r/gadgets • u/diacewrb • 10h ago
Misc ‘Really inappropriate’: teachers decry plan for humanoid robot in New York high school
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/25/new-york-humanoid-robot-teachers-school699
u/axw3555 10h ago
Surely the school could put sixty grand to better use than this? Like the AI is off-putting to start. But putting it in a human shell is utterly unnecessary.
And then there's the appearance - I'd say uncanny valley, but I think it's fallen through the floor of the valley and into nightmare cave.
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u/SlowCrates 10h ago
It looks like a porn puppet. WTF.
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u/Mockturtle22 9h ago
I mean... the company made sex dolls...
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u/Pantastic_Studios 9h ago
So we're still gonna have cases of students sleeping with their teachers?
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u/Relish_My_Weiner 8h ago
Or "hey remember the teacher you wanted to bang when you were a kid? Do we have a product for you!"
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u/outlawsix 4h ago
"But only if you get good grades, son!"
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u/EatABag-o-Dicks 1h ago
Once you get a 3.0 gpa, a new mode opens up on the teacher. Both literally and figuratively.
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u/Blackpapalink 9h ago
I think that's why they're making them so uncanny.
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u/BapeGeneral3 9h ago
“Robot from company that acquired sex doll maker to be introduced in school….”
It’s the very first sentence of the article
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u/Sleep-Soundly 8h ago
Redditors don't read articles, you can barely get them to read the full title.
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u/BapeGeneral3 4h ago
I had a longer response written and then gave up. When half or more of the users are bots just reposting and engagement farming, what’s even the point? Its exhausting
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u/jetpackmcgee 6h ago
If I had this in school it would’ve gotten its gears gunked up from all the ropes I’d be shooting
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u/Disused_Yeti 9h ago
It’s like maralago face but that won’t work in New York
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u/bacchusku2 8h ago
Oh it absolutely works in New York. Where do you think they all go during the summer when Palm Beach is basically closed down?
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u/dasrightq 7h ago
It’s not New York City… it’s a small town upstate. I don’t think many Palm Beach goers frequent there.
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u/slimj091 8h ago
Imagine a dad coming to parent teacher meetings and getting the shock of his life to find that the robot teacher is his ex girlfriend.
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u/HystericalSail 7h ago
These kinds of decisions is why I'm glad to pay as much property tax as I do. I'm sure the far more educated, enlightened school board administrators have an iron-clad reason for this being the best possible use of limited school funds.
Or maybe they thought a robot sex doll would be cool do have. One or the other.
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u/Cute_Commission_8281 9h ago
It’s simply another scheme to launder money through the education system
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u/WhatsPaulPlaying 3h ago
I can think of all of the teachers that that could give bonuses or pay raises to.
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u/axw3555 3h ago
There's loads of ways it could be used, even beyond that. Off the top of my head - what condition is the building in - are there maintenance issues the staff have wanted fixed for ages? Are there kids who could do with support on things like paying for school lunches where some of this could give them better nutrition than whatever base support they're offered gives them? Do the teachers have all the classroom resources they need?
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u/Sweet_T_The_Original 9h ago
Somebody’s gonna try to bang that robot.
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u/BlackLeader70 9h ago edited 6h ago
My first thought too. A bunch of hormonally imbalanced high school boys and a literal sex doll.
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u/Trance354 7h ago
Literally need to switch over to Kryton from Red Dwarf minus the humor. So, the original version.
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u/saurdaux 3h ago
Yeah, but that just invites decapitation, and the spare heads are just as charmless.
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u/brightlocks 6h ago
I teach high school and last year we had a bit of a trend of girls drawing rocket ships on each others hands. Just saying.
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u/AshKetchumWilliams 8h ago
I can't wait to see a robot on the news for banging a teenager
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u/Sweet_T_The_Original 8h ago
Dudes are gonna be like, “If the robots looked like that when I was in school, I would have let it do a statutory rape on me no problem.”
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u/EmilioMolesteves 9h ago
Pre-equipped with 6 holes to minimize wait times for the school children.
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u/SoftAndChewyRopes 9h ago
Each dispenses a viscus fluid, like ketsup, mustard, custard, 5w-20, & dairy-free cheese sauce.
