quadrant. Simple example would be seeing alcoholic partner as child who needs care rather than as adult whose personal authority should be respected to the extent that you grant him the freedom to choose to choke on his own vomit.

AxelHeyst
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

Thanks for that - and the dynamic re: codependency, very interesting.

Container Build Update
My roommate and I got stressed over the past month or so. We're both jamming on projects, and the insertion of money into our relationship made things weird. He started micromanaging the build a bit, and I was getting to the point where I just wanted to finish it up and leave forever, just hand the keys over to him. (The last development was that my roommate proposed he pay for the container build, and I pay rent, as a way of keeping ownership clear in case one of us bounces.)

Blah blah blah, long story short, we went back to the old deal. He's not paying me anything for the container, and I'm not paying him anything in rent (I split utilities). I "own" the build. This feels way better. Even though things got weird, we both just sat down and had an adult conversation about it once it was obvious what was going on, talked about how we felt about it, slept on it a bit, and changed the deal. It's nice to spend time with people who are capable of this level of critical conversation - it's one of the reasons I chose to come here.

I'm going to finish the internal framing tomorrow. My roommate freehand chainsaw-milled fire-killed cedar that he felled himself from his property into 4x4's. The dude's a badass.

Next I'll put something together for the kitchen. My roommate had an old rectangular dining table he didn't want - I'm planning on cutting it in half, and making one of those halves the kitchen counter, the other an art desk for DW.

By then I should be out of time here - I'm going to relocate to the Family Land, get my surgery, and loaf around my parent's for 3 weeks. My plans for that are to work on upping my cooking game, develop more digital assets for my side hustle, take care of some work stuff, and read.

Then (end of May/June) it's time to hop on the moto and go see friends. Ideally I'll be vaccinated by then as well.

Oh, also, I bought one-way tickets to Lisbon for Feb next year for $150 a pop. The approximate plan is to slow travel round the world, taking as long as we feel like (a year?).

2Birds1Stone
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by 2Birds1Stone »

AxelHeyst wrote:
Thu Apr 15, 2021 7:26 pm
Oh, also, I bought one-way tickets to Lisbon for Feb next year for $150 a pop. The approximate plan is to slow travel round the world, taking as long as we feel like (a year?).
I know someone who did that ;)

Scott 2
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by Scott 2 »

AxelHeyst wrote:
Thu Apr 15, 2021 1:46 pm
So, no, I haven't found a pattern of spirituality that works for me, not really.
I backed into something that worked for me through yoga. I went for exercise, got euphoria. That lead to mindfulness practices, a community, etc. I followed it into philosophy, found some resonated, read on and realized I'd been drawn into a spiritual practice. It was more of an "oh, I guess this helps," than an experience I ever sought. It should have been obvious when I found myself in the Hindu temple basement, or maybe chanting Sanskrit, but honestly the aha! moment wasn't until much later. I was just playing Simon says.

I'm not recommending any specific religion, only noting spirituality is a common answer to the love yourself problem. I think the practices that resonated with me - mindfulness, positive engagement with community - they recur in most spiritual arenas. I happened to stumble on a philosophy that was also helpful. I would in no way argue it is superior or even right. Just a "hey, this works for me."

RoamingFrancis
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by RoamingFrancis »

Ditto on yoga and mindfulness. The shit just works.

ertyu
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by ertyu »

RoamingFrancis wrote:
Thu Apr 15, 2021 11:10 pm
Ditto on yoga and mindfulness. The shit just works.
How did you get into it?

ertyu
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by ertyu »

AxelHeyst wrote:
Thu Apr 15, 2021 1:46 pm
"You're a worthless piece of shit. But God is awesome, loves you, and will let you in to heaven anyways if you believe XYZ." The doctrine is SUPPOSED to make you feel loved by God even though you're no good, but I got hung up on the first part and maybe had some doubts as to the second part. I missed a key fundamental there, in other words, and it damaged me.
I don't think you missed a key fundamental. The teaching worked on you exactly as it was supposed to work. The church used to be the Western world's most prominent political institution, and as such, one of its main functions was social control. Using carrot and stick to make sure you're in line isn't exactly original. Buddhism does something similar with the concept of karma - it uses the afterlife to scare the bottomest rung of the rabble into compliance. Most peasants in the old days wouldn't have had access to Buddhist texts that examine the concept of karma in depth just like most christian peasants wouldn't have had access to their scripture beyond the fire and brimstone they received from their local preacher on sundays. Stepping out a bit further, capitalism also has personal inferiority as one of its tools of social control, but instead of the preacher directly telling you what an undeserving pos you are, you learn that through ads and celebrity examples (of body/appearance/athleticism as well as of achievement/wealth) you're taught you're continuously lesser than and you should emulate.

