Zen Of Design

The design and business of gaming from the perspective of an experienced developer

Lum the Mad Pokes Head Up, Sees His Shadow, Chews Out Mark Kern

February 26, 2015 /

Scott has some kind words for Mark Kern.

My previous coverage of Mark Kern’s bizarre attempts to try to blame #gamergate on the gaming press despite all logic or evidence otherwise:  Here, here and here.

Gamergate

41 Comments

  1. A Person

    This appears to be a rant about how bitter Lum is that Kern is successful and respected while Lum is neither.

    And before you say “respected? Well he fucked up at Red 5!” let me point out that Lum has fucked up at basically every job he’s had and has been fired more times than anyone would reasonably assume is possible.

    He was also a raging Islamophobe last time I checked, but to be fair that was quite a while ago so maybe he’s changed.

    I have some kind words for Scott Jennings!
    —

    Oh, I’m sorry. Was I supposed to just nod my head and agree with another overstuffed white man who thinks he has some valuable insight? It’s funny how you guys don’t realize that bloviating white dudes with dull opinions are a dime a dozen and not the unique fonts of wisdom you think you are.

    • A Person

      Let me guess: it’s OK to claim that thoughtful pieces by women, which you fully admit to not having read, are fueled by jealousy because you know that women are just naturally jealous, but it’s not ok to claim that a piece by a man is fueled by jealousy, even when it explicitly brings up how angry the author is that his target of ire is considered successful and credited with being a key component of some of the biggest games in history.

      And furthermore: it’s ok for Lum to take a cheap shot at Kern’s career and not ok for me to do the same to Lum, because Lum is your white buddy and Kern is not.

      Let’s just get your most predictable and boring objections out of the way.

      • InnerPartisan

        I mostly only lurk in these here comments sections – but I finally wanted to thank you personally, dear Mr. Person.
        This parody of an over-the-top, hysterical, screeching GamerGator you perform is simply hillarious. Really, a brilliant piece of satire and performance art! You’ve provided me, and everyone else here, with many hours of entertainment.
        Please, keep it up!

        • A Person

          Eat any good books lately?

          I like that you went right for the gendered insults – apparently the worst you could come up with is to compare me to a woman or suggest that I might even be one. Surely a devastating blow in the mind of a sexist troglodyte.

          • John Henderson

            He said “hysterical”. At this point you are un-gendered, anonymous, nameless, cowardly, unmarked and worthless except for the occasional joy you provide strangers, all in the name of somehow making Damion change what he writes about on his own blog. In this case, it’s his linkage to someone else’s post that you’re impotently objecting to.

            Either you’re trying to get yourself banned or you’re a parody. Nothing else makes sense. Take the L and own it.

          • InnerPartisan

            Ha ha ha! That’s what I’m talking about! Good stuff man, keep it up!

          • InnerPartisan

            @John Henderson: Seriously! I mean, me calling him a parody was obviously just mockery – but “gendered insults”? The fuck?
            I think I might have been on to something, after all. Poe’s law is becoming more and more treacherous these days.

          • Tylor

            Mr. is feminine? Damnit, I’ve been using the wrong title for ages!

          • A Person

            Oh look, a forum full of white men who claim to be expert feminists don’t understand gendered insults.

            What a shock!

          • Trevel

            “Hysterical” , from “hystera”, meaning uterus, was specifically a female-only diagnosis of mental problems “caused by the uterus”. This went on for about two millennia, although the diagnosis stopped being uterus-specific for at least 100 years. (Compare: Hysterectomy)

            So, technically a gendered insult.

          • InnerPartisan

            @Trevel: I wasn’t aware of that. I knew that is was used for a bullshit catch-all “diagnosis” for, basically, uppity women, but I didn’t realize how much the world itself was tainted.
            Oh well. English isn’t my first language, if that wasn’t obvious 🙂

            BTW: My intention was, mostly, to mirror the usual behavior gators display – reals not feels, all that. One of their go-to “arguments” is to claim that all those dastardly “SJWs” are acting on emotion alone, always, and the they have none of the Logics and Reasons.
            Considering that Mr Person here is clearly holding a grudge the size of Jupiter, and sports a blood pressure so high his heart should be beating in ultrasound by now… I just wanted to rub it in a little, I must admit.

