Jane Pratt’s 37 Favorite Things (original) (raw)

37 Things Jane Pratt Can’t Live Without

The best box fan to help you fall asleep, bucket of salt, cashmere hoodie, and more.

Photo-Illustration: The Strategist; Photos: Jane Pratt, Retailers

Jane Pratt, the founding editor of Sassy, Jane, xoJane, and, now,Another Jane Pratt Thing, is veryparticular about her stuff. Like Jason Schwartzman, Debi Mazar, and Amy Sedaris before her, Pratt’s tastes are uniquely specific and discerning, as are her explanations for why she likes the stuff she likes. So for this edition of our long-running “What I Can’t Live Without” column, we asked her to go above and beyond the standard slate of eight to ten items to get into the nitty-gritty of everything from her (extremely minimal) skin-care routine — which still features the very same products she first told us about eight years ago — to the 1970s women’s-empowerment books she collects, to her favorite “clean but homey” New York public restroom.

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Chanel stopped producing these a couple of years after I got addicted to them in 2013, which was the first year I needed glasses. So now they are vintage and I have to find them each time on eBay or elsewhere. I have once or twice bought fakes accidentally, where the Chanel _C_’s were falling off. But they’re the perfect shape and I love that they have quilted leather on the sides, because how special. I don’t actually even care if they are fakes as long as they faked the shape correctly. My favorites are black with white quilted leather, but I’ve had them in tortoise, beige, brown, gray, and every color they come in because it’s the shape that I love more than anything.

I recently found a similar style from Celine that is my best new backup. And then right after I bought those, I found that my favorite little store on Bleecker Street, Caddis, makes a pair that is exactly equally as great as the Celine shape for about one-fifth of the price. Lesson learned. So now I have two backup pairs in my closet for whenever my current pair breaks — though I will keep all my searches for the Chanel ones open and buy them, and probably get duped, whenever I do find a pair. People ask me why I need to replace my glasses so often, but I am hard on things and wear them out and break them. I stretch out the sides by pushing them on top of my head like you’re not supposed to do. My dogs have also eaten them twice.

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These are kind of everywhere now, but my mom actually discovered them a few years ago — probably through a Facebook ad. She started sending me these relatively inexpensive cashmere hoodies. She has given them to me in different colors, and I’ve also asked her to give them to me in different sizes because I wear them when it’s cold out as an extra layer just inside my coat. The colors are perfect and standard; my favorites are navy and black. But I don’t really wear mine to go out or for other people to see them — I wear them more to be cozy at home or as that warmth layer when it’s cold.

They have everything you need, including a zipper and pockets, which is super-handy for carrying dog treats, or a remote, or your phone, or whatever you want with you as you pad comfortably around your house. Ahhhhh. And then having the hood is essential for keeping your neck warm when you go out, especially with a coat over it that doesn’t have one. I would have thought, for the price, that these would be extremely thin cashmere that would get holes instantly, like other cashmere I’ve purchased online that was basically sheer. But these are hefty enough and hold up to all kinds of my destructive treatment.

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I have worn men’s boxers to sleep in for most of my life. These are the perfect ones. The prints are gorgeous and classy, and they never ever wear out or stretch or lose their elasticity or anything. They can also be worn underneath pants or a skirt — the prints look so sweet peeking out over the top. One of my editors years ago called me out for cultural appropriation because I was showing the band of my boxers above my jeans, which I get. I do love the look, though.

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I know we’re not supposed to call them wifebeaters, but I’m just not capable of saying wifepleaser, so let’s go with “the sleeveless white tank top made for wearing underneath other clothing.” I wear these constantly. I like the way they feel, and I love the look of the little bit of white peeking out of the top of whatever else I am wearing. It makes everything you wear a little bit more casual and pragmatic-looking.

The key is that they have to have a high-enough neckline to see it under whatever other color you’re wearing, so the cut is really important. And they have to be long enough but not too long that they show out from underneath the bottom of whatever you’re wearing over them. Slight, thin ribbing is also critical to me for looking like they have some kind of utility beyond a cute _faux-_collar layer. For decades, I wore Hanes men’s but recently learned that Hanes is a big GOP supporter. So I switched to Uniqlo, and they’re even better. The fit is perfect — not-too-high armholes, not too long or short, and they cost just about $2 more per shirt than the Hanes three-packs. But unlike Hanes, these last forever and ever.

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I have two of these: one in navy blue and one in khaki. They are original Boy Scouts button-up short-sleeved shirts that I found in an East Village used-clothing store, like, 25 years ago, and I’ve been wearing them inappropriately to events over dresses and just all the time since then. I get asked about them almost every time, and I assume that is a compliment.

