cornes.debru.me---Flat Holm Siren (1980)
▻http://cornes.debru.me/IMG/mp3/flat_holm_clip_2.mp3
le perce-oreilles // Author this sound : The Association of Lighthouse Keepers provides a forum for everyone interested in lighthouses, lightships and aids to navigation from : Flat Holm Siren (1980). The Foghorn on Flat Holm Island is silent The island of Flat Holm in the Bristol Channel can be accessed from South (...)
Over 3,000 US prisoners serving life without parole for non-violent crimes
ACLU report chronicles thousands of lives ruined by life sentences for crimes such as shoplifting or possession of a crack pipe
▻http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/13/us-prisoners-sentences-life-non-violent-crimes
Until the early 1970s, life without parole sentences were virtually unknown. But they exploded as part of what the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] calls America’s “late-twentieth-century obsession with mass incarceration and extreme, inhumane penalties.”
The report’s author Jennifer Turner states that today, the US is “virtually alone in its willingness to sentence non-violent offenders to die behind bars.” Life without parole for non-violent sentences has been ruled a violation of human rights by the European Court of Human Rights.
On the 40th anniversary of the famous ‘Blue Marble’ photograph taken of Earth from space, Planetary Collective presents a short film documenting astronauts’ life-changing stories of seeing the Earth from the outside – a perspective-altering experience often described as the Overview Effect.
The Overview Effect , first described by author Frank White in 1987, is an experience that transforms astronauts’ perspective of the planet and mankind’s place upon it. Common features of the experience are a feeling of awe for the planet, a profound understanding of the interconnection of all life, and a renewed sense of responsibility for taking care of the environment.
‘Overview’ is a short film that explores this phenomenon through interviews with five astronauts who have experienced the Overview Effect. The film also features insights from commentators and thinkers on the wider implications and importance of this understanding for society, and our relationship to the environment.
Narcoleaks | We dont’t publish #secrets, we collect evidence
▻http://narcoleaks.wordpress.com
In 2011, a small group of journalists and researchers from Italy, led by journalist Giovanni Augello and researcher Sandro Donati, author of studies on cocaine production and trafficking for the association Libera, monitored the global seizures of #cocaine. (...)
365 days, over 100 different sources. The monitoring was carried out daily, from January 1 to December 31, 2011. Information on cocaine seizures was collected from over 100 different sources. Media coverage was compared with official data issued by government agencies of countries most affected by trafficking. Throughout 2011, the team worked tirelessly, collecting data on more than 5,000 major drug operations that had led to significant cocaine seizures.
(...) On December 7, 2011 our team published a press release to announce that the quantity of cocaine seized had surpassed the amount of cocaine produced. Our research showed, in fact, that data on the quantity of cocaine confiscated by police forces worldwide exceeded the U.S. and UN official estimates of cocaine production. This can only mean that cocaine production is underestimated by the international bodies.
We Like You So Much and Want to Know You Better — NYTimes.com — FICTION BY DAVE EGGERS
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/magazine/dave-eggers-fiction.html
Dave Eggers is the author of eight books, including, most recently, ‘‘The Circle,’’ to be published next month, from which this has been adapted. Cf.
▻http://seenthis.net/messages/178862#message183760
▻http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/audio/magazine/20130929-fiction/Eggers.mp3
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHVBzLGAIbU
#coïncidence
For #Silicon_Valley Novels, Blurring Fiction and Non-Fiction
▻http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/10/for-silicon-valley-novels-blurring-fiction-and-non-fiction #livre
Seeking Online Refuge From Spying Eyes - NYTimes.com
▻http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/19/seeking-online-refuge-from-spying-eyes
Consider this scene in “The Circle,” Dave Eggers’s new novel that imagines a dystopian future dominated by an omnipotent social networking company: Mae, the young protagonist, tries to unplug from her hypernetworked life to go on a covert, solitary kayaking trip. But when she returns to shore, she is greeted by police officers who have been alerted to her excursion by several hidden cameras. She quickly realizes that very little in her life isn’t recorded, tracked and analyzed.
