What are you reading?

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Catoptric
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Re: What are you reading?

Post by Catoptric » Wed Apr 06, 2022 5:35 am

An official government document from Washington Headquarters Services

paranormal_briefing.pdf ADVANCED RESEARCH PROJECTS AGENCY 1973
https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Docu ... iefing.pdf
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Madrigal
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Re: What are you reading?

Post by Madrigal » Thu Apr 07, 2022 12:49 am

I'm reading a kind of real-life supense story involving two guys who fought in WW2 and loved the same woman. "My Soul is Wherever You May Go".

It's just for practice. I don't actually care for anything written after the 70s.

Fiction has a lot of words I don't know.

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Re: What are you reading?

Post by Catoptric » Fri Apr 08, 2022 3:23 pm

The Sacred Mushroom: Key to the Door of Eternity by Andrija Puharich
https://archive.org/details/andrija-puh ... f-eternity

Also, a book he wrote on Uri Geller (who managed to bend keys held by people such as Arthur C. Clarke, which suggests either Clarke was holding the key with more resistance than Geller, and allowed it to bend, or the key was crap enough to bend easily. This also explains why Clarke had to break into his own apartment and was caught doing so.) Click on the 'Download original PDF' as otherwise it does something weird with the file.
https://kupdf.net/download/uri-andrija- ... c34646_pdf

If you click on the authors name in Archive it leads to a pdf of various sorts, one of which describes electrolysis of water which he purportedly used to drive around in an RV using hydrogen gas.

Vehicles were predominantly using hydrogen from water prior to the oil rush of the late 1800s.
https://fuel-efficient-vehicles.org/ene ... age_id=819

François Isaac de Rivaz (mentioned above)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A ... c_de_Rivaz

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Another Uri Geller book pdf download, covering the topic of him being a spy.
https://www.urigeller.com/books/the-sec ... masterspy/


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Declassified CIA documents from Vietnam era (download of PDF)
https://www.theblackvault.com/documenta ... nt-cd-rom/

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CE-5 handbook (on how to get probed by aliens)
https://setecresearch.com/register-ce1- ... ThHVP_PBu8

Part of the mess kit should include Vaselline.

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Born in blood : the lost secrets of freemasonry
by Robinson, John
https://archive.org/details/borninbloodlosts0000robi


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I'm currently clearing up some bookmarks and rereading

How to Destroy an INTP or ISTP
former url (16boxes 2018 08 02 how-to-destroy-an-intp-or-istp ) is now a Chinese porn site.
Last edited by Catoptric on Tue Aug 16, 2022 9:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: What are you reading?

Post by Catoptric » Thu Apr 28, 2022 1:42 am

One of the more interesting news articles.

The Search For Who Killed Ira Tobolowsky
https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/ ... -happened/

The guy was finally arrested in Florida (only recently, and the guy has always been the main suspect since 2017)

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The Forme of Curry: The master cooks of King Richard II
PDF https://archive.org/details/b21529401
Text https://archive.org/stream/theformeofcu ... cury10.txt

And a modern English version also exists (considering its 14th-century recipes.)


Yorkshire recipes
https://traditional-yorkshire-recipes.i ... gathering/


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Findings
C. The Committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The Committee is unable to identify the other gunman or the extent of the conspiracy.
https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/s ... rt-1c.html



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Who Really Designed The AK-47?
https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/201 ... ned-ak-47/

How Closely Related Are the StG-44 and the AK-47 Machine Guns?
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/ ... uns-183327

Supposedly the Nazi designer (Hugo Schmeisser) of the STG-44 was forced to work for Stalin's Russia, and in addition to producing the STG 44 in East Germany following WW2, the AK47 design just happened to be a refinement of that rifle and similar American versions (and yet Kalashnikov had no experience with any gun design prior,) so I tend to wonder if he was tasked as a propaganda piece with the backing of Stalin awarding him?
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Yesterday
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Re: What are you reading?

Post by Yesterday » Thu May 05, 2022 1:47 pm

This is from my daily devotional for May 5th written by Eleanor White.

Pardon and Acceptance

For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. Matthew 7:2.

We can receive forgiveness from God only as we forgive others. It is the love of God that draws us unto Him, and that love cannot touch our hearts without creating love for our brethren.

