Thursday, December 01, 2022

Links - 1st December 2022 (1)

What If TV Isn't Bad for Us? - Freakonomics - "Did watching television as a preschooler lead to lower test scores later on?
    SHAPIRO: If you look at the effect of having television as a preschooler and test scores, the estimates that we find are pretty small. So, sometimes they indicate a small, positive effect. Sometimes they indicate a small negative effect. which is a way of saying that we can use our data to statistically rule out moderate or large effects of television on test scores...We found that the effects of television are more positive for kids whose first language at home was not English. Television may have had some benefits in terms of language development, or at least English language acquisition. And that fits with other studies that try to look for whether kids learn words from television... between six in the morning and six in the evening, there was no change in assaults or violent crime tied to the violent movies. That made sense to them. Not many people go to see matinees, so there wouldn’t be a big change in crime following daytime movie showings. But then they looked at the night data.
DAHL: Here’s where our first surprise came. We looked in the evening hours between 6:00 p.m. and midnight, when most movies are being played and most people are attending the movies. And what we found was not an increase in violence but a drop in violence. And it wasn’t a small effect. For every million people watching a strongly violent movie, we had a drop of about 1.3 percent in violent crimes. And if you saw a mildly violent movie — you know, those Avengers, Spiderman type movies — we saw a 1.1 percent drop in violent crimes. And on average, the violent movies as they get released, throughout different weekends, they result in about 52,000 fewer assaults throughout the year. So, about 1000 fewer assaults on a given weekend. So, that was surprising to us because we predicted that there would be more violent crime, not less... People, even going all the way back to Aristotle, thought that viewing violence would actually be cathartic. That was one of the arguments for the Roman gladiators. if you see people doing violent stuff, maybe that gets rid of their violent tendencies... When you take a violent person and you put them in a movie theater, they’re pretty much incapacitated. It’s very difficult to commit a violent act while you’re in a movie theater, because it’s a very monitored environment...
The data also revealed a drop in crime between midnight and six a.m., one that was even bigger than the one between six p.m. and midnight. Now, why would that happen? At this point, people aren’t at the movies, so you can’t say that they’re busy doing something else instead of causing trouble. But a lot of times, a night out at the movies means a break from the usual weekend pattern. On opening weekend of the latest Avengers movie, a lot of people aren’t doing what they would normally be doing on a Friday night... that change in the evening’s activities may be just as important, or even more important, than whatever impact the movie itself is having on viewers. The researchers know this because — that drop in violent crimes? It was bigger when the blockbuster movie that people were flocking to wasn’t violent"

When Is a Natural Disaster Good for Your Health? - Freakonomics - "the annual number of deaths in New Orleans spiked in 2005, the year of the hurricane. That’s predictable. A lot of people died in the storm. But then, David and Tatyana saw something surprising in their data.
    MOLITOR: Starting in 2006 and 2007, that initial spike in mortality among the New Orleans cohort disappeared. And in fact, the mortality rate dipped below the pre-hurricane trend in New Orleans, suggesting a mortality reduction... if you take the people living in New Orleans before the hurricane, the probability that they survive for up to eight years after the hurricane, including the initial shock of the hurricane, is actually a mortality reduction, suggesting that the hurricane caused more people to be alive eight years after the storm than would have happened...
The people who lived longer as a result of the storm were those that moved to different cities...
MOLITOR: What we find is that the subsequent mortality is much lower among movers that move to relatively low mortality regions compared to those who moved to higher mortality regions. In fact, the relationship between the migrants’ own subsequent mortality and the mortality rate of the destination region is on average, nearly one to one...
BERWICK: Statins are one of the most widely used medications in our country today. They’re regarded as a medical breakthrough to prevent heart attacks. There was a study in 2015 that estimated the most favorable outcomes for the use of statins, and it said that for a year on statins, in primary prevention, you gain about a day of life. Twenty years on statins, 20 days of life...
This idea of being able to move to a place where opportunities are more plentiful has led to research that has already had some very meaningful results. Economists Raj Chetty and Nate Hendren at Harvard and John Friedman at Brown University have tackled this issue through a policy research effort called Opportunity Insights.  The Opportunity Insights team developed a program for people in neighborhoods where there’s typically not a lot of social mobility. They offered families help with identifying “high opportunity” neighborhoods to consider moving to, which they defined as areas where children from low-income families have gotten out of poverty... The researchers estimated that, if the families who moved ended up staying in their new neighborhoods, the total lifetime income for their children who moved during very early childhood would increase by more than $200,000.  By the way, the program cost about $2,700 per family. That’s almost covered by the future increase in tax revenue that the economists project will come eventually from each of the high-earning children in these families.  Just to give you those results again: 54 percent of families who received basic help with navigating a move ended up relocating to high-opportunity neighborhoods, up from 14 percent of families who didn’t get that help. Raj Chetty, one of the researchers behind the program, called it, “the largest effect I’ve ever seen in a social science intervention.”"