« The Circle », le roman d’un monde totalitaire inspiré par Google (02/12/2013)
▻http://rue89.nouvelobs.com/rue89-culture/2013/12/02/the-circle-roman-dun-monde-totalitaire-inspire-google-248015
Israelis torch Palestinian car, slash tires of five others
▻http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/israelis-torch-palestinian-car-slash-tires-five-others
Suspected Jewish extremists slashed the tires of five Palestinian-owned cars in Israeli-occupied east #jerusalem overnight, a police spokeswoman and local media said on Tuesday. Separately in the occupied #west_bank village of Burin, near Nablus, Israeli settlers set fire to a car, Ma’an news agency cited a Palestinian Authority official as saying. "Five vehicles were vandalized close to the Old City at the entrance to the Silwan neighborhood, and the slogan ’#price_tag' written on a wall (...)
“mov is Turing-complete” by Stephen Dolan. A very good paper and a fun one, which is not common in #computer_science. The author demonstrates that the #assembly_language #mov instruction is sufficient to build a #Turing_machine (providing it has some adavanced addressing modes).
Meet the Microsoft Billionaire Who’s Trying to Reboot U.S. Counterterrorism - By Shane Harris | Foreign Policy
▻http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/09/18/meet_the_microsoft_billionaire_whos_trying_to_reboot_us_counterterror
Add to Nathan Myhrvold’s already eclectic résumé — which includes ex-chief technology officer of Microsoft, co-founder of one of the world’s largest patent-holding firms, and author of a $625 cookbook — a new credit: terrorism expert.
Myhrvold, a famous autodidact, recently published a 33-page paper that he rousingly calls, “Strategic Terrorism: A Call to Action.” The core of his argument is easy enough to understand, and probably true: The United States is more focused on stopping a guy who blows up an airplane and kills 300 people than on a guy who intentionally spreads smallpox and kills 300,000.
“In my estimation, the U.S. government, although well-meaning, is unable to protect us from the greatest threats we face,” Myhrvold writes. “[M]odern technology can provide small groups of people with much greater lethality than ever before. We now have to worry that private parties might gain access to weapons that are as destructive as — or possibly even more destructive than — those held by any nation-state.”
Sky Arts Ignition: Memory Palace - About the Exhibition - Victoria and Albert Museum
▻http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/exhibitions/exhibition-sky-arts-ignition-memory-palace/about-the-exhibition
18 June – 20 October 2013
Sky Arts Ignition: Memory Palace brings together a new work of fiction by the author Hari Kunzru with 20 original commissions from leading graphic designers, illustrators and typographers to create a multidimensional story.
The way we read books is changing. Memory Palace explores how a story might be imagined in a different format – as a walk-in book.
The Story
Hari Kunzru’s story is set in a future London, hundreds of years after the world’s information infrastructure was wiped out by an immense magnetic storm. Technology and knowledge have been lost, and a dark age prevails. Nature has taken over the ruins of the old city and power has been seized by a group who enforce a life of extreme simplicity on all citizens. Recording, writing, collecting and art are outlawed.
The narrator of the story is in prison. He is accused of being a member of a banned sect, who has revived the ancient ‘art of memory’. They try to remember as much of the past as they can in a future where forgetting has been official policy for generations. The narrator uses his prison cell as his ‘memory palace’, the location for the things he has remembered: corrupted fragments and misunderstood details of things we may recognise from our time. He clings to his belief that without memory, civilisation is doomed.
The Commissions
The chosen practitioners work across a variety of fields, from comics and editorial illustration to advertising and typography. The broad selection of contributors demonstrates the exceptionally diverse and expanding worlds of contemporary graphic design and illustration.
Kunzru’s story is written in a series of short passages that move in a non-linear way through the dystopian world he created. Each of the designers and illustrators worked on a different passage of text from the story, responding freely to the text. The resulting commissions vary dramatically in scale and format, from intricate hand-drawn works to large three-dimensional environments.
Asia Times Online :: Kerry becomes first war casualty
▻http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MID-01-100913.html
By M K Bhadrakumar
(...) Within hours all hell broke loose. The high drama was neatly captured by the well-known Nigerian-American novelist Teju Cole (author of Open City), who twittered:
Kerry: We won’t attack ... if you do this impossible thing. Syria? Oh, We’ll do it. Russia: They’ll do it. UN: They’ll do it. Kerry: Shit!