After completing the Lord's Prayer, Jesus added: "If ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: but if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." Matthew 6:14, 15. He who is unforgiving cuts off the very channel through which alone he can receive mercy from God. We should not think that unless those who have injured us confess the wrong we are justified in withholding from them our forgiveness. It is their part, no doubt, to humble their hearts by repentance and confession; but we are to have a spirit of compassion toward those who have trespassed against us, whether or not they confess their faults.

Nothing can justify an unforgiving spirit. He who is unmerciful toward others shows that he himself is not a partaker of God's pardoning grace. In God's forgiveness the heart of the erring one is drawn close to the great heart of Infinite Love. The tide of divine compassion flows into the sinner's soul, and from him to the souls of others....

We are not forgiven because we forgive, but as we forgive. The ground of all forgiveness is found in the unmerited love of God, but by our attitude toward others we show whether we have made that love our own. Wherefore Christ says, "With what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged."

Let Christ, the divine Life dwell in you and through you reveal the heaven-born love that will inspire hope in the hopeless and bring heaven's peace to the sin-stricken heart. As we come to God, this is the condition which meets us at the threshold, that, receiving mercy from Him, we yield ourselves to reveal His grace to others.

Neuroscience has discovered the health benefits of forgiveness I've recently learned. Another thread idea perhaps.
ENTP

"Our truest selves exist within the observational incongruencies among general first impressions and further analyses of the finer details."
- from my Ph.D. thesis in psychobabble

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Re: What are you reading?

Post by Catoptric » Fri May 06, 2022 11:44 pm

Karl Marx only published the first book before he died, and Volume 2, and 3 were finished up by Engels, and apparently a 4th volume was an unfinished draft which seemed to question Adam Smith's economic ideas.

Vol 4
http://digamo.free.fr/tpv.pdf

Archive.org has the rest, though when looking for a decent pdf of the first book (that wasn't some absurd lithograph children's book from the brownshirt era of Nazi Germany) or a weird 500 page pdf that somehow thought it had over 2300 pages.

I would prefer a hardcover version but I realize that most of the books comprise of annotations and irrelevant data points unique to the mid 1800s.

The flaws of his ideas are a byproduct of his nature and unwillingness to actually answer the tough questions, namely that he was so narcissistic and neglectful to anyone and everyone around him that he was never living in reality and only through mooching and shitting on people could he actually manage to continue on in denial of his own circumstances (not unlike how communism has always been implemented.)

https://qr.ae/pvY52d

I plan to try and not be distracted while I go through these 4 volumes, but from what criticism I've seen towards my opinion of Marx, can generally be summed up that he was a product of his time:

Marx attempted to use "scientific" methods to evaluate the best course for society much as phrenology and evolution theory were adopted by the likes of Hitler and implemented, and much like Stalin and Mao created manmade famine by being the brilliant intellectuals of their day. . . North Korean's Juche might as well be symbolized by a giant dick.

The idea that Marx was opposed to exploitation of the workforce did not reflect how Communism has, and always will be implemented. The idea that Marx revered human achievement at it's most artistic form in art and literature, and in music, is not how it was reflected when Communism dominated; which incidentally seemed to kill off any and everyone who ever possessed any real talent to begin with. . .

Hitler had very similar sentiments about humanity and thought he understood humanity better than the existing governments of the time. Likewise, what Marx got wrong in his observations about humanity, could only have been worse under communism.

"Marx had very little to say about how the business of life would be conducted in a communist society, and this turned out to be a serious problem for regimes trying to put communism into practice. He had reasons for being vague. He thought that our concepts, values, and beliefs all arise out of the conditions of our own time, which means that it’s hard to know what lies on the other side of historical change. In theory, after the revolution, everything will be “up for grabs”—which has been the great dream of leftist radicalism ever since."

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016 ... -and-today

What he did is create a power vacuum much as any capitalist society produces out of unchecked powers (things like Glass-Steagal act followed after the stock market crash and trends gradually away from removing the gold standard from the dollar, would set a precedent of corrupt banking practices that would result in further collapses (as afterall, history repeats itself.) Currently in Russia preventing autocratic rule of law is a carryover from corruption within government (as was the precedent following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Many of these issues are not unique to modern society and since ancient Roman times people like Cicero discussed the issue with rule of law, that all must be under the purview, and Marx seemed to speak very little about that as well.

https://qz.com/1697577/capitalism-vs-so ... will-work/


Marx, et al. communism is a religion that suppresses thinking and stifles innovations. Either communism isn't less dogmatic or it would assume religion isn't merely beliefs stemming from the epistemology of how the world works around us. Communist dogma isn't just a term used to define a belief system, but the dialectic of it is intended as a warning about checks and balances within any system of self-governing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic ... _elsewhere

The part people seem to miss is that the books of Das Capital were intended to provoke thinking rather than stifle it into submission to a beuracratic dystopia, where only through killing off the "excess surplus" does it permit itself to maintain dominance over the "proleteriat."

