An early work-in-progress dedicated to helping,
circuitously, precipitate the Great Mobilisation
Dare to be wise!
Kant
Endnote Worthy: The planetary magnitude of the climate polycrisis cannot begin to be apprehended in ignorance of the real possibility of the anthropogenically-precipitated end of the ice houses / ice ages. chart Mahurangi Magazine
Contents
author Cimino
work-in-progress first published 20240703
reworked work-in-progress from 20250518
Notes nor endnotes are normally not expected in a novel, much less a magazine. But not only is Light the Fuse : Not the Great New Zealand Mobilisation Novel not your ordinary novel, it is part-factual, part-counterfactual, part future-factual-conditional; and the Mahurangi Magazine has always broken any rules it needed to, in the interests of sanity.
Mostly, however, the decision to go-for-the-doctor with foot- and endnotes, is to spare the reader the myriad rabbit holes that would otherwise litter their way. A beloved longtime reader recently remarked:
I’m not sure if your style of writing is unique or just different, but it always holds my interest— search engine kept idling.
At the risk of causing their search-engine sparkplugs to carbon up, the notes that follow should encourage treasured readers to hop in and out of said burrows at will, and with alacrity. Then, with the overlap of Light the Fuse, the bleedin’ obvious finally dawned—a unified set of end notes:
Aotearoa/New Zealand Aotearoa is used where practicable when referring to the multi-island nation state of that name. Elsewhere, the official name New Zealand is preferred when the nation’s name is employed as a proper adjective, for example:
Hospitality, pre-neoliberalism, was a proud New Zealand attribute. Sadly, hospitality is currently only valued if it is being comprehensively monetised. As neoliberalism is rendered irrelevant by the Great Mobilisation, it is hoped that New Zealanders will rediscover a wholesome role for hospitality in Aotearoa…
Just one style benefit of using both Aotearoa and New Zealand, but separately, is retaining New Zealander in preference to Aotearoan , Aotearoaian , Aotearoaer , or Kiwi . It should go without saying that using Aotearoa–New Zealand would reek of virtue signalling, and be unrelievedly unstylish and cumbersome.
To be continued…
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Referenced :
Light the Fuse : Style Guide, “Aotearoa and New Zealand…”
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Across with two cs James Goldie ‘J G ; Butch’ Brown, Mount Albert Grammar, English teacher and ‘Senior Five’ class master, author of the long-prescribed English-language textbook to Cimino:
Just because you come from the country, Cole, doesn’t mean you can spell across with two cs!
Suffice to say Cimino was never going to be the speller the familywhich, hands down, was Cimino’s walking-dictionary mother, Noelene Adelaide Cole née Cimino, and the onetime subeditor only realised, at age 77, he’d invariably chosen to spell choose with one o. Only in hindsight did the probability Brown was not a sixth or seventh-form master but of a lowly fifth—Senior Five, Cimino’s—was due to the class harbouring significantly more than its share of the school’s sporting prowess. Not that Cimino was part of that exalted cohort, except that sheer physicalmaybe a footnote or chapter: Cimino never developed the discipline to exercise—beyond youthful push-ups and squats—a perennial proclivity for going hard, physically, allowed him to fare at least averagely through his misspent adulthood… strengthmaybe a footnote or chapter: Cimino never developed the discipline to exercise—beyond youthful push-ups and squats—a perennial proclivity for going hard, physically, allowed him to fare at least averagely through his misspent adulthood… did earn him a rigorous role in the firstthe school’s top Rugby football team, of 15 players plus reserves fifteen’sthe school’s top Rugby football team, of 15 players plus reserves training programme.
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Referenced :
Light the Fuse : Chapter 7 – Aspirations of a Dumb-Arse Intellectual, “Just because you…”
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Anti-alien state of America Regarding the above-mentioned 92-year-oldthen, 92-year-old’s superior suitability for the role of president—setting aside the small considerations of common sense, inclination, the immutable limitations on longevity, and preferred nation-state of residency—his mere country of birth rules him out. Likewise, it rules out a mere 77-year-old American son, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who demonstrated devastating fitness-for-office as governor of America’s most populous state. In discriminating against those born in Australia or Austria—or anywhere other than their United States—the founding fathers displayed appalling anti-immigrant bias, bequeathing Birther Trump his first brutish bludgeon, 220 years later. Schwarzenegger, hands down, would have made for a hugely more humane Republican president than fellow movie-star Regan—premise for a blockbuster far-reaching counterfactual if there ever was one.
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Referenced :
Light the Fuse : Chapter 2 – Recruiting a Compelling Face, “Anybody can become president”
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Buy Waiwera 2025 Despite the news that its new owners plan exactly that which was feared by its local and Auckland-region devotees, Waiwera may yet survive its currently assigned future: host to yet another shrineshrine/temple, the alliterative and rough-rag alternatives are finely balanced to entitlement and social stratification. Granted, New Zealand’s first tourist spa, which Robert Graham established there in 1848—whether visited by coach or by steamer—was affordable only by the wealthy of the day, in contrast to its pre-colonialnot that pre-Pākehā society was the picture of egalitarianism use. Waiwera’s wonderfully egalitarian era was the late 1950swhen the first two 20th century pools were opened through to the waterslide era of the early 1970s, when families could arrive per cheap public transport or by community or church-organised busloads. Towards the end of the golden era, admission for adults was 40 cents—less than $10 in today’s2025 money—but children only 15 centsor $3.60 in 2025, with a family required to pay for no more than their first four. Admittedly, Waiwera would have been considerably more egalitarian had the pools been publicly owned, given the pools’ operating costs were barely more than a third of the gate take. Be that as it may, from a clientele a quarter of the heyday of the old Waiwera Mineral Pools, and the new owners expecting to “generate” average of nearly $1000 per head, not a whole lot of “affordable wellness” will be available to median families and young people, there, much less those struggling.
Buoyant But Gratuitously Geometric: New buoyant breakwater protecting volunteer-run, not-for-profit LaSalle Park Marina, Burlington Bay, Ontario might have been a thing of beauty were they fashioned from constant-camber sections as opposed to these, astringently straight. Instructive, nevertheless, as to how a buoyant breakwater might beautifully protect the acutely vulnerable foreshore at Waiwera, and a new, buoyant, Waiwera spa.
image Kropf Industrial
What will seem preposterous, within a very few decades, is how consenting authorities in 2025 could begin to countenance amenities being built at near sea-level given the extreme uncertainty surrounding rates of sea-level rise this century—Grandey et al (2024):
We have only a poor understanding of processes that could drive abrupt melting of ice, producing rapid sea-level rise.
Waiwera would have been, and may well still be, an exquisite exemplar of how to future-proof a coastal village, and thrive while doing so. Buoyancy is key to building new future-proofed foreshore structures, and to future-proofing those existing. Compared to steel-reinforced concrete floors and footings—long seen as the only legitimate foundation for permanent buildings—buoyant foundations can confer numerous advantages beyond buoyancy. Relocatability is the prime advantage, and with most sea-level-rise at-risk new builds this means that small and large buildings can be built efficiently, under cover adjacent slipwaysrequisitioned and repurposed, or greenfield-built and towed coastwise to their respective sites. In contrast, slab-concrete buildings typically cannot be economically relocated, much less recycled . Demolition is costly environmentally and fiscally, and just more desperately unwelcome landfill waste-stream mass. Engineered timber buoyant-foundationed buildings, in contrast, could be designed to last centuries, in their inaugural or subsequent locationor locations. During those centuries—irrespective of this century’s success in slashing icecap-melting emissions, or its evidentiarily indicated entirely likely continued failure to do so—sea level will continue its inexorable rise—Guðfinna et al. (2021):
Beyond 2100, GMSLglobal mean sea level will continue to rise for centuries due to continuing deep-ocean heat uptake and mass loss of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, and will remain elevated for thousands of years (high confidence).
