Bill Cosby guilty

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Bill Cosby guilty

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http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/ce ... a696b03911
Bill Cosby found guilty of sexual assault
BILL Cosby reacted with fury in court after he was found guilty of sexual assault charges, with his several accusers proudly declaring women were ‘finally being believed.’

Staff writers

BILL Cosby, a once-adored icon who was fondly dubbed “America’s dad”, has been found guilty of three counts of sexual assault in a landmark trial.

It took two mammoth trials but the disgraced comedian, 80, was brought to justice this morning over an incident in January 2004, in which he drugged and molested Andrea Constand at his home in a Philadelphia suburb.

Cosby showed no emotion and looked down at the table in front of him as his verdict was read out — which prompted some of his victims to burst into tears.

But his calm exterior quickly wore off, when prosecutors asked the judge to revoke Cosby’s bail because he was a “flight risk and has a private plane.”

Cosby stood up and in a loud voice, bellowed, “He doesn’t have a plane, you a**hole.”

The explosive outburst p​​rompted Judge Steven O’Neill to yell, “That’s enough!”

Judge O’Neill eventually ruled that Cosby should not leave his Pennsylvania home, and that he would need to be fitted with a GPS tracking device.

The Judge said Cosby would remain free on $1 million (USD) bail but must surrender his passport. He was ordered to stay in Montgomery County pending his sentencing, which was not scheduled.

He faces up to 10 years in prison on each count but is likely to serve them concurrently.

“Because of his age, his medical issues, I am not going to simply lock him up because of this,” said Mr O’Neill.

He faces fines of up to $US25,000 ($33,000 AUD) on each count.

The reckoning comes following the disgraced comic’s second trial, and just over 14 hours of deliberations by a panel of five women and seven men.

‘HE KNOCKED ME OUT WITH BLUE PILLS’

Cosby’s chief accuser, Andrea Constand, bravely took the stand to publicly relay for a second time her recollection of the horrifying 2004 attack.

Constand, 45, a former Temple women’s basketball administrator, told jurors that Cosby knocked her out with three blue pills he called “your friends” and then penetrated her with his fingers as she lay immobilised, unable to resist or say no.

It was the only criminal case to arise from a barrage of allegations from 62 women who have publicly said the former TV star drugged and molested them over a span of five decades.

Constand sat stone-faced in the first row but tilted her head back and breathed a sigh of relief after jurors were formally polled.

One of his victims, Lili Bernard, burst into tears as the verdicts were read, prompting Judge O’Neill to call for order in the Montgomery County courtroom.

COSBY TO APPEAL: ‘FIGHT IS NOT OVER’

Cosby waved to the crowd outside the courthouse, got into a car and left without comment.

Cosby’s lawyer Tom Mesereau, who won an acquittal for Michael Jackson on child-molestation charges, says the “fight is not over” and that his client planned to appeal the verdict.

Gloria Allred, the lawyer who represented three of five of Cosby’s additional accusers, declared justice had “been done”, and that she was grateful a jury saw past “his defense attorney’s lies.”

“We are so happy that finally we can say women are believed, and not only on ‘Me Too,’ but in a court of law where they were under oath, where they testified truthfully, where they were attacked, where they were smeared, where they were denigrated, where there were attempts to discredit them and after all is said and done, women were finally believed and we thank the jury so much for that,” she said to reporters outside court.
Previously I didn't read too about the circumstances about the case against Cosby to be confident one way or the other, however it was mighty suspicious, but I would have to say at that point he was innocent until proven guilty and my suspicion doesn't equal guilt. But then I heard that he admits to using sedatives the same way people normal people use alcohol. Jesus Christ.

Well now he is guilty, and this is a criminal, not a civil case, so it was beyond reasonable doubt.
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Re: Bill Cosby guilty

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Glad they got him.
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Re: Bill Cosby guilty

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My threshold for "pretty sure he's guilty of this kind of shit" basically boils down to the combination of sheer number of accusations.

If one person accuses Bob of sexual assault they MIGHT be lying.

If five people all accuse Bob of sexual assault they are almost certainly not ALL lying, unless they are an organized, predesigned conspiracy to slander Bob. In which case we would need a plausible motive for the slander (nigh-nonexistent in this case), AND we'd strongly expect it to be easy to prove at least some of the spammed false accusations weren't true.

It's like, so far as I know George Takei has been accused of sexual misconduct by one man. It's plausible that one man could be lying, so I'm withholding judgment.

