154. Trump, TikTok, & Tech

I found my freedom in you I found a joy I can't lose And thank God it's true You wrapped your arms around me And heaven broke through From the moment you found me I found my freedom in you Welcome to the For Freedom Podcast. This podcast exists to bring the freedom of the gospel for everyday Christians with everyday issues. Now here are your hosts, James Safer and Brad Martin. Welcome back to the For Freedom Podcast. What a blessing it has been to be away from the mic as much as we've been away. It has been great to be back in the hot seat here with my man Brett. We had our Christmas break. We had our New Year holiday. And we had a snowstorm come through the country. It felt like we've got snow on one side of the country and we've got fire on the other side of the country. Arctic temperatures. It's been, I love the cold weather, so it's been great for me. And Brett, how was your Christmas? How was your New Year? How was your snowstorm? Did y'all, y'all made it through? Everything's good? Yeah, Christmas was great. Everybody got what they wanted. Had a good New Year's. Had a good time in church. I'll tell you that the snowstorm, it actually stopped one county above us. So we were right below the line. And so here's the thing about the snow. When they say, well, for us down here, this is the case, down here in south central Mississippi, if they say you're going to get snow, you're not going to get any. And when they say that you're not going to get anything, that's when you're going to get it. So that's how the weather works down here in south central Mississippi. I love it. That's great. Our weather guy, Brad Patovich is his name. He was spot on, dude. He was so close. He was projecting three to six inches from my area. We got like four and a half inches, so he was right in the middle of it. And kids loved our Christmas time. Had a blessing with just being able to hang out together and be able to open gifts. And I told our kids that when I became a senior pastor, that we'd get a dog. I've been putting this thing off, Brad, as long as I can. And finally, my wife's like, listen, you promised these kids you'd get them a dog, and you ain't got them a dog yet. Kept on, kept on, kept on. Finally, we decided that this Christmas we invested in a dog, and we got a dog. And so he's running around the house and going crazy. It's a puppy. So he's in his puppy stages right now. And Hudson doesn't quite understand what a puppy is. And so he'll bite him in the arm, and he'll smack him in the face, and they're just going back and forth. But it's been good. We had a good Christmas. The kids already got a little dirt bike. Hudson got a little electric dirt bike. And so they've been riding in the snow. Man, they had a ball on their dirt bikes out there, riding around, going crazy. But, yeah, it was a good time. And had a great, great time together. They got to sledding the snow a little bit. So it's been good. Yeah, well, my kids, you know, they're teenagers. And so one thing that we've been putting off is electronic devices because, you know, they didn't grow up with it. I mean, here lately you've been seeing, we've seen five- and six-year-olds with iPhones and Samsungs. And here my boys are, 14 and 16, and they're getting their first, you know, galaxy phones. They both got galaxies now. They got them for Christmas. And, you know, everything, you know, Santa was hitting on, you know, was batting it out of the park this year. So everybody liked what they got. And so Christmas was a good time. And so we are just ready for the new year and what the new year brings. Yeah. Well, Brett, speaking of the new year, we got to launch our cigar company. And our cigar company is shipping. We have sold several cigars so far. Right now we've got three different lines. We've got the Sweet Elder, which is not shipping yet. It's our sweet cigar. And it is going to be shipping soon, waiting on just a couple more samples. We're trying to finalize that exact flavor that we're wanting. We've got the Pastor's Reserve, which is our Maduro. And then we've got our Bishop's Blend, which is our Habano blend. And so blend, not blend, blend. And excited about that. You can go to 1689cigars.com backslash collections blackslash for freedom cigars, I believe. But we've got links there as well. And excited about this partnership and the ability to be able to brand our own brand. And excited about the conversations that we've been able to have through it. And we hope that you'll maybe birthday gift Father's Day is coming up. We'll be running some Father's Day specials. Maybe your dad's a smoker and you want to grab him some. Be a great gift for that. And so looking forward to what we've got going on in the future as well. Yes, we can't say a lot. We're under, you know, we've signed NDA on some things. But we're attached to some really, really big things. Yeah. And we can't say anything, but just know it's big. Speaking of big things, Brett, got something big coming up in just a couple of days. This comes out November, November. This comes out January 17th and three, four days, three days from when this is releasing. Got something big going on up in D.C. What's going on up there? Up in D.C. Was it the 17th? Today's the 17th. Oh, today's the 17th. The 20th. Three days from now. Three days from now. We've got something. We've got an incoming president. I thought it was Martin Luther King Day. Oh, is it? It is. It is also Martin Luther King Day. Okay. Well, good, good, good. Well, we've got a new president coming in. Right. Kamala Harris. Wait a second. Wait a second. No, no, no. Not quite there. We've got Trump. Yeah. Huge. Huge. Coming to office. Going to be our president. Was it 45 and 47? 