[Editor’s note: Boy Scouts of America sells new uniform shirts in boys’, girls’, men’s, and women’s sizing at scoutshop.org. There are also all sorts of older versions to browse through on_ eBay and Etsy._]

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These are genius homeopathic drops that you take and instantly feel more limber in your joints. After I take 12 drops of them under the tongue, I can crack any knuckle or anything else that needs cracking. They also just help me stay limber in general. I carry them with me and take them maybe three times a day on an as-needed basis. If I take them before a yoga class, sometimes my cracks are so loud and frequent that I worry I am making the other yogis jealous. You have to wait 15 minutes before or after eating to take them, so you just work around that.

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I get the New York Times print version delivered every day, and I do read it every day. But the Sunday Times is critical because I always want to do that crossword. I like to go through and just sit on my bed and organize the sections I’m going to read first, the ones I’m never going to read, and the ones where I’ll just read one little item out of it. I like to splay them all around. It feels very comforting.

I start at the back with the obituaries. On Sunday, they have a lot of those paid obituaries that families put in, so it’s not necessarily just the famous people the Times is writing about. You get insight into these other people’s lives that way. I read all the ones that have a picture with them. Then there are other sections where I like certain things. In the “Metropolitan” section, I like the “Sunday Routine.” I always want to see if other people are doing more productive things on their Sundays than I did when I did it. And then that leads to Ginia Bellafante, who is usually opposite that, and I like her. I’ve known her for years. I have to be in the right state of mind for “Style.” It can really put me in a not-great mood, depending. But I usually do eventually end up getting through it. The only section I never, ever, ever read is “Sports.” I’m not that into “Opinion” either. I want to read the facts — I don’t really need to know what other people think about them as much.

I can remember, actually, before starting Sassy, when I decided that I was going to get up on other types of news; I started reading the New York Times every day. It’s very similar to what I do now. I force myself to read it — even if it’s midnight, even if it’s into the next day. If I haven’t read that day’s paper yet, I force myself to finish it, just because I want to feel like I’ve done it. I started doing that when I first moved to New York when I was 21 years old, so it’s been more than 40 years.

Most of my other reading is digital — reading one article from The Atlantic or from the Washington Post or whatever on my phone. I also get a physical copy of New York Magazine. My subscription ran out, but there’s someone in my building who moved, so I get theirs. During the pandemic, I also got the Washington Post, the Financial Times — I got about five physical newspapers sent to me every day. It was a coping mechanism of some kind.

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I think getting the New York Times delivery is more common, probably, especially among readers of this column. However, I would also like to extol the wonders of the Sunday New York Post. I know that, politically, it’s completely uncool and goes against everything I believe in, but there are four pages in the middle of the Sunday New York Post where they print photos. Basically, they take the last week’s worth of photos from celebrities’ Instagrams and they blow them up big, put them on that grainy newsprint in that bad coloring that newsprint can get, and run them with their own little captions.

Because I don’t keep up with celebrities’ social accounts, this is, for me, usually news. So it’s actually really fun for me to see these photos in that format. What I end up doing is I take pictures of them — so further degrade them — and send them to my friends with my own little captions. So it makes something like a picture of Katy Perry kissing the ground when she comes off the rocket ship look even more cartoonish than it looks if you just see the original photo. I just find it really hilarious and like a little strange, kitschy art piece to send to people.

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I got into the library when my daughter was little. That was just the best place to go and hang out and just be part of everything — even more than going to the Barnes & Noble near us. Going to the public library, it always felt like you were seeing a nice range of New Yorkers. We would go to the library almost every day.

I went to a talk at the main New York Public Library on 42nd Street not too long ago. It was two of my friends, one questioning the other one. And it was the best — these are people I’ve known for many years, but I got more insight into them through this talk than I’ve ever had through many other interviews they’ve done. And I thought, There’s something about that atmosphere of being in a library that makes people put their guards down, be more curious, and open to showing other sides of themselves. It was really one of the best interviews I’ve heard in ages, and I think that the library setting was part of that. I love the feel of the library, and I love that we have them.

I don’t actually check books out, but I like to go and look through them. I would love to say I check books out, but I’m so irresponsible that I can’t imagine I would ever return them. That would do more harm than good.

[Editor’s note: You can sign up for a New York Public Library card_ here._]

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I’m a physical-book person, and looking right next to me right now, I have the hugest stack, all nonfiction. I hate to say — I haven’t read fiction in many years. I’m obsessed with nonfiction. I will read anybody’s autobiography. It doesn’t matter if I have never heard their music or anything. I’m curious.

