Daily Darwin

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Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>Daily Darwin: Tuesday, November 15, 2022 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Not betting on a favorable outcome...

Daily Darwin: Tuesday, November 15, 2022

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Jackie Dorothy.

Jackie Dorothy

Wyoming Life

Around Wyoming

John “Josh” Deane was 16 years old when he left his home in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, for the Wild West in 1872, lured there by the adventures he had read about in the 10-cent novels of his day. 

Instead of the excitement he dreamed of, the teenager found life a struggle just to survive.

Deane eventually took a job for $75 a month driving freight, a profession known as "bull whacking." 

By 1876, Deane was 20 years old and landed an opportunity that he considered an advancement in life. 

He was hired as a government dispatch carrier at the princely sum of $125 a month. 

In 1928, Deane told his story to a biographer about he carried one especially important dispatch, related in his own words in the book “The Mayor of Meeteetse.” 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Rumors Of A Fight"}]

Deane had arrived at Fort Brown in the middle of June 1876 and was told by Col. Julius Mason to remain a few days. 

Mason had just arrived himself from Fort Riley, Kansas, and was concerned because there were rumors of a fight with the Indians in the Rosebud country. 

“A little later, he decided to send me to the camp of Custer and Reno and told me to select an Indian to accompany me,” Deane said. “I picked Niogen Doget, a Shoshone, and we started out on the morning of June 24, with our saddle horses and one pack horse.”

The two men had orders to reach their destination as quickly as possible, so they traveled fast and light. 

Crossing Cottonwood Creek, they made our way up the slope of the Owl Creek Range. 

On the summit of the mountains, Deane described pausing to look down for the first time into the Big Horn Basin which would one day be his future home. 

“From my point of vantage, I could see the Big Horn River and could trace its course for many miles, by the line of cottonwood timber along its banks,” Deane said. “Not a human being, nor a sign of human habitation, was visible in all the valley.”

As Deane and Niogen Doget took in the view, they were unaware of the danger that Custer, Reno and the others would be facing the next day along the Little Bighorn River.

Deane said that the Pryor Mountains were dimly visible, and the Big Horn Range, with snow-capped Cloud’s Peak, rising in its midst, was easily discerned. 

Only a few miles beyond the smooth northern slope of the range on which they stood, the men could see the peculiar, brick-red, conical hills of the hot springs region, in which the town of Thermopolis would later spring up. 

They descended the northern slope of the mountains, passing close to the spot where Col. Torrey’s Embar Ranch would soon to be situated, the same ranch that Butch Cassidy and others of the Hole-in-the-Wall gang would be working on in the 1890s. 

He forged unnamed creeks and swam rivers in his haste to reach the camps. 

As the two men traveled with the dispatch from Fort Brown on June 25 and 26, they were completely unaware that the Battle of the Little Bighorn, known as the Battle of the Greasy Grass by the Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes, was being fought. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Reno Sick in Tent"}]

On June 27, Deane said that he and Niogen Doget reached the head of what is now called Reno Creek. 

They followed down a long bench, hunting the camp of Custer and Reno. 

“As we drew near the camp, which was on the bank of the Little Big Horn River, I could see dead horses and other traces of a fight,” Deane said years later in 1928. “Sergeant Ned Bowling, whose widow is still living in Lander, Wyoming, greeted me and pointed out Reno’s tent.”

Deane said he hurried over to the tent but was surprised when Reno’s orderly would not let him inside. 

Deane was told that Reno was ill and unable to receive dispatches. 

“I was sent to the second in command to whom I handed over the small locked pouch, used by the government for secret messages, and the sealed envelope containing the key,” Deane said. “As he tore open the envelope, I remarked that I would look around a little and return later.”

Deane was ordered instead to wait while the officer prepared dispatches about the battle to send back to Fort Brown. Deane was then told to start back with the messages at once. 

“My curiosity was now thoroughly aroused, as well as some resentment,” Deane said. “When a man has just covered 170 miles, in two days, it must be a very urgent matter which sends him back over the same route, without at least, one night’s rest for himself and his horse.”