          • Dom

            @InnerPartisan The pseudo female only diagnosis is a bit archaic, the modern definition of hysteria is very close to tantrum.
            I use french as my primary language and I am an auspie so you may use as much salt as you deem necessary in my statements. I consider that hysteria can be a gendered insult if the writers makes it as such. If someone discussion can be considered sexist or misogynist, you can consider that hysteria is probably meant as gendered insult.

            In your post, there is absolutely nothing else that give any hint of misogyny, you even refer the object of your post as “mister”. Is it very clear that you snarky comment about a dude’s tantrums.

            You have been victim of a logical fallacy called equivocation, the same one used by creationists claiming evolution is just a theory. The annoying thing is that it preys on your willingness to admit that you may be wrong.

            http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Equivocation

          • Damion Schubert (Post author)

            This is my sense. Describing someone you call as ‘Mr’ as ‘hysterical’ is a stretch, at best to describe this as a gendered insult. On the flip side, if you describe a gaggle of feminists as ‘hysterical’, it could reasonably be considered as such. That being said, I would generally consider a feminist saying something like that to be being overly defensive about stuff.

            I don’t want to kick this puppy too hard, since I am aggressively censoring the person we’re talking about here, but one of the bizarre hallmarks of the #GamerGate movement en masse is a thin-skinned ease of being offended that normally they accuse SJWs of (something I will note that is not altogether unfounded!)

          • Trevel

            While I have no reason to think “hysterical” was used with the intention of being sexist — after all, I don’t believe we know the gender of the so-called person — the word still carries a bit of that gendered payload. Rather than saying “your ovaries are making you act erratically!” it becomes “you’re acting like a woman, which is clearly bad!”

            It is common in a number of cultures to insult men by comparing them to girls. I trust I don’t need to list examples. Something doesn’t stop being a gendered insult just because it’s not used on a woman; terminology based on the idea that men are good and women are bad is generally to be avoided.

            The point isn’t that I-honestly-don’t-remember-who-and-don’t-care-enough-to-check used “hysterical” and is therefore an evil person who must be shunned, the point is that they (presumably) unintentionally used a gendered insult and hopefully will try to avoid doing so again. That’s why the goal of most feminists I know is education, not revolution: we want people to *know* that certain words and phrases are insulting in ways they don’t mean, so that — assuming they’re good people — they will stop, or at least try to.

            In most cases, sexism is bad, not evil. It’s not an indictment of character to be told you did something sexist; rather, it’s a sign of maturity to be able to admit to it and grow.

          • Dom

            @Damion SchubertI have mentioned that earlier but I think the “thin-skin” of many GGers can be described as “Chewbacca Defense”, a technique that consist at being so crazy that nobody can reply anything, then claim you won because your opponents just give up.

            I think the claimed hyper-sensibility is simply a way to exploit the fact that most non assholes avoid being unnecessary callous. Claiming that you insulted somebody can make you fell guilty, apologize for non existent faults, be overly cautious, clarifying already clear points or just drop the conversation. In all case, the tread derailed.

            The other use seem to be about exploiting the common belief that if there is smoke, there is a fire. There has been attempts to paint you as a real misogynist bully. The claimed offenses are an attempt to construct this narrative in hopes that people believe the rumors are justified. The same phenomenon can be observed when GGers try to describe Dan Olsen as a distributor of CP, Anita Sarkeesian as a scam artist or the Zoe Quinn as a corrupt journalist. It doesn’t need to make sense, it just need to build a narrative. It also hurt the reputation of GG’s opponents and, hopefully, force them into silence where GGaters will impose their narrative.

            It also try send a message to those who oppose gaters :”Bother us and we will destroy your reputation, your career and your live”

      • Dom

        He don’t have the wits or gives any clues he is doing a parody. To me, he is just a very obnoxious hateful troll in a movement of very obnoxious hateful and sometime dangerous trolls, a harrasser among harasser. He is not a parody, he is the genuine article, not even that over the top relative to other gaters.

        Happy he amuses you. I usually just read those who respond to him, his comments have been a chore to read and more often than not, aggravating and incoherent. I am surprised his vicious attacks, like his 2 post you replied to and his venomous reply to you, didn’t cause Damion to play “whack a troll” with him.

