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I'm Not Proposing That You Let The Crowd Dictate, Or That You Work Hard To Fit In. Far From It. I'm Proposing That You Know The Impact Your Choices Are Having And Act Accordingly.

-Seth Godin

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I'm Not Proposing That

Seth Godin

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I'm Not Proposing That You Let The Crowd Dictate, Or That You Work Hard To Fit In. Far From It. I'm Proposing That You Know The Impact Your Choices Are Having And Act Accordingly.

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More From Seth Godin

Your Positions On Everything Are Based On The Story You Tell Yourself And Not Some Universal Fact From The Universal Fact Database.

Learn. Ceaselessly. Learn To Code, To Write Persuasively, To Understand New Technologies, To Bring Out The Best In Your Team, To Find Underused Resources And To Spot Patterns.

When You Walk Around Braced For Impact, You're Dramatically Decreasing Your Chances. Your Chances To Avoid The Outcome You Fear, Your Chances To Make A Difference, And Your Chances To Breathe And Connect.

Making A Difference

If It Scares You, It Might Be A Good Thing To Try.

Anything Worth Achieving In Life Has A Dip

The Nature Of Revolutions Is That They Destroy The Perfect And Enable The Impossible.

Too Often, The Person Who Wrecks Our Work Is Us.

The Less People Know, The More They Yell.

Don't Save The Canary. Fix The Coal Mine.

Just Start. Start Now. Fail Often. Enjoy The Ride.

It's Human Nature To Quit When It Hurts. But It's That Reflex That Creates Scarcity.

A Dialogue Leads To Connection, Which Leads To Trust Which Leads To Engagement

People That Take Responsibility Are Often Given Responsibility!

Taking Responsibility

People Rarely Buy What They Need. They Buy What They Want.

The Big Win Is When You Refuse To Settle For Average Or Mediocre.

If You Wait Until There Is Another Case Study In Your Industry, You Will Be Too Late!

What Are You Working On? If Someone Asks You That, Are You Excited To Tell Them The Answer? If You're Not, You're Wasting Away.

Marketing Is The Art Of Seeing (and Then Creating) What Might Be Interesting To More Than Our Friends

And In A World Where We Have Too Many Choices And Too Little Time, The Obvious Thing To Do Is Just Ignore Stuff. And My Parable Here Is, You're Driving Down The Road And You See A Cow, And You Keep Driving 'cause You've Seen Cows Before. Cows Are Invisible. Cows Are Boring. Who's Going To Stop And Pull Over And Say, Oh, Look, A Cow? Nobody.

Put Aside Your Need For A Step-by-step Manual And Instead Realize That Analogies Are Your Best Friend.

Just Because Something Is Easy To Measure Doesn't Mean It's Important.

Things That Look Like Shortcuts Are Actually Detours (disguised As Less Work).

Being Aware Of Your Fear Is Smart. Overcoming It Is The Mark Of A Successful Person.

The People That Are Doing Work That Matters Aren't Doing Work Thats Popular. They're Just Doing Work That Changes Some People.

Don't Fix Me; Love Me For What's Broken.

Most Of The Time, Creative Entrepreneurs Lose Interest Long Before Their Marketing Message Loses Its Power.

What People Are Afraid Of Isn't Failure. It's Blame. Criticism.

You Don't Win An Olympic Gold Medal With A Few Weeks Of Intensive Training.

No One Is As Smart As All Of Us.

A Symptom Of The Revolution: When We State Something Is Impossible In Theory, But Then Change Our Minds When We Discover That It Is Possible In Practice.

Impossible Things

Possible And Impossible

Piracy Is Not The Problem, Obscurity Is.

For Most Modern Marketers, Quantity Isn't The Point. What Matters Is To Matter. Lives Changed. Work That Made An Actual Difference. Connection.

All Artists Are Entrepreneurs. All Entrepreneurs Are Artists.

Great Marketers Don't Make Stuff. They Make Meaning.

If You Use Your Money To Create Exceptional Products And Services, You Won't Need To Spend It On Advertising.

Go Ahead And Make Something For The Elites. Not The Elites Of Class Or Wealth, But The Elites Of Curiosity, Passion And Taste. Every Great Thing Ever Created Was Created By And For This Group.

