Rick Rubin Revisits the Origins of Def Jam Records & the NYU Dorm Room Where It All Began

There may have been no more influ­en­tial a label in the late 1980s than Def Jam Records. Found­ed by Rick Rubin, Def Jam launched the careers of The Beast­ie Boys, LL Cool J, and dozens more hip-hop pio­neers. But its begin­nings were hum­ble. The ear­li­est Def Jam releas­es list the mail­ing address as “5 Uni­ver­si­ty Pl. #712.” Cur­rent and for­mer NYU stu­dents out there may rec­og­nize this address—it’s a dorm room in the university’s Wein­stein Res­i­dence Hall, where in 1984, Rubin set up shop and began try­ing to repro­duce the sound, as Rolling Stone writes, of “the raw per­for­mances he heard in clubs and the wild par­ties he threw.”

In the short Rolling Stone doc­u­men­tary above, “Rick Was Here,” see the pio­neer­ing pro­duc­er revis­it his ori­gins, return­ing to his old dorm for the first time in 30 years. He talks about the “very spe­cif­ic feel­ing” of ear­ly hip-hop, and his desire to shift the focus of hip-hop records from R&B back­ing tracks to the DJ, who was all-impor­tant in live per­for­mances. Def Jam’s first release, T La Rock and Jazzy Jay’s “It’s Yours,” remains a clas­sic of the genre. At the time, says Rubin, “it didn’t sound like any­thing else,” and through that record, Rubin met Rus­sell Sim­mons, already “a big fish in the small pond of hip hop.” Sim­mons brought along a host of artists and gave Rubin more cred­i­bil­i­ty in the com­mu­ni­ty. Now the two are super­pro­duc­ers and moguls, but their ori­gin sto­ry is one of scrap­py deter­mi­na­tion that sparked a musi­cal rev­o­lu­tion.

The short film also fea­tures inter­views with Sim­mons, LL Cool J, the Beast­ie Boys’ Adam Horowitz, and some of Rubin’s for­mer dorm-mates and accom­plices. For more on Def Jam’s ear­ly years, MetaFil­ter points us toward the his­to­ry Def Jam Record­ings: The First 35 Years of the Last Great Record Label and Rus­sell Sim­mons’ auto­bi­og­ra­phy Life and Def: Sex, Drugs, Mon­ey, + God.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The “Amen Break”: The Most Famous 6‑Second Drum Loop & How It Spawned a Sam­pling Rev­o­lu­tion

All Hail the Beat: How the 1980 Roland TR-808 Drum Machine Changed Pop Music

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

The Groundbreaking Art of Alex Steinweiss, Father of Record Cover Design

Steinweiss Grieg

Giv­en the visu­al per­fec­tion and ubiq­ui­ty of album cov­ers by design­ers like Storm Thorg­er­son and Peter Sav­ille—giv­en the pop­u­lar­i­ty of blogs fea­tur­ing mon­u­men­tal­ly bad album covers—it’s hard to fea­ture a time when records came wrapped in plain brown paper like cheap booze or cov­ered in non­de­script bind­ings like busi­ness ledgers. But this was the case, before anoth­er wide­ly admired design­er, Alex Stein­weiss, more or less invent­ed the album cov­er in 1939 at the age of 22.

Steinweiss Boogie

There had been cov­er art before, dur­ing the age of the 78 rpm record, but only for the rare spe­cial release. Most music came stamped with its con­tents and lit­tle else. Ini­tial­ly con­tract­ed by Colum­bia Records to pro­duce bet­ter jack­ets for the unwieldy 78, Stein­weiss soon became the label’s art direc­tor and con­vinced them to try out sev­er­al full col­or designs inspired by French and Ger­man mod­ernist poster art. When Colum­bia released the first vinyl LP in 1948, Stein­weiss not only designed the cov­er, but he invent­ed the paper­board jack­et that still sur­rounds records today.