Al Franken was accused of sexual misconduct by like eight women. All eight of them being liars seems unlikely,
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Re: Bill Cosby guilty

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Three or more unconnected accusers is usually my threshold for saying "Yeah, this person almost certainly did it." (In the absence of more solid physical evidence).
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Re: Bill Cosby guilty

Post by The Romulan Republic »

You know, thinking about it, I'm amazed how relatively little coverage this trial got. There was a big deal over the initial accusations, but then it just sort of faded away. I'd have expected "Bill Cosby on trial for rape" to be obsessively covered 24/7.

I guess that's what happens with Orange Thing constantly hogging the headlines. Or maybe its just that "celebrity revealed to have raped people" is becoming almost routine these days. Which is suppose is actually better than when most of them got away with it in silence.
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Re: Bill Cosby guilty

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I think part of it was how sedate the Cosby trials were.

It got down to an old man sitting at a table, listening to people reveal all the shift he's done.

That doesn't make for high drama.
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Re: Bill Cosby guilty

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Simon_Jester wrote: 2018-05-03 03:31pm My threshold for "pretty sure he's guilty of this kind of shit" basically boils down to the combination of sheer number of accusations.

If one person accuses Bob of sexual assault they MIGHT be lying.

If five people all accuse Bob of sexual assault they are almost certainly not ALL lying, unless they are an organized, predesigned conspiracy to slander Bob. In which case we would need a plausible motive for the slander (nigh-nonexistent in this case), AND we'd strongly expect it to be easy to prove at least some of the spammed false accusations weren't true.

It's like, so far as I know George Takei has been accused of sexual misconduct by one man. It's plausible that one man could be lying, so I'm withholding judgment.

Al Franken was accused of sexual misconduct by like eight women. All eight of them being liars seems unlikely,
George Takei has been accused by one person, but his denial verges on suspiciously specific territory (he basically said "I don't remember this person, and it would be against my principles to do such a thing") and he also at least indirectly confessed (in an interview on the Howard Stern show several years prior, he described the exact behavior the victim accused him of, and claimed that it was normal and accepted behavior in the gay male community).
The Romulan Republic wrote: 2018-05-03 04:31pm Three or more unconnected accusers is usually my threshold for saying "Yeah, this person almost certainly did it." (In the absence of more solid physical evidence).
That's a reasonable rule of thumb, as long as you're withholding judgement as opposed to saying you don't believe the victim until there's three of them.
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Re: Bill Cosby guilty

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PoisonSymic wrote: 2018-05-04 03:32am...

George Takei has been accused by one person, but his denial verges on suspiciously specific territory (he basically said "I don't remember this person, and it would be against my principles to do such a thing") and he also at least indirectly confessed (in an interview on the Howard Stern show several years prior, he described the exact behavior the victim accused him of, and claimed that it was normal and accepted behavior in the gay male community).
The latter is a valid reason why we should revise the probability of Takei's innocence downward.

The former... uh, I'm not sure I understand. If (when I was eighty) someone accused me falsely of committing a rape forty years ago, I might say "I do not remember this person, and it would have been against my principles to do such a thing." Because, well, this would be a person I don't remember, and it would be against my principles to do such a thing. In my eyes, a suspiciously specific denial would be something more like "So-and-so was my friend and I would never have wanted to make him uncomfortable like that."

However, as noted, the latter is a valid reason why we should revise the probability of Takei's innocence downward.

On the other hand, IF, purely hypothetically, someone were specifically out to undermine the reputation of a prominent gay rights activist and/or gain personal fame by being known as the person who made accusations against them... Well, it would be much easier to make up a plausible story heavily inspired by something that the target of my false accusation had already described in a radio show.

So the probability of Takei's innocence should be revised down. Not all the way down, but down.

This recalls a discussion we had when the accusation first came up, starting on this page of the thread:

viewtopic.php?f=22&t=166837&start=50

...

More generally, the point isn't really about "is Takei guilty or innocent?" The point here is about probabilities. It is well within the realm of the possible that the singular plausible accusation against Takei could be a falsehood.

If ironclad proof came up tomorrow that the accusation was false, you might be surprised, but not stunned.

Thus, Takei's innocence is at least plausible. Even if there is only a 10% chance of his innocence, from all the above possibilities combined, 10% chances happen often enough in our experience to be worth considering. It is believable.

By contrast, Al Franken was accused by eight people. Even if there was ONLY a 50/50 chance that any one of them was telling the truth, the probability of all eight cases being lies would still be a mere (0.5^8) = 3.9%. Drastically less than the probability of Takei's innocence.