The Secret Of Getting On The Shortlist Is Doing Your Best Work Fearlessly For A Long Time Before You Get On The List.

Every Activity Worth Doing Has A Learning Curve.

No One Can Force You To Stand Up, Speak Up And Make A Difference. But If You Back Off And Play Along, Please Understand That Whatever Happens Happened, At Least In Part, Because You Acquiesced.

Making A Difference

It's Far Easier To Put Your Future Into Someone Else's Hands Than It Is To Slog Your Way Forward, Owning The Results As You Go.

Before You Tell Yourself You Have No Right To Invent This Or Improve That, Remind Yourself That The Person Before You Had No Right Either, But Did It Anyway.

Build It, And They Will Come" Only Works In The Movies. Social Media Is A "build It, Nurture It, Engage Them, And They May Come And Stay.

Life Is Like Skiing. Just Like Skiing, The Goal Is Not To Get To The Bottom Of The Hill. It's To Have A Bunch Of Good Runs Before The Sun Sets.

We Need To Care Enough To Connect, To Put Ourselves At Emotional Risk And Play One Note Worth Hearing.

Don't Scale Because You Think There's A Pot Of Gold Over That Rainbow. Scale Because You're Ready And Eager To Do Heroic Work, Every Day, Forever.

The Only Reason To Build A Website Is To Change Someone. If You Can't Tell Me The Change And You Can't Tell Me The Someone, Then You're Wasting Your Time.

Wasting Your Time

Those That Spend The Most Effort In Search Of Shortcuts Are Often The Most Disappointed And The Least Successful.

The First Rule Of Doing Work That Matters: Go To Work On A Regular Basis.

No Organization Ever Created An Innovation. People Innovate, Not Companies.

The Job Is Not The Work.

Competence Is The Enemy Of Change!

If You Hear My Idea But Don't Believe It, That's Not Your Fault; It's Mine. If You See My New Product But Don't Buy It, That's My Failure, Not Yours. If You Attend My Presentation And You're Bored, That's My Fault Too.

The Second Person To Write A Story About A Young Boy And An Escaped Slave On The Mississippi Wasn't A Novelist, He Was A Typist.

Art Is What We Do When We're Truly Alive.

You Are Far More Likely To Do Your Best Work If You Are Willing To Delight A Few As Opposed To Soothe The Masses.

The Question Is Not Will You Succeed? But Rather, Will You Matter?

Without People Pushing Against Your Quest To Do Something Worth Talking About, It's Unlikely To Be Worth The Journey. Persist.

Set Up A Life You Don't Need To Escape From.

Keep Starting Until You Finish.

Good Marketers Tell A Story.

Sooner Or Later, The Ones Who Told You That This Isn't The Way It's Done, The Ones Who Found Time To Sneer, They Will Find Someone Else To Hassle. Sooner Or Later, They Stop Pointing Out How Much Hubris You've Got, How You're Not Entitled To Make A New Thing, How You Will Certainly Come To Regret Your Choices. Sooner Or Later, Your Work Speaks For Itself. Outlasting The Critics Feels Like It Will Take A Very Long Time, But You're More Patient Than They Are.

You Want It To Be Hard. If It's Hard, Then That Means Others Can't Do It Easily And You Can Charge For That Value.

It's Not An Accident That Successful People Read More Books.

Seek Out Habits That Help You Overcome Fear Or Inertia. Destroy Those That Do The Opposite.

I Don't Like Offending People, And It's Easy To Offend People When You Don't Know As Much As They Do. This Group Knows More About What It Takes To Lead In This Way Than I Ever Will. My Goal Is To Push People, But I Need To Do It From A Place Of Respect.

If You Hear My Idea And Dont Believe It , Thats Not Your Fault Its Mine.

Go Ahead, Do Something Impossible.

You Win By Trying. And Failing. Test, Try, Fail, Measure, Evolve, Repeat, Persist.

If You're Not Upsetting Anyone, You're Not Changing The Status Quo.

If You Want To Get In Shape, Go To The #‎ Gym Every Single Day, Change Your Clothes And Take A Shower. If You Can Do That Every Single Day For A Month, Pretty Soon You'll Start Doing Something While You're There.