Deane could see that “serious things had been happening.” 

He described how the faces of the officers were grim and haggard; there were dead horses and bandaged men, and Reno was evidently seriously wounded. 

He pulled his friend Bowling to one side while waiting for the dispatches and asked what had happened. 

Bowling told Deane that Custer and Reno had quarreled at Rosebud, and Custer, impetuous and hot-headed, had taken a small group and gone ahead to attack the Indians, without waiting for Reno’s support. 

Deane learned that Custer and his men had ridden forth upon a rolling ridge and were going so fast that the ammunition wagon and Gatling gun could not keep up. Indians, outnumbering his forces 10-1, were in ambush in the timber along the Little Big Horn River, which paralleled the ridge. 

Bowling said that Indians had pushed upon Custer’s little group, taking them by surprise, cutting them off from the retreat and from their ammunition, and had them at their mercy. 

The soldiers had put up a brave resistance, but when their ammunition was gone, they were helpless and were slaughtered without quarter by the furious Sioux.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Battle Scene"}]

Deane said that Reno, coming along later in the day, had a skirmish with the Indians, in which he lost a great number of men. 

The rest of the soldiers were so exhausted that no attempt had as yet been made to bury the dead from the Custer massacre. 

“As a matter of fact, except for a thin layer of soil thrown over the bodies where they lay, they were left untouched for many months and then buried in one huge pit, above which stands the Custer monument bearing their names,” Deane said.

According to Deane’s account, small stones were set up at the spot where each man fell, and where he lay before each soldier was given a permanent resting place. 

Custer, alone of the victims of that day’s slaughter, is not buried on the field, Deane said. His body was removed to the East.

“Orders or no orders, I could not go back to Fort Brown without a glimpse of that battlefield,” Deane said. 

When his dispatches were ready; instead of starting back, Bowling and Deane slipped away to the spot, only a short distance from the camp, where the soldiers lay dead. 

“As we approached the scene of the massacre, we saw a horse quietly grazing on the hill side, apparently the sole survivor of the recent battle,” Deane said. “He had a bullet wound in his neck, but was not seriously hurt, and as I happen to know, died many years later, of old age.”

The scene that Deane observed before him was one that remained with him for the rest of his life. 

He described how men and horses were lying where they had fallen, scattered singly or in groups of twos or threes, on both slopes of the ridge and on its summit. 

“Most of the bodies were fairly close together, but occasionally we noticed small groups or individuals at some distance from the rest,” Deane said. “Piles of empty shells could be seen everywhere.”

As Deane walked among the battlefield, he said that none of the soldiers appeared to have more than two or three cartridges left. 

The whole field, as indicated by the positions of the dead, was about a square mile. 

He said that the bodies of the men were all on this unsheltered ridge, where sagebrush was the only vegetation, but dead horses were scattered through the timber close to the river. 

There were no dead Indians to be seen, though they must have lost at least as many men as the whites. 

They had evidently paused long enough after the fight to gather up their own dead, as well as to take the scalps of a good many of their victims. 

“We came upon General Custer lying across the neck of his horse, a pistol in his hand,” Deane said. “The Indians must have respected his rank for he still wore his scalp. 

“I remember noting that he had yellow hair, a fact which I have since had to dispute with several people who have insisted that Custer was dark.”

The scene Deane described decades after the fact matched that of Captain Frederick Benteen, battalion leader of Companies D, H and K who walked the battlefield on the same day. 

“The only approach to a line was where five or six horses found at equal distances,” Benteen reported. “Ahead of those horses there were five or six men at about the same distances, showing that the horses were killed and the riders jumped off and were all heading to get where General Custer was.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Delivered Dispatch"}]

After walking the battlefield, Deane and Niogen Doget reached Fort Brown late in the evening of the second day. Deane went immediately to Mason and handed him the envelope and dispatch pouch.

“Huh! Hell of a note! Did you hear the details?” Mason said after reading the dispatch. 

Deane repeated to him what Bowling had told me of the cause of the affair and described the battlefield as he had seen it. 