And if we assume that Franken's accusers were NOT inherently far more likely to be lying than Takei's accuser (say, both have an 80% of being truth-tellers, per person)... well then, Takei has a 20% chance of being innocent, which is worth at least noticing and remembering to consider. Franken would have a 0.000256% chance of being innocent.

A 20% chance of innocence is "I wouldn't be stunned to find out he's innocent" territory. A 0.000256% chance is "I would be stunned."
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Re: Bill Cosby guilty

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PoisonSymic wrote: 2018-05-04 03:32am
Simon_Jester wrote: 2018-05-03 03:31pm My threshold for "pretty sure he's guilty of this kind of shit" basically boils down to the combination of sheer number of accusations.

If one person accuses Bob of sexual assault they MIGHT be lying.

If five people all accuse Bob of sexual assault they are almost certainly not ALL lying, unless they are an organized, predesigned conspiracy to slander Bob. In which case we would need a plausible motive for the slander (nigh-nonexistent in this case), AND we'd strongly expect it to be easy to prove at least some of the spammed false accusations weren't true.

It's like, so far as I know George Takei has been accused of sexual misconduct by one man. It's plausible that one man could be lying, so I'm withholding judgment.

Al Franken was accused of sexual misconduct by like eight women. All eight of them being liars seems unlikely,
George Takei has been accused by one person, but his denial verges on suspiciously specific territory (he basically said "I don't remember this person, and it would be against my principles to do such a thing") and he also at least indirectly confessed (in an interview on the Howard Stern show several years prior, he described the exact behavior the victim accused him of, and claimed that it was normal and accepted behavior in the gay male community).
The Romulan Republic wrote: 2018-05-03 04:31pm Three or more unconnected accusers is usually my threshold for saying "Yeah, this person almost certainly did it." (In the absence of more solid physical evidence).
That's a reasonable rule of thumb, as long as you're withholding judgement as opposed to saying you don't believe the victim until there's three of them.
Well, yes. All accusers should be taken seriously, and even with one accuser, if its just their word against the person they're accusing, I'd be inclined to think that they're probably telling the truth (because it takes a special kind of messed up to falsely claim that you were raped, especially against someone with as much ability to retaliate as a wealthy and beloved celebrity).

Three unconnected accusers is just the point where I feel more comfortable saying "yeah, this person did it", rather than giving them the benefit of the doubt. Though one is enough if there's additional physical evidence or credible witnesses to back them up, rather than just one person's word against another.
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Re: Bill Cosby guilty

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In the previous thread there was a good point about human memory being very unrelible (especially when it comes to things that have happened a long time ago). To use George Takei as an example, the accusation against him was for an event that happened in 1981 IIRC and accusation was made last year so we're looking a single accusator, over a 30 year gap between the accusation and event.

All these factors make "Takei is guilty" less likely (not impossible mind you but less likely). After all it's possible the victim was indeed sexually harassed by a gay asian man, but for what ever reason over time this unknown man and George Takei (who is prominent public figure who is, gay, asian and a man) merged in the mind of the victim unintentionally.

As for Cosby there's multiple people who don't seem to have nothing in common besides "were sexually harassed by Bill Cosby" and IIRC some of the accusations are fairly recent too. All those point to Cosby being Guilty.

And we should also remember that more often then not accusations of sexual harassment/rape are not made up even if the curprit is incorrect.
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Re: Bill Cosby guilty

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The Romulan Republic wrote: 2018-05-04 01:28pmWell, yes. All accusers should be taken seriously, and even with one accuser, if its just their word against the person they're accusing, I'd be inclined to think that they're probably telling the truth (because it takes a special kind of messed up to falsely claim that you were raped, especially against someone with as much ability to retaliate as a wealthy and beloved celebrity).

Three unconnected accusers is just the point where I feel more comfortable saying "yeah, this person did it", rather than giving them the benefit of the doubt. Though one is enough if there's additional physical evidence or credible witnesses to back them up, rather than just one person's word against another.
That's what I thought you meant; I just felt it was important to clear the ambiguity.
Simon_Jester wrote: 2018-05-04 11:42am
PoisonSymic wrote: 2018-05-04 03:32am...

George Takei has been accused by one person, but his denial verges on suspiciously specific territory (he basically said "I don't remember this person, and it would be against my principles to do such a thing") and he also at least indirectly confessed (in an interview on the Howard Stern show several years prior, he described the exact behavior the victim accused him of, and claimed that it was normal and accepted behavior in the gay male community).
The latter is a valid reason why we should revise the probability of Takei's innocence downward.

