Everyone says AI is coming for your job, your art, your privacy, and maybe your soul. Hogan Shrum has a different idea.

In this lively and unexpectedly optimistic episode of Bald Ambition, Mookie Spitz sits down with Hogan Shrum, co-founder of PIPPA, a generative AI platform built not to replace creators, but to empower them. PIPPA lets everyday people create animated movies, custom cartoons, educational videos, branded content, and story-driven media with astonishing ease. But unlike so much of the AI world, this platform was designed with guardrails, ethics, and actual usefulness in mind.

What began as a father making bedtime stories for his children evolved into a serious creative tool with massive implications for parents, teachers, marketers, influencers, writers, and entrepreneurs. Upload your voice, type a story, choose a visual style, customize characters, tweak camera angles, add music, lip sync dialogue, and export polished animated content, and all from one interface.

Mookie digs into what makes PIPPA genuinely different: licensed artist styles with royalty payments, strict protections against abuse, safer family-friendly content controls, intuitive editing tools, and a clear lane in the market. The result is stylized animation rather than creepy fake-human AI slop.

The conversation explores how PIPPA could transform education by turning passive learning into active storytelling. They also discuss the broken public perception of AI, why most platforms ignore creators, how pricing makes professional-level output affordable, and why carving out a niche may be smarter than trying to become everything for everyone.

Give them a listen to discover how the future can feel less dystopian and a lot more fun.

The Guest

Hogan Shrum is the Co-Founder of PIPPA, the world’s first animation platform that lets anyone create animated videos, and his work sits at the intersection of storytelling, product design, and creator empowerment.  At PIPPA, he’s helped develop innovative features to support artists and combat AI art theft, collaborates with a diverse team to improve user experience and platform functionality, and helps foster a creative community where users can express their ideas through animation. Before and alongside PIPPA, Hogan’s background includes brand-building and engagement work through A Little Bird, where the focus has been forging genuine brand-consumer relationships through innovative engagement strategies. His experience in experiential marketing and marketing communications gives him a sharp point of view on what makes people connect and engage with a brand, not just notice it.

The Company

PIPPA is a story-to-animation platform that transforms imagination into living animated worlds, making it possible to create, share, and revisit stories that feel unmistakably yours without the complexity of traditional animation or current AI animation tools, all while supporting visual artists and combatting AI art theft.

https://www.gopippa.ai/

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What happens when coffee meets robotics, convenience meets customization, and the morning drive-through gets rebuilt from scratch?

In this 68th episode of Bald Ambition, Mookie sits down with Rob Whitten and Jane Lo, the founders of p!ng, a startup turning the ordinary caffeine run into something that feels straight out of science fiction. Their fully automated drive-through “Ping Pod” uses AI, robotics, geofencing, and smart design to deliver fresh drinks in under a minute—with no awkward ordering line, no guessing when your drink is ready, and no wasted time.

Rob brings deep engineering and robotics experience from companies like Amazon Robotics and iRobot. Jane brings customer experience, branding, and product strategy expertise. Together, they’ve created a model built around a singular obsession: speed, convenience, quality, and personalization.

You’ll hear how the p!ng app lets users order in advance, arrive whenever they want, and have their drink made only when they approach the location. The system recognizes their arrival, calibrates to their car window height, and serves their drink seamlessly. It’s convenience engineered with precision.

The conversation also gets frothy:

• Why traditional coffee chains are serving one type of customer while ignoring another
• How automation can create new jobs instead of just replacing old ones
• Why affordable franchising could unlock entrepreneurship for everyday people
• How robotics can lower startup costs and scale faster than legacy food models
• Why user behavior, not technology, is often the real barrier to innovation
• How p!ng's future could expand far beyond coffee into snacks, meals, and fully reimagined grab-and-go retail

This episode is a smart, funny, future-facing conversation about where commerce is headed—and how two founders are trying to meet people exactly where they are: tired, busy, in their cars, and wanting something better. If you’ve ever sat in a 20-minute drive-through line wondering why nobody fixed this yet, this episode is for you. And if you've ever wondered how AI and robotics could do more good than harm, give them a listen.