On the second rung of the ladder, so to speak, when one digs deeper into the concept of original sin, I don't think it's about making you feel loved by God even though you're a piece of shit. Imo, it's about counteracting the very strong human tendency to be self-serving and blind to our weaknesses and moral failings. Left on their own devices, humans will be blind to their own faults, project them on others, and hate. Humans will other. Humans will feel superior and self-righteous. A theme that runs through Christianity, therefore, is to make sure not to be blind to one's own failings -- and this is stressed a lot because of how strong our instinct to be self-serving is, even in individuals who hate themselves or feel inferior. Original sin isn't about inherently being a piece of shit, it's about not falling into the trap of thinking that you, in particular, are pure and righteous and have no failings. It's about telling us that as long as we're human, we have a shadow. As long as we're human, we will have less than noble envies, hates, desires, and drives, just like all the other humans around us. Original sin is thus a teaching about equality of ego: it deals with the concept of value by saying no one has more intrinsic value than anyone else because we're all human. We're all children of god (the good) and we're all flawed (the bad).

Another theme running through christianity that enforces this is the teaching not to judge, to leave the judgment to God. Conversely, to love your neighbor as you love yourself. This one is very interesting to me as it is also in Buddhism: when you do tonglen meditation, one is supposed to first connect with the love and compassion that's easiest to connect with, the love and compassion for oneself. Then one is supposed to learn to love by extending this love onto others - friends, then neutrals, then enemies. The pinnacle is to extend it universally: to recognize at a deep level the interconnectedness and unity of all. My thinking is, there must have been something about pre-industrial society that allowed people to not be alienated from their self-love and self-compassion in spite of how fucked and lawless life was. I don't know, but it seems to me there is something about industrial society in particular that encouraged this widespread sense of inferiority and worthlessness. Is it the fact that we trade our lives for money, and if we can't command enough of a wage, we aren't seen by the system as worthy of survival? Is it something about learning to get alienated from our inherent creativity and to follow the mechanistic directions of others, on schedule? Is it that people who feel worthless are more willing to let value be extracted from them because they feel a continued need to prove themselves? It's certainly something in the water we swim in. I remember the articles about finding my first job that I read when I was first in the states which implied that only the best, the brightest, and those who put in the most hours deserve to be employed. There is something in the water, and that something gets overlaid with christianity's original sin, and this message ends up digging people deeper instead of gently bringing them down from their own egoic grandstanding.

similarly, "God loves you" isn't really about the entity of god actually loving us, it's about that gratitude you mention: about getting to notice the small ways in which things work out well, the way in which life sometimes just flows. Maybe it's the fact that I never felt unconditionally loved by my parents so I can't really picture being unconditionally loved and project this on the flying spaghetti monster or some such, but i do believe people who say that they access a state of awareness of universal love when they meditate or do lsd.

I'd be very interested to hear more from the yoga/mindfulness people on how those practices have led them to loving themselves. @S2, I know you have spoken about this before, so thank you and anyone else who shares.

RoamingFrancis
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by RoamingFrancis »

@ertyu I got into meditation when I attended a 10 day Vipassana retreat on a whim. I had a powerful experience and now have had a dedicated practice for about two and a half years.

I think any religion can fall into a couple categories, depending on the time period, location, and who's preaching.

First is using religion as an institution of social control—unfortunately this is the most common. This is the medieval church, most of Christianity nowadays, etc.

Second is "opiate of the masses" style of religion. A comforting belief structure provides a release valve for suffering, but is ultimately a Band-aid.

Third is religion as a philosophy of social liberation—see Ambedkar's Buddhism, Latin American liberation theology or MLK's Christianity, Malcom X's Islam.

Fourth is a path of contemplative practice that leads to direct experience of God/No Self/True Self/Great Mystery/Awakening/Whatever.

Christianity has been all four of these things. So has Buddhism and Islam. I think the important thing is to let people stick with whatever ontology or religious/cultural tradition they are most comfortable with, but do what is possible to push for categories three and four.