Steinweiss Gershwin

You can see a few of Stein­weiss’ cov­ers for clas­si­cal and jazz albums here. At the top of the post, see that first LP cov­er, for a record­ing of Grieg’s Vio­lin Con­cer­to in E Minor. The design may seem pret­ty restrained, but Stein­weiss quick­ly broad­ened his palette. Just below the Grieg cov­er is a clas­sic design for the jazz com­pi­la­tion Boo­gie Woo­gie, and just above, we have a col­or­ful block design for a Gersh­win album. Stein­weiss also drew inspi­ra­tion from abstract expres­sion­ist painters like Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky, as you can see in the Bar­tok cov­er below.

bartok cover

Stein­weiss’ designs were extreme­ly pop­u­lar and sent record sales soar­ing. In one instance, Newsweek report­ed that sales of a record­ing of Beethoven’s “Eroica” sym­pho­ny “increased 895% with its new Stein­weiss cov­er.” A savvy, fear­less artist, Stein­weiss left the field with the same ease and grace with which he’d entered it. After design­ing album cov­ers, movie posters, and graph­ics for “count­less oth­er prod­ucts” for 33 years, writes Jeff Newelt for the Art Direc­tors Club, Stein­weiss retired to become a painter, “not­ing the rise of Swiss Mod­ernism and min­i­mal­ism, and the increas­ing pref­er­ence for pho­tog­ra­phy in the field” of graph­ic design. While Stein­weiss was­n’t afraid to incor­po­rate pho­tos into his designs on occasion—as you can see in a 1940 Bessie Smith cov­er below—it was the rare occa­sion. Most­ly what inter­est­ed him were bold col­ors and geo­met­ri­cal shapes.

Steinweiss Bessie Smith

Though it’s cer­tain that some­one would have come along and cre­at­ed record cov­ers even­tu­al­ly, it’s hard to under­es­ti­mate the tremen­dous influ­ence Stein­weiss had on the form—the way his work has guid­ed our expe­ri­ence of star­ing in awe at a mys­te­ri­ous album cov­er, even in the MP3 age, and try­ing to imag­ine the kind of music it describes. For much, much more on Stein­weiss, you could pur­chase this enor­mous, and enor­mous­ly expen­sive, Taschen book. Or save a few bucks and browse through some exten­sive online col­lec­tions of his work, like this Stein­weiss trib­ute site, this six part biog­ra­phy, and the Bir­ka Jazz Archive from Colum­bia, which also fea­tures icon­ic cov­ers by such artists as Jim Flo­ra, Neil Fuji­ta, and Saul Bass. Steven Heller, who teach­es at the School of Visu­al Arts in NYC, presents a talk on Stein­weiss’ art here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andy Warhol Cre­ates Album Cov­ers for Jazz Leg­ends Thelo­nious Monk, Count Basie & Ken­ny Bur­rell

Clas­sic Jazz Album Cov­ers Ani­mat­ed, or the Re-Birth of Cool

Under­ground Car­toon­ist R. Crumb Intro­duces Us to His Rol­lick­ing Album Cov­er Designs

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Watch The Simpsons’ Halloween Parody of Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange and The Shining

For the past 25 years, the high­light of every sea­son of The Simp­sons has been its Tree­house of Hor­ror Hal­loween spe­cial – an omnibus episode filled with mor­bid, and fre­quent­ly hilar­i­ous, hor­ror spoofs. It’s the one time of the year when the cre­ators of the long run­ning series feel com­fort­able with dis­em­bow­el­ing Homer, flay­ing Marge, and let­ting Mag­gie wield an axe. Arguably the best one of these seg­ments was its 1994 par­o­dy of Stan­ley Kubrick’s The Shin­ing – called “The Shin­ning”. This year, The Simp­sons return to riff­ing on Kubrick in a seg­ment called “A Clock­work Yel­low.” You can watch a sec­tion of it above.