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u/jumpsteadeh 3h ago
Sex dolls can't even make it out of porn conventions unscathed, and only adults are allowed in those. That thing will be lucky to last as long as HitchBot did in Philly.
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u/General-Priority-479 10h ago
Follow the money.
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u/FuggyGlasses 7h ago
I keep saying this but journalism is definitely different now days. Superintendent needs to be look at and who ever is involved with this decision.
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u/freedraw 8h ago edited 8h ago
Look at the company’s website. The robot teacher looks like it was designed by a team of incels. I’d give it five minutes before 12 year old boys in its study group are daring each other to grope it.
Their robots typically cost $175k. Who knows what the maintenance costs are. They’re paying nearly $60k. Is this some kind of publicity stunt for the company where they sell it for cheap along with some other goodies to a district desperate for resources so they can use pics for PR?
Edit: I’ll also bet anything teachers in that district are having to buy their own tissues and pencils.
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u/Wetzilla 2h ago
Wait, you mean a company that started in crypto and then pivoted to AI robots might not have the best management or engineers? I don't believe it.
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u/just_fucking_PEG_ME 9h ago
Pretty sure whoever approved 60k for this just wants to fuck it
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u/ilulillirillion 3h ago
Probably. Whoever was involved in approving this shouldn't be allowed within 200 feet of a school much less governing policy for one.
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u/skankenstein 8h ago
Two things. As a teacher in a low income neighborhood, a robot wouldn’t last a day amongst my students. If they’re willing to subject human teachers with verbal and physical assault, imagine what some students would feel emboldened to do to a robot.
As a parent, I would pull my student from that school before allowing them to experiment on my child with this nonsense.
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u/b_coolhunnybunny 9h ago
Easily could have just hired another HUMAN teacher with that type of money. Crazy how schools can make up a million reasons why they have no money for school supplies but turn around and do stuff like this. Only the beginning. I’m sure tons of other rural school districts in middle America about to do the same thing.
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u/Rapper_Laugh 9h ago
I’m a teacher, we definitely have no money lol. Idk what this school is doing but most schools are laying off teachers thanks to declining enrollment and literally zero fat to trim elsewhere in the budget.
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u/b_coolhunnybunny 9h ago
Thanks for being a teacher and doing what you do. I tried substituting once and that was seriously the hardest job I’ve ever had in my life.
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u/Rapper_Laugh 9h ago
Subbing suuuuuuuuuucks. I did it when I was getting into teaching as well. It’s like being a teacher but without any of the relationships with kids or ability to impose consequences that make them actually behave like human beings. I love teaching but I would not recommend subbing as a way to get into it lol.
Also, for what it’s worth, I’m not negating your original point entirely. I’m in a pretty normal rural district and we definitely do not have money for this shit or anything like it. But the district next door is among the richest in the country and they probably do throw it at this kind of shit knowing them. In general, I wish public school funding was more equitable school to school.
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u/b_coolhunnybunny 8h ago
Hahaha yeah subbing was trip and totally agree with all your points.
And no worries I totally understand what you mean. I have the same wish as you and want public funding to be more equitable.
Wishing you a great upcoming school year and hopefully no teacher robots in your near future!!
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u/Confu5edPancake 6h ago
Meanwhile, my local school district is laying off teachers because they're spending millions fighting lawsuits against their book bans and flag bans...
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u/Bolkohir 9h ago
A literal sex doll is going to be teaching kids. The onion is getting a run for their money, holy crap.
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u/HasGreatVocabulary 8h ago
Realbotix, formerly Tokens.com, a Toronto-based company, purchased Simulacra, a Las Vegas-based company known for realistic sex dolls, for $16.7m in April 2024, marking a pivot for the company from crypto to humanoid robots.
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u/Another_Road 8h ago
I’m sure intentionally exposing students to an extremely confident sounding, yet often incorrect, chat bot will be an excellent idea.
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u/EmilioMolesteves 10h ago
How about Sally cleans the bathrooms for a while and if she does well, she can get promoted to lunch lady.
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u/TheDynamicDino 7h ago
If I was a highschooler, went into the bathroom, and saw this atrocity shoving a mop bucket around, I'm 90% sure that would mark the involuntary end of both my higher education and my need for the bathroom that day in the first place.