45, 47. Yeah. Trump will be there. You know, as we're talking about politics for just a second. We don't normally talk about politics on here. Jimmy Carter passed away during our break. President number 40, 39, maybe. I don't remember what number he was. Maybe it's 40. He passed away at 100 years old. And they did that funeral, that service. Trump and Obama were sitting beside each other, which was an interesting picture. Kamala just couldn't stand it. Yeah. It was an interesting picture. And then I had the opportunity, Brett, just a couple of days ago. You know, every once in a while you get one of those harebrained ideas. I get them all the time. And I sent a friend of mine a text and just said, hey, I know you have a little bit of a connection. What do you think the possibility of me going to the inauguration would be? And he said, well, I may actually have a couple extra tickets. And I said, well, see if you can get two, one for me and one for my son. And so he texted back the next day and said, you should be receiving an email. And I checked my email. And there it was, an invitation from Donald Trump and Mr. Vance himself. And they had invited me to the inauguration from the Billy Graham-Trump alliance that they have there. And so I will be at the inauguration on the 20th there in Washington, D.C. Me and my son are going. We don't get to be part of the hoi polloi that gets to sit on the stage. But we'll be in the field. And in freezing cold weather, it's like 20 degrees, 25 degrees, I think is the high that day. And so we're going to be a part of the festivities. I've never been to an inauguration before. And this is only the second. It's a once in a lifetime thing, you know. It is. I was telling my son this. I said, man, it's a once in a lifetime opportunity. And this is only the second time we've ever had a president win two non-consecutive terms. Grover Cleveland was the last one. And now Trump is the second one. And so, I mean, it's been like 150 years since that happened. So it could very well never happen again. But it's an opportunity for me to be able to spend some time with my son, him to be able to witness history, something that he's never going to forget. And I get to be there. Looking really forward to that. Been planning out some things. Been sending out emails to some senators that I know and just trying to hook up while we're there. We're going to go up Sunday night, be there Monday, and drive back Monday. So being able to get up with other people may be a little harder. But I do want to definitely spend some time with my son and excited about doing that. So, yeah. And, of course, you're going to get him on the podcast. Oh, yeah, absolutely. 100%. I mean, people think the Joe Rogan interview was something. It's nothing compared to the For Freedom podcast where Trump comes on here and talks about freedom and pride from Galatians 5. Absolutely. And I'm sure he's going to call me up to pray during the ceremony when he gets sworn in. I'll have my Bible there. My King James hate man Bible. I am such an over-preparer that if it was me going, I would have a prayer ready to go just in case. You never know. Is that Brett Martin out there? Brett, come on up here and pray for us, brother. Come on. Yeah. Give us a – and I'll tell you this, and this can – we want to talk about this anyway. Anyway, I am, like, so ready to go back to Israel. It is just like you have no idea how bad I want to go, how bad I want to take a trip. And I've said when Trump gets in office, I'm going to give him a couple of months to get this Gaza thing under control. And this is something that I've been saying for a while. And so I'm going to give him to March, April to get this thing done. He says he's going to stop it. He's going to stop the war. And so my thing was, okay, I'll give him to March, April. If by sometime mid-April he has not fixed it yet, we're going to plan a Missionary Paul journey, which we're going to do one day anyway. And so we're going to do Missionary Paul, go to Greece. And so that was the plan. And so I was waiting on that. And then we get news today. I mean, I'm talking – I found this out an hour ago that they have just signed a ceasefire right now for the Gaza conflict. They're releasing, like, 30 hostages. The Israel is releasing Palestinian hostages. And they're releasing about 30 Palestinian hostages for one Israeli hostage. Or it's not hostage. Israel doesn't take hostage. I misspoke. They're Palestinian prisoners to one Israeli hostage. And they're releasing the sick, the elderly, the women. And about 30 – between 30 or 50. I'm – you know, I just found out about it. So it's between 30 and 50 hostages are being released. But this has led to a ceasefire, a six-week ceasefire. This is the first stage. And so we'll see how things go after