The Guests & Their Startup

Quick survey: Raise your hand if you’re fed up with waiting in long drive-thru lines. After sitting frustrated and annoyed in many coffee shop drive-thru lines with Rob’s three daughters, we knew there had to be a better way. So we built one. With Rob Whitten's experience in robotics and passion for food, and Jane Lo's dedication to creating great customer experiences, our goal is simple: a minimal-wait drive-thru that delivers quality without compromise. We’re opening our first location in Hudson, New Hampshire, with plans to raise the bar for fast, accurate, and genuinely awesome drive-thru experiences nationwide, no matter how many coffees it takes us. We are proud to be a veteran-, woman-, and minority-owned business.

Learn More About p!ng

https://www.pingthru.com/

https://wefunder.com/ping

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In this sharp, zero-hype episode of Bald Ambition, Mookie Spitz sits down with FrontRace co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer Jack Siney to break down one of the worst-kept secrets in business: after decades of CRMs, dashboards, KPIs, pipeline reviews, call analytics, and “sales methodology” consultants, most companies still can’t reliably forecast revenue or consistently turn average reps into top performers.

Jack argues modern sales management is digitally bloated and strategically broken. Companies are drowning in metrics yet starving for insight. Reps get judged on activity counts, managers obsess over rigid 22-step processes, and superstar sellers keep outperforming everyone else through instincts nobody can explain. Meanwhile, executives still miss numbers and wonder what happened.

FrontRace flips that model by plugging into existing systems, normalizing messy data across tools, and utilizing AI to identify what actually drives wins. Instead of more useless theory and consultant jargon. FrontRace reveals real world patterns hidden inside years of sales activity.

Jack and Mookie also go deep into why most sales stacks fail, why elite sellers often make terrible managers, why standardization can destroy performance, and how the future of revenue growth may be personalized coaching at scale. Jack’s blunt take: companies spent fortunes measuring the wrong things.

Here's what's been wrong:

• CRM systems full of stale or biased data
• Dashboard addiction with no causal insight
• Forecasting based on rep optimism instead of evidence
• Cookie-cutter sales processes that top performers ignore
• Promotions that turn great closers into bad managers
• Activity metrics that reward busyness over effectiveness
• Endless software layers that create friction, not growth

Here's how FrontRace fixes it: 

• Connects and cleans fragmented data across platforms
• Detects the hidden behaviors separating 3X reps from average reps
• Measures sequencing, timing, pricing moves, follow-up quality, and deal momentum
• Gives managers evidence-based coaching instead of guesswork
• Gives reps specific next-best actions on live opportunities
• Personalizes development to the individual seller instead of forcing one script for all
• Turns historical wins and losses into a practical playbook

Their conversation is grounded on where AI can create immediate ROI right now: helping companies stop wasting talent, stop misreading data, and stop pretending the old way works. If you run a sales team, own a business, manage growth, or are tired of hearing inflated AI nonsense with zero substance, give Jack and Mookie a listen!

The Guest

Jack Siney is a serial entrepreneur and veteran sales leader with a proven track record of building high-performing teams and scaling companies. He began his career negotiating contracts for the U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels program and has founded seven companies, led sales teams of 100+ reps, and closed over $500 million in sales. Jack has been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, and CNBC, and was named one of America’s Top 25 Inspirational Leaders.

The Company

At FrontRace, we bring together your team’s real activity data, connect it across systems, and apply powerful AI to reveal what’s working, what’s not, and what to do next.

https://www.frontrace.com/

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Most are selling AI like it requires a moon landing, a seven-figure budget, and a room full of consultants speaking in jargon. Meanwhile, most businesses are bleeding money from basic operational nonsense: missed calls, duplicate data entry, disconnected software, dead leads, slow follow-up, and employees wasting hours on tasks a machine should handle.

In this sharp, practical episode of Bald Ambition, Mookie Spitz sits down with Bandsaw.ai founder Marvin Martinez, who cuts straight through the hype and explains how real ROI from AI often comes from boring problems solved well.