The episode cen­ters on can­ker­ous bar­tender Moe Szys­lak as the bowler-bedecked Alex who, along with Lenny, Carl and Homer (play­ing Dim, of course), spouts non­sense Nad­sat and ter­ror­izes Lon­don. When they decide to break into a house, Moe and the gang end up crash­ing an Eyes Wide Shut-style orgy host­ed by Mr. Burns. From there, the Kubrick ref­er­ences start fly­ing thick and fast, with nods to Full Met­al Jack­et, 2001: A Space Odyssey and even Bar­ry Lyn­don (“Even I for­get what this is in ref­er­ence to”). And then a scene cuts to a Simp­son­fied ver­sion of Kubrick, watch­ing the seg­ment from an edit­ing bay. “Let’s burn this,” he bel­lows at an assis­tant. “Let’s rewrite every­thing. And let’s start all over.”

The full episode is avail­able on Hulu Plus, if you have a sub­scrip­tion. If not, you can watch it for free after Octo­ber 27th. And you can watch a por­tion of “The Shin­ning” below.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Fear and Desire: Stan­ley Kubrick’s First and Least-Seen Fea­ture Film (1953)

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Daugh­ter Shares Pho­tos of Her­self Grow­ing Up on Her Father’s Film Sets

Stan­ley Kubrick’s List of Top 10 Films (The First and Only List He Ever Cre­at­ed)

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

Are You a Psychopath? Take the Test (And, If You Fail, It’s Not All Bad News)

We’ve all heard the old philo­soph­i­cal sce­nario known as the trol­ley prob­lem: as the run­away vehi­cle of the name careens out of con­trol toward the edge of a cliff, you must choose whether to pull the lever to switch it to anoth­er track. The catch: while the trol­ley would then no longer plunge off that cliff, bring­ing about the cer­tain deaths of the five peo­ple aboard, it would instead kill some­one stand­ing on the oth­er track, who will sur­vive if you don’t pull the lever. In a more fraught ver­sion of the prob­lem, you must choose not whether to pull a lever, but whether to shove a per­son of con­sid­er­able bulk onto the (sin­gle) track, stop­ping the trol­ley but killing the bulky indi­vid­ual.

In the Big Think video above, Oxford psy­chol­o­gist Kevin Dut­ton, author of The Wis­dom of Psy­chopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Ser­i­al Killers Can Teach Us About Suc­cess, uses the trol­ley prob­lem to illu­mi­nate the con­di­tion of psy­chopa­thy. While non-psy­chopaths may dither about the first ver­sion of the sce­nario, they even­tu­al­ly come to the con­clu­sion that they pre­fer one death to five. They have much more of a strug­gle with the sec­ond ver­sion, which requires them to actu­al­ly push the lone stranger to head off those five deaths. Psy­chopaths, by con­trast, expe­ri­ence no such dif­fi­cul­ty: the trol­ley prob­lem, for them, hard­ly amounts to a prob­lem at all, and Dut­ton explains, neu­ro­sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly, why: “Imag­ine that I were to hook you up to a brain scan­ner and present you with those two dilem­mas. I would see the emo­tion cen­ter of your brain, your amyg­dala and relat­ed brain cir­cuits, the medi­al orbital frontal cor­tex for exam­ple, light up like a pin­ball machine.”

And if he’d scanned a psy­chopath? “Pre­cise­ly noth­ing.” All this assumes, of course, that you do not your­self suf­fer from psy­chopa­thy. If you don’t know whether you do, Dut­ton offers a handy mul­ti­ple-choice “psy­chopath chal­lenge” on his site that can give you an idea of the direc­tion your brain may lean. If you’ve got a touch of the old psy­chopa­thy, don’t lock your­self away; as Dut­ton explains in this Time inter­view, “you don’t need to be vio­lent,” and you can even attain greater suc­cess in cer­tain fields than non-psy­cho­pathics — espe­cial­ly if you con­sid­er vig­i­lant­ly and unhesi­tat­ing­ly min­i­miz­ing the death tolls at divert­ed cliff­side trol­ley tracks a field.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

