- Tajikistan’s repression of independent and critical voices continued in 2023, with hundreds of nongovernmental organizations forced to close, scores of bloggers detained for their opinions on the government’s policies, and religious organizations banned or circumscribed. Several political movements and parties seen as a threat to the government remained banned, including the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) and Group 24, with some members of both serving lengthy prison terms or subject to forced returns from abroad.
- Cube (allthetropes.org)
Cube is a Canadian science fiction/horror film series. The three movies are each based on the same premise; there is a gigantic, mechanical, cube-shaped structure (the purpose and origin of which is almost completely unknown) that is made up of lots of smaller cube-shaped rooms. Each of these rooms has 6 doors, one on each wall and one on the ceiling and one on the floor, which lead into adjacent, identical rooms, only differing by color. Some of these rooms are safe, while others are equipped with booby traps such as flamethrowers and razorwire which kill a person who enters the room (in some cases it is possible to detect a trap by throwing a boot into the room first, except in Cube 2: Hypercube where the traps are less distinct - in the form of an abstract shape and visual effects - and less predictable).