In the near term, whether Waiwera will get another chance to play a heroic role in demonstrating responsible coastal development and societal cohesiveness may now depend upon how intelligently and ethically Auckland Council assesses the resource consent application lodged 1 December 2025. However, having the “full backing” of the mayor of the metropolis even before such assessment process begins presumably means council officers are effectively on notice that small trifles such as near-term storm surge events, and longer-term permanent inundation…
To be continued…
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Referenced :
Light the Fuse : Chapter 4 – Blessed are the Toolmakers, “Waiwera’s egalitarian promise may yet be realised…”
Light the Fuse : Appendix – 1 Buy Waiwera, “on the open market…”
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Buy Waiwera lacuna addressed
While Buy this Beach might have appeared a stroll along the sand in a summer breeze, for its warm-hearted, cool-headed organisers it was a desperate in-the-teeth-of-an-early-season-cyclone beatWiktionary: To sail to windward using a series of alternate tacks across the wind. to escape imminent Wiktionary: To shut in, enclose, shelter or trap, such as ships in a bay.embayment. Adam Gard'ner and Duane Major faced a deadline that would otherwise probably have seen Awaroa Beach in private hands for generations. Gard'ner and Major were already greatly respected lay leaders, whose adoring community readily responded. Organisation of the campaign was around the clock, at the expense of time that otherwise would have been energetically devoted to family. In a halfways-informed world, inundation-guaranteed foreshore properties—particularly those within or adjacent regional or national parks—would be willing-buyer-willing-seller acquiredgenerously and sensitively sunset-claused where necessary and their transition managed that they might be accessed and utilised appropriately and optimally. Camping, in the Awaroa instance, is an obviously rational use and infinitely preferable to the otherwise inevitable grandiose designs that almost inevitably demand attendant foreshore armouring at the expense of tidally uninundating sandy beach. It was Gard'ner and Major’s knowledge of the exceptional value of the bay to expeditions of youthful Abel Tasman Nation Park kayakers that fueled their determination to preserve the taongate reo Māori: treasured thing for future such generations.
Referenced :
Light the Fuse : Appendix 1 – Buy Waiwera, “While Buy this Beach might have appeared…”
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Continual style improvement With online publishing existing little more than a tenth of the time since Gutenberg, it is unsurprising that many printing-press practices have carried over to the digital. One such practice is to treat all written work as inviolate. While there is a place and need for that, the Mahurangi Magazine has always taken a work-in-progress approach, reasoning that the hapless reader deserves the very best version the publishers are capable of. In truth, the approach was also an acknowledgement of Cimino’s limitations, and particularly of his functioning-perfectionist trait. Where an improvement involves correcting a factual error, however, Cimino’s practice is to record that, typically with a tooltipnote to self: create style-guide entry for >tooltip!, but sometimes with a full mea culpa footnote…
To be continued…
See note
Referenced :
Light the Fuse : Style Guide, Continual Style Improvement
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Craving a Mahurangi Minnie the Moocher In the movie version, a Mahurangi Minnie the Moocher , equally infectious, is introduced, and within two or three summers becomes the most anticipated number belted out by the West City Jazz Orchestra, of a regatta evening. Left until 11.00 pm, the Mahurangi Regatta anthem has provided all the incentive needed to keep the long-in-the-tooth from drifting previous toward their berths, afloat or ashore—even a few children are treated to a rare, indulged, up-with-the-olds- ’til-midnight treat. Then, signalling it’s time for all think of sleep, Neal Hefti – Count Basie’s sublime Li’l Darlin’ —positively punched out earlier in the evening—is repeated, but as an achingly lilting lullaby. While not every summer, regular regatta-goers will remember Li’l Darlin’ as the slower, more circumspect piece sometimes played. Its inclusion was the result, earlier in the Mahurangi Regatta big-band era, of one regatta-goer being honoured with an invitation to nominate a number to be rehearsed, possibly to celebrate a milestone birthday—Li’l Darlin’ was unequivocally it .
Successfully commissioning the writing of a Mahurangi Minnie the Moocher would require a miraculously, serially serendipitous sequence of circumstances, and monstrous talent. Organic anthems don’t grow on gmo trees. Masterpieces, however, have been commissioned, Li’l Darlin’ and Rhapsody in Blue being just two famous examples, although the later miracle must be as far away from an exuberant, singalong-able, massed-voices anthem as could be imagined. If this impossible craving was somehow provisioned, and picked up where el maestro Dr Trevor Thwaites’ magnificently craven Moocher left off, in 2024, it might be believed that there is yet hope for miracles, mutually respectful democracy, and Mahurangi—never mind precisely how miniscule.
To be further footnoted…
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Referenced :
Mahurangi Regatta : 2026 Mahurangi Regatta Programme, “Li’l Darlin’…”
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Resign or Mobilise: With 30 years since the first cop conference—this was just the heads-of-delegations lineup, 2015, Paris—and absolutely no reduction in the annual greenhouse-gas emissions that cumulatively have probably already tripped at least one-too-many tipping points—the demand across-the-board resignations and the immediate Great Mobilisation is as reasonable as it is existentially essential. image Wikimedia Commons
d-Day of Hope d-Day One hundred thirty days—the days between the United Nations resolution and its fatuouswill all due respect to the Permanent Mission of Kiribati to the United Nations first International Day of Hope, on 12 July 2025—is about 100th of the time spent not reducing the annual ratestabilising the annual rate of emissions might sound like a good thing, but it is not. Even if the annual rate is slashed, accumulated atmospheric carbon dioxide will remain dangerously elevated for 1000 years or more of greenhouse-gas emissions, much less the accumulated 427 ppmreached in 2024 concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide. One hundred thirty days was always going to be a challenge for would-be Day of Hope highjackers, exercised to see the beyond-urgent Great Mobilisation begin. Targeting the 2026 Day of Hope, however, would put the d-Day of Hope 495 days out—or, in d-Day military parlance, d-495D minus number of days, as of the creation of this footnote.
Helping to precipitate the first, massed d-Day of Hope demand for an immediate Great Mobilisation has become the proximate priority of Light the Fuse—495 days, and counting, down.
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Referenced :
Light the Fuse : Chapter 8 – D-Day of Hope, “In the D-Day of Hope…”
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Defeating demagoguery Any Great Mobilisation moonshot, should it defy its astronomical odds and materialise, Cimino apprehends was unlikely to screen without its producers, long since, having insisted upon prepending the definite-article The to whatever title was favoured. It is not as though the novel, the movie, the franchise etcetera, etcetera, would not be in good company, with The Sound of Music and The Ten Commandments among the top 10 inflation-adjusted-grossing movies of all time. With the marketing division likely to plump heavily for the The , arguing for other-than The Great Mobilisation would be challenging, and capitulation, most might readily concur, would be small price to pay for salvaging a survivable climate. Producer David Selznick clearly didn’t give a damn about benching the The , nor its absence prevent Gone with the Wind becoming the highestwhen when adjusted for inflation grossingwhen when adjusted for inflation film ever, beating out The Lord of the Rings: bloody The Return of the King with all its bloodysorry, sorry, channelling John O’Grady/Nino Culotta here The s. With only two out of the top 10 inflation-adjusted top grossing employing the The , and one of those incorrectly—not even the Ten Commandments commands the definite-article. While it is difficult to imagine The Sound of Music sans definite article, or a less fictionalised story grossing as highly, a richly illuminating Heavenly von Trapp Choir might have better built sorely-needed resilience to demagoguery.
Then, there is The Doors’ record-best-selling Light My Fire, to support the likes of the Light the Fuse call to action. One hell of a good fight should be waged to ensure that the movie, as with the mobilisation, is not guilty of the same eighthapologies to Lorenz deadly sin of kicking every other—in this context, non-Light the Fuse—can down the roadthat has so abominably dogged and defined neoliberalism. Arguably, losing the The would draw a clear, strategic, mission-critical line in the sand…
To be continued…
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Referenced :
Light the Fuse : Chapter 8 – D-Day of Hope, “Light the Fuse campaign by whatever name…”
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Democracy Disgraced: Close ally Australia and closest neighbours Canada and Mexico, and most European countries—led by Sweden—are the foremost in having a poor-or-somewhat-poor view of the flawed democracysince 2016, the Economist Intelligence Unit has indexed the United States as a Flawed Democracy of the United States. chart Pew Research Center, Spring 2025 Global Attitudes Survey note Those who did not answer are not shown. | chart compaction Mahurangi Magazine
Democracy from day one Growing a community of moonbeamsvernacular, possibly peculiar to Aotearoa–Australia: stratospherically costly-moonshot pledgers to match or better the 76.2%2023, down 1.2 percentage points from 2020 of general-election voters is far from far-fetched. Not only would every pledgerassuming of course that they ranked the winning cause as either their favourite or one or other of their less-preferred options have the satisfaction of voting for the winner—the cause—pledgers would be eligible to ‘vote’ from the time they started school—adding about 852 000 young people to the cohort that currently enjoys only the slimmest odds of participation in a voting-in-schools programme.
To be continued…
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Referenced :
Light the Fuse : Appendix 2 – Buy Waiwera Plan B, “exceeding the 76.2%…”
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Democratic megamobilisation Given the endemic democratic dysfunction, insisting that the Climate Polycrisis-megamobilisation be waged democratically will seem to many—possibly to most —as less than optimal. Setting aside the serially-misattributed—
Democracy is the worst form of government.