All sorts of conspiracy theories have since popped up - including that a secret Russian-American plan is afoot to help Obama to beat a decent retreat from war plan against Syria. But the honest truth is Kerry made yet another gaffe, and this time it took a life of its own.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (who plays ice hockey by the way) crashed into Kerry within a split second to grab the puck:
We [Russia] do not know if Syria agrees to this, but if placing the chemical weapons under international control helps avoid military strikes, then we will immediately get to work on this.
We are calling on the Syrian authorities to reach agreement, not only on putting chemical weapons storage sites under international control, but also on its subsequent destruction and then joining the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
We have already handed over this proposal to [Syrian foreign minister Walid] Muallem, who is in Moscow, and hope for a quick and positive answer.
Muallem, of course, didn’t even bother to consult Damascus:
I have attentively listened to Mr Lavrov’s statement. I declare that Syria, guided by its concern for the lives of its citizens and the security of the country, welcomes the Russian initiative.
Indeed, it is not that Russia and Syria were taking advantage of the time difference between Washington and London (from where Kerry spoke.) Even David Cameron got deceived. The British prime minister said the excellent Russian plan to place Syria’s stockpiles under international control is "hugely welcome’’.
A fire-fighting operation began no sooner than folks in Washington heard about Kerry’s offer and the Russian plan and the Syrian response, et al. State Department spokesperson Marie Harf called her boss’s words “hypothetical” and “rhetorical” and poured cold water on the Russian plan as "highly unlikely’’. She clarified, “Secretary [Kerry] was not making a proposal.” (...)
Kerry appelle Bachar al-Assad à saisir l’opportunité de paix qui s’offre à lui
▻http://www.romandie.com/news/n/_ALERTE___Kerry_appelle_Bachar_al_Assad_a_saisir_l_opportunite_de_paix_qui
WASHINGTON (District of Columbia) - Le secrétaire d’Etat américain John Kerry a appelé mardi le président syrien Bachar al-Assad à véritablement saisir l’opportunité d’essayer de faire la paix dans son pays.
S’exprimant juste après l’annonce selon laquelle la Syrie est prête à signer la Convention internationale interdisant les armes chimiques, M. Kerry a dit espérer que le régime de Damas tiendrait parole et qu’il aiderait (les Etats-Unis, ndlr) dans les prochains jours à travailler avec la Russie pour trouver le moyen de placer ses armes chimiques sous contrôle international.
Against Academic Alibis: The Best Education is the Struggle – An Interview with George Ciccariello-Maher | Class War University
▻http://classwaru.org/2013/08/19/against-academic-alibis
Summary: The author of We Created Chávez, George Ciccariello-Maher, draws on his experiences in the “cauldron of resistance” of Oakland, CA to speak on the relations between education, organizing in universities, and struggles against police and prisons. Against academics’ use of alibis, such as ‘changing the world by teaching,’ to legitimize anything they do as a contribution to radical movements, he calls for academics to more clearly distinguish between their jobs and their political work.
Char, a XNA based roguelike on Steam Greenlight (I am not the author)
▻http://www.reddit.com/r/roguelikes/comments/1kndne/char_a_xna_based_roguelike_on_steam_greenlight_i
submitted by Terkala [link] [2 comments]
New York Review of Books : AUGUST 15, 2013
Eavesdropping on America. (August 2013)
They Know Much More Than You Think
James Bamford is the author of three books on the NSA, including The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA
In mid-May, Edward Snowden, an American in his late twenties, walked through the onyx entrance of the Mira Hotel on Nathan Road in Hong Kong and checked in. He was pulling a small black travel bag and had a number of laptop cases draped over his shoulders. Inside those cases were four computers packed with some of his country’s most closely held secrets.