Mason appeared disturbed but made no further comment, except to wonder if the news had been dispatched to other quarters. 

Deane told him that dispatch carriers had been sent to Helena. 

“I should have reached my destination, however, before they did theirs,” Deane said. “There was no telegraph line at Fort Brown so we were unable to pass the news along before it had reached the world through other channels.”

Robert Hall, the telegraph operator at Fort Stambaugh, about 50 miles south of Fort Brown, had the distinction of first wiring the news to the headquarters department at Omaha. 

General Crook at Fort Rosebud had dispatched Shoshone Indian runners to Fort Stambaugh, as soon as he heard of the catastrophe. 

Stambaugh had a telegraph line, but there was a break in the wire, just then, which had not yet been located. 

The commanding officer had relays of horses sent out along the telegraph route and gave Hall the dispatches with instructions to ride along the route until he found the break in the wire. 

He found it at a point about 50 miles from the Fort, and from there he sent his news to Omaha.

“Nothing more that was exciting or worthy of special notice occurred during my career as a government dispatch carrier,” Deane said. “I made only the usual routine trips from one fort to another.”

A year later, Deane had not saved much of his money and had grown weary of the monotony of the long, lonely rides over the hills. He quit the job of delivering messages for the military and headed to Green River.

Eventually, Deane returned to the Big Horn Basin during a more peaceful era and settled in Meeteetse where he was appointed mayor. 

There, he lived his last years as an old timer of the region and became famous for his barbecues.

Custers last stand Getty Images 514887526 5 30 26

<title>Wyoming History: The Courier Who Carried First Dispatch From Custer’s Last Stand | Cowboy State Daily</title>

John “Josh” Deane came West looking for adventure — and got more than he bargained for when he took a job as a military dispatch rider. It was 150 years ago that he found himself carrying the first message about Custer’s last stand to Wyoming’s Fort Brown.  

Wyoming History: The Courier Who Carried First Dispatch From Custer’s Last Stand

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's Feature Reporter, Andrew Rossi.

Andrew Rossi

Outdoors

Public Lands

[{"type":"text","text":"Wyoming’s winds are so strong, they actually move Devils Tower."}]

The nation’s first national monument has been swaying back and forth for millions of years — and it’s moving right now.

 published by the Geological Society of America has revealed that Wyoming’s iconic Devils Tower is constantly moving. 

An international team of geologists studied the massive monolith and determined that it's perpetually and ever-so-slightly swaying, twisting, and turning in the wind.

“It’s not only a static rock structure, millions of years in the making,” said Jeffrey Moore, a professor of geology and geophysics at the University of Utah and lead author of the new study. “It is moving on human timescales. It's constantly in motion.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Solid As A Rock"}]

Devils Tower is a giant, eroded plug of volcanic rock. It was an intrusive body of magma that cooled under the surface and was gradually exposed by millions of years of erosion.

When most people see Devils Tower, they assume it’s as solid as a rock. Moore’s research shows that it isn’t entirely true.

“It’s lively with vibrational energy,” Moore said. “You can't see it, feel it, hear it, or anything, but it's nonetheless very real. It’s happened right this very second.”

Moore and his colleagues studied Devils Tower using ambient vibration modal analysis techniques. 

It’s a way of analyzing the ambient vibrations moving through solid rock forms, identifying the mode of those vibrations, and determining the extent and nature of movement they cause.

“It’s similar to playing a note on a piano,” Moore said. “If you looked at the sound wave of that, it wouldn't look like much, but if you looked at the frequency, it would tell you quite a lot about the frequencies of what you’re hearing. That’s what we did at Devils Tower.”

To conduct the study, the team placed two sensors at the base of Devils Tower and a seismometer at its 867-foot summit.

Kathryn Vollinger, another author of the study, was tasked with climbing Devils Tower twice in two days to set up and remove the seismometer at the top.

“She hauled it up, set it there, left it overnight, and climbed up the next morning to take it down,” Moore said. “All done with a permit from the National Park Service, of course.”