—if the megamobilisation is to happen, it will be because the people demand it, channelled by compelling, charismaticas opposed to populist, Churchillian leadership. Churchill’s verbatim use of the bald, seven-word pronouncement was directly from the writing of initially New Zealand-educated, social anthropologist Robert Briffault (1930) :
Democracy is the worst form of government. It is the most inefficient, the most clumsy, the most unpractical. No machinery has yet been contrived to carry out in any but the most farcical manner its principles. It reduces wisdom to impotence and secures the triumph of folly, ignorance, clap-trap and demagogy. But there is something even more important than efficiency and expediency—justice. And democracy is the only social order that is admissible, because it is the only one consistent with justice.
Churchill, in his 1947 Parliamentary address, didn’t imply authorship—he deliberately prefaced the dictum with, “while it is said”. He then proceeded to do justice to its source—Briffault’s unbridled critique of democracy, yet adamant defence of it as the only form of government compatible with justice—by following his deft, except-for-all-others-which-have-been-tried paraphrasinpossibly also descriptions of other forms of government contained in Rational Evolution: The Making of Humanity, 1930g with:
…there is the broad feeling in our country that the people should rule, continuously rule, and that public opinion, expressed by all constitutional means, should shape, guide, and control the actions of Ministers who are their servants and not their masters.
Setting aside the inconvenient, undemocratic pro-House of Lords-intent behind Churchill’s 11 November 1947 speech, the Mahurangi Magazine contends that the answer to Briffault’s entirely-valid-in-1930 contention, the ingenious machinery has long since been contrived. Conceptually, at least, the deliberative and electoral machinery to carry out, and in the most eleand the most transparentgantand the most transparent manner, all the important principles of democracy—including the long-overdue, less-than-superficial democratisation of the political-party system. Only the studiously depraved indifference of political parties and their corporate overlords, stands in the way.
Meanwhile, mired in the poorly comprehended Climate Polycrisis, the imperative for democratic megamobilisation is incontrovertible, and beyond urgent.
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Referenced :
Light the Fuse : Prologue, “democracy-debasing neoliberal ideology…”
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Failure to deliberate sinks democracy index and low-carbon electrification Without deep democratisation, powerful, narrow sectional interests were effortlessly able to scuttle New Zealand’s most economic pathway to deep decarbonisation. Aotearoa should be the deliberative democratisation world leader, not languishing at 33rd in that liberal-democracy component index. New Zealand’s once-healthy egalitarianism was put to the Rogernomics sword by the 1984–1988 Labour government gifted the commencement to its two-term rampage. It remains to be seen whether some principled politician can yet do what neither Cunliffe nor Ardern could: prevail over their party’s unrepentant hierarchy sufficiently for Labour to begin to atone for the four decades of harm its unbridled neoliberalism unleashed.
What We Got Here: Is a failure to deliberate, or to egalitise, in desultory contrast with index-acing Denmark. Ending child hunger in Aotearoa, deliberatively and decisively, would represent—for the world’s first full democracy—a wondrously humane redemption. chart V-Dem Institute
To be continued…
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Referenced :
Light the Fuse : Appendix 2 – Buy Waiwera Plan B or End Child Hunger in Aotearoa Now!, “world’s first, full, deliberative democracy.”
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End child hunger and kick-start Great Mobilisation While it is entirely practicable—not to mention morally imperative—to End child hunger in Aotearoa, now !, the same can’t be said for child hunger globally. At least, Aotearoa can’t singlehandedly end global child hunger. The country could, however, precipitate the beginning of the end of global child hunger. While it wouldn’t need to be Aotearoa that sparked the global action, New Zealand would be as good as any nation to lead the revolution—it wasn’t the world’s first full democracy for nothing. For New Zealanders to fancy they can lead the democratic world is far less preposterous than President Joe Biden’s tone-deaf 20 October 2023 pronouncement:
American leadership is what holds the world together.
Former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, while in office, kicked off the Christchurch Call initiative, the impact of which has unquestionably been transformative in instigating a global content-incident protocol. It can only be hoped that the Christchurch Call will be the social-media-pollution equivalent of the ozone-layer-hole-healing Montreal Protocol, but meantime it does indicate that Aotearoa could lead, globally.
Some may argue that ending the child hunger that has been permitted to persist beyond the Third1940–1970 Agricultural Revolution has completely missed the boat, given the starvation that global heating will precipitate unless unprecedentedly extraordinary levels of surgically targeted mobilisation mitigate its impacts and rescue its victims. One team of five million, however, if it demonstrated emphatically that child hunger was an imminently eradicable scourge, could readily become the showcase for global, practicable climate-action mobilisation. Wretchedly, that demonstration may be far from convincing unless Winstonhis opportunity to expose the paucity of Green Party policy supporting Lake Onslow? Petershis opportunity to expose the paucity of Green Party policy supporting Lake Onslow? deigns to take time out from his viciously disinforming conspiracy-baiting to coerce the coalition-leading National Party into revisiting its free-market-pandering, egregiously carbon-illiterate axing of the heroic Lake Onslow pumped hydro storage project. The failure of both the government and the mainstream media to respond to the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s call for a national discussion on future electricity pathways vividly illustrates the urgent need for deep democratisationre-democratisation, arguably.
To be continued…
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Referenced :
Light the Fuse : Appendix 2 – Buy Waiwera Plan B or End Child Hunger in Aotearoa Now!, “synonymous with the Great Mobilisation…”
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Rendering Epitome of Global Dysfunction: Had fellow Europeans immediately mobilised to stand shoulder to shoulder with their Ukrainian cousins, Putin would have been faced with murdering tens of millions, or withdrawing. Being left to fight for her freedom with home-built, 150 mm-cable-duct fuselaged drones graphically illustrates Ukraine’s plight, and courage. Climate megamobilisation would bind rather than divide countries, and undermine the world’s serially murderous kleptocrats. rendering Covert Shores
Global government is great Sitting at the intergovernmental level is the inherently undemocratic, un-self-critical un. The pivotal dysfunction is, infamously, at United Nations Security Council level—that, and its membership left open to blatantly, serially war-covert and overt mongerincovert and overtg United States and Soviet Union:
Membership in the United Nations is open to all other peace-loving states which accept the obligations contained in the present Charter and, in the judgment of the Organization, are able and willing to carry out these obligations.
Setting aside the travesty of those arch Cold War adversaries ever being permitted permanent Security Council seats, Russia was allowed to inherit the former Soviet seat unopposed, leading Volodymyr Zelenskyy to subsequently reasonably demand:
Where is this security that the Security Council needs to guarantee?
That the world needed democratic global government should never have been in any doubt. It is both pathetic and forlorn that a 200-year American cleavage to New World Order conspiracy theories—weaponised via the World Wide Web—can poison any prospect of a civilised discourse about how, today, global democracy can be achieved. Meanwhile, the modern God-is-great and maga twin menaces are testimony to the depths of global democratic dysfunction. While waiting for God, instead, for example, of navel-gazing the future of work, megamobilisation must be the work, and the , global, economy.
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Referenced :
Light the Fuse : Prologue, “billions of lives on the line globally…”
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Spot Where the Highfield Action Should Be: Cimino always believed, particularly when one took the liberty of standing on the shoulders of Archimedes, that intellectual property laws were an unconscionable rort. Image is placeholder while Cimino draws the elegantly simple, immensely powerful-where-it-most-needs-to-be Highfield action that action that superseded the short-lived compound-lever seriously-stuck-manhole-cover-unsticker-and-lifter concept. image Mahurangi Magazine
Highfield-lever manhole-cover lifter Cimino missed a trick when the engineering workshop, unrequested, added the folding component to his manhole-cover-lifter design. Cimino’s three-decade-old model, with its mechanical advantage of ± 15:1first draft put it at 17.333 but that was arrived at entirely erroneously. New figure is taken from full-scale drawing indicating initial lift exerted by handle movement through 100 millimetres, used correctly, must have saved a mint in damages to covers, frames and, especially , the frames’ concrete collars. Basking in a little self-congratulation, Cimino sobers as he spots the trick he and the jobbing engineer missed as they were developing the design. Said engineer had insisted on producing a folding option, which Cimino saw as unneeded, heavy, and fiddly to use—the non-folding version easily dropped into the boot of his small car.