        • InnerPartisan

          I was just mocking him. 😀

        • A Person

          The point of the OP was to attack Mark Kern. The use of “kind words” was to snarkily acknowledge that he was linking to an attack piece.

          Aren’t you just a pathetic typical bully who can dish it out but can’t take it? Answer: yes.

          Let me guess: it’s ok for you to attack people because – you’re a white man with a hugely inflated sense of your own relative worth.

          Because you’re male? You’re white? I’m an evil “GamerGater”, which you define as “anyone who criticizes me for any reason”? I’ve never used the GamerGate hashtag, I don’t read any GG forums and I’m not making GG points – the only thing I have in common with GG is that I’m making fun of Damion and some of them also do that. So do a lot of people – the guy is a professional asshole who wants to be the Perez Hilton of gaming.

          Damion is an insufferable bloviating pundit, an intellectual coward and lightweight, a serial fibber, a mansplainer, a man who encourages the abuse of women and then treats their complaints as trivial.

          These are not GamerGate talking points.

          • InnerPartisan

            “These are not GamerGate talking points.”

            The wrongness of this sentence is so immense, it collapsed in on itself, forming a supergiant black hole of wrongness. One that has swallowed its entire (wrong) parent galaxy; thus forming an accretion disc of pulverized wrongness, providing the black hole with a nigh-unending supply of fuel to shoot out in jets of ionized wrongness at relativistic speeds.

      • Scott Jennings

        I… don’t think I’ve *ever* been fired from a job. Thanks, though!

    • Unbound

      Wow. Out of that entire article, all you understood about it is that it is a rant? BTW, while you like to make out that you use logic, most of your arguments fail because they heavily leverage the logical fallacies of Appeal to Authority, Ad Hominem, Strawman (which is actually one the primary approaches of the pro-GG complaints), Tu Quoque and False Cause to name the ones that are easily pointed out. I think you’ve also used the Poison the Well, but, to be honest, much of what you’ve written on this site is so badly thought out (and full of those other logical fallacies) that I haven’t read it that closely after the first dozen or so attempts on your part.

      Back to the comment about the Bryan Fischer award. While claiming Damion has these traits, you have demonstrated quite clearly you are the one possessing the traits you laid out. Namely:

      1) Mistaken about basic factual matters – if that counts as a rant for you, you are seriously struggling with some basic concepts of how freedom of speech and blaming the messenger works.

      2) Starting rumors – isn’t that what you are doing here?

      3) Claiming zero tolerance regarding bullies – doesn’t apply to you fully as far as I know, but it does apply to you considering the “logic” you apply has no logic associated with it whatsoever (seriously, please take some basic philosophy classes before you claim to understand logic)

      4) Devotes life to attacking people online – well, that’s every post you’ve put up on this site so far.

      5) Reserves most vicious criticism for those he supposedly supports – you’ve attacked everyone that disagrees with you.

      So, yes, you most deservedly win the Bryan Fischer award. Your continued nonsensical attacks on anyone that doesn’t agree with you despite the most basic facts proves this.

      BTW, I’ve been an actual gamer probably longer than you’ve been alive. Most of the arguments I’ve read by you and others of your ilk are absolutely laughable in the face of history and the actual facts of what has transpired over the decades.

      • Dom

        I think his modus operandi can be sum up as Chewbacca Defense, an extreme form of Gish Gallop

        http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Chewbacca_Defense

      • John Henderson

        Yes, those are indeed logical fallacy types. You just listed a bunch without applying them to anything Lum said, but you’re putting the onus on Damion to answer them. Which ones go to which parts of the article, then?

        Did you miss that brokentoys has its own comment thread?

        • Trevel

          Think he was talking about A Person, not about Damion.

          • A Person

            John Henderson is not smart.

      • A Person

        “Wow. Out of that entire article, all you understood about it is that it is a rant?”

        Jesus fuck dude…learn to recognize a rhetorical device. Let me spell this out for you:

        I treated Lum’s post the same way that Damion treated Liana’s articles: I purposely mischaracterized, was unfairly reductive, and attributed it to petty motivations, in the exact same way that Damion did. BY DESIGN.

        The point of me doing that was so that people like you would stamp your feet and moan about how unfair and stupid what I wrote was, so that I could then point out that my analysis of Lum’s post was in the same vein of Damion’s “analysis.” Either that or you would realize what I was up to and stop and reflect a bit.