One book I have right next to me is called It’s Not Okay, by Andi Dorfman. Andi Dorfman was one of the Bachelorettes vying for the Bachelor. She did not get chosen but she wrote a book, so I read her book. It’s ridiculous. Just looking through my list, I also have Demi Moore, Ione Skye, Andrew McCarthy, Hunter Biden. I definitely like the print versions, and I like to go back and reread them — that kind of thing.

One of the best nonfiction books I’ve found within the last couple years is called The Great Pretender, by Susannah Cahalan. It’s that whole era at Stanford where they were doing the Stanford prison experiment and all that crazy sociological stuff. This is about a guy from that era who — it’s just the most crazy thing — sent people who were not mentally ill to mental institutions. He got them to be accepted, then had them try to prove their sanity to get out, and they couldn’t.

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Rather than an app that makes a humming or other noise to help you sleep, nothing creates the perfect sleep-inducing sound like a large box fan. (By the way, the app that I use when I am away from my beloved fan has a sound called “cabin hum,” and I always thought it meant a log cabin, but it’s actually the sound of an airplane cabin — it’s fairly comforting!) Plus it gives a breeze, which I think also helps create a perfect sleep environment. For this to be effective, you have to get the cheap ones that rattle a little bit and hum really loud, not anything that’s more streamlined or engineered to be quiet at all. That won’t work.

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Well, first of all, I’ll start by saying I don’t cook. Probably the last thing I cooked was maybe ten years ago, or maybe 20, but it tasted good. I can always make things taste good; I just don’t like to do it. And I don’t do it, so I know a lot about delivery. I learned about Pasta by Hudson in the least-cool way possible. First of all, it’s the least-underground thing you could ever imagine, the least “I’m a native New Yorker” kind of thing. I learned about it from Shark Tank when all of the hosts tasted it, including Mr. Wonderful. They thought it was delicious. They loved it. They wanted to invest. They said it was fresh pasta, so I was interested. I thought, Let me try that. And so I ordered it in. It comes in these little Chinese-takeout containers. It’s really simple, really cheap. You can’t even believe how they get it to you for the price, and it is delicious.

[_Editor’s note: Pasta by Hudson’s Chelsea location is temporarily closed, though its sister restaurant,_ the Perry Club, _is open in the West Village._]

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I was really dismayed recently when PG abandoned their unique pyramid shape because I believed their marketing was the reason for their perfect robust and flavorful cups of tea. But I’m here to say that even though now they are manufactured as perforated two-packs that you have to carefully separate so you don’t spill the tea leaves, the flavor is exactly the same. They’re relatively cheap and produce the perfect strong breakfast tea. I drink it every day, multiple times, and just have to stop myself by about five in the afternoon or it’ll be hard for me to fall asleep.

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This is so far from a new recommendation. I learned about it from Gwyneth maybe 15 years ago. But maybe more than anything on this list, it fits the criteria of something I can’t live without. I buy Maldon sea salt by the 3.1-pound bucket. I have gone through five or six of these buckets in about the same number of years. Keep in mind that it is just me, and sometimes my daughter, at home, so I recognize that’s a lot of salt for one person. But my doctor gave it the thumbs-up for me, and as anyone who’s tried it knows, Maldon flakes make everything taste so, so, so much better. That little pyramid shape with an occasional pop on your tongue is glorious like heaven. I have heard that it’s not worth it to use it for cooking because a big part of the flavor is in that shape that would break down when you cook, but I have friends that use it for everything, and if I cooked, I would, too. It’s really hard to use just regular salt after this — I get bummed in restaurants about this often, because I add salt to everything. Even before I’ve tasted it.

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As I said, I don’t cook, but I love lemon and lime juice on almost everything. I’ll squeeze it onto my takeout or into water. I saw this at a friend’s place, and I was like, Oh, it’s gorgeous. I think it’s the kind of utensil that almost looks vintage, so I want to keep it on my countertop, sticking out of something so you would actually see the top of it. It’s very, very sturdy. It feels like you’d hand it down to your grandkids. I like that it’s not aluminum or plastic; it’s stainless steel.

And it works tremendously well. I actually looked it up: You get 37 percent of the juice out of the fruit. They did a comparison of squeezers, and that’s on the very high end of the juice that you get out of the half of the lemon or the lime.

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I have one scent that I love by Krigler called Extraordinaire Camelia Number 209, but it’s expensive and I’m precious with that one when I use it. But the Cocomoi Body Mist is something that I can spray into the air and walk through and not worry about because it’s not pricey and it feels like something you leave by your door and spray on every time you’re leaving. It’s not so strong that you have to be careful where you place it. You just kind of spray it around and then go out. It’s not highly noticeable because it’s milder. And, also, my friend’s daughter is the one who developed it, so I think I have a connection to it for that reason, too. It feels like home to me. It feels very warm for that reason. It’s a little bit beachy, but it also has this feeling of freedom, happiness. It takes you to this place where you don’t care about all the worldly things. It’s a little hippie-dippie, maybe.