Reflecting now on the un-folding action, and a Wikipedia mention of compound levers, sparked the realisation that if the last say 200 millimetres as the handle straightens deploys such compound leverage, the result would massively increase the initial lifting force. While manhole-cover lifter broadly describes versions 1.0 and 1.1, it fails to mention the tool’s forte: its power to unstick rust-frozen cast-iron covers from their cast-iron frames. All too often, the first course of action is to reach for the 20-pound sledgehammer. Wielded out of impatience, machismo, or depraved motivation to add to the cache of cast iron “scrap” augmenting the drainage gang’s booze kitty, the outcome is seldom pretty.
When attempting to draw the compound-lever action, Cimino realises that, as slack-jaw enraptured as he was with his own ingenuity, the resultant tool risked being too expensive to manufacture to have any prospect of displacing the only marketed—the folding version he so despised—of his 1.0 design. Pondering at his digital drawing board, he elects to shelve a folding version and employ a Highfield lever attribute—the one not stressed in online references to the ingenious electrical engineer and 1930s rear-commodore of the Royal Thames Yacht Club, j s Highfield—but the gargantuan leverage placed on a gaff rig’s running backstays as the lever is pressed through its last few degrees on its way to over-centre, against the scarred teak deck. Employing the Highfield-lever effect, it appears that the initial lift exerted on a “frozen” manhole cover might be ± 40:1 and the tool easy to wield into the bargain. Manufacturing the Highfield-lever manhole-cover lifter at a less-than eye-watering-to-the-accountant cost, would be challenging—barring the exceeding unlikely happenstance whereby the accountant had witnessed the wilful economic waste firsthand during a holiday job in a drainage gang, for the want of a better tool.
To be continued…
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Referenced :
Light the Fuse : Chapter 4 – Blessed are the toolmakers, “the manhole [cover frame].”
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Hopium wars In the preceding, the Mahurangi Magazine argues that megamobilisation is the best antidote for the net-zero hopium that so concerns Hansen et al. In the absence of megamobilisation, the net-zero-hopium market-forces overwhelm all objectivity, putting civilisation and the biosphere at risk of crossing one too many tipping point and passing the point of no return. What should give humanity pause is that even in peacetime, no climate scientist can provide an ironclad assurance that there is time to prevent tipping points dominoing past the point of no return. Nothing points towards the Climate Polycrisis overwhelming civilisation more than the current part-First World War, part-War of the Worlds waged by Russia against Ukraine, that waged against Gaza by Israel, and other ongoing wars too sickeninas so powerfully and definitively used by, if not coined by, Bruce Cockburn, in the context of CIA-funded covert warsg to relate.as so powerfully and definitively used by, if not coined by, Bruce Cockburn, in the context of CIA-funded covert wars The best contribution the West can make to end the scourge of kleptocracy and war is to demonstrate that it will, belatedly, decisively put civilisation-and-the-biosphere ahead of its own, selfish materialistic interests. Just one example: Boeing is still considered too big to fail despite systematically divesting itself of the ability to reliably design and build airworthy passenger aircraft—in time, coincidentally, for what categorically needs to be the end of the if-I-can't fly-somewhere-balmy-of-a-winter-every-winter-life’s-not-worth-living era. Boeing, reinvented, could find redemption as a public-benefit entity, manufacturing the accommodation modules immediately needed to house the United States’ half-million homeless, and the planet’s three billion by 2030—honest employment for every hardworking quality inspector ever purged or put to the sword by Boeing, and then some.
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Referenced :
Light the Fuse : Prologue, “billions of lives on the line globally…”
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Ragged Rocks: Noeline gave Cimino Glover’s Hot Water Sailor , sparking a 14-year-old’s lifelong fascination with typography. Here, splendid bad-rag art serendipitously illustrates that which pretty paragraph line-length algorithms help iron out. sculptor Catherine Griffiths
Hyphenation If working as a newspaper subeditor didn’t cure Cimino’s enthusiasm for comprehensive hyphenation, nothing was going to—newspaper style guides proscribe all but the most essential hyphenation. Magazine style-guides, however, tend to allow for more liberal hyphen deployment, and sheep-for-a-lamb Mahurangi Magazine and Light the Fuse take it into the realms of the radical, not least of all in pursuit of typographical perfection. Magazine-style left-justification can leave yawning gaps in the unjustified righthand side of paragraphs. Judiciously deployed soft-under the bonnet, the HTML soft hyphen entity, code: ­hyphenation however, serenely aids the much-needed civilisation of the right. In time, there is no reason online magazines and books cannot exceed the typographical finesse of the icecap-melting printed form, which is blithely airfreighted globally hither and yon. A bold step in this direction is the leadership shown by builders of the open-source browser engine WebKit. If early-championer Safari succeeds in leading behemothian Chrome, and Edge, Firefox et al into universal deployment of the whimsically named cssCascading Style Sheets, developed by the World Wide Web Consortium property text-wrap: pretty , masterfully balanced, soft-hyphened paragraphs will abound, and diminish the appetite for expensive glossies and hardbacks, and with their eye-wateringparticularly if one has a fig to give for the icecaps delivery charges.
Notwithstanding the above, line-end hyphenation is only resorted to where the raggedness can’t better be addressed by improving the text around it…
To be continued…
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Light the Fuse : Style Guide, Hyphenation
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Mahurangi Regatta Inc. update Unshared ahead of the Mahurangi Action Inc. 2025 annual general meeting was the adamant opposition by Mahurangi Cruising Club members to even exploring how well renaming and repurposing Mahurangi Action as Mahurangi Regatta Inc. might work for the many organisations involved, which include the Classic Yacht Assoc., Mahurangi East Residents and Ratepayers Assoc., Mahurangi West Hall and Reserve Inc. not to mention at least 14 visiting yacht and boating clubs, Auckland Anniversary Regatta Inc., and the Auckland Council. The final substantive contribution of Cimino Cole was the annual multiheaded mission of lodging the funding application with Auckland Council’s regional events fund, on 27 June 2025. The application was successful in securing $6000 towards the costs of the 2026 event.
To be continued…
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Mahurangi Regatta: Renaming Mahurangi Action née Friends of the … as Mahurangi Regatta Inc., “that the renamed organisation be styled…”
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MakaurauStrictly, Tāmaki Makaurau, but Makaurau—reo Māori meaning “desired by many”—is Mahurangi Magazine’s longstanding suggestion as the name for the Auckland Council governance region–Whangārei rail-with-trail Just one, hero-project use for green steel is a new, standard-gauge rail-with-trail route between the ports of MakaurauStrictly, Tāmaki Makaurau, but Makaurau—reo Māori meaning “desired by many”—is Mahurangi Magazine’s longstanding suggestion as the name for the Auckland Council governance region and Whangārei, for freight and passengers, and for cyclists and recreational walkers—not least of all, to magnificently complement New Zealand’s national walkway: Te Araroa. At the Makaurau /Auckland end, it would cross the harbour there with the only new crossing that would ever be needed—with the only new Waitematā crossing that could ever come close to being Great Mobilisation-justified.
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Light the Fuse : Chapter 8 – D-Day of Hope, “desperately needed green steel…”
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Mahurangi megalomania manifesto overflow Waiwera Tea and Coffee House | Waiwera Retreat Hotel | Waiwera Retreat Restaurant | Waiwera–Waiwera Mahurangi Coastal Path retreats, and retreat retreatscentre for the study of sea-level rise adaptation | Waiwera faculty of for exampleKoi Tū: The Centre for Informed Futures support for this concept is not implied the Centre for Informed Futures | refundable Waiwera water bottle| sail-training, power-generating machine | ruddered, nesting, Mahurangi punts, to allow every young Aucklander to learn to row in two-minutes-flat | Waiwera to Warkworth Mahurangi punt race, during “Waitangi week” with its heroic Aotea ki Mahurangi waka ama ocean race…
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Light the Fuse : Appendix 1 – Buy Waiwera, “the bathhouse, the tea and coffee house…”
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Gaza Grotesque: In the perfect vacuum left by this dysfunctional civilisation’s failure to face the Great 3rd Millennium Polycrisis, this paving-over-a-genocidal-atrocity utopia proposed by Netanyahu is being provided succour by Biden, Modi, and von der Leyen. rendering Archpaper | pm Office of Israel
Finally, hideously, there’s mega-megalomania Adam Toose begins his Chartbook #284 with:
I have to admit, when I first saw the image,
I thought it must be a hoax.