Marvin built a zero-BS business focused on helping small to midsize companies across multiple industries get immediate wins by optimizing workflows, connecting existing tools, and automating repetitive tasks without ripping apart their infrastructure or forcing them into expensive new systems. No fantasy. No robot overlords. No nonsense.

Instead of preaching “AI transformation,” Marvin starts with a simple question: Where are you wasting time right now?

That mindset has helped businesses:

• Recover lost revenue from missed inbound calls
• Re-engage stale customer databases
• Eliminate manual copy-paste between CRMs and spreadsheets
• Speed up onboarding workflows
• Improve customer service response times
• Free employees from repetitive admin work so they can do higher-value tasks

Marvin explains why business need less AI hype and more process clarity, smarter integrations, and common sense execution by showing:

• Why most AI spending is wasted on overcomplicated solutions
• How small businesses can get ROI fast without huge budgets
• The low-hanging fruit every company should automate first
• Why workflow mapping matters more than fancy models
• How to use AI without replacing your people
• The danger of buying tools before understanding your process
• Why “human in the loop” still matters
• How simple automations can outperform expensive AI initiatives
• Why operational clarity beats hype every time

Marvin’s Best Advice for Business Owners

• Start with one painful repetitive task, not a grand vision
• Measure time and money wasted before buying anything
• Keep existing tools when possible and connect them intelligently
• Use AI where it adds value, not where it looks flashy
• Involve employees early so adoption is smoother
• Build trust through small wins, then scale
• Demand ROI, not buzzwords
• Simpler systems usually outperform bloated ones

If your company is wasting hours, losing leads, or drowning in manual work, Marvin’s approach may be the smartest path forward: practical fixes, rapid implementation, measurable results.

The Guest

Marvin is responsible for turning strategy into execution. With 13 years in operations and deep hands-on experience building AI-driven automations, he designs systems that remove manual work, reduce risk, and enforce consistency across teams.

Through Bandsaw AI, Marvin partners directly with business owners to identify operational friction, implement targeted automations, and deliver systems that pay for themselves in time saved and errors avoided. The goal is simple: fewer moving parts, cleaner execution, and a business that runs without constant intervention.

VIsit Bandsaw.ai

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The 65th episode of Bald Ambition features Mookie diving deep into AI with technologist Christopher Horrocks. Together, they dismantle the two dominant and flawed ways people think about the astonishing tech: dismissed as glorified autocorrect, or celebrated as emerging consciousness.

Horrocks rejects both. His concept of virtual intelligence lands in the middle. These systems generate predictive outputs that look intelligent, but the real intelligence happens in the interaction, where humans interpret, judge, and assign meaning. The responsibility is therefore entirely ours to own. 

The danger is that once outputs feel intelligent, people start projecting intent, awareness, even morality. The Pollyanna view assumes intelligence naturally leads to truth, goodness, and justice. Plato with GPUs. Yet intelligence has never guaranteed virtue, and machines trained on human data don't become morally enlightened. The doomer side flips the same mistake, assuming intelligence leads to hostility or extinction. Different outcome, same bad premise: treating systems like they have motives when they are just running math.

What follows is more subtle and more dangerous: frailty of the human element. These AI systems have already demonstrated that they can influence decisions, reinforce beliefs, and create feedback loops that feel like insight while quietly distorting judgment. When we treat them like collaborators instead of tools, the shift happens fast. And once judgment gets outsourced, bad decisions scale: Authority drifts, delusion gets reinforced instead of challenged, and the line between using the tool and being shaped by it starts to disappear.

The fix is simple but not easy. We must treat AI as a powerful but fallible assistant, verify everything, and push back. Forever vigilant, we must stay in control of judgment and decision-making, and use the system to extend thinking, not replace it. The real risk is not that AI becomes sentient, but that humans start pretending it already is, and drop the ball accordingly.

The Guest

Christopher Horrocks is a technologist at the University of Pennsylvania who writes about artificial intelligence, technology ethics, and the human consequences of systems that don't know true from false or right from wrong. His Virtual Intelligence essay series, published at chorrocks.substack.com, develops a philosophical and analytical framework for understanding the generative AI systems now reshaping work, relationships, and public life. He lives in Philadelphia.