From the Upper West Side to the Middle East: Najla Said on Her New Memoir, Looking for Palestine - Culture - Music, Movies, Art, Profiles, and More
▻http://www.vogue.com/culture/article/from-the-upper-west-side-to-the-middle-east-najla-said-on-her-new-memoir-looking-for-palestine/#1
Via @cdb_77
“I am a Palestinian-Lebanese-American Christian woman, but I grew up as a Jew in New York City. I began my life, however, as a WASP,” writes author and actress Najla Said, whose new memoir, Looking for Palestine: Growing Up Confused in an Arab-American Family (Riverhead), sorts through a bewildering stew of identities with honesty and humor. Said grew up in the 1980s on the Upper West Side, eating bagels from Zabar’s and surrounded by intellectuals; she attended school across Central Park on the Upper East Side, at sea amid the blonde daughters of privilege. While her father and “temperamental soul mate,” the scholar Edward Said, was arguing for Palestinian self-determination (and her Lebanese mother, Mariam, was managing their daily life), young Najla was gripped by an eating disorder, struggling to reconcile TV news stereotypes of the Middle East with her own eye-opening experiences—including visits to her father’s homeland, where she toured refugee camps in an Agnès B. skirt—and to her mother’s family in Beirut, where she found a sense of belonging. Vogue corresponded with Said about her own path to self-definition, both onstage and on the page.
UAE: demonising the opposition
▻http://www.al-bab.com/blog/2013/july/uae-demonising-the-opposition.htm
Davidson, author of After the Sheikhs: The Coming Collapse of the Gulf Monarchies, said the “UAE 94” trial provides a useful example of how these monarchies deal with opposition. He continued:
We have seen many different opposition groups over the years. These have been dealt with in different ways but one particularly effective strategy has been demonisation – essentially trying to make any opponents in your kingdom, sultanate or emirate part of a distinct “other” that the rest of your population will hopefully bandwagon against, to help the ruling elite and the regime ostracise them.
When we look at the Gulf states they have tended to pick upon what’s likely to be the most effective demon to get the bulk of their population on board and connect that opposition to some kind of external threat – the threat that’s likely to alarm the west most at that time.
It’s why most opposition groups back in the 1960s and 1970s were described as Communist in the context of the Cold War. We also had the Arab nationalist threat – all these Arab schoolteachers and doctors working in the Gulf who were linked to the revolutionary movements elsewhere in the Arab world, and Gulf rulers were very uncomfortable about this.
For example, after the Suez crisis, according to [British] Foreign Office archives, we even had Sheikh Zayed, the first president of the UAE, remarking to British political agents: “Why didn’t you do to Nasser what the Russians have done to Budapest?” That was the level of antagonism they were hoping to generate.
More recently, of course, we’ve seen political Islam and in particular militant political Islam, terror linked to al-Qaeda, becoming the obvious demon to create, connecting domestic opponents including human rights activists, intellectuals and academics to supposed terror organisations. We’ve seen this particularly in Saudi Arabia. We’ve also seen it in the UAE. For example, a number of people who were part of the UAE 94 were actually accused back in 2009 of being part of a terror cell to bring down the Burj Khalifa tower in Dubai.
Summer Reading List
▻http://africasacountry.com/summer-reading-list
Tweet Everything I’ve heard and read about François-Xavier Fauvel-Aymar’s Le Rhinocéros d’Or tells me I’m going to love it… The author is a French historian who specializes in medieval Africa and sheds light on ignored parts of African histories trough a number of mini-essays covering very specific moments and places. It has gotten raving reviews pretty [...]
#BOOKS #FEATURED #Latest #Born_Fi'_Dead #Le_Rhinocéros_d'Or #Learning_to_Pray_in_the_Age_of_Technique #Lumières_de_Pointe-Noire #Popular_Politics_in_the_History_of_South_Africa_1400-1948 #Queer_African_Reader #The_Heart_of_Redness #The_Informationist #The_Tuner_of_Silences #We_Need_New_Names #Welcome_To_Our_Hillbrow
Policing Feminism: Regulating the Bodies of Women of Color
▻http://msmagazine.com/blog/2013/06/10/policing-feminism-regulating-the-bodies-of-women-of-color
The decision to feature #Beyoncé Knowles-Carter on the cover of the latest issue of Ms. magazine ignited controversy among its feminist readership, and as the author of that cover story I’m not all that surprised. Indeed, my article is precisely about the “debates” over such a high-profile celebrity and sex symbol identifying as a feminist.