This is Your Brain on Sex and Reli­gion: Exper­i­ments in Neu­ro­science

What Hap­pens When Your Brain is on Alfred Hitch­cock: The Neu­ro­science of Film

The Dalai Lama on the Neu­ro­science of Com­pas­sion

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy Cours­es

How To Think Like a Psy­chol­o­gist: A Free Online Course from Stan­ford

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Different From the Others (1919): The First Gay Rights Movie Ever … Later Destroyed by the Nazis

From Albert Kin­sey, to Sig­mund Freud, to Mag­nus Hirschfeld, promi­nent social sci­en­tists have offered dis­sent­ing opin­ions to pre­vail­ing main­stream ideas about homo­sex­u­al­i­ty as a con­se­quence of parental or soci­etal influ­ences. This doesn’t mean those researchers have agreed with each oth­er, or with cur­rent ideas, but their con­clu­sions were con­tro­ver­sial and star­tling to a con­sen­sus often com­plic­it in the crim­i­nal­iza­tion and polit­i­cal repres­sion of gays and les­bians. If you haven’t heard the last name on that list above, there’s prob­a­bly a good rea­son: Hirschfeld—a gay, Jew­ish physi­cian, sex­ol­o­gist, and advo­cate in Weimar Germany—had much of his work burned by the Nazis in their 1933 rise to pow­er.

One of Hirschfeld’s works destroyed in Nazi fires was a film he co-wrote and co-starred in called Dif­fer­ent From the Oth­ers, the first gay rights movie in his­to­ry. Released in 1919, and banned in 1920, the film explored a doomed rela­tion­ship between a vio­lin­ist, played by silent star Con­rad Vei­dt, and his stu­dent. Exten­sive flash­back scenes show both char­ac­ters’ ear­ly sex­u­al expe­ri­ences, their failed attempts to change their sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion (includ­ing treat­ment with bogus “ex-gay” ther­a­pies), and their even­tu­al self-accep­tance. In their present day, the cou­ple is open­ly affec­tion­ate, until the vio­lin­ist is black­mailed and dragged into court by an extor­tion­ist, then aban­doned by his friends and fam­i­ly. He com­mits sui­cide, and his lover vows to fight the law that crim­i­nal­ized homo­sex­u­al­i­ty in Ger­many, known as Para­graph 175.

Dif­fer­ent From the Oth­ers would be lost to his­to­ry were it not for Hirschfeld’s preser­va­tion of 40 min­utes of footage in a sep­a­rate doc­u­men­tary. You can view the sur­viv­ing film above, with Eng­lish title cards. The film was part of a didac­tic series on themes of sex­u­al­i­ty that Hirschfeld made with direc­tor Richard Oswald. In each one, Hirschfeld appears as a doc­tor who inter­venes on behalf of per­se­cut­ed indi­vid­u­als. In Dif­fer­ent from the Oth­ers, he does so with the violinist’s par­ents, telling them, “You must not con­demn your son because he is a homo­sex­u­al, he is not to blame for his ori­en­ta­tion. It is not wrong, nor should it be a crime. Indeed, it is not even an ill­ness, mere­ly a vari­a­tion, and one that is com­mon to all of nature.”

In many oth­er such scenes, most of them now lost, Hirschfeld explic­it­ly states his argu­ment that, as The New York Times writes, “homo­pho­bia, not homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, was a scourge of soci­ety.” The then-rad­i­cal point of view found lit­tle con­tem­po­rary support—screenings were restrict­ed sole­ly to med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers and lawyers until the film’s destruction—but it makes this arti­fact of tremen­dous inter­est to film his­to­ri­ans and activists today. In addi­tion to Hirschfeld’s pio­neer­ing activism, the film is notable for star­ring Viedt, who went on to fame for his role in The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari.

