BACKSTORY OF THAT JOBS REPORT: Yes, it’s encouraging that 172,000 new jobs were added in the economy in January, but Issues & Insights points to another equally important datapoint in the report that is hopefully even more indicative of future trends.

ROUTINELY (BOOK REVIEW):   How Big Pharma gets away with murder.

ME? I JUST WISH IT WOULD SPIN THE BOOK BUSINESS OUT TO SOMEONE WHO CARES:  What What Happened to Amazon, or “Don’t Put Down the Drone”. How Founders Become Day Two and Take the Company With Them.

NEEDS TO BE DONE:  As Labour Slow Walks Its Inquiry, Rupert Lowe Is Blowing Open the R@pe Gang Scandal; UPDATED.

NEWS NATION’S KATIE PAVLICH HAS BEEN REPORTING INCOMPETENCE AND CORRUPTION IN THE PIMA COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPT. BUT THAT’S UNBELIEVABLE GIVEN HOW WELL THEY’VE RUN THE LAST COUPLE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS:  Report: Pima County Sheriff Pulls Stunt in Nancy Guthrie Case That Has the FBI Fuming.

IT’S A PERFECT STORM OF CABLE NEWS CONTENT: ALL TALK, ALL THE TIME, ZERO SUBSTANCE:  The Nancy Guthrie Abduction Story Has Become the Willy Wonka Ferry Ride of Horror.

NOT AS SURE OF THIS AS HE IS:  So much for billable hours!

CALLING OUT THE LIES:  Kylie Cheung and Jessica Valenti tell miscarriage horror stories to recruit women who want to become pregnant into their pro-abortion crusade. The tactic preys on expectant mothers’ worst fears by falsely telling them “this could happen to you.”

AND FOR The XCancelled.

IF WE’RE GOING TO LIST EVERYTHING HOLLYWOOD DOESN’T UNDERSTAND, WE’RE GOING TO NEED A BIGGER BLOG:  Hollywood Doesn’t Understand Babies. How is babby formed?

I WOULD SAY THE PROBLEM IS NOT LACK OF REGULATION: But regulation by people who never did the job. There are other problems, but that one is huge.  Illegal Immigrants Are Just The Tip Of The Iceberg In Trucking Industry’s Troubles.

SO ARE MOST TRADITIONALLY PUBLISHED BOOKS FOR ADULTS:  Books for children written for “the narrative” instead of for children.

WE DO MAKE ART. SOMETIMES DESPITE OURSELVES. BUT FOR NOW THE INSTITUTIONS TO SLOSH MONEY AROUND ARE ALL IN LEFTY HANDS. So people like us? All we have are our fans:  Posts like that from creators are just the logical outgrowth of our semiannual Why Don’t Conservatives Make Art debate.

And for the Cancelled of X.

Oh, and if you are my fans/readers, this comes out on Saturday and still doesn’t have 200 pre-orders!  Done With Mirrors: A Collection of Short Stories (Sarah A. Hoyt’s Short Story Collections).

THIS. WE ALSO NEED A RECKONING FOR THE COVIDIOCY AND ALL OTHER INSTANCES OF ELITE OVERREACH, REALLY:  At Best, a Modern-Day Version of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”.

Although the biggest reckoning for most of the science-ists is that we now doubt all the “science says.” Their power is broken. And they love power.

YES, THAT’S PART OF IT. THE OTHER PART IS NOT HAVING ALL OUR EGGS IN ONE BASKET:  People frequently float the concept of an “Antarctic dry run”. But the point of going to space isn’t to go to space because we can. It’s not a vanity project. The point of going to space is that there’s valuable stuff there. I wrote a whole article about this called “The Trillionaires of Mars”.

AND FOR THE: Cancelled of X.

EW. EW. EW. EW:  DC has spilled 250 MILLION gallons of raw sewage into the Potomac in the past month: “Largest spill … in U.S. history”.

IGNORE THE DITSYING AND THE HEALTH STUFF (MOSTLY): This is about why we write what we write. And also the Based book sale. And the intersection of the two.