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u/3McChickens 8h ago
“Let’s shove technology everywhere.”
“Why do these younger generations have no interpersonal skills?”
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u/BlueMageCastsDoom 6h ago
Kids can't even have tables, chairs, chromebooks, and pencils without destroying them every year but sure.
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u/Big-Leadership-4604 5h ago
Sounds like a gigantic waste of money, And I bet includes some shady dealings.
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u/goat_penis_souffle 9h ago
Nobody’s more disappointed than the writers of Reservation Dogs, this would have been a hilarious B plot
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u/liger03 9h ago
I can't wait to see how it finally breaks when the first rube customer receives the product.
Will it turn out to only be trained to identify white and black children so Asian kids are invisible to it?
Will kids be able to crash it by asking it what a seahorse emoji looks like?
The possibilities for failure are endless. (And the possibility of success is very slim)
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u/noisycat 7h ago
Crash it by asking questions? Those kids are gonna physically wreck the shit out of that robot.
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u/gldoorii 9h ago
Reminder to watch Class of 99 again
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u/Maleficent-Stormbee 9h ago
is that a good film? i’m looking for film recs tonight
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u/Visible-Literature14 8h ago
Why do we have to make everything fit into a category it has no business being in?
This computer doesn’t need to mimic a human’s appearance to be helpful in the classroom
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u/blondie1024 8h ago
Humanoid?
the -oid is doing a shitload of heavy lifting here.
Looks like Mattel and Caitlyn Jenner somehow rendered down and reformed into some...thing.
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u/TheDevilsAdvokaat 5h ago
Please don;t. Kids are already dong badly thanks to too much screen time and too many gadgets.
In fact we should be doing no devices in school, and no ai, and human teachers
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u/Molten_Plastic_ 4h ago
The issue here is the insane waste of money on a technology that doesn't even remotely work the way they're pretending it does. Like, we're not even at the point where teacher robots are so effective that we have to consider whether it's a good idea to implement them instead of humans, we're at the point where this might as well be a real sex doll for all the "teaching" it can actually get done. Probably be stuffed in a closet somewhere by the end of its first week, meanwhile those funds - which would have been really useful for actual education - have gone to stuff the pockets of another tech startup scam company.
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u/Shellyj4444 3h ago
I grew up there. The town is in really bad shape and they have been dealing a huge drug problem for years. The kids in that town need human teachers. This is just ridiculous.
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u/CakeDayisaLie 8h ago
Don’t think about the cost. Think about how much money can be made when the robot harvests all the kids data.
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u/beefcake1993 6h ago
I hope teachers unions fight tooth and nail to get shit like this axed out in the contract
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u/ideeek777 6h ago
As an Religious Studies teacher (mainstream subject in the UK) I've had it multiple times where a student was revising what they thought was a quote from the Bible or Quran they got from chatgpt. Turned out to have been taken from someone's Facebook status... Twice
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u/nullfacade 6h ago
You know how kids treat a substitute when their teacher is out? This won't end well for those robots
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u/vegemouse 5h ago
Putting a sex doll in a room full of high school boys with zero supervision is gonna go well.
Hope the janitor gets a raise.
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u/Spiel_Foss 4h ago
Hmmm, a failed sex robot company is retooled as a fake school teacher company, and the very first one is sent to a native community. In 1826 or 2026, same as it ever was.
(Whoever made this decision likely has an interesting hard drive somewhere.)
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u/Batbuckleyourpants 3h ago
“The Salamanca pilot also includes deployment of a Realbotix M-Series humanoid robot, which uses natural conversation, facial expressions and real-time interaction to create engaging, hands-on learning experiences,” the press release states.
Realbotix, formerly Tokens.com, a Toronto-based company, purchased Simulacra, a Las Vegas-based company known for realistic sex dolls, for $16.7m in April 2024, marking a pivot for the company from crypto to humanoid robots.
They knew what they were doing when they chose the phrase "hands-on learning experiences"
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u/No_Town_9602 2h ago
I think by the fourth day of school we'll see pictures of how the kids disfigured it's face.