Should We Pay People to Be Healthier? - Freakonomics - "Kevin says research done on flu vaccines shows that paying people can help. And with Covid-19 vaccines, some states and employers tried to entice people with money. Ohio, for instance, created a lottery with large cash prizes. The soap company Dr. Bronner’s offered employees $1,000 to get the vaccine.  But Kevin says that when it comes to the Covid-19 vaccine, studies of financial incentives suggest that they mostly haven’t helped. Part of the reason for that is that people who wanted to get vaccinated — they just did it. But by the time this research was done, many of the people left were people who DIDN’T want the vaccine.
VOLPP: This was a whole other ball game with the Covid vaccine. There’s on top of that, a whole layer of beliefs about not wanting to get vaccinated, some cases thinking this was a government conspiracy, and that none of this was based on science. And so, then having the government then offer money to get vaccinated in some sense could even feed that narrative, as opposed to offsetting those concerns...
Mitesh and his team wanted to apply that concept of loss aversion to design financial incentives to increase physical activity. They did an experiment in which for a month, they gave a group of people one dollar and 40 cents per day to meet a fitness goal. Pretty standard. The other group, though, was the loss aversion group.
PATEL: In the other group, we said, we’ll put $42 upfront in a virtual account. And you can lose a dollar and 40 cents each time you don’t meet 7,000 steps. So, by the end of the month, we would pay everybody whatever was in their account. So, it really didn’t matter whether you were in the gain-framed arm, where you got a dollar and 40 cents, or you were in the loss-framed arm where you lost a dollar and 40 cents. If you met your step goal 10 days, you would get $14 by the end of the month. But it had a huge impact in terms of how people behaved.
The people who felt like they were losing money when they failed to meet a goal — they exercised way more often. But one of the problems with these interventions is that they’re difficult to scale. Paying everyone to exercise could cost a lot of money, even though it might motivate some people to move more. So, Mitesh and his team wanted to know if they could get similar results without money. It turns out, they could, by combining a few different strategies.  One was something called gamification. Take away the money, and instead, use things like points and levels to motivate participants. Another strategy combined gamification with loss aversion. People didn’t just earn points — they were first given points that they could lose... And on top of that, instead of using financial incentives, Mitesh and his team used social incentives. They had people work together, or against each other, to see if that got people moving...
PATEL: For physical activity and trying to get people to exercise more, this worked just as well as paying people, except we weren’t paying people at all. We were giving them these virtual points and moving them through levels. And what was even more impressive is when we turned these programs off — we said, ‘Okay, the game’s done. And we want you to keep using your wearable device to, to walk a certain number of steps.’ People kept up the habit. In the financial incentive studies. A lot of times we find that that behavior goes away, but we found here that this was sustained as far as up to a year after we turned this off."
The objections to the loss aversion mug study are neatly countered by the exercise studies

How Do We Know if Alcohol Is Bad for Us? - Freakonomics - "in medicine, the stakes of publishing subpar research are considerably higher. If you tell people that something like a supplement, that they can easily buy in a drugstore, will dramatically reduce their risk of heart disease, they’re likely to try it, which can lead to other unintended effects.
    SMITH: People doing something which they think might be beneficial to reducing heart disease risk might make them focus less on doing things like stopping smoking and losing weight and reducing their cholesterol levels."