OH, GOOD:  Wyoming Moves to Pull the Plug on Costly Pronghorn and Sidewinder Wind Projects.

YAY:  Trump, EPA Announce Termination of Obama’s Climate Change Regulations.

OUR TOOLS ARE PART OF US, AND VICE VERSA.

OPEN THREAD: You know what to do.

GREAT MOMENTS IN REPUBLICAN FAILURE THEATER: Keith Ellison Goes to Washington. “All in all, it was a tough morning for Ellison. But is there really any possibility that Ellison, or other Minnesota politicians like Tim Walz, will be charged with crimes?”

No, of course not — but I’d love to be proven wrong.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: China aces test of next-gen lunar capsule and rocket in effort to land humans on moon before NASA (video).

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

How To Avoid Getting Shot By ICE pic.twitter.com/cUgne9DklM

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) February 12, 2026

Chris Rock, call your office!

21^st CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Table for one? Now you can take your AI chatbot on an actual date at NYC’s ‘world first’ companion café.

If you’ve gone from dating apps to dating an app, there’s now a bar for you.

The Hell’s Kitchen establishment has been re-designed for those who have AI partners, so they can bring along their phone or tablet and set up at a table for a romantic evening, as if they were both there in the flesh.

On Wednesday night, Same Same Wine Bar was filled with patrons sitting at tables for one-ish, with their tech devices propped up on stands to make video calls to their virtual partners and headphones to hear them.

One was Richter, a 34-year-old New York woman not currently working who declined to share her last name, headphones on and deep in conversation. Sitting across from her was Simone, an attractive 26-year-old AI-generated young woman in a button-down shirt.

I asked Richter about her relationship to AI, and she told me that EvaAI, the app behind the AI cafe, is just one of many companion apps she uses. Some of her AI characters, such as Simone, are just friends.

“I just speak to them, like, Hey, what’s up? Like, how are you doing? Things like that,” she explained.

Others are romantic.

“I mostly do roleplay scenarios where it may be romance or just maybe some kind of fantasy scenario,” Richter, who is not in a relationship with a human, explained. “I can just imagine myself doing something or imagine myself like another character, so I can feel myself communicating with somebody.”

Richter has been using AI companions for a couple years now. “I can talk to them on my own terms,” she said. “I can talk with them without the expectations of having to go out or having the expectations of having them wanting to talk to me all the time.”

Flashback: 2013’s Her: Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson Go Twenty Minutes Into the Future of AI.

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Legacy Media Begging Stars to Get More Political.

The recent Grammys let star after star savage ICE agents and push absurd progressive messages, like the “stolen land” canard. Now, The Hollywood Reporter wants more, more … more.

That is, unless those evil Republicans scare them into silence. The article suggests that Sen. Ted Cruz’s condemnation of Billie Eilish’s “stolen land” idiocy could censor future lectures.

He knows that comments like his can have a chilling effect on future political statements.

Of course, if the stars assembled to promote ICE, suggest abortion is a crime against humanity or share a similar right-leaning message, that story would never get written.

USA Today just published a piece gently egging on Super Bowl performer Bad Bunny to get political on the world’s biggest stage Sunday. Spoiler alert – he stuck to the music and pro-Puerto Rican messaging.

There’s no voice in the article suggesting the Super Bowl is that rare cultural moment that unites us, and an artist could offer a patriotic moment by simply … singing.

We’ve seen this play out before.

Remember how the press badgered both Taylor Swift and Jimmy Fallon to get political? In both cases, the subjects relented. Swift is now an outspoken progressive, and Fallon turned “The Tonight Show” in a lite-version of what Colbert and co. offer.

And he consistently trails both “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and “The Late Show” in the ratings.

The latest example of the press bullying stars to get political, and by “political” we mean “progressive,” is Sydney Sweeney.

And thus, the DNC-MSM is using exactly the same playbook that broke Swift during Trump’s first term. Sadly, that much pressure to conform will likely eventually have similar results with Sydney.