Despite its many lacu­nae and entire miss­ing scenes, and char­ac­ters, Dif­fer­ent From the Oth­ers is cur­rent­ly being restored and turned into an expand­ed, “watch­able fea­ture,” using the sur­viv­ing rem­nants, along with found pho­tos and film stills, by the Out­fest-UCLA Lega­cy Project (see their ful­ly-fund­ed Kick­starter here). Many scenes—such as a lengthy the­o­ret­i­cal lec­ture by Hirschfeld—will be recon­struct­ed from a syn­op­sis, “a few reviews, and lit­tle else.” “You’re not see­ing the orig­i­nal,” admits UCLA Film & Tele­vi­sion Archive direc­tor Jan-Christo­pher Horek of the com­ing recon­struc­tion, “because we don’t know what the orig­i­nal looks like.” Nev­er­the­less, in what­ev­er form, Dif­fer­ent From the Oth­ers rep­re­sents a per­spec­tive at least “50 years ahead of its time,” says Horak, with an “enlight­ened the­o­ry that you wouldn’t see in this coun­try prob­a­bly until the ‘70s or ‘80s.”

Dif­fer­ent from the Oth­ers will be added to our list of Great Silent Films, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rudolf Braz­da, Last Man to Wear the Pink Tri­an­gle Dur­ing the Holo­caust, Tells His Sto­ry

Sig­mund Freud Writes to Con­cerned Moth­er: “Homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is Noth­ing to Be Ashamed Of” (1935)

The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari: See the Restored Ver­sion of the 1920 Hor­ror Clas­sic with Its Orig­i­nal Col­or Tint­ing

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Lynda Barry, Cartoonist Turned Professor, Gives Her Old Fashioned Take on the Future of Education

With col­lege tuitions bal­loon­ing to the point of implo­sion, and free edu­ca­tion­al con­tent pro­lif­er­at­ing online, the future of edu­ca­tion is a scorch­ing hot top­ic.

So where are we head­ing?

Cours­era and Khan Acad­e­myVideo game-based cur­ric­u­la? Expe­ri­ence-dri­ven microlearn­ing?

Or school build­ings that moon­light as can­dy?

So sug­gest­ed one of the younger par­tic­i­pants in a work­shop led by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wisconsin’s Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor of Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary Cre­ativ­i­ty, car­toon­ist and author Lyn­da Bar­ry (aka Pro­fes­sor Long-Title).

Barry’s mes­sian­ic embrace of the arts has proved pop­u­lar with stu­dents of all ages. When the university’s Coun­ter­fac­tu­al Draw­ing Board Project invit­ed fac­ul­ty, staff, and oth­ers to con­sid­er what the “appear­ance, pur­pose, atmos­phere and com­mu­ni­ty of the cam­pus” would be like in 100 years time, Bar­ry delib­er­ate­ly widened the pool to include chil­dren.

Yes, their inno­va­tions tend­ed toward vol­cano schools that erupt at dis­missal, but pre­sum­ably some of those same chil­dren will be in the van­guard when it’s time for ini­tia­tives that seem unimag­in­able now to be imple­ment­ed. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and all that.

Or as one gim­let-eyed youth put it, in a hun­dred years “the teach­ers will all be dead.”

No won­der few adult par­tic­i­pants can see past a but­ton-dri­ven, her­met­i­cal­ly sealed, dig­i­tal future where­in every stu­dent has a chip implant­ed in his or her head.

Bar­ry, no stranger to depres­sion, man­ages to laugh such gloomy fore­casts off, despite what they por­tend for the tac­tile, hand­made ephemera she reveres. A sense of humor—and humanity—is at the core of every edu­ca­tion­al reform she prac­tices.

Rather than rip each other’s writ­ing to shreds dur­ing in-class cri­tiques, her stu­dents call each oth­er by out­landish pseu­do­nyms and draw med­i­ta­tive spi­rals as each oth­ers’ work is read aloud. Every read­er is assured of a hearty “good!” from the teacher. She wants them to keep going, you see.

Sure­ly there are insti­tu­tions where this approach might not fly, but why poo-poo it? Isn’t fuel­ing the cre­ative spir­it a prac­ti­cal invest­ment in the future?