Communism only justifies it's existence based on "neutralizing" the excess surplus (as shown here.)
https://www.quora.com/What-theories-of- ... ype=answer
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Re: What are you reading?

Post by last_caress » Sat May 07, 2022 4:16 am

Han Solo at Star's End + trilogy by Brian Daley.

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Re: What are you reading?

Post by Catoptric » Fri May 13, 2022 5:46 am

Croatan indians may have assimmilated with Roanoke settlement and they later became the Lumbee tribe?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumbee

The mafia and Russia cultural phenomenon:

The Moral Basis of a Backward Society
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mor ... rd_Society
- pdf https://coromandal.files.wordpress.com/ ... ociety.pdf

http://www.fredvanlente.com/downloads/WhyWeHere.pdf
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Re: What are you reading?

Post by Catoptric » Wed Jun 08, 2022 7:06 pm

Stepping Off the Hedonic Treadmill: Individual Differences in Response to Major Life Events
https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... ife_Events

"Theorists have long maintained that people react to major life events but then eventually return to a setpoint of subjective well-being. Yet prior research is inconclusive regarding the extent of interindividual variability. Recent theoretical models suggest that there should be heterogeneity in long-term stress responding (Bonanno, 2004; Muthén & Muthén, 2000). To test this idea, we used latent growth mixture modeling to identify specific patterns of individual variation in response to three major life events (bereavement, divorce, and marriage). A four-class trajectory solution provided the best fit for bereavement and marriage, while a three-class solution provided the best fit for divorce. Relevant covariates predicted trajectory class membership. The modal response across events was a relatively flat trajectory (i.e., no change). Nevertheless, some trajectories diverged sharply from the modal response. Despite the tendency to maintain preevent levels of SWB, there are multiple and often divergent trajectories in response to bereavement, divorce, and marriage, underscoring the essential role of individual differences."


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Reading about a Dr. famous for separating the first "Siamese" twins (attached by the tops of their heads) and who died at the beginning of the Covid outbreak, had also been involved with leading many teams in subsequent operations. Even though he was a highly specialized pediatric surgeon he seemed to have not had any children.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/obit ... virus.html

Conjoined Twins Carl and Clarence Aguirre : A Decade Later. (tons of photos)
https://www.lohud.com/picture-gallery/n ... /13464609/

https://mcufoundation.org/farewell-james-tait-goodrich/

Incidentally, I was looking up someone I bought a microscope from in 2015 and one thing stood out when he mentioned looking at marijuana strains through it, and apparently he worked for the Drug Enforcement Agency in Dallas, and retired and died two years after I purchased the microscope, from colon cancer. I tend to think he might have been sympathetic to marijuana use considering his cancer.

https://obits.dallasnews.com/us/obituar ... d=17175141

It's a little odd looking at the interior of the house from photos, as I had entered it when buying it and he went on about his son being a Doctor, and had a grand daughter as well as presumably his daughter in the same kitchen as shown in the photo, who I assumed worked on selling the house while he was probably getting ready for hospice care at the time.

I posted in rants about looking over closed restaurants and discovering a couple who died from covid, and it's kind of odd going through the apparent changes all around. This is typically nothing unique to various chronology as even going through Google Earth Pro you can discover a lot of changes to the real estate market, as you will notice stark differences in street vs satellite view.

The entire block was cleared out to make way for an apartment complex

And the entire right block had one century old home on the far corner, and presumably everything else was wiped out over time. Reading reviews on businesses that no longer exist is also really odd, and you start to get into the back story of them (and why people referencing a property management are still leaving reviews long after the building was clearly gone.)

Alternatively, the satellite view is not updated and the street view shows a tremendous change. I lived literally across the street from the Airport fence, which for the longest time remained wooded, and now the barrier is set back further with new gas stations, etc. My home address at this time was 2702 Rosemary Lane, Euless, TX 76039


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Vagabond manga in Chinese (I could use Google Translate app)
https://archive.org/details/collectorsu ... red%20v01/

I found a Sandmann comic link as well, and there was some odd British comic series which is basically just an inferior Mad comic, called Viz.