        As far as me starting rumors – Lum has lost his job a lot. Was he fired? I don’t know – probably not.

        I did say he was fired. Hmm…why would I do that? Let’s think about how I rephrased Damion’s criticism of Liana’s work and see if similar thinking applies here…hmmm…

        In one of Damion’s first posts on this stuff he find out that, gasp, Christina Hoff Sommers once worked at a job she no longer holds, then implies she was let go due to performance reasons. CHS then had to correct him on Twitter, the same way Lum predictably corrected me. Damion then accused Sommers of not being able to let it go because she had the gall to correct him (and thus embarrass him), and there’s nothing Damion hates more than a woman embarrassing him. He made up a rumor about her and when she defended herself against his rumor he spun that as her having a problem rather than him.

        “Which makes the fact that Sommers bio describes her as a former philosophy teacher even more hilarious. Who knows, maybe she didn’t leave that profession by choice. ”

        I’m not a passive-aggressive coward so I’m not going to do this weaselly “well who knows, maybe they were run out for being incompetent – just sayin’!” nonsense. Who knows, maybe Damion beats his wife. It’s a possibility!
        —

        You’re upset that someone you perceive as a “GamerGater” (which again, means nothing more than “person who criticizes me”) is attacking you with your own bankrupt logic. “This guy sounds like me – only I’m allowed to sound like that!”

        Only I’m allowed to make up rumors about people! Only I’m allowed to purposely mischaracterize other people’s writing. (Without even reading it!)

        ME ME ME ME ME ME ME.

        “BTW, I’ve been an actual gamer probably longer than you’ve been alive. Most of the arguments I’ve read by you and others of your ilk are absolutely laughable in the face of history and the actual facts of what has transpired over the decades.”

        Congratulations on being super old then. I’m not sure that has to do with anything – do you want some sort of award for being old and playing video games? Or are you suggesting that you’ve accumulated a ton of wisdom in your life by repeatedly slaying dragons in Adventure?

        I’d love to hear you elaborate on a single argument I’ve mad that is “laughable in the face of history.” Go on. Please quote a single specific argument of mine. Exact quotes, from me. Should be easy. (This is where you bow out and make some dumb excuse like “it’s not worth my time!”)

        If you’re old then you’re old enough to know better. Instead you have the mentality of a child. “Anything is ok when I do it because I’m me!” They say wisdom comes with age, not matur – oh wait, nobody says that!

        • Consumatopia

          “I treated Lum’s post the same way that Damion treated Liana’s articles: I purposely mischaracterized, was unfairly reductive, and attributed it to petty motivations, in the exact same way that Damion did. BY DESIGN.”

          This is awesome. But you should fully commit to this. You should tell us that you’ve been doing stuff like this in all of your posts, because that would explain a lot. I mean, it’s not like that post actually sticks out from the rest of your oeuvre.

          • A Person

            I do actually do it in a lot of posts, and quite frankly I phrase them in a way that I think makes it rather obvious. I mean, I literally just took what Damion said and plugged in a new name and some synonyms.

            I suspect you guys are so wrapped up in your us vs them holy war that even the slightest bit of subtlety is too much.

            You read something you disagree with and you immediately get the vapors about how I’m some GG person. And even though I don’t make GG arguments and have consistently said that GG is dumb you still wail and have fainting spells over the fact that I’m GG – because to you anyone who disagrees with you on anything is somehow GG – that’s how you preserve your world view. That’s how you avoid any level of introspection.

            GG is a collection of largely dumbfucks. So are you guys. The fact that you’re fighting against dumbfucks doesn’t make you not dumbfucks, it just makes you a slightly different breed of dumbfuck. And really not even that different, the defining characteristic of both gg and you anti-gg crusaders is extreme egocentrism and exceptionalism.

        • Damion Schubert (Post author)

          I treated Lum’s post the same way that Damion treated Liana’s articles: I purposely mischaracterized, was unfairly reductive, and attributed it to petty motivations, in the exact same way that Damion did. BY DESIGN.>

          It’s amusing to see you tack to what you see as an easy escape route. However, if you actually read Liana’s articles, or review her tweets about Anita (search for ‘prom queen’), you’ll realize that pettiness is a perfectly accurate description. You, on the other hand, are groping at straws because, frankly, verbosity does not mean that you are not really bad at this.