The data collected by the sensors revealed a lot about the movement of Devils Tower. It’s not just a once-in-a-while phenomenon, but an everyday occurrence.

[{"type":"text","text":"“It’s constantly in motion,” Moore said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Twist And Turn, Back And Forth"}]

Different movements have different frequencies. By analyzing the frequencies collected by the sensors, Moore and his colleagues determined how Devils Tower moves.

“We were able to discern the three modes of vibration,” Moore said. “The first two modes are what we might call full-height swinging, as it sways in one direction and then back in the other direction.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Unnaturally tall, narrow objects do this. "}]

It’s a physical force that constantly acts on skyscrapers, forcing architects to design and use the proper materials so their hundred-story buildings can safely sway with the wind.

The third mode of vibration Moore found was a torsional mode. That means Devils Tower twists on its vertical axis, around and back, and not just back and forth.

“That’s a rather interesting one, but again, something that's relatively common for tall buildings,” Moore said.

So, on an average day, Devils Tower is swaying and twisting back and forth.

[{"type":"text","text":"And what are the forces causing that movement? Wind and seismic activity."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Moore said Wyoming’s wind was particularly impactful on Devils Tower."}]

“When it was windier, the amplitudes of movement were higher, but the frequencies were the same,” he said.

Seismic activity was a smaller factor, but one that was easily distinguished and had an impact, according to the data collected. Moore said there is enough seismic activity to keep Devils Tower moving even on the rare windless day.

“There’s enough seismic energy to keep the tower in constant motion,” he said. “On a windy day, it's going to sway stronger, but it's still in motion on a calm day. It's just very, very subtle.”

[{"type":"text","text":"In this case, the subtlety is definitely in the details."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Never Blink And You’ll Miss It"}]

If Devils Tower is constantly in motion, could it eventually twist or sway enough to partially or fully collapse? Could the nation’s first national monument send itself to hell?

Unlikely, said Moore. While the tower is constantly in motion, that motion is so minuscule that it’s barely noticeable.

“The movements are very, very small,” he said. “They’re on the order of a micrometer. That's a thousandth of a millimeter, and a millionth of a meter. It’s easily measurable on modern seismographs, but not to the human eye.

Someone could stare at the constantly moving Devils Tower all day and not see a thing. If someone pointed a time-lapse at the tower for 100 years, it would appear to remain motionless.

The difference between Devils Tower and Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, now the tallest building in the world at 2,717 feet, is that Devils Tower is solid. That’s why the swaying and twisting of skyscrapers is noticeable and much more intense.

“Tall buildings are mostly hollow steel structures, so they sway enough that people feel ill,” Moore said. “Devils Tower is solid throughout, so its movements are very small.”

It’s also important to note that while Devils Tower constantly moves, technically it isn’t moving.

While the tower itself is swaying, twisting, and turning on a daily basis, it isn’t migrating across the landscape like the Yellowstone or Hawaiian hotspots. The volcanic activity that created Devils Tower ended a long time ago and shows no signs of reawakening.  

But what about the worst-case scenario? Moore and his colleagues have that covered.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Future In Modeling"}]

As part of their research, the team created models of Devils Tower’s structural dynamics. They used their data to create predicted resonance models visualizing its constant directional movement to the extreme.

“These are very exaggerated deformation shapes,” Moore said. “They're exaggerated so you can see the motion, and how it's bending, swaying, and twisting.”

The models are a little alarming, showing a much more precarious Devils Tower leaning to-and-fro to an extent that would make anyone scared of an imminent collapse.

However, these are not predictive models. Nobody’s saying Devils Tower can or ever would reach these extremes.

The volcanic activity that created Devils Tower ended millions of years ago. 

Today, northeast Wyoming is far from any active seismic faults that could create enough force to twist the tower out of shape or cause a collapse.

Like all geologic wonders, Devils Tower will be worn down by wind, water, and erosion over a prolonged period. Its daily micrometers of swaying, twisting, and turning are not a cause of concern.