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The texture of this is so nice and soft. And it just soaks right in — it’s not like you have to not put your clothes on for a while after.

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I have the bodywash also, and that just feels like an indulgence. The scent doesn’t stay on you, but it’s really nice to smell up the shower with it.

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Whenever people compliment my skin, it’s never because of a product I’ve put on it for a facial treatment I’ve gotten. It’s always because I have taken 60 milligrams of zinc picolinate for five days prior to that moment. This one comes in 30-milligram capsules, so I end up taking two of those a day, which gives me 60 milligrams. It’s a genius method that I’ve shared with close friends, and it seems to work for everyone.

I discovered it when I was on college break visiting my grandparents, and my grandpa had zinc capsules in the medicine cabinet and the label said they were good for your skin. So I tried and lo and behold: After three to five days of these pills, I was glowing so much that everyone around me wanted to take my picture. (In terms of glowing, because it is supposed to be a sign of good sex or being in love, I’ve also used this trick to try to convince people that we were in love when it was actually just the zinc.)

The bummer is that you can’t continue taking zinc for extended periods of time for two reasons: Your skin will get beet red and feel a little hot to the touch after longer than five days of the supplements, as they build up in your system, and, also, your iron will get depleted because its absorption is blocked by zinc. So, many times when I’ve gone on talk shows or whatever and people say that I look like I’m glowing, I actually feel so incredibly tired. It’s a deceptive thing, but if it’s a visual medium, I’ll take the deception of “looking good” over “feeling good” any day.

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I was introduced to Mila Moursi and her products probably ten years ago by some L.A. friends. A lot of my friends moved on, but I just stayed with these because they work so incredibly well. With my trick of using zinc, you have to take it five days before you want to have your skin glowing. So this is a more quick way.

I don’t wash my face very often, about every two or three weeks. I usually just splash water on it. But when I do, I use these products, especially if I’m going out to something and I want my skin to look like I’ve had some work done. And that’s what people will say after I’ve used them. The Cleansing Foam is really mild, but it really works. And then I do the pH Balancing Toner and then the serum and then the moisturizer. The Dual Action Serum just tightens everything up incredibly. They have one moisturizer called Firming Cream that’s good; the only thing is it leaves a little bit of shine. So if you’re not a makeup wearer — and I’m not much of a makeup wearer — you need to do powder or something after.

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The woman who makes this has a salon in London that a lot of my friends go to, and they get the fish-sperm facials. I think basically they put salmon sperm into a microneedling procedure, so it’s going into their skin. My friends who are doing that look like infants. These are people my age. It’s crazy, but I’m not in London, so I can’t go do those, and I have to just be jealous when they send me pictures. So they got me into trying her products, and those are also amazing. They tighten, they feel really fresh, and this serum is good because you only use that one product and it kind of does it all.

[_Editor’s note: VicoSkin lists prices in pounds, so the cost shown here is an approximation in dollars._]

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One of the great things about having done this for so long is that you can give people a start and then they are indebted to you forever. When Genevieve Herr was an assistant, I had her do something for me for Jane magazine. This was probably in 1997 or something, so it was quite a long time ago. And I was like, This woman is great. She does makeup in a whole different, very light way. She has a way of applying makeup with these little butterfly taps that have it go on in a way that’s really, really subtle. And so I started using her at Jane, and we became friends.

For special events, she likes to be the one to come and do my makeup for me. I feel incredibly lucky because she’s really in demand now. She does Julia Roberts, Katie Holmes. She’s in demand to the point where friends of mine who have the means to actually pay really high rates can’t book her for things like the Oscars, but I can get her to come and do it for me just because she’s a friend, and I feel so lucky about that. I can always tell when I look at red-carpet pictures if it’s Genevieve’s work because the person seriously looks the best they ever were, but they look like themselves.

When I was doing Jane, she would go every morning to Anna Wintour’s townhouse early, do her makeup, and then come over to my townhouse and do my makeup every day before I went into the office. Now, that’s a luxury. Imagine feeling like you’re done, anything can come your way, and you’re ready for it.