Still, what is surprising to me is the level of vitriol and mean-girl over-the-top outrage that accompanied the news of Beyoncé’s cover on the Ms. Facebook page. Whatever one may feel about Beyoncé as a feminist icon, when did it become acceptable to call this married mother of a toddler daughter a “stripper” and a “whore”?
ADL: Alice Walker conveys ’fervently anti-Jewish ideas’ in new book - Diplomacy & Defense - Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper
▻http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/adl-alice-walker-conveys-fervently-anti-jewish-ideas-in-new-book.premium-1.
The Anti-Defamation League on Tuesday lambasted U.S. author Alice Walker over “fervently anti-Jewish ideas” the group said she expressed in her new book.
According to the U.S.-based Jewish organization, Walker’s new book, “The Cushion in the Road,” devotes some 80 pages to essays on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – a section “replete with fervently anti-Jewish ideas and peppered with explicit comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany.” In her writing, Walker further suggests that Israel should cease to exist as a Jewish state and seeks to justify terrorism against Israeli civilians, the ADL said.
“Alice Walker has sunk to new lows with essays that remove the gloss of her anti-Israel activism to reveal someone who is unabashedly infected with anti-Semitism,” Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, said in a statement. “She has taken her extreme and hostile views to a shocking new level, revealing the depth of her hatred of Jews and Israel to a degree that we have not witnessed before.
“Her descriptions of the conflict are so grossly inaccurate and biased that it seems Walker wants the uninformed reader to come away sharing her hate-filled conclusions that Israel is committing the greatest atrocity in the history of the world,” he added.
Alice Walker, the author of the Pulitzer-winning work “The Color Purple,” has long held a position very critical of Israel. In protest against the country’s policies toward the Palestinians walker last year refused to authorize a new Hebrew translation of her most famous work.
More recently, Walker – a proponent of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel – urged singer Alicia Keys to cancel her scheduled July concert in Tel Aviv. In an open letter to Keys, she said that “It would grieve me to know you are putting yourself in danger (soul danger) by performing in an apartheid country that is being boycotted by many global conscious artists.”
In its statement, the ADL blasted Walker for describing Israel’s actions toward the Palestinians as “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing,” “crimes against humanity,” and “cruelty and diabolical torture.”
Facebook and Google insist they did not know of Prism surveillance program
▻http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/07/google-facebook-prism-surveillance-program
Some speculated that the wording of the document was incorrect or that the author had over-hyped the scheme.
Security experts and civil liberty figures were less convinced. “I was assuming that these tech companies were just lying,” said security guru Bruce Schneier. “That’s the most obvious explanation.”
“Could it possibly be that there’s a department within these companies that hides this from the executives? Maybe,” he said. “I don’t know, we don’t know. This points to the problem here. There’s so much freaking secrecy that we don’t know enough to even know what is going on.”
Trickle-Down Distress: How America’s Broken Meritocracy Drives Our National Anxiety Epidemic - Atlantic Mobile
▻http://m.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/07/trickle-down-distress-how-americas-broken-meritocracy-drives-our-national-anxiety-epidemic/259383
“According to the 2002 World Mental Health Survey, people in developing-world countries such as Nigeria are up to five times less likely to show clinically significant anxiety levels than Americans, despite having more basic life-necessities to worry about,” writes Taylor Clark, author of Nerve: Poise Under Pressure, Serenity Under Stress, and the Brave New Science of Fear and Cool. "What’s more, when these less-anxious developing-world citizens emigrate to the United States, they tend to get just as anxious as Americans.
Adieu Chasch, Wankh, Dirdir et Pnume : Jack Vance, 1916 - 2013
▻http://www.noosfere.org/jackvance/art/jv_cat&dog.jpg
Jack Vance passed away at home on the evening of Sunday May 26, 2013, ending a long, rich and productive life. Recognized most widely as an author, family and friends also knew a generous, large-hearted, rugged, congenial, hard-working, optimistic and unpretentious individual whose curiosity, sense of wonder and sheer love of life were an inspiration in themselves. Author, friend, father and grandfather – there will never be another like Jack Vance.