Subtitled “the surreal geoeconomic imaginary of Netanyahu’s ‘economic peace’”, Adam Toose describes a Netanyahu megamobilisation vision of Third Reichian utopianism. It would be hard to invent a counterfactual that more hideously underscored the imperative for humanity to embrace the necessity of comprehensively responding to the 3rd Millennium Polycrisis with every milligram of goodness and mercy humans are hard-wired to deliver.
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Light the Fuse : Chapter 13 – Beyond-urgent Great Mobilisation, “Netanyahu and Trump…”
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Megamobilisation powerhouse The key to a small country pulling off the civilisation-and-the-biosphere-saving mission of instigating the Climate Polycrisis-megamobilisation, unavoidably, is monetisation. The ideal world in which the trillions needed to fund the megamobilisation would be allocated with the alacrity the world’s bankers were bailed out in 2008, doesn’t, of course, exist—how humanity is not seen as too big to fail and accorded the same largesse as banks, is a job for the anthropologists to explain. Meantime, in the interests of pursuing, hell-bent, the avenue that is available to Aotearoa is to manufacture and deliver the products and services the world desperately needs, playing to New Zealand’s strengths. The goods and services desperately needed range from proven, plural-rollIn 1867 in Aotearoa, Māori men were granted practicable, plural-roll universal suffrage, 12 years before the European men there. electoral systems, to high-cube-40-foot-shipping-container-sized accommodation modules, at scale—the latter being just one of the ways planted-forest engineered timber can both sequester carbon long term, and displace carbon-culprits steel, aluminium, and cement. Logs, meantime, exported for use as concrete shuttering, are destined to soon return their hard-won carbon back to the atmosphere.
By becoming a world leader in the field, Aotearoa has a golden opportunity to monetise the transformation of its carbon Achilles heel, agriculture. In that multifaceted challenge, milk powder is analogous to the export of radiata pine logs, and the continued burning coal to dry milk is instructive regarding the fantasy of using less, renewable, energy, as opposed to generating a great deal
more energy, zero-carbon. Hansen, Sato, and Kharecha:
By 2030, there should be multiple options for modern ultrasafe nuclear power that can serve as the needed complement to renewable energies to produce carbon-free electricity.
Rolls-Royce of smrs: From its robust $16 billion-revenue base, the Rolls-Royce Group is likely to be one of the first to market with an attractive small modular reactor—poised to be in Poland, thanks to the slow-turning bureaucratic wheels in the United Kingdom. Rolls-Royce is no newcomer to building small reactors, having powered the Royal Navy’s nuclear submarines since 1966. rendering Rolls-Royce
As the climate-tipping-point dominos fall, nuclear-free Aotearoa continues to behave unrepentantly hypocritically. Ideology has been allowed to trump science; twice: In the 1980s, opposition to nuclear-armed-United States-warship visits to New Zealand morphed into anti-nuclear-anything zealotry. In the 2010s, zero-carbon/sustainable energy sources were marketed as renewables, deliberately and disingenuously relegating zero-carbon nuclear power. Ever since, there has been a stubborn refusal to objectively accept that the rapid growth of renewables has neither displaced fossil fuels at scale nor provided the electricity and heat needed to produce, zero-carbon, the aluminium, ammonia, cement, hydrogen, plastics, steel, and the many other materials currently essential to civilisation.
Renewable–sustainable ideology is jeopardising the prospects of civilisation surviving the immediate climate-heating onslaught. Had the renewable, or sustainable, criteria been arbitrary imposed on those leaders who opposed Hitler, the Third Reich would never have been successfully resisted. There was nothing renewable about how the Allies defended democracy. World War II didn’t need to be sustainable, but for democracy to stand a chance it did have to be fought—even if democracy sometimes took a back seatnot back-seat in the sense, of course, of the democratic Great Mobilisation staff-car conceptualised in Chapter 6. Climate, meantime, has killed four million since 2000 but threatens the survival of billions in the coming decades. The twin overriding criteria for energy decisions must be their contribution to the rapid reduction in global greenhouse emissions and to the protection of proximately vulnerable populations.
Aotearoa, by delivering an anti-nuclear-power mea culpa now, committing to repurposing Huntly Power Station for fossil-fuel-free operation and to installing the planet’s first Rolls-Royce smr, would kickstart the country’s destiny on the world stage as the instigator of the Climate Polycrisis-megamobilisation.
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Light the Fuse : Prologue, “Aotearoa-centric, standout contender…”
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Megamobilisation vs. mega-mobilisation Setting aside whether it is wise to attempt to appropriate maga, or otherwise dignify it by imitation, the megamobilisation espoused in this article is the antithesis of the mega—Mobilizing an Earth Governance Alliance—approach, which relies upon firstly strengthening global governance architecture. As worthy as such a mission might be, it is directly analogous to waiting for fusion power before radically reducing fossil-fuel burning, with the likes of smr-generated power—on land and sea—pumped hydro storage, in-motion-charging trolleybuses, to mention but a few essential elements of a megamobilisation. The strengthening-global-governance goal—much less democratising global governance—having seen no progress in 77 years, now needs to be a byproduct of megamobilisation, not the prerequisite for it. But worse, backroom-preoccupations such as strengthening-global-governance are the epitome of boring, and an insult to the spirit and intelligence of humankind, which craves something to sink its teeth into. Humanity’s prospects now hinge on whether the some of the myriad exciting projects—such as Onslow, which can slash energy prices while it restores and enhances the South Island’s hydro-compromised lakes. Meanwhile, a 2500-kilometre-rail-with -trail-network-in 10 years would only be comparable to the 1604-kilometre-within-seven-years that Julius Vogel pulled off, until derailed by his detractors.
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Light the Fuse : Prologue, “Aotearoa-centric, standout contender…”
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Mega-Oppenheimer An epic biographical blockbuster, followed by an epically swashbuckling docudrama series, is surely the surest route to convincing voters at large to demand and participate in the real-world megamobilisation. The production would need to rival Hollywood East in scale and quality, and would need to be as accurate as a non-Navajo Nation-denying Oppenheimer . New Zealand’s initial job would be to produce the book and movie versions of the modello, and mega-modello—beginning, perhaps, with a Mahu mega-modello. The Climate Polycrisis is not a crisis that can be magicked away, regardless of what percentage of the Earth’s 5.1 billion-hectareland and ocean surface is covered with photovoltaic collectors—the sun doesn’t shine at night and Moore’s Law doesn’t ultimately apply even to micro devices, much less to network-scale batteries. The epochal mission must be to mitigate the savaging of billions of human beings, at century timescales. If that can be achieved, humanity will then have the luxury of insisting on sustainability on millennial timescales.
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Light the Fuse : Prologue, “blockbuster…”
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Birdas published: Birth, but surely wordplay counts for something, given a metaphorical triple-entendre birdstrike could be as disruptive to the growth-for-growth’s-sake as literal birdstrike is to commercial aircraft operations —$1.2-billion per year, globallystrike or Uninhabitable Earth: One generation can bring humanity to its senses, by predominantly refusing to procreate. Population already exceeds the long-term carrying capacity of the planet by 50%. Given that there remains at least a possibility that radically slashing greenhouse gas emissions could alleviate otherwise hellish privations in store for children being born today, it is illogical that it is apparently unconscionable to stop population growth in its tracks, but acceptable to fail to completely curtail, amongst other things coal mining. Aotearoa published as: New Zealand burns an egregious, reported 534 000 tonnes per year to dry milk—and steel and cement manufacture. For Birth Rightits former domain, birthstrikeforfuture.com, is, tellingly, up for grabs to get real traction, however, it must threaten economic growth, at scale—a potentially dangerous action given the global financial oligarchy will likely not go quietly. bbc News
Metaphorical birdstrike That young people apparently can’t grasp en masse that they could readily wrestle power from the prevailing oligarchy, for any purpose, is remarkable. All they have to do, at scale, is to organise the mother-of-all birdstrikes—a birth strike—demanding the beyond-urgent Great Mobilisation begin, to give humanity, and its fellow species, a fighting chance to weather the 3rd Millennium Polycrisis. Even without the help of the fertilization president, industrial-scale procreation has seen global population balloon greater than tenfold.
That mere discussion of the possibility of consideration of a pause on proliferation can invite extreme reactions from people who reverently worship Planet Earth is paradoxical, but cannot be allowed to forestall a close examination of the rapidly reducing options for, on one hand, radical reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions, and on the other, the means to decently feed, clothe, and shelter any given population. While it has endlessly argued that climate targets can be reached without risking alienating audiences by insisting that population be considered, the inconvenient fact is that, despite the record uptake of solar, greenhouse-gas emissions are showing no signs of plummeting, and meantime, nor has the energy-hungry work demanded by the Great Mobilisation begun—building accommodation for the billions who will be displaced by multi-metre sea-level rise, to name but one⸺herculean , a barely adequate superlative for the magnitude of the task⸺enterprise. It is precisely because of the scale required of the Great Mobilisation that an economy-disrupting birthstrike must be contemplated. The choice is stark: More more-of-the-same stupid, growth-for-growth’s-sake economy, or radical, intelligent, Great Mobilisation economy. A bigger, fairer economy, building for the immediate future, as well as the medium- and long-term.