AxelHeyst
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

Scott 2 wrote:
Thu Apr 15, 2021 9:02 pm
I'm not recommending any specific religion, only noting spirituality is a common answer to the love yourself problem.
After mulling on your post, I think I wasn't being entirely fair to my experiences. Yogic and tantric philosophy and practice have benefited me immensely, as well as explorations in a few other traditions (buddhism, taoism, etc). While I haven't yet cracked the nut of healthy self-worth, my spiritual path has at least primed me to be wandering in the approximate right direction. I doubt I'd be able to even ask the right questions, or be able to understand my issues with self-worth and love, without my work with yoga etc. Insofar as I haven't "solved" (not the right word) my issues, it might just be a matter of having not gone deep/long enough yet.

(Also, the last few posts may have given the impression that I'm in a super dark place right now. I'm not - I'm just being *really* frank about my process of digging around in the mud of my psyche with the aim of becoming very high-functioning, rather than so-so.)

AxelHeyst
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

2Birds1Stone wrote:
Thu Apr 15, 2021 8:24 pm
I know someone who did that ;)
Heh, I was mostly browsing around Spanish cities on flights.google, which were ~$420/flight, and then saw Lisbon at $150 and literally went "2b1s said it was cool! Good enough for me!" *click*

AxelHeyst
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

@ertryu when I think of Christianity as "what I'm pretty sure Jesus actually meant", I'm pretty cool with it. When I think of Christianity as "the organized religion that built itself on the words of Jesus and some other stuff", I'm typically pretty disgusted with it. (I remember my youth pastor using "render unto Ceasar what is his due" as an argument that all the males in the youth group had a religious obligation to sign up to go over to Iraq. Even as a 17yo I thought that was pretty fucked up.)

I really appreciated your thoughts on the levels of intent with Christianity, that's really interesting. And RF's categories.

Scott 2
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by Scott 2 »

AxelHeyst wrote:
Fri Apr 16, 2021 10:26 am
with the aim of becoming very high-functioning, rather than so-so
I don't think anyone would describe me as very high functioning. My spiritual lesson was it's ok to be so-so. There's no value judgement I need to ascribe. By ceasing to strive, one creates space to experience unity with the divine. Everything flows from that.

One of the observations I took from yoga - some people get it right away. They can thrive with a very simple practice. Others need the western mindset beat out of them. They'll take on progressively more difficult practices, chasing higher and higher "levels" of yogic insight. The eight limbed path is a ladder, and they are going to climb it through force of will.

I had to go through a couple years of the latter before things clicked. I visited with teachers all over my region, at least a thousand hours in the studio. I chased the lineage tree. Most days I'd practicing for multiple hours. I read dozens of books. On and on.

Now - I move and I breathe, with no expectation of a result. But, I generally do feel better after. My practice is very simple, typically some amount of this guy's flow:

https://jbrownyogavideo.com/

AxelHeyst
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

Scott 2 wrote:
Fri Apr 16, 2021 1:37 pm
By ceasing to strive, one creates space to experience unity with the divine. Everything flows from that.
I think that's exactly what I meant by "high-functioning". :)

Western Red Cedar
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by Western Red Cedar »

AxelHeyst wrote:
Thu Apr 15, 2021 7:26 pm
Oh, also, I bought one-way tickets to Lisbon for Feb next year for $150 a pop. The approximate plan is to slow travel round the world, taking as long as we feel like (a year?).
That was a juicy nugget to drop at the end of your post. Hoping you heal up well and spend some quality time with friends and family before the big trip. Lisbon is a beautiful city with a cool art scene.

I appreciate you and others here sharing things like this and putting this ERE stuff into practice. Dropping down to 1/5 time at work, jumping into the container build, and going on some grand adventures incentivizes salarymen like me to make the leap sooner rather than later.

Keep on rockin' in the free world!