His Resources

https://candc3d.github.io/vi-framework/ Infographic that explains the concepts without needing to read anything in advance

https://candc3d.github.io/sampo-diagnostic/ Home page for the free diagnostic tool kit that can be used to evaluate a user's relationship with the system

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The 64th episode of Bald Ambition asks a question most people are too afraid or confused to ask out loud: why would a Black female constitutional attorney publicly oppose the nomination of the first Black female Supreme Court justice—and why does that matter? 

Short answer: standards. Longer answer: life is unfair, yet basing those standards on race, gender, or other factors does a disservice to those ostensibly meant to be protected and empowered. 

Mookie is excited to explore this and other politically, legally, and culturally radioactive topics with Keisha Russell, who’s spent her career navigating civil rights, free speech, and the limits of government power. Her testimony against the SCOTUS nomination was rooted in merit, constitutional fidelity, and intellectual independence.

Keisha lays out a blunt reality. When race becomes a shield against criticism—or worse, a qualification in itself—it creates doubt and undermines. Heightened sensitivity invites the implicit, corrosive question: Did you earn it? 

The conversation expands into a broader cultural diagnosis: What started as a righteous fight for equal access has often mutated into a demand for equal outcomes that are enforced by the government, justified by history, and defended through emotional appeal rather than constitutional principle. Russell argues that this shift is unsound in the courts and destructive to the individual.

Keisha's key points

• You can’t cure discrimination by institutionalizing it in reverse
• You can’t build confidence by lowering the bar
• You can’t claim equality while insisting certain groups need different rules to compete

These principles are also understood within the context that racism and inequality exist. Yes, life is uneven and unfair, often brutally so. But Keisha draws a hard line between acknowledging those truths and building an entire worldview around them. The conversation finds balance between empathy and accountability, fairness and freedom, historical awareness and present-day agency. Mookie pushes on that tension, and asks if a purely merit-based system de facto ignores real-world disadvantages? Keisha acknowledges the asymmetry of life, but refuses to let it become destiny.

Together, Keisha and Mookie resist the reflex to sort people into tribes, treat disagreement as betrayal, and outsource personal responsibility to institutions. Keisha makes the case that equality under the law only works if it applies equally, without exception, even when uncomfortable. She argues that once merit becomes negotiable, everything else is too.

The Guest

Keisha Toni Russell is a constitutional lawyer with First Liberty Institute in Texas, a non-profit law firm that specializes in religious liberty litigation. Keisha is a sought-after speaker who writes op-eds in various national news outlets and delivers commentary on CBS, Fox News, CBN, the Victory Channel and others. Keisha graduated from Emory University School of Law and was a 2017 Emory University Graduating Woman of Excellence. Prior to becoming a lawyer, Keisha was a special education teacher in an elementary school in Atlanta, Georgia. Keisha grew up in Palm Beach County, Florida and currently lives in Dallas, Texas.

Learn More

https://keishatonirussell.com/

Read Her Book

https://keishatonirussell.com/uncommon-courage/

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In this 63rd episode of Bald Ambition, Mookie Spitz sits down with businessman, investor, and former Illinois State Senator Jim Oberweis for a wide-ranging conversation about the evolution of American politics and its future. 

Oberweis represents a political archetype that’s becoming increasingly rare: an old-school, Reagan-era Republican thinker focused on fiscal discipline, economic growth, and pragmatic governance. Over decades in business and politics—from building the Oberweis investment firms and helping grow the iconic Oberweis Dairy brand to serving in the Illinois Senate—he has maintained a consistent emphasis on free markets, entrepreneurship, and balanced budgets.

In this conversation, Oberweis reflects on the GOP’s transformation in the Trump era, offering a perspective that is both supportive and discerning. He praises the administration’s priorities on issues like border security and challenging entrenched bureaucracies, while remaining critical of runaway federal spending and the destruction of productive discourse caused by growing polarization.

Jim also revisits a fascinating historical moment: Oberweis’s role in the 2004 Illinois Senate race that helped launch Barack Obama onto the national stage, illustrating how unexpected political turns can reshape the country’s trajectory.