six weeks. We'll see how, you know, how things progress. It really isn't going to completely be over until all the hostages are freed. Yeah. Because, you know, Israel is not going to let up until every single hostage is accounted for. And so, I mean, look, Trump's doing this. He's not even taking office yet. He's already doing this stuff. So it's amazing what Trump can do. But, man, I am glad that you get to go to that inauguration. That's going to be a great thing. It's going to be a memorable thing. And if I was closer up there, I might have, you know, pushed for tickets for myself. But, you know, it's pretty far away from me. But I am glad you get to go. And I can't wait to see Trump get into office. Yeah. Which, by the way, if he gets into office, he gets into office on the 20th, but that's a day late. Day late and a dollar short, my friend. To save TikTok. That's right. Which brings us into our next subject. Topic number two, TikTok. And what that means for what's going on here for the future of that. I actually had a conversation last night at the dinner table with my family about it. They were like, hey, what's going on? And, you know, they know I follow politics pretty well. And I said, well, Congress has passed a law that if TikTok doesn't change ownerships from their parent company, I don't even remember what the name of their parent company is. Bike dance. Bike dance. That is Chinese owned and Chinese ran. That it will no longer be downloadable or updatable in North America, in America, in the United States. And that passed in Congress. It passed in the House. And Joe Biden signed that into office that it would go take effect January 19th. And the only way this gets reversed is, Brett, how does this get reversed? Do you know? Well, we've got a couple of options. It's before the Supreme Court right now. Okay. So they have some things that they can do. First thing they can do is they can say, okay, we're going to postpone this. Trump says that he can save the app. So we're going to push this a few months past and give Trump a go at it. The Supreme Court could, option number two, they could say, okay, well, we don't see how this is, you know, hurting national security. And if you listen to their argument, they don't have an issue with directing people's, you know, directing videos to be anti-American, directing videos with an agenda. Because like Kavanaugh said, that's what apps do today anyway. Every app, you know, adjusts their algorithm and videos to push a certain agenda. So that's nothing new. Yeah. But their issue is really the data collection. That is the, you know, that is the big, the big thing. Well, the other big thing is, Brett, if America had an app such as TikTok that was owned by America that we were able to collect data from Chinese individuals or Japan, that app would not be allowed in their country. Because we would be collecting their data and they would not allow it. So the, the premise of this is, hey, you wouldn't allow this in your country. So we're not going to allow it in our country. Sell your ownership to someone that's going to be able to work well with us because we don't work well with China in that sense of data. And we'll maybe have this conversation. And it's not looking like bike dance is going to do that. Right. And so they could say, okay, well, we agree that it violates First Amendment rights. We're going to, we're going to kick it out and say that TikTok is okay. Then three, they could, they could say, oh, no, we're just going to agree with it and let the ban go through and it's over. Now Trump, if they do that, Trump could get an office on the 20th and say, okay, we're not going to enforce the law. It's a law, but we're not going to enforce it. But then that puts a lot of liability on the app stores like at, like Google and, and, and Apple play in stores because they're still liable. And if one day the government changes their minds, they're going to get these hefty fines. There's a bill put forth by a Senator a couple of days ago to kick the can down the road, 270 days, to give them more of a time to find a solution. That would have, that bill would have to pass in the next two or three days to save the app. And so there's a lot of options on the table to save the app. Um, so I think there's good applications, there's bad applications for Tik TOK. And so we're just, we're in the road and we're just waiting to see what happens, uh, if, if it can be saved or not. Um, I know that like the world is going to be completely decimated. If the RFP Tik TOK page that I run gets taken down. Yeah. And so I know I'm going to be devastated. I think that, uh, that it's going to be shut down. Um, this is my, my James Safer hat here. Um, uh, I think that, that Trump's not going to have the ability to, uh, say, we're not going to follow this law. Um, once it's signed into law, you can't just say, we're not going to follow that law. Uh, that's not how laws work. I think Supreme courts shouldn't be how they work. I think the Supreme court's going to uphold it, um, because their arguments are so weak and the Supreme court's going to have to say, Hey, we, we back the other two forms of government, the, the legislative and the presidential. Um, so I think they're going to uphold