“It’s there in every­body,” Bar­ry believes. “You have to give peo­ple an expe­ri­ence of it, a repeat­ed expe­ri­ence of it that they gen­er­ate them­selves.”

Maybe some­day, some kid who hasn’t had the love of learn­ing squelched out of him or her will apply all that cre­ativ­i­ty toward cur­ing can­cer. That’d be great, huh? At worst, that care­ful­ly tend­ed spark can give solace in the dark days ahead. As fans of Barry’s work well know, art exists to car­ry us through times of “sor­row and grief and trou­ble.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry Reveals the Best Way to Mem­o­rize Poet­ry

Join Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry for a Uni­ver­si­ty-Lev­el Course on Doo­dling and Neu­ro­science

Pablo Picasso’s Two Favorite Recipes: Eel Stew & Omelette Tortilla Niçoise

picasso stew

Back in 1964, Pablo Picas­so shared with Vogue’s food colum­nist Ninette Lyon two of his favorite recipes — one for Eel Stew, the oth­er for Omelette Tor­tilla Niçoise. If you live in the South of France, as Picas­so did, the recipes prob­a­bly won’t be entire­ly for­eign to you. But if you aren’t so lucky, you might want to add these recipes, now reprint­ed by Vogue, to your culi­nary buck­et list.

Below, we’ve high­light­ed the ingre­di­ents for the recipes. But, for step-by-step direc­tions on how to pre­pare the dish­es, head over to Vogue itself.

For more recipes from cul­tur­al icons — Hem­ing­way, Tol­stoy, Alice B. Tok­las, Jane Austen, David Lynch, Miles Davis, etc. — head to the bot­tom of this page.

Eel Stew for Four Peo­ple

6 table­spoons olive oil
6 table­spoons but­ter
12 small white onions
1 tea­spoon sug­ar
2 yel­low onions, chopped
12 mush­rooms
⅓ pound salt pork, cubed
2 shal­lots, minced
2 cloves gar­lic, minced
2 eels of about 1 pound each, cut into four- to five-inch sec­tions
1 bot­tle of good red wine
1 table­spoon flour
Salt, pep­per, cayenne pep­per
Bou­quet gar­ni: thyme, bay leaf, pars­ley, fen­nel, and a small branch of cel­ery

Omelette Tor­tilla Niçoise for Four Peo­ple
6 table­spoons olive oil
1 large onion
4 pep­pers, red and green
3 toma­toes
2 table­spoons wine vine­gar
8 eggs
Salt and pep­per

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ernest Hemingway’s Favorite Ham­burg­er Recipe

Leo Tolstoy’s Fam­i­ly Recipe for Mac­a­roni and Cheese

David Lynch Teach­es You to Cook His Quinoa Recipe in a Weird, Sur­re­al­ist Video

Thomas Jefferson’s Hand­writ­ten Vanil­la Ice Cream Recipe

Alice B. Tok­las Reads Her Famous Recipe for Hashish Fudge (1963)

Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Hand­writ­ten Turkey-and-Stuff­ing Recipe

Read Film­mak­er Luis Buñuel’s Recipe for the Per­fect Dry Mar­ti­ni, and Then See Him Make One

Miles Davis’ “South Side Chica­go Chili Mack” Recipe Revealed

The Recipes of Icon­ic Authors: Jane Austen, Sylvia Plath, Roald Dahl, the Mar­quis de Sade & More

Google Makes Available 750 Icons for Designers & Developers: All Open Source 

google icons

If you’re a design­er or devel­op­er, Kottke.org thought you’d might like to know: “As part of their Mate­r­i­al Design visu­al lan­guage, Google has open-sourced a pack­age of 750 icons. More info here.”

Over at Github, you can view a live pre­view of the icons or down­load the icon pack now.

Our friends at Boing­Bo­ing add, “They’re licensed CC-BY-SA and designed for use in mobile apps and oth­er inter­ac­tive stuff.” Use them well.

 

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