three laws lethal by David Walton

Great premise, setting, beginning and story-telling, cardboard characters; the end was weak, cramming too much action into too few pages. 2/5 Stars.  Disappointed.

Zukunfts-Chroniken La Mancha von Hoerspielproject Deutschland

Interessante Ideen über kryogenen Schlaf und Gesellschaft, aber keine großartige Produktion. 2/5 Sterne.

Let the Ants Try by Frederik Pohl

interesting concept, not a great story, 2/5 stars.

The Midas Plague by Frederik Pohl

Really good, holds up extremely well! 4/5 stars.

practical, useful AI in everyday use

At the exact time and place this information appeared in my gmail, I needed it most and acted upon it.   When AI knows us better than we know ourselves, subtle changes will radically affect our lives and we won't notice.

How To . . . by Randall Munroe

Fantastic!  Randall's writing is improving.  The percentage of silly ideas I find appealing increased in this book compared to the last one.  .  I may buy copies as gifts for nieces, nephews, other kids again, as I did with Thing Explainer a few years ago.  4/5 Stars.

Dark Space Invisible War by Jasper T Scott

Terrible, 0/5 stars.  I put it down and did not finish.

The Empire Duet book 2, Hidden Empire by Orson Scott Card

Great continuation of the story and fantastic drama, 5/5 stars.

The Empire Duet 1, Empire by Orson Scott Card

A little dated but great writing and characters. 4/5 stars.

interesting take on the national basketball association's imbroglio with the Chinese government

The story of immediate outrage from Chinese basketball fans over the Houston Rockets basketball team General Manager Morey's tweet suffers from the inconvenient truth that Twitter is banned in China.  Hmm.

And Ben Thompson's article gets better.  

Chinese companies like Baidu, Tencent (WeChat, etc.)  Alibaba, et. al. are, of course, allowed into the U.S. while U.S. companies remain locked out of China. Chinese attacks on U.S. tech companies are allowed, encouraged, and augmented by China's censors.  The attacks are assisted by the Chinese military and by the "Great Firewall."

But Ben tells us much more.

Xi Jinping and the Communist Party does not hesitate to use state power to tell the Chinese people how they should think. Displays of patriotism, especially from young people, shows that the party's propaganda machine has mastered the power of symbol and symbolism in the mass media and social media. While imposing very tight censorship, the Communist Party has also learned to force the most popular artists and the most experienced internet companies to help Xi Jinping instill Chinese with patriotic zeal. All Chinese "influencers" are part of the propaganda machine, enforcing "correct" thoughts.

China Central Television (CCTV) wrote, "we oppose [NBA commissioner] Silver's claim to support [Houston General Manager] Morey's right of free expression. We believe that any speech that challenges national sovereignty and social stability is not within the scope of freedom of speech," Think about that a few seconds.  What does "freedom" mean?

And, of course, TikTok, the popular Chinese-owned social network, instructs its moderators to censor videos that mention Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence, Hong Kong protests, or the banned religious group Falun Gong, as one might expect.

So the question is:  will more companies, like Silver and the NBA give up all the money and stand by their values?  Or will they sell out and impose Chinese censorship?  I think it depends.  Microsoft and eBay will sell out for sure.  We already have.  Will Amazon?  Walmart?  It's hard to say.

Read Ben Thompson's entire analysis.