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(1994) John Mack Abduction Human Encounters With Aliens
https://www.academia.edu/35709654/_1994 ... ns_not_OCR_

Just think of it like a romance novel. . . "Harder! Deeper!" etc. You're welcome.

John Mack died in 2003 but a book he was writing, 'Passport to the Cosmos' was verging on some of what this recently published book below is getting into.

Potentially:
Origins Of The Gods: Transdimensional Beings, Skinwalkers, And The Emergence Of Human Civilization
by Andrew Collins, Gregory Little
https://grahamhancock.com/collinslittle ... DmbwtBdUvA




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The Super-Rich Are Stockpiling Wealth In Black-Box Charities
OCTOBER 3, 2018 • SUZANNE WOOLLEY
https://www.fa-mag.com/news/the-super-r ... 41159.html
Spoiler
Show
It’s all the rage in charitable giving -- and it’s actually got some charities worried.

Donor-advised funds — money that grows tax-free in individual accounts — are reshaping the landscape of U.S. philanthropy. After creating their account, donors choose how it’s invested, and the money compounds until they decide where to dole it out. DAF assets mushroomed to more than $85 billion at the end of 2016 from $30 billion in 2010.

Not everyone thinks that’s good news. Critics say the approach may slow the flow of money directly into nonprofits that serve the needy on a daily basis. Moreover, it injects charitable affiliates created by for-profit financial players such as Fidelity Investments and Charles Schwab deep into the big business of philanthropy -- a boon for them and their clients, but, some worry, not so clear a win for the causes.

The Salvation Army is grateful for DAF contributions, said Jeff Hesseltine, director of gift planning for the not-for-profit’s western territory. But “the best option is for donors to work directly with a Salvation Army fundraiser who can assess their charitable intent, decide on a giving strategy” and have gifts put to good use immediately.

The financial-service industry’s interest in giving is tied to a looming generational wealth transfer -- and a desire not to see assets walk out the door. (A common DAF marketing theme is the ability to leave a legacy of giving for heirs.)

The money in many of these accounts started out as highly appreciated, publicly traded stock and illiquid “complex assets” such as shares in closely held businesses, restricted stock, oil and gas royalties, and real estate interests. Then there’s the art, the cruise ship, the Bitcoin and bushels of wheat and soybeans DAFs have liquidated to fund accounts.

Huge Tax Bills
If the donor sold them, those assets could produce huge tax bills. If they’re donated to a DAF, they bring huge tax benefits and a bigger pool of charitable funds than if they’d been sold and the proceeds donated.

This tax-powered alchemy has been called “philanthropic fracking” — a way to tease out more dollars from rich people’s portfolios. Fidelity Charitable took in $1 billion last year in complex assets and will probably get another billion this year, said President Pam Norley. At Vanguard Charitable, more than 80 percent of 2017 contributions came from non-cash assets including securities, restricted stock and real estate.

DAFs offer advantages over private foundations. Donors who contribute privately held stock or real estate to their foundation must value it at cost basis -- likely to be low for depreciated property or businesses started in a garage. The income-tax deduction is capped at 20 percent of adjusted gross income (AGI), which can be carried forward five years.

No Capital Gains Tax
If instead that asset is contributed to a DAF, an appraiser determines its fair market value before it’s donated. That yields a bigger deduction, which can offset as much as 30 percent of AGI (and can also be carried forward five years). Since the DAF is a public charity, the donor pays no capital gains tax -- and neither does the DAF when it sells the asset.

The wealthier one is, the more illiquid and highly appreciated assets one probably owns, enhancing the appeal of these accounts.

“One reason for the extraordinary growth of DAFs is their ability to provide maximum tax benefits for complex assets: property other than publicly traded stock,” said Ray Madoff, a Boston College Law School professor and founder of its Forum on Philanthropy and the Public Good.

DAF have another advantage: Even though donors yield legal control of assets they contribute, their financial advisers may be allowed to direct how the money is invested and earn management fees. The biggest accounts also may be allowed to invest outside a DAF sponsor’s usual menu of options.

DAF Advantages
DAFs have advantages for financial-services companies, too. Some 60 percent of the $21.2 billion in Fidelity Charitable, for example, is in Fidelity funds. Fidelity Investments parent FMR LLC is the DAF’s largest independent contractor and received $46.3 million for the year ended June 30, 2017.