it, uh, which doesn't mean that Tik TOK will cease to exist. This is what people don't understand. It's going to still be there. Um, it just won't be downloadable. And then as phones and new devices update, you won't be able to put it on new devices. Um, and then it won't be accessible on your desktop view. Um, so those are the implications. And I don't think, um, I have to look into it cause Bertie asked me this question. Well, dad, can you still upload videos and watch videos, uh, after it's no longer, um, after it's banned. And I said, I think if it's on your device, just like other apps, you'll still be able to use it. There just won't be any support for it from the app store anymore. Right. Well, and, and all the American companies that, um, that support and update won't do that anymore. So slowly, but surely the app will lose function and it won't work as well. It'll start getting glitchy. But on the other hand, ByteDance is saying that the Tik TOK is saying that if the ban goes through, they're just going to shut it off. So there's a chance that it will just go completely dark. Um, so, you know, Hey, you know, I, me, I mean, China wants the, the chicken soup recipe I sent to my aunt the other day, let them have it as far as I'm concerned. Uh, but, but I know there are bigger implications for, for data. Uh, and so, you know, Well, I know you're, I know you're really concerned because you're going to lose your millions of dollars that you get from your views, uh, by being the, the RFP, um, Tik TOK guy. I mean, all your millions. Yeah. All your millions. I mean, you're, you're going to have to sell your jet plane. Now you're, I mean, Jesse, the planet is going to have to buy it back from you. Uh, you know how, when you know how expensive insurance is on a Lamborghini? I mean, it's just, it's highway robbery. We can't handle this. So, well, Hey, let's add one more tea in there, Brett, because you mentioned something. Uh, we've got Trump, we've got Tik TOK. We're going to talk about one more in just a minute, but I did a tea thing this, oh, this, this Christmas. I went out and I bought me one of those dare Teslas and, uh, I've been driving one around. And so, uh, I've been enjoying it. It's been fun. Um, it's electric, it's fast. Um, it's crazy. Um, the amount of technology that's in it. Um, and it's pretty cool, man. I, I, I've always thought they were a cool car and I, of course I got it used, didn't buy it new. We don't make that much money as pastors. Um, but I got it. I told Allie sort of what we were paying in gas. And I said, Hey, if we can find a Tesla for this cost based on what we're paying in gas, I said, we would essentially be putting our gas money into a car payment and wouldn't have a gas payment anymore. And in a couple of years, once it's paid off, uh, you know, we would be sitting on the plus side versus the negative side. And so, uh, we've been looking for about six months and one came up on Black Friday, went and looked at it and bought it on that Saturday and, uh, really good home, uh, uh, mom and pop used car dealership there in Conover. And, uh, it's been fun. Kids like it. We drove it to the beach and back and it was a definitely fun trip. So, yeah. Do you read the New York times going down the road? Yeah. Do you ever see? Yeah. You read the New York. No, it does have a little camera in there. So you have to actually keep your eyes on the road. You can't look around. Like one time I was sitting there looking at Allie talking to her and like everything started flashing. Pay attention, pay attention. Um, so it's weird having the car drive you. It's, it's really cool. I actually, so you have to pay for that subscription. They give you like 45 days for free. Um, and then after that, it's a hundred dollars a month to keep the full self driving. And mine does come with the full self driving. Some of them don't. Um, so for that first 30 days, yeah, I put in my destination, hit the, the, the, the, uh, the stick on the steering wheel and it drove me to my destination, pulled into the parking lot or pulled into the driveway. And I didn't have to touch the wheel or the gas. It changed lanes. It did everything. It was pretty spectacular during those 30 days. Um, if I knew I was going to be driving a lot, like long destinations that I may would pay for that month, but I'm not going to pay $1,200 a year to have that function on my car. It has an auto. If I'm going on a long trip, like on vacation, I'd pay for it. 100%. Yeah. And it, I'm telling you, like you put it in and it goes, it, it stops at charging stations. It does everything for you. You don't have to touch the wheel or the gas or the brake or anything. So it was, it was pretty wild. That's crazy. Speaking of crazy technology, since we're on our T's, what's the last topic we'll talk about before we, uh, introduce what we're going to be talking about this, this season on the podcast. I want to talk about a little bit about tech as in AI tech, as in specifically AI in the church, AI in the ministry. AI is a big thing. It's becoming more a part of our everyday life. Um, artificial intelligence is, I mean, you've seen some of these big, uh, these big rooms with these computers that do this AI for every 4,000 words that chat GPT, uh, writes, it takes up a gallon of water to pull, to, to, to cool the computer. And then are there people writing novels today? 