“These animations help us understand how it might move if there were a big earthquake,” Moore said. “There isn’t any sort of risk associated with these movements that I know of, and I don’t even know that there could be.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Twist And Shout"}]

Devils Tower is the latest geologic wonder that Moore has studied using ambient vibration modal analysis. He’s done similar studies on Utah’s famous rock arches and the Matterhorn in the Swiss Alps.

The scientific justification for these projects is using the ambient movement of geologic landforms to determine their composition and study how their properties change over time.

“It’s called structural health monitoring,” Moore said. “What we've shown is that by placing a seismometer on top of a geologic landform for a few hours, you can derive the key structural and mechanical properties of the materials and then compare those to other materials across the world.”

Structural health monitoring can help identify the effects of cracks on famous landforms and how geologic composition may lead to future failures that could affect people.

There’s nothing to worry about at Devils Tower. According to Moore, another fact they confirmed during their research is that the monolith is “pretty monolithic.”

“In some cases, we find important impacts of cracks and other structural additions, but that’s not super prominent at Devils Tower,” he said. “Based on its rock properties, it’s pretty solid.”

Moore hopes his work will reignite interest in Devils Tower and its unique geology.

 At the very least, people who visit the iconic Wyoming landmark will know that the seemingly still, immovable object looming above them is actually constantly in motion.

“Hopefully, we’re adding a new layer to the way that people can appreciate Devils Tower,” he said. “It’s an unexpected layer of interest. The motion is very, very tiny, but it’s constantly in motion. It’s alive.”

Devils tower storm 8 7 24

<title>"It's Alive!": Scientists Say Devils Tower Is Constantly Moving | Cowboy State Daily</title>

New research published by the Geological Society of America has revealed that Devils Tower is constantly moving. An international team of geologists determined that it's perpetually and ever-so-slightly swaying, twisting, and turning in the wind.

"It's Alive!": Scientists Say Devils Tower Is Constantly Moving

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's business and tourism reporter, Renée Jean

Renée Jean

Business & Tourism

Business

CHEYENNE — In some ways, it was the ultimate Mother’s Day gift, even though the gift didn’t necessarily happen on that exact date. 

In 2019, Shareen Brendle’s mother was showing early signs of dementia.

“So I bought Bouquets Unlimited from her, because it was her only out for retirement,” Brendle told Cowboy State Daily. “And then she passed away in 2022.”

Four short years later, Brendle’s independent florist shop faces a tough reality. Her Mother’s Day sales were down 10% this year, even as she heard of a nearby store giving away free bouquets for the holiday as an in-store promotion.

It felt like a sign of the times to Brendle. She’s been helping her mom at the family’s legacy shop for 38 years, and she’s watched independent florist shops dwindle all along the way.

In 1992, there were 27,000 florist storefronts in America. By 2012, that number had dropped by almost half to 14,000. Today, they number 11,750. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Soon that will be 11,749. "}]

That’s because Brendle has made the difficult decision to close her mother’s store in June — one more independent florist succumbing to e-commerce and big-box price undercutting amid ever-tighter margins from rising fuel and other overhead costs.

“I’m broken-hearted about it,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “But think about the hundreds of chain stores that buy in bulk. They have hundreds of stores, so they can get better deals than small stores.”

Oftentimes, Brendle has even seen retail prices at big-box stores and supermarkets that are lower than her wholesale prices.  

“I just can’t do it anymore,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “It’s just become tougher and tougher, and we’ve had to get tighter and tighter.”

Bouquets Unlimited has been part of Cheyenne’s business landscape for 44 years. Brendle’s mother opened the shop, and for decades the store has been as much about family and community as it has flowers.

“We really balanced each other out,” Brendle said, chuckling a little bit. “It was the yin and the yang. I got to see my mom every day. A lot of people don’t have that novelty. We worked together side by side.”

Her mom was the public face for the business — active in the Chamber, Kiwanis, and other local groups — while Brendle handled the less glamorous side of ownership. She did the hiring, the firing, the purchasing, and paying the bills.

“I did all the things that owners don’t want to do,” she said. 

But she also made beautiful arrangements, winning a national floral design contest with Florist Magazine in 1998. On a trip to Hawaii, a stranger even recognized her win.

