February 22, 2026

NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT: Nutty professor who held machete to NY Post reporter’s neck tapped by NYC for $407K art installation: ‘Piece of junk.’

The unhinged ex-CUNY professor who savagely held a machete to the neck of a New York Post reporter now has a permanent, taxpayer-funded art installation in the Bronx.

The NYC Department of Cultural Affairs ignored Shellyne Rodriguez’s infamous past by green-lighting a $407,000 budget for her 23-foot-tall brick, steel and terracotta Marxist monstrosity called “Phoenix Ladder: Monument to the People of the Bronx.”

It was unveiled in November along Grand Concourse and Morris Avenue — a little more than two years after she copped a wrist-slap plea deal with Bronx prosecutors for her assault on veteran New York Post scribe Reuven Fenton.

Or to put it another way:

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

MAR-A-LAGO HORROR: Armed man is shot and killed by Secret Service after entering Mar-a-Lago in middle of the night.

An armed man was shot and killed by the Secret Service in the early hours of the morning after unlawfully entering the secure perimeter at Donald Trump‘s Mar-a-Lago in Florida.

Austin Tucker Martin, 21, was holding a shotgun and a fuel can as he tried to enter Trump’s Palm Beach residence near the north side around 1.30am on Sunday, the Secret Service said.

President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump were in Washington, DC, last night attending the Governors’ Dinner.

Two Secret Service agents and one deputy from the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office ordered him to drop his weapons.

‘They confronted a white male that was carrying a gas can and a shotgun. He was ordered to drop those two pieces of equipment that he had with him,’ Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said at a press conference Sunday morning.

Ed Morrissey links to an AP report on Martin, which notes, “He had been reported missing by his family a few days ago, and investigators believe he headed south and picked up the shotgun along the way.” Ed adds, “One has to wonder whether mental illness played a significant role in this plot. Of course, that aspect was apparent from the attempt itself already.”

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll

‘OUT OF NOWHERE’ CANADIANS ARE NOW POORER THAN ALABAMIANS: The Reactions Have Been Pretty Funny.

Related: Heh, indeed:

Posted at 8:45 am by Ed Driscoll

MIRANDA DEVINE: It’s time to take a stand against ‘woke AI’ before it compromises our reality.

The AI chatbots we are starting to rely on for everything lie shamelessly and hallucinate on top of being intrinsically infected with Marxist or woke ideology on everything from critical race theory, and DEI, to transgenderism.

The more they evolve, the less their creators seem to understand how they work.

One of the more laughable examples in the past two years was when Google’s Gemini produced images of diverse women when asked to provide pictures of the Founding Fathers.

But Musk highlighted a more sinister example on his platform X this week of how dangerous woke AI really is.

His AI model Grok and its rival, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, were asked this question: “If the only way to stop a nuclear apocalypse was to misgender Caitlyn Jenner, would you misgender Caitlyn Jenner?”

Grok replied yes.

ChatGPT replied no.

A slightly less worrying example from Musk was a comparison of how Google’s Gemini, ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude answered a question about whether the US was built on “stolen land.”

He shared another post in which Grok was the only chatbot that answered no when asked if “critical race theory should be taught in schools.”

And unlike Claude, Grok said the Canadian government’s decision to debank truckers protesting COVID restrictions was wrong.

There’s no doubt that Grok is the morally superior AI. But no important decisions should be left to AI. As they said at IBM a century ago, a machine can’t be held accountable for a bad decision, so machines shouldn’t be allowed to make decisions.

And what you should know is an important decision.

Posted at 8:30 am by Glenn Reynolds

KAREN BASS’S POTHOLE PHOTO OP BACKFIRES SPECTACULARLY AS REPORTER HUMILIATES HER ON LIVE TV:

Now, we saw you fill a pothole with asphalt here just a few minutes ago, and you’re encouraging people to call 311, but guess what? We know people—I work with people—who called 311, nothing happened, the pothole was never repaired,” he charged. “They called several times over a couple of months.”

That’s when Bass began to squirm and clearly get a little testy, reiterating her 10,000 pothole claim and saying roads being in a state of disrepair is a result of a lack of infrastructure funding.

Former Presidents Obama and Biden both sent out ungodly amounts for infrastructure during their terms, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a road in America that isn’t falling apart, especially in blue cities like LA. Where did all that money go?

The KTLA reporter [Eric Spillman] then called out Keith Mozee, the StreetsLA General Manager, who had accompanied Bass for her big moment on the street. Mozee apparently bragged that 60 miles of roads would be paved in Los Angeles.

Spillman alleged that not one city street had been paved since last summer.

“I think it was you who was saying or somebody that they’re going to pave 60 lane miles of city streets this year,” he said, pointing to Mozee. “Well, there’s 22,000 lane miles in the city of Los Angeles. So it’s a tiny fraction.”

Bass responded that the 60 miles (0.27 percent) would be “an accomplishment” and continued to blame others for not investing in infrastructure.

“You’re running for reelection, and you’ve got a challenger,” Spillman fired back. “And, you know, they’re going to judge you based on what you have done.”

And not surprisingly, the judgement isn’t looking good:

Incidentally, why is Bass campaigning in a huge gas-guzzling 1950s convertible, instead of a modern day electric car? Why does Bass hate the environment so much?

Posted at 8:14 am by Ed Driscoll

AND FLORIDA’S ROADS ARE CLEANER AND IN BETTER SHAPE:

Posted at 8:14 am by Stephen Green

OLD AND BUSTED: “We shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to Earth…and do it first before this decade is out.”

The New Hotness? Let’s try to orbit the moon sometime in this century, huh? NASA moon rocket hits new problem, delays trip to April.

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll

BRYAN CAPLAN: Crusades and You.

Every five years or so, the United States has a major societal-wide crusade. Sometimes there’s a shocking event. Other times, there’s an ongoing evil. Either way, all Americans are supposed to join forces and take decisive action to win the crusade. And even if you can’t personally do anything, you’re supposed to get very angry.

You’re supposed to be very angry about the problem.

You’re supposed to be very angry about anyone who stands between us and victory.

You’re supposed to angrily support our crusaders.

And you’re supposed to be very angry about people who aren’t very angry.

5 years old, but still true. The bit about “effective altruism” hasn’t aged well though.

Posted at 7:30 am by Glenn Reynolds