4,000 words is nothing, but there's a lot of applications. Before I get into how I use AI, I want to ask you, have you ever used AI? Brett, I've used chat GPT, GPT, maybe four or five times total. Every once in a while I'll be playing around and I'll pull it up and throw something in. And, uh, if I'm trying to, uh, alliterate something or, or get something right, I may put it in there, but man, it's been three, four or five times. That's about it to the extent that I've used it. Um, I know some guys are using it every day. I have several guys in my church that work in the tech field that do a lot of coding and they use chat GPT to, um, help them with a code. If they're trying to find a code, instead of searching for it, they can just drop it in and it'll spit out the code they're looking for. One guy who built our website for our church, he used chat GPT to build the website, our website, which was insane and crazy. Uh, I haven't, I've thought about it. The more I talk to you about it, the more I may, may do a little bit of it. Um, but, but tell us how you're using chat GPT and AI in your, uh, day-to-day life. So I just started, uh, you know, as most people know, I just started working on my master's through New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. And one of the first orientation, uh, orientation classes that I took for one of my classes, he said, look, we don't, we don't want you to use AI to write your research papers, to write your essays and stuff like that. But at the same time, if you don't use it at all, you're going to get left behind. And so as far as school goes, what I use AI for is I use it to research. Like I can plug in my syllabus and it can say, I need, you know, give me 10 sources, uh, for this paper, make sure they're free that I can use online. And it'll pop up 10 sources that I can use for my paper. They're online. They're free. It gives me the links to every one of them. They meet all the requirements of my syllabus. Once I get them, I don't let it type my paper for me. But once I get my paper, then I'll take it. I'll plug it in. I was like, check for spelling, grammar, syntax, logical consistencies, whatever else I can think of. I call that for me. And so it's just a really great way to use, you know, AI in that regard. So then I started using AI more for church applications. And I think that this is something that a lot of pastors that they knew about, they would start using. Now, I'm not at all advocating that somebody use AI to write their sermons for them. Not at all. But if you want to use ChatGPT to help you research for your sermons, say, look, give me, you know, commentaries on this verse. You know, give me, you know, I want to preach on praying in the Holy Spirit. Give me some information about that. Give me some Bible verses about that. And it can do a lot of research for you. Another thing that I'll do is I'll say, OK, here's the points of my sermon. Here's the subjects. Here are the verses for each point. Now give me illustrations for each point. And they'll pop out sermon illustrations for each one. Now, I might not use those exact sermons, but I mean, those exact illustrations. But I'll read the illustration. But, you know, something similar like that happened to me in my life. And so then I can use that as a catalyst, as a jumping off point to write my own illustrations that AI kind of gave me, you know, gave me the idea for. Here's another thing that you can do with AI that I think would be good to help churches, help pastors, is repurposing your old sermons. So what you can do is you, like for me, I manuscript all of my sermons, OK? If you don't manuscript, we talked about this before we started. You can go on YouTube. If you post your sermons to YouTube and copy and paste the transcript of your, you know, the, you know, where it says the words, the closed captioning, you can copy and paste that and use that as well. But I manuscript my sermons. I go to the pulpit with every word that I'm going to say typed out. So then I take those old sermons and I plug it into ChatGPT and I'll say, OK, take this sermon and write me five blogs in my voice and that I can post throughout the week. And it'll do that. Now, these are my sermons that I wrote, so it's not like I'm cheating. It's not like it's writing it for me. Basically, it's taking my sermon and it's organizing it into five blogs that I send to our tech guy and he posts them on the church website. And so I've been blogging using my old sermons that I preached years ago that I think I will never use again. And I'm repurposing those. I'm turning those into blogs for our church website. Another thing that I do on Monday morning is I take my manuscript. I plug it in ChatGPT. I'll say, give me seven quotes. Pull seven quotes from this sermon that I can post on my Facebook page. And I'll pull seven of the best quotes from the sermon. I go to Canva, which is free. And I make like an inspirational Facebook, Instagram type post with a moon in the background or a mountain or something. Just like an inspirational quote that you post on Facebook. Put our church logo and address on it and post it on Facebook. And