Do You Know What People Want More Than Anything? They Want To Be Missed. They Want To Be Missed The Day They Don't Show Up. They Want To Be Missed When They're Gone.

I Believe That Uncertainty Is Really My Spirit's Way Of Whispering, I'm In Flux. I Can't Decide For You. Something Is Off-balance Here.

While You May Have Made Money Doing Something A Certain Way Yesterday, There's No Reason To Believe You'll Succeed At It Tomorrow.

I Feel Like I'm Treating People As I'd Like To Be Treated.

Transferring Your Passion To Your Job Is Far Easier Than Finding A Job That Happens To Match Your Passion.

Make More Decisions. That's The Only Way To Get Better At It.

The Fatigue Was There, But Some People Understood That Putting It Aside Was The Single Most Important Factor In Succeeding.

We're All Born Creative, It Takes A Little While To Become Afraid.

Your Audacious Life Goals Are Fabulous. We're Proud Of You For Having Them. But It's Possible That Those Goals Are Designed To Distract You From The Thing That's Really Frightening You--the Shift In Daily Habits That Would Mean A Re-invention Of How You See Yourself.

If It's Work, We Try To Figure Out How To Do Less, If It's Art, We Try To Figure Out How To Do More

Our Best Work Can't Possibly Appeal To The Average Masses, Only Our Average Work Can. Finding The Humility To Happily Walk Away From Those That Don't Get It Unlocks Our Ability To Do Great Work.

Competent People Are The Most Resistant To Change

Be Genuine. Be Remarkable. Be Worth Connecting With.

The One Path That Never Works Is The Most Common One: Doing Nothing At All.

Just As We Don't Spend A Lot Of Time Worrying About How All Those Poets Out There Are Going To Monetize Their Poetry, The Same Is True For Most Bloggers.

The First Step To Getting Good Is Admitting That You Aren't (yet).

No, The Only Way To Know What People Think Is To Watch What They Do, Not What They Say. Do They Come Back For More? Do You Cause Them To Change Their Behavior? Can You Make Them Smile?

Any Customer That Walks Away, Disrespected And Defeated, Represents Tens Of Thousands Of Dollars Out The Door, In Addition To The Failure Of A Promise The Brand Made In The First Place. You Can't See It But It's Happening, Daily.

Confusion Sets In When You're Not Sure If Your Product Or Service Is Bought Or Sold, Or Worse, If You Are A Salesperson Just Waiting For People To Buy.

No One Can Be Responsible For Where Or How We Each Begin. No One Has The Freedom To Do Anything Or Everything, And All Choices Bring Consequences. What We Choose To Do Next, Though, How To Spend Our Resources Or Attention Or Effort, This Is What Defines Us.

Success Brings With It The Fear Of Blowing It. With More To Lose, There's More Pressure Not To Lose It.

If There's Time For An Emergency, Why Isn't There Time For Brilliance, Generosity Or Learning?

Doing Justice To The Work Is Your Task, Not Setting A World Record.

The Largest Enemy Of Change Isn't 'no', It's 'not Yet' - That Is The Easiest Way To Forestall Change.

We Don't Become Mediocre All At Once, And We Rarely Do It On Purpose.

Too Often, We Don't Give People The Opportunity To Fill In The Blanks.

Big Ideas Are Little Ideas That No-one Killed Too Soon.

Without A Specific Reason For The Consumer To Behave, Without A Reward Or Benefit, The Overwhelmed Consumer Will Refuse.

Ideas Don't Get Smaller When They're Shared, They Get Bigger.

The Most Successful Givers Aren’t Doing It Because They’re Being Told To. They Do It Because Doing It Is Fun. It Gives Them Joy.

You Dont Need To Convince Everyone. All You Need To Do Is Motivate People Who Choose To Follow You.

Attention Is A Bit Like Real Estate, In That They're Not Making Any More Of It. Unlike Real Estate, Though, It Keeps Going Up In Value.

We Don't Need More Stuff, We Need More Humanity.

Normal Is Fading Away. Governments And Industries And Schools Like Normal, Because It's Easier, It Scales And It's Profitable. But People Don't Like It - We Want To Be Who We Are, Not Who Some Marketer Tells Us To Be.

After You Produce You Can Select. You Can Curate. You Can Censor. But For Now, Have Bad Ideas, Lots And Lots Of Bad Ideas.