Should You Trust Angelina Jolie or Your Doctor? - Freakonomics - "DESAI: We did not find evidence that the article resulted in increases in mastectomy rates. And in fact, among women who had had the B.R.C.A. genetic test, we actually saw a small decrease in the rates of mastectomies, from 10 percent of women who had the B.R.C.A. test getting mastectomies before the article to 7 percent mastectomy rates, following the article. And so, the article didn’t necessarily target the high-risk women.
To put it another way: instead of targeting women who were at high risk of having the B.R.C.A. mutation, Jolie’s op-ed seemed to have encouraged more testing among the “worried well.” While it’s amazing that celebrities may be able to reach so many people and influence their healthcare choices, this work shows that there seems to be an inflection point."
"Awareness" is not always good

Ontario has fallen behind Michigan’s economy - "According to a recent study, Ontario has the lowest per-capita GDP and (since 2000) the slowest economic growth rates in the Great Lakes region."

Christina Sommers on Twitter - "After robbing two banks within an hour earlier today, officers from the @NYPD41Pct  caught the suspect, who is on parole for rape, and has over 60 other arrests. Investigators determined he robbed the 3rd bank earlier this week in the Bronx and was charged accordingly."
"Parole for rape?"
Not to mention over 60 other arrests. When Democrats are pro-crime

Comment la France a tenté de bâtir un faux Paris en 1918 - "À la fin de la Première Guerre mondiale, l'armée voulait attirer les avions allemands vers des cibles lumineuses imitant les grandes installations de la capitale."

Breathing Through the Rectum Saves Oxygen-Starved Mice and Pigs - The New York Times

Dear Prudence: I’m a staunch Republican. My boyfriend’s friends hate me. - "lately, Nick and I have been arguing quite often. I’m a staunch Republican, and two of his friends, “Jordan and “Andrew,” don’t like that. They use all kinds of vile names for me, including “white trailer trash” and “inbred.” This started after I began working for a Republican organization. Before that, they were nice to me. Now they treat me terribly... My friends treat Nick with kindness and respect. My work friends treat him nicely too"
Political demonisation has consequences
"When they go low, we go lower"

Do the German Greens want to rule the world? - "‘Green politics should be based on human dignity and freedom in a globalised world. And not on Germany’, reads a motion supported by 300 delegates, demanding that the word Germany be deleted from the manifesto’s title... CDU politician Gordon Hoffmann blamed the Green revolt on left-wing self-loathing: ‘If the Greens are so ashamed of Germany, why do they want to govern Germany?’... While the Green leadership has spoken out against the motion, the party is clearly at home with the technocratic and globalist forms of government that have been emerging in recent decades. While it may sound ‘inclusive’ to speak for the world and not just Germany, what this really does is call democracy and citizenship into question. Greens and technocrats alike want to float above the nation state. They want to do politics free from the constraints of the demos"

What Does a Pig Skeleton Discovered in Jerusalem Say About First Temple Era Jews? - "The 2,700-year-old porcine remains were found crushed by large pottery vessels and a collapsed wall during excavations in the so-called City of David, the original nucleus of ancient Jerusalem... The find of swine adds to previous research showing that pork was occasionally on the menu for the ancient Israelites and that biblical taboos on this and other prohibited foods only came to be observed centuries later, in the Second Temple period. It also ties in to broader questions about when the Bible was written and when Judaism as we know it was born. The animal’s skull clearly identifies it as a domestic pig, as opposed to a wild swine, and its presence indicates that pigs were raised for food in the capital of the ancient Kingdom of Judah, says Lidar Sapir-Hen, an archaeozoologist at Tel Aviv University and at the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History... The importance and central location of the house suggest that pig husbandry and pork consumption may have been a rare treat, but still very much part of “mainstream” food habits, he says. In other words, it doesn’t look like this was something done secretively by, say, a poorer household that may have been desperately in need of a quick meal.  At this point we have to wonder how to square the idea that pigs were infrequently but openly raised in Jerusalem with the biblical injunction that: “The swine, though he divide the hoof, and be clovenfooted, yet he cheweth not the cud; he is unclean to you. Of their flesh shall ye not eat, and their carcase shall ye not touch; they are unclean to you.” (Leviticus 11:7-8)... the tendency to eschew pork in the Iron Age cannot be linked to a specific ethnic identity or to the biblical prohibition, Sapir-Hen concludes. Pigs were only a small part of the Levantine diet most probably because other animals, especially goats, sheep and cattle, were more suited to the local environment and economy. Pigs can be raised in an urban environment, as they require less space, but they also need a nearby water source: it is perhaps not a coincidence that the Jerusalem piglet was found near the city’s spring. This may explain why, throughout the Levant, swine occurrences only tend to rise at times and in places where populations increase and are concentrated in larger urban settlements, whether in Philistia, in the Kingdom of Israel or, to a lesser extent, in the more built-up sections of Judah’s capital, Jerusalem. This also gels with a growing body of research on the Israelite religion in the First Temple period. While scholars believe that parts of the Bible were already compiled at the tail end of this era, it is generally agreed that the holy text we know today only reached its final form after the Babylonian exile, in the Second Temple period.  Whenever the Bible was actually written, archaeological finds have shown that, in practice, First Temple-period Judaism was very different from the religion it would later become. While the ancient Israelites believed in Yahweh, the God of the Bible, they also worshipped other deities, including Asherah, who was thought to be God’s wife. They liberally made figurines and other graven images, ostensibly banned by the Second Commandment. Additionally, a study published just last month in the Tel Aviv journal of archaeology looked at the finding, at archaeological sites throughout Israel, of bones from scaleless and finless fish, which are also prohibited by the Bible’s dietary rules. The research showed that catfish, sharks and other non-kosher fish were commonly consumed in Jerusalem and Judah during the First Temple period, and only for the late Second Temple period is there clear evidence that Jews were eschewing such banned seafood.  In other words, biblical prohibitions that are considered signposts of the Jewish faith today were unknown, unheeded or non-existent back in the First Temple period."