Breeding Wicked Problem: Nothing spotlights the wickedness of the problem of anthropogenic climate disruption more dramatically than the need to confront the natural, human imperative to breed that is driving the Sixth Great Extinction and the onset of a potentially uninhabitable Earth. Air-flight carbon-dioxide-equivalent values here based on premium economy direct return flights. graphic Mahurangi Magazine, adapted from the Guardian | Wynes & Nicholas, Environmental Research Letters, IOPscience
Until the present biosphere-destroying economy is held to account, those presiding over the corporations calling the shots have no financial incentive to do anything but feed—and profit from feeding—consumerism. If sufficient young people sacrifice—or even delay—their procreative birthright, their message will, in time, be heeded. To being lectured that any hiatus in having babies will wreck the economy, their unwavering response must be:
Yes, it will put your biosphericidalglobal sum of all ecosystems on Earth + suicidal economy out of its misery-making misery, but you will find that our Great Mobilisation economy will do just fine, and we know how to waitVincent Lingiari, quoted in From Little Things Big Things Grow.
There is little doubt that, sooner or later, youth will discover the wit and wisdom to wrestle power from the oblivious biosphericidal oligarchy. What will be unknowable possibly for decades, is whether mobilisation in response to the 3rd Millennium Polycrisis was, by 2025, left so late that civilisation is rendered unrecognisable, and its people all but annihilated. There is no question of not mobilising immediately, and some actions are so patently priorities, no excuse for other than their immediate implementation. The pair of such Great Mobilisation priorities should arguably be ending child poverty and homelessness. While that mission might strike the majority of climate-concerned as utterly off-target, that in itself is a powerful reason for putting poverty first, precisely because it sends the unequivocal message that nobody, and no country, is to be left behind. The Great Mobilisation enterprise is for all of humanity and the biosphere upon which it and its fellow species utterly, unequivocally depends, not to mention the profound degree to which humanity and its fellow species depend upon each other. In the face of the Third Millennium Polycrisis, to fail to mobilise is the definition of collective insanity.
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Light the Fuse : Appendix 4 – On the Ephemerality of Beaches, “ grassroots population moratorium”
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Moccasin-kicking against the pricks Mindful of the strict curfew implicit, most of the students were pouring out and on their convivial way, to regroup in hundreds of smaller gatherings the length and breadth of the isthmus.
Instantly incensed on hearing that preying on Auckland university students was the sport of rookie city police, Cimino, as he swayed up the curving driveway sidewalk towards the venue’s entrance swung a surprisingly well-aimed moccasined left foot into the passenger door of each passing patrol car. Cherishing the glow of a blow struck for freedom, and academia, the unworldly suburban-house carpenter’s euphoria evaporated the instant he felt the strong fingers of a pair constables clamp his biceps. Minutes later, sat in the back of one of the two slightly bruised squad cars, Cimino, from dancing like nobody was watching—to Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow? —was suddenly stone-cold sober. The officers, disconcerted that they hadn’t bagged a student, tested the crowd. One spotted a cocky car-keyring-jangling specimen and growled:
You’re not driving in that condition!
Wouldn’t dream of it, officer.
…shot back the suave-beyond-his-years bona-fide university student.
The hastily resumed police car emerged just in time to see, farther up the road, the entitled mark climbing in the driver’s side of his spotless, late-model Volkswagen. Tailing the two students at a distance, all that could be observed, disconsolinglywhy dictionaries disdain disconsolingly yet respect consolingly I have no idea. The word is in, admittedly limited, use, was the picture of propriety. Subsequently tiring of witnessing anything resembling dangerous driving, the squad car pounced and blasted the broad, deserted, crosstown connecting road with its siren. The quarry demurely pulled over, politely winding down their respective windows in anticipation. How many yes-sir-no-sirs or the like were proffered Cimino couldn’t judge from his limited backseat vantage, but after a lengthy harangue, the officers returned, plumped back into their seats, the younger lamenting:
Ah, I was just waiting for him to take a swing at me.
Had the constables know then that, later that morning, a judge was going to unhesitatingly let off the neatly suit-white-shirt-and-tied, first-time-offending former telephone-salesclerk with a suspended sentence, the night might have taken a less comedic turn. The goading and cajolingcoined: cudgelling/ cajoling—alluding to the “entice into a cage” etymology of cajole may have resumed, redirected at their meagre bycatch. Mercifully, it didn’t; possibly by the grace of a looming end-of-shift. At Central, after an eternity of processing—the full photographing, fingerprint-taking, belt-stripping malarky—Cimino made the best of his cell bunk, rattling hungry. But there was not even to be bread and water, much less a cuppa; Cimino was awoken at 0600 hrs and shown the door. Walking through the empty central city streets back to his suburban digs provided much time for self-examination, and mental preparation for his 1000 hrs court attendance. Freshly showered and cravenly cleanshaven and handsomely chauffeured—in the Citroën Traction Avant—Cimino escaped a record, by virtue of a merciful…
To be continued…
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Light the Fuse : Acknowledgements, “By the time police arrived…”
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Neo-alarmism and legitimate alarm Reaction rejecting alarming information is commonplace. Bureaucrats famously favour the don’t-scare-the-horses default. So too defenders of the status quo generally, whether their motivation be preference for the quiet life or the depraved accrual of power at all costs, or something in between those extremes. Weaponised by politicians, characterisation of legitimate alarm as alarmism, is surely ancient. In the context of anthropogenic global heating, it is particularly effective in discouraging any action that might be seen to encroach on the rights of the rich and well off, or to load further injustice on the vulnerable and/or impoverished.
Ironically, of course, bought-and-paid-for sanctity-of-the-market defenders are typically the first to deploy alarmist rhetoric to malign the work of people whose responsibility it is to ensure that potentially irreversible biospheric-damaging trends are clearly communicated, that they be timely addressed.
To be continued…
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Light the Fuse : Chapter 9 – Left, Left, Left n’Right, Left, “leave-it-to-the-market legions…”
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No place like home Also incomprehensible to any futurethat should possibly be “near future” but risks reading as student of near future, as opposed to student in the near future, studying the history of the early 2000s student will be the drivel published about the supposed inevitability of mankind needing to prepare to leave Planet Earth in the dust for more alluring destinations. A smidgen of perspective is suggested: If the current billion-year balance remaining of Planet Earth’s oxygenated atmosphere sounds trifling, animal life has existed here for only about the last 0.64 billion years. Was the Great Mobilisation mounted, and it was successful in salvaging a survivable planetary climate, the best billion years, entirely arguably, could be yet to come. For further perspective, species Homo sapiens sapiensas opposed to Homo sapiens, to acknowledge Homo sapiens idàltu, and to avoid the more cumbersome alternative of ‘anatomically modern human being’, and for sheer cussedness has existed for only about 300 000 years, or a mere 2000th of the time since the likes of jellyfish first evolved, or little more than a 15 000th the lifetime of the planet.
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Light the Fuse : Chapter 8 – D-Day of Hope, “incomprehensible to any future student…”
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Buoyant-Bulwarked Tide-Powered and in-Motion-Charging: In a perfect world, a purpose-built scow would assume the J Barry Ferguson moniker and pioneer the long-proposed Mahurangi Coastal Path—to connect 1000 hasince the hectare is non-International System of Units anyway, why not the acronym for hecto- + are? of regional parkland with public transport. In a major learning gained from owning a surplus to operations Auckland Council landing barge, buoyant bulwarks would be paired with the massively redundant scuppers of the initial design. J Barry Ferguson. design Mahurangi Magazine
Passenger ferries inherently problematic Passenger ferries, particularly the dominant roll-on-roll-off form, are inherently and existentially problematic. There are two primary areas where passenger ferries are problematical: inherent vulnerability to free-surface-effect-caused capsize; and dependency on either fossil fuel or grotesquely capital-and-resource-ravenous electric /hydrogen alternatives. This realisation was, in part, informed by Mahurangi Action’s direct experience with attempting to repurpose a very small, former Auckland Council landing barge for passenger use, to help pioneer the proposed Mahurangi Coastal Path. That experience is detailed in It’s a barge! It’s a boat! It’s the J Barry Ferguson. What was especially sobering, in regard to landing-barge naval architecture, was the paucity of studies in respect to vulnerabilities peculiar to the form.