so from blogging to writing inspirational quotes, it has a lot of applications. I'll give you one more application that I use it for. I'm writing a book. And what I'm doing is, you know, a lot of people say, take your old sermon series and turn them into a book. And that's what I'm trying to do. I want to do a little booklet on marriage. And so what I'm doing is I'm taking an old sermon series that I preached on marriage. And I'm using AI to help convert that sermon into the chapters for this new booklet that I'm that I'm typing. It's my words. It's still my voice. It's my points. It's my research. But it's organizing it into a book format for me, saving me so much time, so much effort. And I think it's just it's something that we really need to look into. You know, we don't need to be like, oh, well, that's not how my grandpa used to do it. So we're not going to use AI because that's not how they did it back in the 1950s. No, no, no. We're we're we're we're free to use these tools. These are here. There's nothing wrong with using them. You know, there's nothing wrong with taking an iPad to the there's nothing wrong with taking an iPad to the pulpit. There's nothing wrong with using AI to help you in your research. Now, I will say once again, don't let AI write your sermons for you at all. But using it as a tool, a research tool, a tool to help you do some of these other other things to save you some time. I don't think there's anything wrong with that at all. Yeah, I love it. That's great. Great thoughts and things I haven't even thought of. Oftentimes we do get stuck in doing things a certain way. You know, I know some of these big time preacher men back in the day, they would have research assistants and they'd say, hey, I need you to research this passage. And you're basically just outsourcing that person to an AI program that's doing the same thing a whole lot quicker than what that person's going to do. So it is saving you time and effort. And again, it's your work. It's your your your background of all that. And I love that. Thank you for sharing that, Brett, and sharing what you've done and ways that you're using technology to further the gospel ultimately and provide freedom for those who have been struggling. And it's been been great to hear that and to see that. And I do see your blogs and I've been following those online. I was wondering how you did that. So it's good to know. Maybe I'll steal some of those ideas and use them for myself. But love that. Last thing that we'll talk about before we sign off is our upcoming season. We'll be starting next week. And man, we are excited about what we've got coming up. We are going to be talking about wokeness in the church, what that means, how that's defined. We've got some different topics that we're going to bring it on. We're going to bring our old founding host back, John, for a victimhood episode, being woke in victimhood and victim blaming and hurt in the church. And so he's going to come on and talk through that. And we'll be talking through several different issues. But next week, hopefully you'll tune in and maybe share some of these ideas because oftentimes some of these new fandangled words like woke and other things get mistranslated or misdefined over the years. And so we want to define that and what that means and what that looks like. And then we're going to be looking at two different sources that talk about wokeness in the church and begin to talk through that, begin to look through it, and really dive deep over the next probably eight or ten weeks, maybe even longer than that, on different issues that have gone woke in the church. And so, man, we're really excited about that. And hopefully you'll be tuning in to us. And again, if you want to purchase some cigars from us, we'd love for you to try some of those. If you ever have any questions for us, feel free to reach out to us on our social medias. And we would love to talk with you. Brett, any final words from you, my friend? No, just I'm looking forward. I'm looking forward to the series. Me and you kind of put our heads together and come up with this. I think it's really relevant. I think it's something that needs to be talked about. People are afraid to talk about it. We don't need to be afraid to talk about it. We don't need to be afraid to talk about controversial subjects, especially if they affect the gospel. And these subjects are becoming the center of our culture. We need to stay awake to the gospel, not woke to the culture. And so it's really needed, and I'm looking forward to it. Absolutely. Well, until next time, to God. Not the pastor. Be the glory. I found my new name. I found that good grace. I found that healing. And the tears fell down my face. When I found my beginning. That has no ending. I found that second chance. I found my best friend. I found my forgiveness. I found my happiness. I've been singing ever since. I found my freedom in you. Thanks for listening to the For Freedom Podcast. If you enjoyed our content, do us a favor by liking, subscribing, or sharing our podcast on whichever podcast platform you use. Be sure to join us next time for the For Freedom Podcast. For Freedom Podcast. AVAILABLE NOW

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