          The point of me doing that was so that people like you would stamp your feet and moan about how unfair and stupid what I wrote was, so that I could then point out that my analysis of Lum’s post was in the same vein of Damion’s “analysis.” Either that or you would realize what I was up to and stop and reflect a bit.

          Nope, because Scott’s post is, for the most part correct, and your post has no weight of actual evidence or rhetorical substance.

          As far as me starting rumors – Lum has lost his job a lot. Was he fired? I don’t know – probably not.

          Ethics! Let’s start rumors even though the answer is ‘probably’ the opposite of what evidence says!

          In one of Damion’s first posts on this stuff he find out that, gasp, Christina Hoff Sommers once worked at a job she no longer holds, then implies she was let go due to performance reasons

          It was a joke. However, for example, Sommers’ recent reports of rape statistics on campuses is no joke, and she should be roundly ridiculed and condemned for continually touting them and following them up with ‘men will be men’ responses. At any rate, I responded to Sommers’ criticism months ago, and heard back no response from her. Because it’s easy for her to ignore the fact that she’s actively being dishonest about the stats in order to earn the favor of various MRA-type organizations while still calling herself a ‘feminist’ (even if she had to invent a new version of feminism to even start the conversation).

          ——–

          I’ve hard numerous people ask me why I don’t censor your posts, because you are obviously a disruptive element to this community who is ruining attempts for honest dialogue between people who could be having an honest and open conversation about things, including numerous people who are pro-gamergate (or pro-things gamergate support). I haven’t yet, because (a) gamergaters tend to condemn ‘censorship’ and I felt I didn’t need the hassle and (b) because to be honest, the post of most gamergators who posted were so ridiculously malformed and beyond the pale that their mere existence showed how stupid, inflammatory, uninformed and irrational the movement actually was. Your posts were usually good examples to turn to. The people I would show them to did not need the handholding I’ve done in the last hour so, in order to show how malformed #gamergate’s arguments are. The people I showed were all game developers. Many of these posts were yours.

          There are just so MANY of them.

          At any rate, your recent spat of posting suggests that perhaps this run of logic has run its course. You clearly have little of substance to actually contribute to the discussion. As such, while I’ve been EXTREMELY LENIENT over the last week in terms of allowing comments (I’ve deleted exactly one), I’m going to get more aggressive . And yes, this includes overly enthusiastic anti-GG idiots as well as overly enthusiastic pro-GG idiots.

          • A Person

            “It was a joke.”

            No, you’re a joke. You do realize that at this point everyone with even a half-working brain has figured out that “it was a joke” is bullshit right?

            Say something racist. “It was a joke.” Say something ignorant. “It was a joke.” What’s the joke? What’s funny? What’s the punchline?

            Insinuating that someone was fired for performance reasons is a joke? Ha ha I was just kidding? Bullshit. You brought it up because you wanted to plant the idea in everyone’s mind that CHS was fired, but you were too weaselly to come out and say that.

            This is your MO – use snark, weasel words, insinuation, hyperbole, etc, to attack people while maintaining plausible deniability. Except that it’s not plausible – not to anyone who is wise to this sort of bullshit. Which is pretty much everyone at this point.

            What’s a joke is seriously throwing out the “it was a joke” defense. “I started a nasty rumor about a woman I don’t like – as a joke!” Wow, hilarious joke. Jerry Seinfeld, what are you doing pretending to be a bloated unfunny pasty white self-important blogger?

            That’s not insulting because it’s a joke – you probably aren’t actually Jerry Seinfeld.

          • Damion Schubert (Post author)

            When a philosophy professor puts forward an argument that has no actual coherent argument and that massively miscontrues both the debate and their opponent’s talking points, then I have no problem at mocking that philosophy professor. This was definitely true in this case. Did the joke have anything to do with her gender? It seems like you’re the one reading into things.

    • Damion Schubert (Post author)

      This appears to be a rant about how bitter Lum is that Kern is successful and respected while Lum is neither.

      This rant is clearly not about Scott and his own levels of success or failures, and is entirely about Kern’s recent forays into gatorland and/or the press’ coverage of said topic. Also, Scott is one of the most widely respected voices in the history of MMO design and commentary. Your statement is false.