Je dois dire que suis vraiment sniff. Avec Barjavel, Pierre Boulle, Pierre Pelot, pour les francophones et Philip José Farmer et Daniel Keyes, pour les anglophones, Jack Vance et son cycle de Tschaï sont parmis les premiers livres de SF que j’ai lu et qui m’ont donné le goût du genre. Ouin.
We’ve lost another one of the greats : R.I.P. Jack Vance, 1916-2013
▻http://io9.com/weve-lost-another-grand-master-r-i-p-jack-vance-191-510346926
#jack_vance #s.f. #science-fiction #littérature #polar
Forays into Fantasy : The Dying Earth by Jack Vance
▻http://blog.worldswithoutend.com/2012/07/forays-into-fantasy-the-dying-earth-by-jack-vance
The Cult of #Design_Dictatorship - Alex Cabal
►https://alexcabal.com/the-cult-of-design-dictatorship
What struck me about the post is that the main complaint the author seems to have is about a problem that I’ve been thinking about for some time now. It’s a problem that doesn’t just apply to #Gnome 3—though Gnome 3 certainly suffers from it. It’s the problem of the Cult of #Design Dictatorship.
This cult is insidious. Its two main tenents are:
The designer is always right.
If you don’t like what the designer is doing, you’re wrong, and you should go somewhere else.
Why I release things into the public domain - Alex Cabal
▻https://alexcabal.com/why-i-release-things-into-the-public-domain
Recently I read a really interesting article by the author of Zen Habits, Leo Babauta, about something he calls Uncopyright. It’s his term for releasing something into the public domain.
Leo’s rationale for releasing his work into the public domain really resonated with me. It resonated with me so much that I’m releasing my own writing in this blog, along with the content of a few other projects of mine, into the public domain as well.
For those of you who’re interested, I’m going to lay out my reasoning for this decision. But Leo’s article, I think, does a much better job of explaining things than I can. You should read his take on it first.
#droits_d'auteur #propriété_intellectuelle #copyright #domaine_public #communs
Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions | SFWA
▻http://www.sfwa.org/2009/08/fantasy-worldbuilding-questions
The following list of questions is meant to aid authors of fantasy fiction who are seeking to create believable imaginary settings for their stories. While many of these questions may be helpful or crucial to certain stories, they will not all apply to every story. It is not necessary for an author to answer all, or even any, of the questions in order to start writing, (or to finish writing, either). The idea is simply to provoke people into thinking about the ways their settings and backgrounds hang together … or don’t. If it’s useful, use it. If not, don’t.
Arabic language is losing ground - The National
▻http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/comment/arabic-language-is-losing-ground
Un sujet qui mérite plus ample développement.
Headmasters and Arabic teachers in UAE private schools confirmed to a local newspaper last week that parents keep filing requests that their children be spared from Arabic-language lessons. They say that their children will be going on to English-language universities that do not require Arabic.
...
While educators, students and parents have a shared responsibility, the problem is much bigger, he said.
“In fact, the issue is closely linked to the moral value of the language, a value that is derived from the political, scientific, economic, industrial, intellectual, artistic, cultural and social reality of its speakers,” the writer observed.
...
Swayed by this perceived sense of “belonging”, many Arab youth work hard to nurture their non-Arabic culture, by reading English-language books, watching English-language movies and listening to English music, according to the writer.
“It makes them happy to see their interlocutor confused, unable to tell where they are from - the Arab region or elsewhere? It makes them even happier when the interlocutor concludes that they are foreigners.”
Families also play a role in this, with relatives of a new graduate showing great pride in his or her perfect English accent, the author went on.
Also, educators and the media have not done enough to generate positive attitudes about Arabic among students and other young people.
“This generation did not come in touch with the beauty of Arabic. Educators and curriculum developers have not been able to present the language in catchy wrappings, nor did the local or pan-Arab media manage to highlight the graces of this language,” Al Suweihi noted.
This issue is not just “a matter of letters, words and phrases”; the issue is about “a historical and decisive stance” that all Arabs must take to pump life back into Arabic, before it is too late, the author concluded.