RoamingFrancis
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by RoamingFrancis »

AxelHeyst wrote:
Fri Apr 16, 2021 10:38 am
"render unto Ceasar what is his due"
Of course, me being a damned anarchist I take this as an invitation to overthrow the state.

ertyu
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by ertyu »

RoamingFrancis wrote:
Fri Apr 16, 2021 10:13 am
@ertyu I got into meditation when I attended a 10 day Vipassana retreat on a whim. I had a powerful experience and now have had a dedicated practice for about two and a half years.
... i asked you before, you explained, and i completely forgot that we had a whole convo about it until you said this. sorry man

RoamingFrancis
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by RoamingFrancis »

No worries! Lord knows I've forgotten a great many things :)

AxelHeyst
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

RoamingFrancis wrote:
Tue Apr 20, 2021 5:40 pm
Of course, me being a damned anarchist I take this as an invitation to overthrow the state.
Anarchists have it better in modern democracies I think. Ceaser would have tortured you to death by nailing you to two sticks and letting the birds eat your eyes out. Jesus did that bit So You Don't Have To! ;)

--Update:

Health
My energy and stoke has been low for a while. I re-read Tucker Max's "How to Naturally Increase Testosterone", and the short version of that book is 1) Sleep enough, 2) Stop eating grains and carbs, and 3) Lift Heavy Things.

I'm good on 1, I can't do 3 until June, but I've been eating TONS of grains and carbs since at least September. Oatmeal, rice, and flour, tons of it, every day.

So a week and a half ago I switched back to the slow-carb diet (eggs, meat, veggies, legumes, with a cheat day 1/wk). I feel SO much better. I'm not doing blood testing, but it's rather obvious that my test levels are up. My energy is more even. Without trying, I've dropped to two meals a day rather than three plus snacks. I'm more excited to do stuff, and my stoke lasts longer, whereas before I was forcing myself to put in more than an hour on any project at a time. The only downside is it is difficult to get myself to wind down for sleep at night, which I've dealt with my whole life.

It's trickier to eat according to the slow-carb diet inexpensively (oats, rice, and flour are pretty damned cheap) if you insist on 100% grassfed/pasture raised beef. Wanting to get below $200/mo is why I went off it in the first place. But I think I'm going to be able to get back down to <$200/mo after maybe an initial high month. Just more lentils, is all.

Hustles and Such
I'm juuuuust about to launch some digital assets for sale. I think I've identified a niche within a niche, but it might require a little education/marketing to get my stuff to the people who could use it. I don't expect to make much at first launch, but hope to grow over time as I tap into the right market. I could also be totally wasting my time and won't make a damn thing, but at least I'll have gotten my first failed attempt out of the way and can move on to the next.

The connections between several of my different domains seem to be connecting in my head. Specifically, my 3d art, dirtbag design-build, seminomadicism, writing, dirtbag/frugal/alt lifestyle, and video editing domains all seem obviously connected. I have a few ideas on how to thread them together, where they aren't already, but mostly I plan on building up the weakest ones and implementing systems (rather than goals) to keep them driving up in the C^6 model of mastery. And then exploiting opportunities, ideas, and stoke as they arise.

I do find I have to keep reminding myself I'm trying not to build too elaborate of plans right now.

Mental Health
Due to increased testosterone, sun, warmth, daily improvement of living situation in the container, and letting go of clutching after Big Plans and Projects, my mental health is dramatically better than it was over the winter. I've been spending a fair amount of time thinking through how "happiness/contentment <> suffering" is orthogonal to "working hard/achieving stuff/success".

For most of my life I've pegged happiness to achieving stuff, even when I knew that wasn't quite right and it never worked out that way. The time away from full time work is allowing me the space and time to actually step back, examine that, and work with "doing less" as a way of demonstrating to myself that it's possible to be happy and content while not actually accomplishing all that much.

Financial
I went through a small flurry of getting up to speed on and executing some basic FIRE stuff: setting up and maxing out a tIRA and HSA. I looked into p2p microlending, but it seems you need to be either an accredited investor or higher NW than I am (e.g. prosper.com/invest), so that dead ended.

My new accounts are still all in cash. I don't understand what's going on in the markets, and the internet seems to be blowing up with GET IN NOW!!! which I take as a sign to not get in. My current investing strategy is "read more".

I cranked through the McConnell, and started Bodie before switching to "stop doing anything you don't feel like doing, so you can decouple happiness from achievement in your mind", and haven't picked it up since. I'll pick it up again at some point, but at the moment feel I'll get more return on my time from developing income-generating entrepreneurial efforts.