Regarding the fossil-free-fuelling of small craft, including small ships, that this is a wicked problem is amply evidenced by the tiny percentage of fossil-fuel-free vessels operational. Typically, battery-powered-vessels are commissioned not because of cast-titanium business or environmental cases, but because they are the vanity projects of battery-power-dogmatist politicians and policy analysts. Battery power has assumed the there-is-no-alternative invincibility previously reserved for the avaricious /dogmatic neoliberal determination to utterly unfetter free enterprise…
To be continued…
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Light the Fuse : Front matter – Prologue, “Passenger ferries are inherently problematic…”
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Life a Beach 33 150 Years Back: Migration map used with the 2019 article illustrated a coastal route possible 14 700. With science having pushed the timing of coastal back so spectacularly, in such short a time, a map the updated the Smithsonian article seemed called for. Predominance of human settlement in the proximity of the coast is ancient. Although 33% of North America’s coastline is sandy or shingle beaches, the Pacific Northwest is decidedly less so, which strongly suggests the migrants were skilled users of coastal seaworthy watercraft. Alarmingly, as the Arctic neared its 2019 winter maximum, the Bering Sea was virtually ice-free, and should be frozen right now, in April, but isn’t. map from Gandy, 2020, National Geographic Magazine
Upper Paleolithic life a beach Life for Homo sapiens sapiensas opposed to Homo sapiens, to acknowledge Homo sapiens idàltu, and to avoid the more cumbersome alternative of ‘anatomically modern human being’, and for sheer cussedness, it seems, has always been a beach, in very significant part. Given that sea level jumped about 60 metres between 12 000 and 7000 years ago, evidence of the coastal migration into North America is not often stumbled upon, along today’s—until recently—remarkably long-stable shorelines. It seems reasonable to conclude that muchif not most of prehistoric human migration was led by coast-dwelling people. Regardless of whether life’s-a-beach is literally in human dna, failing to communicate that global-heating-caused-sea-level-rise has precipitated their eventual irretrievable loss, would be the mother of Great Mobilisation own goals. Coastal population, meanwhile, is increasing disproportionately with Cosby et al, 2018 calculating:
Ultra-coastal≤ 10 km population encompasses 14.6% of the global population on 4% of the landmass.
As the last significant landmass to be colonised by humans—circa 1280—Aotearoa has a rich oral record of coast-wise migration, bookending evidence spanning the 70 000-year Southern Dispersal route scenario. The saga over conflicting human-dispersal hypotheses makes a compelling case of paucity of evidence not being evidence of absence. That, coupled with New Zealand’s absurdly pertinent distinction of being the last significant landmass to form, from the sunken remains of the failed Zealandia continent, provide a unique vantage from which to command the attention of the world-weary, and not for the first time in the young country’s history. Grist, if any further was needed, for the Light the Fuse premise.
It is entirely probable that, from Homo sapiens sapiensas opposed to Homo sapiens, to acknowledge Homo sapiens idàltu, and to avoid the more cumbersome alternative of ‘anatomically modern human being’, and for sheer cussedness’s earliest development and dispersal, littoral environments profoundly shaped the human physique. As with the orthodoxy regarding the peopling of the Americas, paucity of contrary fossil evidence may have protected older hypotheses. Either way, it is certain that polymath surgeon Peter Rhys Evans’ AttenboroughSir David, The Waterside Ape, BBC, 2016-praised The Waterside Ape: An Alternative Account of Human Evolution will not be the last word on the roundly anthropologist-derided suggestion. Overturning orthodoxy is a famous for its holdouts; it is even possible, for example, that the last laugh will go to those who long questioned the running-flapping-arms cursorial hypothesis of the evolution of avian coelurosaurI am with Sibusiso Biyela: dinosaur, “terrible lizard”, is the mother-of-all animal-group misnomers, having evolving from small bipedal reptiles weighing around 2–5 kg. The more closely bird-related clade, coelurosaur, is merely “hollow-tailed lizard”—birds.
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Light the Fuse : Appendix 4 – On the Ephemerality of Beaches, “Upper Paleolithic”
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Polycrisis to end all polycrises To presume to improve upon plain Polycrisis as the most useful name to describe the 20th century civilisational and biospherical juncture is to challenge no less a formidable thinker than economics historian Dr Adam Tooze. The Mahurangi Magazine ’s justification for this temerity is three-fold. Firstly, anthropogenic global heating trumps all other crises with its incontrovertibly unique combination of irreversibility and extinction-multiplying consequence. Secondly, climate-action mobilisation is beyond urgent—climate-action mobilisation must be optimised in every action designed to address the contemporary polycrisis. Thirdly—purely semantically—there have been numerous polycrises; there will likely be only one, planetary, Climate Polycrisis. Having said that, Light the Fuse unapologetically suggests squaring the circle with Great 3rd Millennium Polycrisis.
To date, the received social-psychology wisdom has lectured the imperative to not alarm the audience, lest it be stampeded past collective action into collective despair. By that measure, Winston Churchill, today, would be being browbeaten to withhold any mention of the war, much less, fighting GermansWe will fight them in the hills. in the hills. Fortunately for humanity, Churchill wasn’t claiming that the Britain wouldn’t be overrun, but stating she would never surrender, and unambiguously backing that up with massive military and industrialfamously, with the help of Beaverbrook mobilisation.
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Light the Fuse : Prologue, “to be emphatically named.”
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Punctuation As with hyphenation, newspaper style guides urge a minimalist approach to punctuation, some large-circulation publications going so far as stipulating single quotes in lieu of single and double typogprettyraphic quotes. Probably needless to sayin all likelihood, in respect to even the occasional Mahurangi Magazine reader, this publication takes a punctuate-and-be-damned approach—in return, it welcomes reader’s lovingly suggested corrections and improvements. A far-from rare criticismthank you sincerely Mike of Cimino’s writing is the sentiment that are too many commas and not enough periods. Because a policy of continual improvement is practiced, the ratio does trend towards the reader-friendly—early readers, in effect, leaving the sheep tracks progressively easier to follow. Commas, periods, em- and en-dashes, and myriad other punctuation marks, are given their own headings.
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Light the Fuse : Style-Guide, Punctuation
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Liquid Fuel from co2 Breakthrough: Although not the first to produce liquid fuel from carbon dioxide, Dr Ziyun Wang, right, in collaboration with researchers at Chinese institutions has developed a cost-effective alternative, particularly applicable—presumably—to powering those public-transport modes that can’t practicably be grid-powered—intercity buses and inter island ferries spring to mind. Least said, meantime, of the far from affordable, sky-high cost of hydrogen-fuel-cell mobility.
image University of Auckland
Rotary-valve 5-stroke modular generator Conceivably, the rotary-valve of Jim Clark–Bruce McLaren-astounding New Zealand engineer Ralph Watson could be married to Gerhard Schmitz’s stringently fuel-efficient 5-stroke to form the double-compound-v 3 heart of the ch2o2specifically, formic acid liquid-fueled small modular engine-generators required, at-scale, to zero-carbon-power everything from interisland ferries and intercity buses, to bulldozers. Regardless of their precise pedigree or configuration, such generators are needed in numbers commensurate with the Anthropocene biosphere’s current burden of one billionpredominantly private, 1.31 billion in 2020 light vehicle fleet, projected to be 2.21 billion by 2050 – International Energy Outlook 2021 private light vehicles—unless the profoundly inspired inside-out Wankel of Soviet-trainedDr Nikolai Shkolnik considers he was advantaged by his broader-than-American engineering training Dr Nikolai Shkolnik and his mit-trained son Dr Alec Shkolnik is indeed so superiorly thermally efficient—and can be made sufficiently clean-burning and reliable—that it does succeed in burying all new forms of the reciprocating piston engine, after its 312-year-and-counting reign. Same-same, in respect, and with the greatest respect, to the implausible-sounding Patented 1-Stroke double-swashplate, horizontal square-four engine—in either its silken opposed-8-pistontantalisingly, 8-piston but 4-cylinder!, or muscular unopposed-4-piston, configuration. In a halfways rational world, the megamobilisation global procurement process would already be scoping the Schmitz–Watson modular generator, possibly sized to power a householdor modest private light vehicle—essential in the deeply unfortunate localities where reliable grid-electricity is no longer, was never, or is never likely to be, reliably available.