The former... uh, I'm not sure I understand. If (when I was eighty) someone accused me falsely of committing a rape forty years ago, I might say "I do not remember this person, and it would have been against my principles to do such a thing." Because, well, this would be a person I don't remember, and it would be against my principles to do such a thing. In my eyes, a suspiciously specific denial would be something more like "So-and-so was my friend and I would never have wanted to make him uncomfortable like that."

However, as noted, the latter is a valid reason why we should revise the probability of Takei's innocence downward.

On the other hand, IF, purely hypothetically, someone were specifically out to undermine the reputation of a prominent gay rights activist and/or gain personal fame by being known as the person who made accusations against them... Well, it would be much easier to make up a plausible story heavily inspired by something that the target of my false accusation had already described in a radio show.

So the probability of Takei's innocence should be revised down. Not all the way down, but down.
1. I think it's a suspiciously specific denial to say, "I don't remember doing this to that person" when combined with the previous admission that he does in fact engage in this exact form of sexual assault.

2. Doubly so when he claims that such a thing would go against his principles. . . but had previously stated that he considered that exact thing to be normal and ethically okay. So clearly it is not in fact against his principles.

3. Overall, I agree with you that this isn't an absolute smoking gun; I just seem to be giving it more relative weight than you do.
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Re: Bill Cosby guilty

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The Romulan Republic wrote: 2018-05-03 08:43pm You know, thinking about it, I'm amazed how relatively little coverage this trial got. There was a big deal over the initial accusations, but then it just sort of faded away. I'd have expected "Bill Cosby on trial for rape" to be obsessively covered 24/7.
Bill Cosby is irrelevant. The media looked at their metrics and realized how little they were getting for their Cosby coverage, so they're putting their coverage into shit that gets better ratings.
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Re: Bill Cosby guilty

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Yeah nobody cares about this anymore even locally around here. The Starbucks thing was barely news after two days and that's a lot more relevant to the city and country. Cosby's first trial got way more attention, and became a mistrial over a single jury vote, that about exhausted public interest.
Lord Revan wrote: 2018-05-04 05:10pm As for Cosby there's multiple people who don't seem to have nothing in common besides "were sexually harassed by Bill Cosby" and IIRC some of the accusations are fairly recent too. All those point to Cosby being Guilty.
Importantly a 2005 disposition by Cosby from a civil suit settlement was part of the evidence in which he openly admitted everything was true on the drugging ect... but that it was all consensual. So no doubt existed that the events took place. The only issue at stake is if it was consenting or not. Which is where it really gets to be a hard sell when it's so many women, even if only a handful were allowed to testify, and frankly, so much younger, and lesbian in one case. People enjoy some weird and dangerous stuff no doubt about it, but this was beyond credible. After all he did pay 3 million dollars rather then face a civil trial previously.
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Re: Bill Cosby guilty

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Well, to be honest, its probably better that it doesn't become a 24/7 media circus. It got enough coverage for anyone who's even slightly paying attention to current events to know what he did, and turning it into a circus would probably just be harder on his victims.
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Re: Bill Cosby guilty

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PoisonSymic wrote: 2018-05-04 09:13pm1. I think it's a suspiciously specific denial to say, "I don't remember doing this to that person" when combined with the previous admission that he does in fact engage in this exact form of sexual assault.
It would be hard to argue that a statement on the Howard Stern show is a confession of wrongdoing in general, but it does revise probability of guilt upwards.

Also, "I don't remember this person" is different from "I don't remember doing this thing to this person." Denying that you know the person accusing you of a crime is not an admission of guilt, not even an admission that you committed the crime against a different person.

At this point, your interpretations of Takei's words are getting hair-splitting enough that if you want to make the argument compelling you may have to quote him directly and highlight the passages you think are questionable.
2. Doubly so when he claims that such a thing would go against his principles. . . but had previously stated that he considered that exact thing to be normal and ethically okay. So clearly it is not in fact against his principles.
What, exactly, did he say on the Howard Stern show?

I mean, shit, Donald Trump made comments about his daughter's attractiveness on the Howard Stern show that were horribly cringeworthy as I recall... but while we can cringe at them, we don't take them as direct evidence that he literally harbors fantasies about his own daughter. That he's creepy as hell and that it's another example of his total inability to recognize the horribleness coming out of his mouth due to sheer personal narcissism, yes... But that's not the same thing.
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Re: Bill Cosby guilty

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Simon_Jester wrote: 2018-05-07 08:18am
PoisonSymic wrote: 2018-05-04 09:13pm1. I think it's a suspiciously specific denial to say, "I don't remember doing this to that person" when combined with the previous admission that he does in fact engage in this exact form of sexual assault.
It would be hard to argue that a statement on the Howard Stern show is a confession of wrongdoing in general, but it does revise probability of guilt upwards.