For Young Arab Israeli Men, It’s Increasingly Becoming a Woman’s World - "There’s trouble brewing in the relations between men and women in Israeli Arab society, especially inside marriages. More women are choosing to remain single or delay marriage to a later age, and divorce rates are rising. And the problem is likely to grow worse in the years ahead, as an emerging demographic imbalance among Israeli Arabs creates an excess of marriageable-age men.  In a society where marriage is the overwhelming norm, that threatens to compound the existing problem of young Arab men marginalized by lack of employment and higher education, which many experts say is behind the crime wave in the Arab community... That’s a problem on a personal level for young Arab men trying to enter adult life by entering the labor market and forming a family. But it’s also a problem for Israel, because a surfeit of young, unmarried men is likely to compound the existing problem of so many Arab men neither working nor in school and often turning to a life of crime... Young Arab men are not only going to be contending with unfavorable numbers, but a marriage market where young women look increasingly askance at who is available as a prospective partner. That is because Arab women are getting a higher education in far greater numbers than Arab men. This is giving them more financial independence than before, enabling them to put off marriage until they find the right partner, or even remain single.  It also has given them a greater sense of freedom to leave their partners due to incompatibility – the divorce rate for Israeli Arabs nearly doubled in the decade through 2019... “When you invest a lot in women and, against that, you ignore the men and don’t allow them to develop – to get an education and allow them to remain the dominant one – that causes no small number of problems inside the family,” says Haj-Yahya, whose expertise is in the socioeconomics of young Arab men and women.  “We’re seeing that in rising rates of divorce in Arab families in recent years... “The parallel here is the gap in educational attainment between men and women [in the United States], which is wider for African-Americans than for whites,” he says. “There are critiques about the education system in general: that it demands a certain conformity in behavior, which is at odds with what being a ‘good’ man is. These are not manly virtues – sitting in a classroom and learning to read.”"
Racism and patriarchy mean that Israeli Arab men are discriminated against, but not Israeli Arab women. Just like African-American men and women

Rust-bucket Ferrari sells for £110,000 after being found in leaky barn - "The 1962 Ferrari 250 GTE was found by an auctioneer having languished in a leaky barn for the past 40 years.  The once-luxury sports car had been bought by its owner in 1973 for a mere £800 – £4,500 today."