I launched an online shop with some digital assets I made. I realize I've produced goods for a market that I need to create first, so I don't imagine I'll make any sales until I've pushed out some tutorials and marketing efforts. My business strategy is terrible, upon reflection, but I'm learning a lot in the process and am not going to quit at this point - I have a lot of iteration and testing to do before I'll have convinced myself I'm in a dead end. If I am able to "create" the market that wants my stuff, I'll be the only person selling to them, so it might work out nicely anyways.

Also, the digital assets I'm creating for this idea will be useful to sell/package the next digital asset idea I have, so I'm just making stuff I kind of need anyways, and trying to sell them.

Container Build
I built a bookshelf out of a few twisted 2x4's and scraps from the floor. It's ugly, but it got my books out of boxes, so I'm good with it. Burning and oiling crap wood goes a long ways towards making it look less crap.
Image

I finished the interior framing, from cedar that my roommate free-hand chainsaw milled. This is the sort of nonchalant badassery he does on the regular.
Image

I used a kreg jig, and the pocket holes will be hidden by the wall paneling. Thanks Jacob for the mention of that - I got the single-pocket one, and while it's best if you can clamp it in place, I found that it's possible with the right leverage to simply hold it in place with one hand and drill with the other. I'd like to make a DIY kreg jig out of some scrap hardwood, now that I've got this one as a template.

I put up the Heat Recovery Ventilator. It needs a wrap of insulation (that some friends gave me from their yurt build), and to make a little control panel for the fusebox and switches, but otherwise it runs good.
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I wrote more about it here, for anyone curious enough about wtf an HRV is to click.

My roommate had an old dining table that he didn't want. It was way too deep for the container, so I cut it in half to make a desk for DW and a kitchen counter.
Image

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This is pretty much the state I'm going to leave the container in for the summer. I'm unlikely to do more than stop by for a few days until the Fall.

In a week I'm off to have a man stick a knife in my lower abdomen while I'm asleep, and then I'll putter around not doing much at my parents for three weeks. By the time I'm cleared for full mobility, I'll be fully vaccinated. Then it's game on for the summer.

Going #cagefree and a Random Anecdote
I haven't driven my truck since the end of February. DGF still has it (and I haven't seen her since mid-March for a couple days). I haven't been too bothered not having it - rather the opposite, in fact. I'm going to aim to sell it in the next couple months. If I can get by in the heart of winter alone in the woods during a build without it, I don't need it.

I ran out of propane this morning. I knew it was going to happen soon. I haven't filled up my bottles because conveying 5gal propane on the back of a 250cc motorcycle is just too much even for me, and I haven't bothered to ask my roommate to fill mine the next time he goes. Honestly I wanted to allow a failure to happen, and then deal with it, and then have confidence in case a similar thing happens in the future unintentionally. Sort of like red-teaming myself, to abuse the term. I was pretty sure I'd be fine, but now I'll know.

So I just took my pot of mildly warm lentils over to the woodstove in the container, fired it up, and finished cooking my breakfast on it. #looselycoupled #diversification #resiliency #ereAFbaby

RoamingFrancis
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by RoamingFrancis »

AxelHeyst wrote:
Mon Apr 26, 2021 3:47 pm
Ceaser would have tortured you to death by nailing you to two sticks and letting the birds eat your eyes out.
Alas, the anarchy I like for sex appeal
Who cares if there is peace or if the poor have meals?

On a more serious note, glad to hear you're kicking ass. Keep on rockin'

theanimal
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by theanimal »

I've been keto for 5 years or so and eat for $150/mo. I refuse to buy beef from the store (and almost always follow through on that). There are a few ways you can eat the way you want to without spending $$$ on red meat. Some alternative examples are chicken thighs (ridiculously cheap and fatty), sardines, nuts and of course more eggs. I occasionally get a summer sausage type thing from the store when I am really desiring red meat but most of the time I go without unless I am able to procure it on my own. The bulk of my food is still veggies, they are just doused in what almost everyone considers to be a ridiculous amount of butter/oil. A daily meal for me is a big stir fry of mix veggies in lots of butter or olive oil then tossed with homemade peanut sauce (heavy on the pbutter. Some may have ill effects from eating peanut butter while trying low carb/keto. I don't). Red meat is not the only way. You have to be a bit more creative. I have almost no variety in my diet, I only have about 3-4 meal options that I choose to eat from each day. But it's inexpensive, tastes great, and keeps me feeling good. Best of luck in finding what works for you.

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