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Referenced :
Light the Fuse : Chapter 6 – Kerb-Pitching Staff Car, “Rotary-valve 5-stroke modular…”
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Engine of One’s Great Mobilisation Dreams: In the twin, once-you-see-it-you-can’t-unsee-it / why-didn’t-I-think-of-that sentiments of a magnificently enlightening, anonymous Bosnian YouTube content creator, the rotary-exhaust-valved-2-stroke solution of Alpha-Otto Technologies is genius. It also illustrates why the Great Mobilisation demands intelligent, technological collaboration, as opposed to endless, biosphere-dooming zero-sum, blind-market-leading-the-blind, business-as-usual, laissez-faireism.
screen capture Alpha-Otto Technologies
Seriously undersquare rotary-exhaust-valved multi-fuel two-stroke In a less comprehensively-dysfunctional world, sufficient billions would already have been thrown at exploring the potential of Alpha-Otto Technologies’s genius rotary-exhaust-valved two-stroke for the large-scale production of several options to be imminent. Many motorheads—including this writer, whose long-time friend is a large-vessel marine engineer—have lived their lives in abject ignorance of the fact that the world’s largest internal-combustion engines, such as those that power the vast bulk of shipping, are two-stroke. Testing the efficiency-extremes of say an electrically supercharged 500cc, contra-rotating-balance-shafted, seriously undersquare—big-ship bore/stroke ratio of 0.384in the league of the 25,601.8-litre Wärtsilä-Sulzer RTA96-C—single-cylinder, would be profoundly illuminating. That such a two-stroke engine might potentially compare acoustically with the un”Maxine, Tony’s here!” Sarah would sing out in the electronic-data-processing department at the back of Motorspecs as she detected the note of Tony’s 50° V twin over the unrelenting din emanating from the intervening building housing the computer-card punches.forget”Maxine, Tony’s here!” Sarah would sing out in the electronic-data-processing department at the back of Motorspecs as she detected the note of Tony’s 50° V twin over the unrelenting din emanating from the intervening building housing the computer-card punches.table authority of the record-breaking 998 cc Vincent Black Shadow, is a dark-soul-of-the-night-dispelling hope that would be impossible to put a price on—the modular multi-net-zero-carbonoperational zero-carbon-emission-liquid-fuel engine of the Great Mobilisation, electric-hybrid powering everything from small marine vessels and auxiliary-in-motion-charging-road-vehicles to off-grid work camps.
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Referenced :
Light the Fuse : Chapter 6 – Kerb-Pitching Staff Car, “rotary-exhaust-valved-2-stroke…”
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Six-degree-separated v 9 liquid-fuel-head fantasy A 6° v might not sound like any sort of v-cylinder head-turner at all, but a bank-angle of 6° might be as much as makes sense, given anything more would put the cylinder heads in the bank of big low-pressure pots too far away from those of their counterparts in the high-pressure bank to be efficient, much less be serviced by a single, rotary-valve valve-train. The almost-inline v 9’s potentially infinitely harmonisable exhaust acoustics, however, might sonorously compensate for its less-than-Detriot-90° v8 machismo.
In the event, unless the genius rotary-valved two-stroke morphs into a three-cylinder three-stroke compound, it could be that niether v 3-, v 6-, v 9-, nor v 12-compound forms a significant part of the beyond-urgent Great Mobilisation.
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Referenced :
Light the Fuse : Chapter 6 – Kerb-Pitching Staff Car, “V 9 modello staff car…”
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Straw boss Having misheard straw boss as store boss—an entirely understandable mondegreen given the saturation airplay Tennessee Ernie Ford’s version of Sixteen Tonswritten and first recorded by Merle Travis, 1946 was receiving in 1955—Cimino’s quest to obtain evidence of the existence of the song Light the Fuse , heard just that one time in his childhood, eluded a subsequent quarter-century of sporadic search-engine deployment. Although the actual term store boss is not used in Sixteen Tons , his two-plus-two-equals-store likely came from the last word of the last line of the song’s four-times-repeated chorus:
I owe my soul to the company store.
Surely, a mining company store had a store boss.
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Referenced :
Light the Fuse : Chapter 1 – Light the Fuse, “straw /store…”
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Straw dynamite , although it is unlikely Cimino had ever heard the term:
Paleine or Straw Dynamite is a mixture of nitrocellulose, made from straw with nitroglycerine; it is manufactured in Sardinia and Belgium.
A Handbook on Modern Explosives: A Practical Treatise on the Manufacture and Use of Dynamite, Gun-Cotton, Nitro-Glycerine, and Other Explosive Compounds, Including Collodion-Cotton Manuel Eissler mining engineer, 1897 p. 69
Setting for a spectacularly abortive black-powder blasting exercise, implicating multiple generations of its males, was the family’s next hometown. Background music of the episode was the crescendo-crashing Rapsody in Blue , emanating from the ultra-acoustically bright Waiwera mineral pools kiosk—the signature Bill Chick floor-to-gable glazing of which survived the incident.
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Referenced :
Light the Fuse : Chapter 1 – Light the Fuse, “straw /store…”
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Winstone Road Reunion
Graham Hutchin’s title for the reunion of his mid-1960s house-mates Cimino Cole, Russell Young, and Jane Watts née Cole, hosted by he and his wife, Jenny, at their Hamilton residence on the occasion of Jane’s six-week 2024 visit from Hollywood, California. Winstone Road was the address of the PuketāpapaPuketāpapa, Makaurau (Mount Roskill, Auckland) house, rented from Cimino’s employers—two-men-and-a-boy carpenter/builders of low-rise houses and apartments. Cimino had long since forgotten the property’s address, although could have navigated there at a pinch.
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Referenced :
Light the Fuse : Chapter 1 – Light the Fuse, “straw /store…”
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Waitangi regatta week Few, today, are aware that for the decade before World War II brought the Mahurangi Regatta to a halt, Waiwera hosted its after-match function. Held in the still extant, wonderfully named Waiwera Gaiety Hall, Waiwera provided the hospitality and entertainment that Scotts Landing couldn’t readily, after losing its unmaintained wharf. The Mahurangi Regatta, meantime, having reached peak private-light-vehicle access, is in the process of being reinvented, as a regatta week, culminating in an Aotea ki Mahurangi waka ama ocean race, possibly on Waitangi Day. The ocean race planned by Mahurangi-based Ngāti Maraeariki could reinvent Auckland Anniversary weekend the finale of a Tātaki Auckland Unlimitedpreviously ATEED—Auckland Tourism, Events and Economic Development-scale, “Waitangi week”. This is because of the part of the huge, international following enjoyed by the event’s inspiration—Hawaii’s Moloka'i Hoe—would beat a path to Mahurangi. Designed from the ground up to revolve around public transport and low-key, family-affordable camping, for many young Aucklanders, it would be their end-of-the-golden-weather opportunity to learn traditional camping, canoeing, sailing, and boat-building, skills.
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Referenced :
Light the Fuse : Appendix 1 – Buy Waiwera, “the sublime Mahurangi Regatta.”
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Waiwera mineral-free pools Had the supercilious engineer and his impenetrable industrial chemist had their way, future pilgrims to Waiwera would have bathed in electrically heated town-supply water. The pair had decided, without any discussion with their clients, that the pools could no longer be directly heated by continuously adding hot mineral water—in the manner a cooling bath is warmed up by judiciously running in a little water from the hot tap, at imminent risk to one’s toes, and, ultimately, of flooding the bathroom. In Waiwera’s case, the problem was that it too prohibitively expensive to have cyanuric acid, which is routinely added to pool water to reduce sunlight’s degradation of the main disinfecting agent, chlorine, continuously flushed to waste. Indirect heating via heat exchange, the clients already knew, was nonviable—that had previously been attempted at Parakai where the bore water is 5–6° higher, without success. Paying to electrically heat the pools, however, was a comprehensive non-starter with the owner, who was of a generation that would not leave a light bulb “burning” in an empty room, ever . Although the water would doubtless have been heat-pump heated—Mount Wellinton’s Panorama Pools were already doing that, the capital and operational costs would have been colossal. Mistrustful of the continued refusal to the engineer to discuss options to the decreed freshwater solution, Cimino…
To be continued…
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Referenced :
Light the Fuse : Appendix 1 – Buy Waiwera, “naturally heated mineral water…”
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‹ Bibliography | Style guide ›
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Disclosure The author of this novel modello is no longer the secretary of Mahurangi Action Incorporated or the Mahurangi Coastal Path Trust. The content published here, however, is that of the editorially independent, independently funded Mahurangi Magazine.
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