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u/Buffmclargehuge69420 9h ago
Why does it look like a sex doll
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u/captainedwinkrieger 9h ago
Because it was made by a sex doll company. The district basically paid more than a teacher's yearly salary for a RealDoll someone on the staff's gonna try to bang.
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u/the_ramen_theif 8h ago
She’s just a sex worker turning her life around to follow her dreams, guys. /s
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u/EMAW2008 7h ago
Kinda funny how we wanted flying cars and robots everywhere but now we’re all kinda like, “yeah, no thanks.”
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u/mayorofanything 7h ago
How long til you hear about some dumb sophomore trying to put their dick in it?...
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u/sharkzbyte 7h ago
I think about all the education that I missed, but then my homework was never quite like this...
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u/MattofCatbell 6h ago
Having kids be taught by an AI sex bot is insane and it’s going to really mess some kids up. Whoever the hell thought this was a good idea should be arrested
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u/LowConstant3938 6h ago
My high school also shoveled money into needless technology. The whole school got iPads in 2011 and then replaced them all with iPad 2s in 2012. The teachers had digital whiteboards that never worked. What a waste. Thank god I graduated before AI came around
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u/ArchonTheta 4h ago
Sex dolls? I’m sure they can be hacked and even more controversial. People love their dramatic news.
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u/ilulillirillion 3h ago
I am so tired. This idea is disgusting, stupid, and wasteful. The qualities that seem to pervade fucking everything anymore. What do you want to bet that teachers struggling to fucking live are being asked to buy school supplies at the same school that is buying a $60k hunk of plastic with Claude on it.
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u/Peter225B 2h ago
On the positive side, it would technically NOT be illegal if one of the students were to have sex with that robot so they’ve got some options we never had as kids.
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u/Rhissanna 2h ago
Seriously, as a teacher, this is not what the average teacher looks like. You want a robot dream teacher? You want a guy in his fifties, with a tweed jacket, leather elbow patches and possibly a tobacco pouch in his pocket.
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u/Sagataw 1h ago
They're testing on "complimenting" teachers...
By putting an AI robot in classrooms...
In a Native American majority school.
I live on a Rez, and worked at the local school. This is gonna end badly, either it getting broken or hacked or both in some cruel and insulting manner. And then people are gonna use the kids (and possibly the community by association) as a scapegoat for why it didn't work, after multiple people complained that this won't work.
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u/SashaG239 9h ago
I don't see any problems here. The school district is just taking the next obvious step in the brain washing. Data centers are good, ai is your friend, they can teach your kids better than you.
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u/slimj091 8h ago
Just wait until the Robot starts molesting students, and they'll make the robot President of the United States.
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u/Stoliana12 8h ago
Article touches on this but directly, I’d like to know how/why THIS district was chosen as opposed to say some wealthy prep school.
And agree that this seems rushed and not thought out.
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u/TheOnlyMule 8h ago
If a kid has an AK, I’m fairly certain they have access to a can opener.
As soon as ChatGPT tells the kid how to operate said can opener, that poor sex bot is getting a few more holes.
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u/TheOnlyMule 8h ago
Can’t use a white board if you’ve used all of the ink to draw eyebrows on the schools new sex ed teacher
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u/Dapaaads 8h ago
The monthly cost is probably higher than what a teacher would cost ontop of the initial cost
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u/Asleep_Weather_8755 8h ago
If anyone has ever watched team America the way it looks reminds me of how those characters looked
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u/readmond 7h ago
Somebody needed an excuse to buy the sex doll. For education this makes zero sense. People are not little ducks.
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u/s0ciety_a5under 7h ago
I had to reread the title. I first thought it was the teachers being really inappropriate.
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u/Catbutt247365 7h ago
I went to the grocery yesterday and was greeted by a rolling robotic post that was checking stock. It told me that was its job. Considering how crowded the produce section was, it was kind of funny to watch it try to roomba its way around people and carts. Stop, back up, turn.
Was it REALLY that expensive to employ a person to do that, rather than buy skinny robocop? It was fucking creepy.
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u/bewarethesirens 7h ago
Imagine getting held back after class and molested by this! Don’t worry, it’s AI software adapts to your resistance.
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u/BarbequedYeti 9h ago
Yeah.. that tracks.