Cricketing crooks stump Russian gamblers with ‘fake Indian Premier League’ - "A gang of conmen set up an elaborate fake Indian Premier League tournament, using farm labourers to pose as cricketers and dupe Russian gamblers... The hustlers received thousands of pounds from the unwitting Russian punters, who believed they were watching real matches streamed online.  Yet the counterfeit matches were played not in India’s mega stadiums, but on a remote farm in Molipur village of Gujarat’s Mehsana district...   “Besides this, the accused had set up high-resolution cameras on the ground and used computer-generated graphics to display scores on a live-streaming screen,” he added. Crowd noise effects were downloaded from the internet.  Labourers and unemployed youths were hired for 400 rupees (£4.20) per match and the contests were broadcast live over a YouTube channel called “IPL”.   To maintain the illusion, the cameraman made sure no wide shots were ever broadcast. A fake commentator from Meerut with a knack for mimicking Harsha Bhogle, one of IPL’s real commentators, was used to make the tournament appear authentic.  Players took turns to wear jerseys of the Chennai Super Kings, Mumbai Indians and Gujarat Titans, police said, acting on the instructions of the plot’s mastermind, who was based in Russia...   Russian gamblers were lured into betting on a Telegram channel set up by the gang. The masterminds were in touch with the umpire via walkie-talkie to manipulate the play. The supposed official “would signal the bowler and batsman to hit a six, four or get out”"

Crowding-in or crowding out: An empirical analysis on the effect of subsidies on individual willingness-to-pay for public transportation - "Public transportation throughout the world is highly subsidized. User knowledge about public subsidies may affect their willingness to pay for public transport services and alter demand and related passenger fare revenues. This is especially relevant in view of the increasing availability of information about public subsidies. An empirical study reveals a crowding-in effect, on average, on WTP (willingness to pay) as a result of access to information about public subsidies that generates concerns of fairness. Crowding-out effects also occur, caused by considerations of double financing and free-riding, although they are minor. Study results show that public transportation companies as well as financing institutions should highlight the existence of subsidies to produce crowding-in effects in the WTP for public transportation, to maximize public valuation (WTP) of public transportation. This should increase self-generated revenues of public transportation services."

High Testosterone Doesn't Actually Make Men More Successful, New Study Hints - "In previous studies, male executives with higher testosterone have been found to have more subordinates, and financial traders with higher testosterone found to generate greater daily profits. Testosterone has been found to be higher among more highly educated men, and among self-employed men, suggesting a link with entrepreneurship.  Much less is known about these relationships in women, but one study suggested that for women, disadvantaged socioeconomic position in childhood was linked to higher testosterone later in life... Rather than testosterone influencing a person's socioeconomic position, it could be that having a more advantaged socioeconomic position raises your testosterone.. we applied a causal inference approach called "Mendelian randomization". This uses genetic information relevant to a single factor (here, testosterone) to isolate just the effect of that factor on one or more outcomes of interest (here, socioeconomic outcomes such as income and educational qualifications)."

1950s California Town Uses Reminiscence Therapy to Treat Alzheimer's - "Glenner Town Square is a treatment center that's helping improve the lives of people with Alzheimer's disease and dementia... Town Square is designed to look like a town from somewhere between 1953 and 1961, meant to reflect the era when most of the participants were young adults.
Scott Tarde: People make their strongest memories typically between the ages of 10 and 30. And if you think about it, the reason that that is is because people typically have a lot of life's firsts at that time. Graduating high school, graduating college, marriage, children, jobs.
Narrator: Helping people recall and discuss these major life events is part of reminiscence therapy, one of the core concepts of Town Square's program."

Deriving Sexual Pleasure from Infants | Islamic Virtues - "Bismillaah
I was asked by a brother whether or not it is true that Shi’ite men are allowed to derive sexual pleasure from infant children, and even new-born babies, by fondling them or rubbing their genitals on them... Yes, this is indeed permissible for Shi’ites. But I warn my brother from the Ahlus Sunnah to not rush to condemn the Shi’ites for this moral depravity, since I’ve looked in our own texts and I could not find any rules in the works of jurisprudence of all the madhabs that forbid such behavior. And since deriving sexual pleasure from your wives or female slaves is generally permissible in Islam, and only sexual intercourse is prohibited before the age of maturity (typically at 9 years), it appears that the act of lustful fondling and thighing infant wives may be permissible for us as well...  Anyway, coming to the actual issue, here are the rulings of their scholars (the “Ayatullahs”) about this topic"

