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The Independent Variable

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đź«  Ai Weiwei on China, the West and shrinking space for dissent

Reuters

In China, censorship relates to red lines. You cannot cross some red lines. It’s about state policy and discussions (about) state power. It’s also related to what they would call minority or religious issues, which can be very sensitive, so people would not touch those topics. If touched, it could cause you different levels of damage. But in the West, especially now, you also see censorship everywhere— not necessarily just from the state but from companies, from institutions, from schools or museums.

Anything by or about Ai Weiwei (艾未未) is worth a read. He’s dynamic and

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🇭🇰 Jimmy Lai: Hong Kong pro-democracy tycoon gets 20 years' jail under national security law

BBC

Meanwhile, in China…

This isn’t a “count your blessings” moment. It’s a preview.

Fun FAKE NEWS Fact: During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln curbed freedom of speech by suspending habeaus corpus.

🇭🇰 Jimmy Lai: Hong Kong pro-democracy tycoon gets 20 years' jail under national security law Read more

🤖 As AI enters the operating room, reports arise of botched surgeries and misidentified body parts

Reuters

The device had already been on the market for about three years. Until then, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had received unconfirmed reports of seven instances in which the device malfunctioned and another report of a patient injury. Since AI was added to the device, the FDA has received unconfirmed reports of at least 100 malfunctions and adverse events.

Medical devices, including those used in surgeries and critical monitoring should never have AI because we know AI hallucinates and will always make avoidable mistakes. It may be useful for research and diagnosis (or secondary monitoring) where a

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🤖 From Chatbots to Dice Rolls: Researchers Use D&D to Test AI’s Long-term Decision-making Abilities

UCSD

Of course they’re using bots to play D&D. Who wants to have fun with their own imagination? We’re only on this rock to track metrics, increase productivity, and shape our blobby flesh into copyrighted bionic cogs.

Key phrase in the article: “The simulations focused on combat: players battling monsters as part of their D&D campaign.”

So, you just made a “Diablo” simulator?

Why not just scrape “Tomb of Horrors” and call it a day? Or, better yet, base an entire campaign on that “Sacred Geometry” feat from Pathfinder.

Dollars to princess doughnuts, whoever

🤖 From Chatbots to Dice Rolls: Researchers Use D&D to Test AI’s Long-term Decision-making Abilities Read more

Week 06—2026

Week 06—2026

When you're reading this, you may already know what has happened at the Super Bowl on Sunday. Hopefully, the Patriots lose and ICE doesn't do anything idiotic like try to detain Bad Bunny—or anyone at the game... but they are just crazy enough to try some stupid shit like that...

February's LLoN went out right on time on the first—although we will probably shift to the first Saturday of every month moving forward. It's a depressing one, but an important one.

February 2026
Here is the Little Letter of Nonsense for February! Available to paid subscribers as a
Week 06—2026 Read more