No More Than Six Words On A Slide. Ever. There Is No Presentation So Complex That This Rule Needs To Be Broken.

The Only Path To Amazing Runs Directly Through Not-yet-amazing . But Not-yet-amazing Is A Great Place To Start, Because That's Where You Are. For Now.

Leadership Is The Art Of Giving People A Platform For Spreading Ideas That Work.

Art Is The Work Of A Human Being – Something A Person Does With Generosity To Touch Someone Else To Make A Change For The Better.

The Sound Of A Small Bell During A Dark Night, Is Louder Than The Din Of Traffic Outside Your Window During Rush Hour. Surprise And Differentiation Have Far More Impact Than Noise Does.

Dreamers Don't Have Special Genes. They Find Circumstances That Amplify Their Dreams.

It Takes Confidence And Guts To Intentionally Create Tension.

The Goal Is To Be On The Hook, Not To Let Someone Else Do The Scary Parts.

You Get To Keep Making Art As Long As You Are Willing To Make The Choices That Let You Make Your Art.

Permission Marketing Is Marketing Without Interruptions.

What If Getting Bigger Isn't The Point? What If You Merely Got Better?

It's Impossible To Have A Coin With Only One Side. You Can't Have Heads Without Tails. Innovation Is Like That. Initiative Is Like That. Art Is Like That. You Can't Have Success Unless You're Prepared To Have Failure. As Soon As You Say, 'failure Is Not An Option,' You've Just Said, 'innovation Is Not An Option.'

In A Crowded Marketplace, Fitting In Is A Failure. In A Busy Marketplace, Not Standing Out Is The Same As Being Invisible.

Studying Entrepreneurshi P Without Doing It... Is Like Studying The Appreciation Of Music Without Listening To It.

The Public Square Is More Public Than Ever, But Minds Are Rarely Changed In 140 Character Bursts And By Selfies.

What We Most Need In Our Lives, Though, Is Something Worth Doing, Worth It Because We Care.

Marketing Is The Act Of Inventing The Product. The Effort Of Designing It. The Craft Of Producing It. The Art Of Pricing It. The Technique Of Selling It.

I Don't Think There's A Shortage Of Remarkable Ideas. I Think Your Business Has Plenty Of Great Opportunities To Do Great Things. Nope, What's Missing Isn't The Ideas. It's The Will To Execute Them.

Don't Find Customers For Your Products, Find Products For Your Customers.

Loyal Customers

Taking Delight In The Journey Takes Confidence. It Pushes The Envelope Of Design.

Desire Can't Be Sated, Because If It Is, The Longing Disappears And Then We've Failed, Because Desire Is The State We Seek.

The Combination Of Fear And Ignorance (two Sides Of The Same Coin) Can Be Paralyzing.

Fitting In Is A Short-term Strategy That Gets You Nowhere. Standing Out Is A Long-term Strategy That Takes Guts And Produces Results.

If Not Enough People Doubt You, You're Not Making A Difference.

Don't Create For The Masses. Create For The People Who Are Your Kind Of Weird.

The Instinct To Produce Great Work Doesn't Require A Fancy Notebook.

Turn Strangers Into Friends. Turn Friends Into Donors. And Then Do The Most Important Job: Turn Your Donors Into Fundraisers.

One Way To Think About Running A Successful Business Is To Figure Out What The Least You Can Do Is, And Do That.

So By Giving People A Tool That They Can Share And Benefit From, It's A Form Of Media That Isn't Controlled By Rupert Murdoch Or The Guys At Viacom. It Is A Form Of Media That Is Earned Every Single Time It Spreads.

Shame Must Be Accepted To Be Effective.

The Best Experiences And The Biggest Ideas Don't Fit Into A Category. They Change It.

Best Experiences

If Your Project Or Organization Depends On Knowing Things That Other People Don't Know (but Could Find Out If They Wanted To), Your Days Are Probably Numbered. Ask A Travel Agent The Alternative, While Difficult, Is Obvious. Provide Enough Non-commodity Service And Customization That It Doesn't Matter If The Ideas Spread. In Fact, It Will Help You When They Do.

A One-hit Wonder Is A Legend Who Stopped Early.