Annual administrative fees for DAF accounts can be 0.6 percent, on top of investment management fees. Norley said Fidelity Charitable’s “complete overall fees” average 0.6 percent.

“Given the potential for philanthropic dollars to grow through investment in a DAF, the work we are doing creates a net positive in funds made available,” she wrote in an email.

Fidelity Charitable’s 2018 giving report noted that investment growth in its DAFs since inception created $6 billion more for giving.

Some have criticized DAFs because the money they accumulate far outstrips funds flowing in, prompting a recent report to label them “warehouses of wealth.” Private foundations must pay out at least 5 percent of assets annually, but DAFs don’t have a legal requirement for minimum payouts, and the big providers cite annual aggregate grantmaking of about 20 percent.

‘Big’ Policy Question
Payouts are “the big public policy question,” said Roger Colinvaux, a professor at Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law. “DAFs are set up to treat money like it’s still the donor’s money. It’s like having your own mutual fund at Fidelity: You get statements and watch it grow. You feel like if you spend it, you lose it.”

If the pace of grantmaking doesn’t increase, DAFs risk regulation, said Bryan de Lottinville, founder of Benevity, a corporate giving platform that partners with DAFs. “There’s this big corpus growing to no real benefit of anyone other than the people earning fees for managing it.”

Also, if non-cash contributions keep mounting, the rules should change so donors’ tax deductions equal the amount available for giving, Colinvaux said.

Now, a donor contributing an asset appraised at $1 million gets an immediate $1 million write-off. When a DAF sells the asset, it may fetch $900,000 and after carrying costs and fees, leave $800,000 for the DAF.

Even with the money in DAFs exploding, total charitable donations remain around 2 percent of disposable income, so it may be too early to judge whether they provide a societal benefit equal to the donors’ tax breaks. What is clear: The business of supporting charitable giving has never been so profitable.

This article was provided by Bloomberg News.
Pretty straightforward but I went ahead and saved the article as a pdf (by 'printing' I selected it.)


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Alien books (pdf collection to keep you moist at night.)
https://archive.org/details/DavidJacobs ... 3/mode/2up



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Ise Monogatari
https://www.academia.edu/27112877/Ise_M ... ranslation

A pdf with hand-painted drawings (but nothing in English) https://archive.org/details/isemonogatari02

Ise predates Genji (which is a mid 12th-century texts which refers to Ise as "outdated," and apparently is from early Heian period (794–1185), written about 980)
https://www.japanese-wiki-corpus.org/li ... atari.html


A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) - Transhumanist Fairy Tale
https://archive.org/download/A.I.Artifi ... manism.pdf

Article
https://www.newworldai.com/a-i-artificial-intelligence/


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Arthur C. Clarkes books
https://archive.org/details/23ScienceFi ... thurClarke

Gentry Lee Co-wrote Cradle, and whenever you see any books with his name on it, you can be guaranteed he is the main writer (and it tends to show.) He did add additional books which can be found in an omnibus book compiling the entirety of the Rama universe, but much of what he wrote has not been republished (or at the very least he seems to have missed the train of digital ebooks. His Author profile on Amazon is limited https://www.amazon.com/Gentry-Lee/e/B00 ... pop_book_2 and you can check his other list of books which also don't show up well online. . . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentry_Lee )

I tend to side with the critical reviews, though I did enjoy messing with the Rama PC game (though it seems to have glitched up at the point when you reach the underground city after doing all the puzzles, and it basically had a guy saying F you and prevented me from finishing, so rather than play through earlier saves I just said fuck it and looked at a game playthrough to see what the city looked like, which might have been better tat 2x speed, which is probably how I would approach reading any of his books as they are just filled with crap for the most part and stereotyped behaviors.) From reading reviews you would have sworn someone was going around making their eyes squinty and playing Asian stereotypes, but also he seems really misguided, and until I played the Rama game did I get a slightly better sense of what his books were like, but it's very evidently incoherent (and not because it's brilliant, though I definitely notice his intellect when I play the game as no one dumber would have made a game like that.)
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Madrigal
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Re: What are you reading?

Post by Madrigal » Sun Jun 26, 2022 6:34 pm

The City & The City by Mieville. This book has won several awards but I'm not warming up to it. I think it's just too plot-based. I like things that sound nice throughout. Maybe I'm just too used to old writers.

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