Also, "I don't remember this person" is different from "I don't remember doing this thing to this person." Denying that you know the person accusing you of a crime is not an admission of guilt, not even an admission that you committed the crime against a different person.

At this point, your interpretations of Takei's words are getting hair-splitting enough that if you want to make the argument compelling you may have to quote him directly and highlight the passages you think are questionable.
Here is the full full audio and text transcript of Takei's remarks on the Howard Stern show.

The relevant sections are here:
HOWARD: Yeah. Did you ever grab anyone by the cock against their will?

(Silence.)

HOWARD AND ROBIN: Uh-oh. (Laughter.)

HOWARD: Oh, no. Well, they were different times.

ROBIN: Held them captive, or something?

HOWARD: You never sexually harassed anybody?

GEORGE: Um…

HOWARD: Have you?

GEORGE (Laughter): Uh, it’s…some people that are kind of, um…skittish. Or maybe, uh, afraid. And you’re trying to persuade. But, you know–

HOWARD: Do we need to call the police?

ROBIN: What is he saying, Howard?

HOWARD: What are you saying, George? In other words, there were times–but you never held a job over someone, if they didn’t give you cock.

GEORGE: No, no, no, no, I never did that. No.

HOWARD: I see.

GEORGE: And that’s what this is all about.

ROBIN: But these are at-work situations, though?

GEORGE: It’s about–it’s not about sex. It’s about power.

ROBIN: I see.

HOWARD: Right.

GEORGE: It’s about power.

ROBIN: But you didn’t do this grabbing at work?

GEORGE: Oh no, no, it wasn’t at work.

ROBIN: Oh, good. (Laughter.)

GEORGE: It was either in my home–

ROBIN: Oh, okay.

GEORGE: –they came to my home.

ROBIN: Well, that was an open invitation. (Laughter)

HOWARD: Right. So, what do you mean–like, you’d meet some guy who was hesitating to have sex with you, and you gave him a gentle, uh, uh, squeeze on the balls, or something?

GEORGE: …more than a gentle. (Laughter.) But it wasn’t–it didn’t involve power, over the other. And, and, or–or, the Trump guy, that’s about power. And–you know, this is a big issue today, but, I don’t think that’s…
As you can see, Takei pretty explicitly admits to nonconsensual grabbing of genitals in order to "persuade" people who were reluctant to have sex, and considers this behavior to be ethical because it was not done at the workplace. And this admitted behavior in fact precisely dovetails with the victim's statement:
"The next thing I remember I was coming to and he had my pants down around my ankles and he was groping my crotch and trying to get my underwear off and feeling me up at the same time, trying to get his hands down my underwear," Brunton says. "I came to and said, 'What are you doing?!' I said, 'I don't want to do this.' He goes, 'You need to relax. I am just trying to make you comfortable. Get comfortable.' And I said, 'No. I don't want to do this.' And I pushed him off and he said, 'OK, fine.' And I said I am going to go and he said, 'If you feel you must. You're in no condition to drive.' I said, 'I don't care I want to go.' So I managed to get my pants up and compose myself and I was just shocked. I walked out and went to my car until I felt well enough to drive home, and that was that."
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Re: Bill Cosby guilty

Post by Ziggy Stardust »

Not that I want to defend Takei in particular or anything, but it's pretty quixotic to try and mine text transcripts from Howard Stern's show in search of any real meaning. Just reading the text doesn't really give us any idea of the context or tone of the conversation, and there's no inherent way to tell whether or not this should be read as a joke or a confession. Hell, it's not even like Takei said most of the outrageous things, it looks like it was mostly Howard Stern egging him on with various disgusting comments and Takei sort of starting to play along. And it's not like the things that are said are terribly specific; everything is basically generic sexual assault 101, so the fact that it "dovetails" with the victim's statement is sort of irrelevant, because it also dovetails with pretty much every statement ever made by anyone about male-on-male sexual assault.

The entire point of Howard Stern's show was to be as shocking and over-the-top as possible, he isn't some shrewd investigative reporter that tricks unsuspecting people into confessing their dark secrets or anything. You might as well be taking quotes from Takei's cameos on "Futurama" as evidence of culpability.
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