The impact of judicial elections on criminal sentencing - "Previous research strongly suggests that such electoral cycles exist. Sentencing for felonies appears to become harsher as election-day approaches for a judge... But existing evidence comes from only three states (Kansas, Pennsylvania, and Washington), and each study used data from only one state... of the ten states that have judicial elections, and whose data included judge identifiers, only four show evidence of electoral cycles... Our interviews revealed striking differences across states in the professional norms governing the judicial selection process. In some states, challenging a sitting judge is frowned upon within the judicial profession. As a result, competition in judicial elections is low. In other states, such professional norms are not present and competition in judicial elections is high.   Our interviews also suggested a potential explanation for the professional norm of not challenging sitting judges. Many of the steps on a judge’s career ladder happen by gubernatorial appointment, even if these appointments later need affirmation by re-election. The prospect of a future appointment by the governor can discipline potential challengers to bide their time if challenging a sitting judge (likely appointed by the governor) would prevent them obtaining an appointment in the future.

‘10% Less Democracy’—A Review - "Jones notes that we accept today that monetary policy should be set by an independent central bank, but tax policy must still be in the hands of the elected legislature. Should there be an independent body to set tax rates based on what level of spending the government proposes? This could force governments to live within their means and discourage legislators from promising voters a Mercedes at Corolla prices."

People Can't Figure Out If This Kid's Cartoon Is A Cat Or A Bird - "The cat-bird graph has been around for a few years, making headlines in 2014 for its similarity to the famous rabbit duck optical illusion."

3 Minutes of the Game of Thrones Cast Being Disappointed by Season 8 - YouTube

Emilia Clarke Says Backlash To The Final Season Of 'Game Of Thrones' Was "Profoundly Flattering" - "It was profoundly flattering is what it was because when someone cares that much that they’re ready to make such a noise about how they believe the characters should’ve been finished and how the story should’ve gone. That’s just enormously flattering. That just shows how much everybody loved it"

Meme - *Christians* Liberal: "You're not fooling me. I know you use Hell to scare people into submission"
*Greta Thunberg, Joe Biden, Fauci, AOC, Psaki etc* Liberal: "There's literally no reason you guys would ever lie. You have absolutely nothing to gain."

Meme - "ETHICAL TRADE CO
Making a difference through job creation
HUMAN TRAFFICKING, POVERTY, EXPLOITATION”

Meme - "In Loving Memory of Pastor Yeh Thiam Pieng"
I've never seen such a jolly obituary photo

Meet the Artist Using Ritual Magic to Trap Self-Driving Cars - "Is it a silly prank, a Pagan ritual, or a genius discovery about the next era of mass transit? In a picture posted to Flickr by artist James Bridle—known for coining the term, "New Aesthetic"—a car is sitting in the middle of a parking lot has been surrounded by a magic salt circle. In the language of road markings, the dotted white lines on the outside say, "Come On In," but the solid white line on the inside says, "Do Not Cross." To the car's built-in cameras, these are indomitable laws of magic: Petrificus Totalus for autonomous automobiles. Captioned simply, "Autonomous Trap 001," the scene evokes a world of narratives involving the much-hyped technology of self-driving cars"

Meme - "King Tut's DNA is Western European
We were kings"

Grave-robbing badgers leave trail of human bones in pensioner's garden

Bo Winegard on Twitter - "I'm generally skeptical of philosophies which claim that truth and objectivity are impossible because of the inescapable historical or political forces because they seem to undermine themselves. Are they objectively true or just another discourse of power?"

Teen spends six years digging underground home in garden after fight with his parents - "When Andres Canto was 14-years-old, he got into a minor argument with his parents when they told him he couldn't go into the local village wearing a tracksuit.  In retaliation, he stayed at home and grabbed his grandfather's pickaxe, using it to take out his frustration by angrily attacking the ground in the garden.  But Andres' act of petulance bizarrely became an obsession, and six years after the now 20-year-old first broke ground, he has created his very own underground cave, with steps leading deep down to a structure comprising of a living and bedroom... He estimates the project has cost him a grand total of £43 (€50).  Andres has plans to expand yet further, with the cave currently boasting two rooms, a heating system, Wi-Fi provided by his phone transmitting from the cave entrance, and a music system. The underground escape even provides a cool place to relax in the summer, with Andres explaining it stays at a constant 20 or 21 degrees in the hottest months of the year.  However, he adds that it does occasionally flood during heavy rain and often attracts insects, spiders and snails.   He says his parents were fine with the build - but that authorities did visit to ensure it was legal, finding no issues as it couldn't be defined as a basement, extension or storage structure."

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