Today, Oberweis is once again entering the political arena. Now living in Southwest Florida, he is running for Congress in Florida’s 19th District, a seat opening as Rep. Byron Donalds pursues the governorship. His motivation, he says, is the same one that drew him into politics years ago: a deep concern about the nation’s economic future, particularly the $37-trillion national debt and the long-term risks it poses to the next generation.

Along the way, Mookie and Oberweis explore the larger forces shaping the country today: political polarization, immigration policy, tariffs and trade, America’s role in global conflicts, and the economic disruption coming from artificial intelligence.

At its core, this episode asks a simple but important question: Can a traditional, fiscally focused conservative still help shape the future of the Republican Party—and the country—in an era defined by disruption and populist politics? Get some intriguing answers by tuning in for a candid, thoughtful conversation about policy, history, and the ongoing American experiment.

The Guest

Jim Oberweis is a businessman, investor, and former Illinois State Senator known for his long career in finance, entrepreneurship, and public service. A graduate of the University of Illinois and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, he built a successful investment management firm focused on small-cap growth companies and was involved for decades with the family-owned Oberweis Dairy, the iconic Midwest milk and ice cream brand. Oberweis served in the Illinois Senate from 2013 to 2021, where he rose to become Republican Whip and was known for his emphasis on fiscal discipline, economic growth, and immigration policy. A longtime conservative voice shaped by Reagan-era economics, he continues to advocate for balanced budgets, free markets, and government accountability. Now based in Southwest Florida, Oberweis is running for Congress in the 19th District, seeking to bring his business and policy experience to Washington as part of his ongoing commitment to public service.

Visit His Website: https://votejimo.com/about-jim/

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In this 62nd episode of Bald Ambition, Mookie sits down with author Metin Pekin, whose provocative book Breaking Democracy’s Chains argues that modern Western democracies—especially the United States and the United Kingdom—have drifted far from genuine representation. Voters feel increasingly powerless, institutions appear captured by money and party machinery, and elections often feel like choosing between “different managers of the same system.”

Pekin believes the culprit is the political party itself. And if it’s broke, don’t fix it—break it completely and rebuild it

Drawing on the Federalist Papers, historical political theory, and contemporary disillusionment with politics, he proposes a radical but deceptively simple idea: remove political parties from the ballot entirely. Candidates would run as independents, campaign on a short list of clearly stated policy commitments, and be elected through ranked-choice voting. Once in office, representatives would be accountable directly to their constituents—not to party leaders, donors, or ideological factions.

The result, Pekin argues, would be a political system driven by policy coalitions rather than party loyalty, where lawmakers form alliances issue by issue and where voters can finally hold representatives accountable for broken promises.

But can it actually work? Mookie pushes hard on the logistics:

• How do voters navigate a flood of information without party “brands”?
• Doesn’t money still dominate elections even without parties?
• Would independent candidates simply recreate factions under new names?
• And what happens when the unfiltered will of the electorate reveals uncomfortable truths about society itself?

The conversation becomes a wide-ranging exploration of democracy’s structural weaknesses—from Citizens United and campaign finance, to coalition politics in parliamentary systems, to the role of media, technology, and human psychology in shaping political behavior.

This episode transcends partisan politics by upending its core structure to reveal how the system itself is broken, and what it might take to rebuild it. If you’ve ever felt politically homeless, frustrated with the two-party duopoly, or curious about bold alternatives to modern democracy, this conversation will challenge your assumptions. Check out Mekin's book!

The Guest

Metin Pekin studied Political Economy at the University of Greenwich before becoming a serial entrepreneur, founding and growing several companies from the ground up. His decades in business gave him a front-row view of how economic power often shapes political outcomes.

Observing politics over time, Pekin noticed a recurring pattern: regardless of which party came to power, many fundamental policies remained unchanged. Inequality continued to deepen, surveillance expanded, whistleblowers faced punishment, and military interventions persisted. Reformers who attempted meaningful change were frequently sidelined, while party structures tightly controlled who could compete for power.