      Lum has fucked up at basically every job he’s had and has been fired more times than anyone would reasonably assume is possible.

      Scott has, as far as I know of, never gotten fired. He has endured a company shutdown (maybe two), but these were clearly related to business activities outside of your control. Your statement is false.

      He was also a raging Islamophobe last time I checked, but to be fair that was quite a while ago so maybe he’s changed.

      You’ve provided no sources, and the topic is a pure ad hominem attack. The burden of proof rests on you, but as of now, the only way to rate this entire post of yours is pretty much entirely as petty falsified bullshit.

  2. Consumatopia

    I guess GG wants to revive the FCC Fairness Doctrine, bête noire of talk radio, and apply it to the Internet?

    That’s… interesting. It would certainly go way beyond net neutrality.

  3. Vetarnias

    All that I will say here is that if Lum is serious about tackling the toxicity of the Internet’s dark corners, he should begin with his own Broken Forum, which has encouraged a toxic atmosphere where anyone not agreeing with the loudest people found there in the appropriate manner is run out of town. Have a look at the Leper Colony (i.e. the banned users) and see all the “accounts closed by request”. By all means, have a look at those former users’ last posts; you’ll see it’s all been a war of attrition where they were abused off the forum, with Lum doing nothing to prevent it, even making one of those abusers a moderator of one section. In many cases, those who left were established users with hundreds of posts going back a few years.

    • Vetarnias

      Oh, and the rules, my God, the rules, which all but gave a blank check to the abusers: http://brokenforum.com/index.php?threads/the-jihad-is-over-new-rules-thread.5452/

      • John Henderson

        You should totally not use the Broken Forum. It’s broken.

        You should start your own forum! Moderate it however you like. Wonder at the majesty.

    • A Person

      “All that I will say here is that if Lum is serious about tackling the toxicity of the Internet’s dark corners, he should begin with his own Broken Forum”

      Of course he’s not interested in that. Like most pundits what Lum is concerned about is not that people on the internet are toxic, it’s that being toxic is a privilege he thinks should be reserved only for him.

      It’s a purely selfish approach. If there was one phrase that could be used to describe this whole gg / ant-gg shit-show it wold be this:

      “It’s ok when I do it.”

      That is the primary philosophy of most people involved. It’s ok to pile-on when I do it. It’s ok to . reply or retweet when I do it. It’s ok to harass, abuse and doxx when I do it. It’s ok to dismiss the concerns of women and minorities when I do it. Everything is ok when I do it because I’m me – a petulant self-centered brat.

      • Damion Schubert (Post author)

        Oh, geez. Having a forum where discussion is sarcastic and snarky, and where disruptive elements are escorted out – perhaps in a manner not to your satisfaction – isn’t ‘toxic’ or a ‘dark corner of the internet’, especially when you compare it to, say, 4chan, 8chan, many reddit forums, etc, etc, etc. It’s not the community for you? Fine. Who gives a fuck?

        As far as I know of, no doxes have been started by BrokenForum. No one has tried to organize a harassment campaign there, no one has tried to get a swat started, no one has successfully tried swapping kiddie porn, or tried to orchestrate getting someone fired. If someone tried these things, Scott would moderate the fuck out of existence (and he has done that when people have tried to elevate to that level before). There have been fights that have boiled up to require heavy moderation to step in and pick sides – this is called ‘normal’ in terms of Internet moderation.

        You are attempting to create false equivalency. And failing hard.

  4. Dan Coyle

    Could A Person and John Henderson please just fuck already? The suspense is killing me.

  5. JJ

    Mark Kern’s followup is even odder:

    “Leigh why won’t you let me speak on GamaSutra!”

    “Ugh… just sign up and hit ‘blog now’? That’s how GamaSutra works.”

    https://archive.today/hyjS2

    And then later, after days and days of #LetMarkSpeak…

    “Actually I’m not really interesting in talking. It’s just more words.”

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B-6aaFSWkAAB5Uy.png

  6. Jonathan

    I love latest GG canon idea they desesperately try to spread:
    “@Grummz is “neutral”.
    The fact that he just happens to agree with everything we say and believe is just another proof we were right all along!”

    It must be so comforting to live the life of a gater… Everything seems so…. simple.

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