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This is not a day-in, day-out thing for me. It’s more if I’m walking between things and I’m burned-out from working on my phone, then I will go to a podcast just to give my brain a break. And the one that I’m loving right now is called Blink: Jake Haendel’s Story. It’s really fascinating. It’s about this guy who, through a drug overdose, basically got this syndrome called locked-in syndrome, where he was alive and awake in his body but nobody knew it. They thought he was in a coma. And his wife does all these horrible things while he’s in the coma. It’s pretty riveting. It’s about halfway through now. I wait for it every Sunday and listen to the next episode.

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I listen to 1010 Wins every day. That’s a must-have for me. When I’m walking between things, I’ll just put it on. First of all, it’s highly inaccurate. It’s so old-fashioned, the way they do things. I don’t even know how they get their traffic reports. Now we have ways you can look and see where there’s traffic, or you can see it with your own eyes if you’re out. But they’ll do these traffic reports based on … I don’t know what, but they’re always wrong. When I’m out walking, I could be at 23rd and Eighth Avenue and hear on 1010 Wins “There’s a huge accident at 23rd and Eighth Avenue. Do not go that way.” And there’s not; there never is. I think they just make the cab drivers and Uber drivers feel like they have a semblance of control when they get to hear these things, but it’s not accurate. And their weather is also not accurate. But it feels good to be getting those kinds of updates. And I like that. I guess it is kind of that sense of security. Their whole slogan is you give ’em 22 minutes; they give you the world. I like that I can tune in to that at any point and I’ll get either weather or some breaking local news or something.

Jane’s Woman Alive books.Photo: Jane Pratt

My friend got me into these. There was a whole era where people were publishing these hardbound “women’s empowerment” books that look almost like coffee-table books. It was early feminism lite. I’m just looking through A Paycheck of Your Own, and it’s as though the idea of a woman actually going into an office is just the craziest thing. They have a woman here with a hard hat on who’s laughing, like, “Oh my goodness, I have a hard hat on!” That kind of thing.

It’s incredibly dated, but funny, to see the early ideas of empowerment. I think women’s rights have just barely moved forward and, in some ways, have moved backward, as we know with recent abortion laws. When you look at these books, it’s kind of comforting because you see that there has been some societal change in the way that women are viewed and the way that women are expected to dress.

These were produced in London in the 1970s. If you just search for them online, you’ll find them. I do this in New York, too, but any time I’m anywhere else, it’s really fun to go into used bookstores and browse for old versions of what I guess you would call “women’s media.” I have some copies of Cosmo from the ’70s too, and those are really fascinating to look at.

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Photo: Central Park Conservancy

I walk around the city a lot from thing to thing, so public restrooms are needed. I also pee a lot, so I know where most of the good ones are. There are not that many, as we know. There are some that are newer and cleaner. But I like the one that’s right next to the Central Park Zoo. Let’s say I’m walking from somewhere on the West Side downtown up to the Upper East or something. I cut through the park. It’s where people who work in the park have their offices, and it’s like a little house. In there, they have a nice, homey bathroom. It’s old. It’s not, like, some newfangled, self-cleaning bathroom or anything like that. It’s got old stuff in there — old sink and everything — but they’re very caring about it. When I would go there during pandemic times, they were so cautious with us that they would make sure that we went in just one at a time. And it was very thoughtful. I have a special place in my heart for that bathroom and the people who worked there.

[_Editor’s note: Central Park Conservancy is a nonprofit dedicated to preserving and celebrating Central Park, including maintaining_ public restrooms _in the park. Donate to support its work._]

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My little brother, Ben, has been telling me what to do, how to do things, and how to fix things for my whole life, and I always just ignored him. But then I gave him a column on Another Jane Pratt Thing called “I’m Jane’s Brother and I’m Here to Help.” And now when I actually take the moment to listen — because I’m editing this stuff, so I’m reading it — it’s really one-of-a-kind advice that is so helpful, for home stuff in particular. And I see other people getting so much from it. It’s been good for our relationship, also. I’ve learned about a lot of products from it as well as tips for things like how to save hot water. He’s been doing things as cheaply, efficiently, and environmentally friendly as possible his whole life, so he’s just got this wealth of knowledge about this stuff. His column is one of the most popular ones that we run.

Another Jane Pratt Thing is very similar to what I did with Sassy, Jane, and xoJane, but the community is even more intimate than any of those because a lot of the people on there have known me — and I’ve known them, in a sense — for 35-plus years. It’s really an incredible thing: We’re still having the same kinds of conversations but that many years later. And with all of that history between us. I do things like hosting Zooms where we all wear our Sassy T-shirts and talk about stuff from the old days. And I bring on old Sassy and Jane writers. But it’s really just another publication. It has a whole mix of content, just like everything I’ve ever done, and a really wide range of writers and contributors in the same way that I always like to do. So it’s another publication; it’s another Jane Pratt thing.

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