Your Biggest Failure Is The Thing You Dreamed Of Contributing But Didn't Find The Guts To Do.

You Can Use Social Media To Turn Strangers Into Friends, Friends Into Customers And Customers Into Salespeople.

The Notion That I Do My Work Here, Now, Like This, Even When I Do Not Feel Like It, And Especially When I Do Not Feel Like It, Is Very Important. Because Lots And Lots Of People Are Creative When They Feel Like It, But You Are Only Going To Become A Professional If You Do It When You Don't Feel Like It. And That Emotional Waiver Is Why This Is Your Work And Not Your Hobby.

Repeating Easy Tasks Again And Again Gets You Not Very Far. Attacking Only Steep Cliffs Where No Progress Is Made Isn’t Particularly Effective Either. No, The Best Path Is An Endless Series Of Difficult (but Achievable) Hills.

Everyone Has A Comfort Zone. Worth Considering: How Hard (and How Often) Are You Willing To Work To Get Out Of It? You Can Turn That Into A Habit If You Choose.

Not Adding Value Is The Same As Taking It Away.

It Takes Three Years To Be An Overnight Success, Sometimes More.

Instead Of Working So Hard To Prove The Skeptics Wrong, It Makes A Lot More Sense To Delight The True Believers. They Deserve It, After All, And They're The Ones That Are Going To Spread The Word For You.

How Do I Dance With The Fear? Fear Is Not The Enemy. Paralysis Is The Enemy.

Real Change Comes From Finding And Embracing And Connecting And Amplifying Those That Are Inclined To Like You And Believe In You. Ideas Spread From Person To Person, Not So Much From You To Them. So Find Your Biggest Fans And Give Them A Story To Tell.

The Conversation Is Happening About Your Brand Whether You're A Part Of It Or Not.

If You're Working With A Spreadsheet Or A Thread Of Correspondence Or A Set Of Data, I'm Not Sure You're Doing Your Best Work If You're Doing It On An Iphone.

Doing Your Best

The Opposite Of Coherent Is Interesting.

Tell Your Lizard (brain) To Shut Up.

When You Set Down The Path To Create Art, Whatever Sort Of Art It Is, Understand That The Path Is Neither Short Not Easy. That Means You Must Determine If The Route Is Worth The Effort. If It's Not, Dream Bigger.

Everyone Is Not Your Customer.

As The Amount Of Inputs Go Up, As The Number Of People And Ideas That Clamor For Attention Continue To Increase, We Do What People Always Do: We Rely On The Familiar, The Trusted And The Personal. The Incredible Surplus Of Digital Data Means That Human Actions, Generosity And Sacrifice Are More Important Than They Ever Were Before.

Art Is A Personal Act Of Courage.

Acts Of Courage

Many Things That Are True Are True Because You Believe Them.

When Kids Grow Up Wanting To Be You, You Matter.

Art Is The Act Of Doing Work That Matters While Dancing With The Voice In Your Head That Screams For You To Stop.

If You're Going To Buy A Real Book, A Paper Book, There Better Be A Good Reason. Perhaps Scarcity Is One Of Those Reasons.

Average Feels Safe But It's Not. It's Invisible.

In A Battle Between Two Ideas, The Best One Doesn't Necessarily Win. No, The Idea That Wins Is The One With The Most Fearless Heretic Behind It.

A Well-defined Backup Plan Is Sabotage Waiting To Happen. Why Push Through The Dip, Why Take The Risk, Why Blow It All When There's The Comfortable Alternative Instead? The People Who Break Through Usually Have Nothing To Lose, And They Almost Never Have A Backup Plan.

Is It Worth Getting One More Tweet Out, Or Putting Your Phone Down And Doing Something That Is Worth Tweeting?

If You're Not Uncomfortable In Your Work As A Leader, It's Almost Certain You're Not Reaching Your Potential As A Leader.

I Do Not Think You Can Get Rid Of The Fear... But You Can Dance With It.

Emotional Labor Is Available To All Of Us, But It Is Rarely Exploited As A Competitive Advantage.

Be Personal. Be Relevant. Be Specific.

The Problem With Requiring People To Be Loud And Angry To Get Things Done Is That You're Now Surrounded By People Who Are Loud And Angry.