“It was like my 10 seconds of fame,” Brendle said. “He’s like, ‘Hey, you’re the one who won that design contest.’ And he goes, ‘I love your work.’ My mom was so proud.”

Even though the man was not a celebrity or someone she knew, it was a neat experience that someone from so far away had recognized her work. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Shifting Shopper Habits"}]

For Brendle, the trend isn’t about people falling out of love with flowers. Demand for flowers has remained strong nationally, and she sees that locally as well.

The problem for small mom-and-pop stores like hers is how many people have shifted to online buying strategies, hoping to save a buck or two on bouquets.

Nationwide, marketshare for florist shops has shrunk about 1% year over year, dropping to about $7.9 billion, according to IBISWorld’s Florists in the US Industry Analysis. 

Meanwhile, digital rivals — online marketplaces, floral apps and the big national brands like 1-800-Flowers that live on the web — have grown roughly 9.1% annually. 

On top of that, flowers are regularly available in convenience stores and supermarkets, stacked in mass-merchandiser coolers or supermarket endcaps. 

They’re available through same-day delivery apps that promise sushi with a side of laundry detergent or anything else consumers desire.

Lowe’s giving away flower bouquets for Mother’s Day, a holiday that had typically been a top sales event for her store, felt like the last straw.

“They can take that hit because of all the things they sell,” Brendle said. “So guys will be like, ‘Oh sweet, now I don’t have to go to a flower shop.’ So that cuts us out. It’s just little things like that.”

The fact that such bouquets aren’t custom-designed and won’t last for very long doesn’t seem to matter to customers anymore, Brendle added. They’re cheap, they’re convenient, and for many people, that’s become “good enough.”

Behind those cheap, grocery-store bouquets is a global supply chain that only works on volume. 

The premade bunches now crowding U.S. supermarkets start in places like Colombia and Ecuador where labor is cheap.

Flowers are cut, sorted and assembled into ready-to-sell bouquets, then flown into U.S. hubs, moving through highly automated distribution centers, so they can be delivered in bulk to retail chains.

Because these bouquets arrive premade, retailers don’t need to staff a full floral department with trained designers. They can sell professionally arranged designs at much cheaper prices than a small florist shop like Bouquets Unlimited, which is sourcing high-quality flowers from all over the world — tulips from Holland, lilies from Canada, and hothouse beauties of all kinds from California, Idaho, Florida, Hawaii and more.

Brendle confronts the structural disadvantages in her industry every time she orders flowers from her Denver wholesaler. Her shop, even though it might order 5,000 roses every Valentine’s Day, is still a very small customer compared to the big chains who are buying tens of thousands.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Order Gatherers 'Racket'"}]

Brendle is also frustrated by so-called “order gatherers.” These are national call-center companies and websites that buy up florist-related domain names and search terms, and then impersonate local flower shops online.

“They’re not florists,” she said. “You’ve heard of Ava’s Flowers, From You Flowers, Ruth’s Roses … you look up a florist in whatever city and you’re always going to find them first because they own 99.9% of the domains, and it says they’re local and they deliver.”

But what actually happens when a customer places an order with them is much different than what a customer might imagine. 

“They charge the customer at least $20 for a fee, then turn around and give it to a florist in that city,” Brendle said. “The florist gets half the money they charge the customer, and then the customer gets mad because they’re like, ‘I paid $100 and that is not a $100 bouquet.’”

When Brendle looks up the order, she can see the order she got was actually for a $40 bouquet.

“It’s a racket,” she said. “They promise the customer is going to get something that looks exactly like the picture they see online, and 90% of those pictures are photoshopped. 

"There’s no way we could get a stem to go in that position in a vase like that. It’s utterly impossible. So it’s false promises straight across the board with these call centers.”

Cheyenne’s Bouquets Unlimited is closing its doors after 44 years because they can't compete with the online giants. In 1992, there were 27,000 florist storefronts in America. Today, they number 11,750.  “I’m broken-hearted about it,” the owner said.

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