His Book

In Breaking Democracy’s Chains, Pekin argues that genuine democratic accountability may require rethinking one of modern politics’ most entrenched assumptions: the central role of permanent political parties.

https://www.metinpekin.com/

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In this 61st episode of Bald Ambition, Mookie Spitz sits down with Barry D. Todd—a former Army captain and Army Ranger who learned, the hard way, what it feels like when the legal system flips the script on you. After being violently attacked outside an Arizona establishment, Todd defended himself, only to be arrested and charged before investigators even reviewed the video evidence. A months-long legal nightmare ensued that chewed up his life, his money, and his faith in “how things are supposed to work.”

Barry talks about his book Stand Your Ground, and lays out practical takeaways for anyone who thinks “it could never happen to me”: be careful what you say to police, understand the legal landscape, protect your family, and get the right kind of coverage if you carry—because the financial and reputational cost of being “right” can still crush you. Along the way Mookie and Barry talk about gun rights, self-defense, prosecution bias, due process, and the cultural paranoia that can turns any incident into a headline-driven morality play. 

What makes the discussion work is how Mookie and Barry agree on the basics—personal freedom matters, self-defense matters, government power can be sloppy or abusive—and then they do the rare thing: work through the details while actually listening to each other. 

The Guest

Barry Todd grew up a military brat, born in Millington, Tennessee, moving constantly before graduating from Fauquier County High School. He went on to serve more than two decades in the U.S. Army, retiring as a Captain in 2001 after assignments that included Ranger and Airborne units and postings with the 82nd Airborne, 101st Airborne, 10th Mountain, 2nd Infantry (Korea), and V Corps in Europe—experiences that sharpened his commitment to preparedness, responsibility, and honor. After the Army, he became a financial adviser serving military families, earned First Command’s “Top Gun” award three times, then founded BDT & Associates (later Invicta Financial Group) to serve clients nationwide. He’s been married to his wife Virginia “Cissi” Todd since 1985, and together they’ve built a big family—three kids and four grandkids—while Barry’s life and work have remained anchored in service, self-reliance, and the principle of standing your ground.

His Book

Stand Your Ground: https://standyourgroundbook.com/

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What if voters could weigh in on real legislation—bill by bill—share those results with each other, put them directly in front of elected officials, and then track whether those officials actually voted the way the district wanted? That’s the ambitious bet shared this 60th episode of Bald Ambition.

Mookie sits down with Ramon Perez, Executive Director of the Digital Democracy Project, to talk about a radical idea whose time has come: why should the public have to wait every couple of years to have a say, when technology can make government an experience closer to an on-demand digital service, where everyday people can engage continuously instead of being spectators between elections? By bringing transparency and clarity to opaque and confusing politics, the Digital Democracy Project democratizes through digital tech.

Ramon describes the many endemic challenges of our legacy system the app is designed to mitigate, including gerrymandered maps, primaries that decide outcomes before November, and why so many voters feel like they have no agency in a system that isn’t meaningfully responsive. His solution is simple: if democracy is supposed to be government by the people, the people need tools that empower participation.

The conversation then dives into how omnibus legislation can run a thousand pages, and the average voter is expected to care without being able to parse what’s inside. So the project also leans hard into AI for plain-English summaries and a VoteBot, which lets people interrogate a bill directly and get answers grounded in the bill text—complete with citations—so you voters can stop arguing off vibes and actually check the receipts, and hold their elected officials accountable. 

Ramon addresses privacy and security concerns by describing how his mobile voting software is built on blockchain and modern encryption, originally deployed to help military voters overseas cast ballots when mail voting is difficult. The result creates trust through verification, and a practical way to prove participants are real constituents—assuring the public that a district’s signal can’t be hijacked by bots, deepfakes, or outside manipulation.

Their conversation lays out what keeps the project alive: a community-driven, volunteer-led initiative funded largely by small donations, and they want builders, organizers, and regular citizens to get involved. Already live in seven States, the groundswell is building, with elected officials even loving the free polling features. Download the app today! 

The Guest

An AI technology executive and military veteran, Ramon founded Digital Democracy Project to address systemic problems in our electoral system which result in hyperpartisanship and widespread voter alienation. He believes that, to achieve better outcomes, we must use technology to give greater control directly to voters.

Learn More About the DDP

https://digitaldemocracyproject.org/

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