Own Your Dreams. There Is No Better Way To Make Them Happen.

Waiting For Perfect Is Never As Smart As Making Progress.

Conversations Among The Members Of Your Marketplace Happen Whether You Like It Or Not. Good Marketing Encourages The Right Sort Of Conversations.

Are You Copying Others? People Won't Pay Extra For That. You Won't Be Followed For That.

Bullhorns Are Overrated: Having Ten Times As Many Twitter Followers Generates Approximately Zero Times As Much Value.

Remarkable Work Is Always Not On The List, Because If It Was, It Would Be Commonplace, Not Remarkable.

Leading Is A Skill, Not A Gift. You're Not Born With It, You Learn How.

The Key To Getting A Reputation For Being Brilliant Is Actually Being Brilliant, Not Just Acting Like You Are.

If You're In The Idea Business, It Doesn't Matter Where You're From. It Matters If We Care About The Change You're Making.

Successful People Fail Often, And, Worth Noting, Learn More From That Failure Than Everyone Else.

So Much Easier To Aim For The Smallest Possible Audience, Not The Largest, To Build Long-term Value Among A Trusted, Delighted Tribe, To Create Work That Matters And Stands The Test Of Time.

There's A Big Difference Between Not Settling And Not Starting.

The Value We Create Is Directly Related To How Much Valuable Information We Can Produce, How Much Trust We Can Earn, And How Often We Innovate.

Which Are You?...competen T, Inspiring, Passionate, Obsessed, Provocative, Impatient, Hungry, Driven, Adoring, Inspired, An Artist, A Genius, Someone Who Cares...? With All These Remarkable, Powerful, Important Options Available To Each Of Us, Why Do So Many Of Us Default To Competent?

In Our Desire To Please Everyone, It's Very Easy To End Up Being Invisible Or Mediocre.

Habits Are Where Our Lives And Careers And Bodies Are Made.

Nothing About Becoming Indispensable Is Easy. If It's Easy, It's Already Been Done And It's No Longer Valuable.

The Answer To The Question "where Do Good Ideas Come From" Is Always The Same, The Come From Bad Ideas. If You Come Up With 20 Bad Ideas You Get One Good One.

Not Only Are Bloggers Suckers For The Remarkable, So Are The People Who Read Blogs.

Emotions Are Far More Contagious Than Any Disease. A Smile Or A Panic Will Spread Through A Group Of People Far Faster Than Any Virus Ever Could. When You Walk Into The Office Or A Negotiation, Then, Wash Your Bad Mood Away Before You See Us. Don't Cough On Us, Don't Sneeze On Us, Sure, But Don't Bring Your Grouchiness, Your Skepticism Or Your Fear In Here Either. It Might Spread.

Marketing Yourself To A New Person Often Involves Being Charismatic, Clever And Quick-but Most Jobs And Most Relationships Are About Being Consistent, Persistent And Brave.

Leaders Who Set Out To Give Are More Productive Than Leaders Who Seek To Get.

... Outsiders Are Way More Likely To Approach Your Organization With Fabulous Projects If They Think They're Likely To Both Get A Good Reception And Succeed When They Get To Market.

Our Cultural Instinct Is To Wait To Get Pickedno One Is Going To Pick You. Pick Yourself.

Whining Isn't A Scalable Solution.

At The Heart Of Art Is Learning To See

Competence Is No Longer Scarce.

The Secret Of Leadership Is Simple: Do What You Believe In. Paint A Picture Of The Future. Go There. People Will Follow.

I Wonder Why Anyone Would Hesitate To Be Generous With Their Writing. I Mean, If You Really Want To Make A Living, Go To Wall Street And Trade Oil Futures ... We're Writers. We're Doing Something That Is Inherently A Generous Act. We're Exposing Ourselves To The Muse And To The Things That Frighten Us. Why Do That If You're Not Willing To Be Generous? And Paradoxically, Almost Ironically, It Turns Out That The More Generous You Are, The More Money You Make. But That's Secondary. For Me, The Privilege Of Being Generous Is Why I Get To Do This.

Change Almost Never Fails Because It's Too Early. It Almost Always Fails Because It's Too Late.

When The Legacy You Leave Behind Lasts For Hours, Days Or A Lifetime, You Matter.

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