21st 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.

CHRIS QUEEN: The Most Wonderful Time of the Year: College Baseball Returns. “College baseball is a sleeper sport in the South,” I wrote in my book Neon Crosses. “You don’t see the rabid following that you do for football and basketball, but college baseball fans have a passion that’s different — I know because I’m one of them.”

NOW THAT’S A BIG BUST:

ANGSTY JOURNALISTS SAID THE WAPO SPORTS SECTION WAS INDISPENSABLE. THE EVIDENCE SUGGESTS OTHERWISE:

ESPN reporter Jenna Laine wrote that the layoffs were “so troubling” because they signaled that “the appetite for real sports reporting has died” as the industry continued “its slow, inevitable burn.” New York Times reporter Ben Mullin wrote a eulogy for “one of the last bastions of great sports writing.” More importantly, he explained, the Post was a “champion of diversity” and a “leader in women’s sports coverage.”

A Washington Free Beacon analysis of the Post‘s sports-related output in recent weeks did not find sufficient evidence to support these claims of journalistic greatness. Amid numerous offerings of gambling advice, the Post also published eight feature-length articles since Jan. 29 that—while technically sports-related—few normal American sports fans would describe as engaging content that must be published even if it means losing $100 million per year.

Read the whole thing.

JOHN NOLTE: Rigged Immigration Report Proves Bari Weiss Is Lying About CBS News Reforms.

On Monday, far-left CBS News released anti-ICE/pro-Democrat Party talking points that prove that, despite her promises, CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss has no intention of reforming the disgraced CBS News.

In fact, Bari Weiss is lying about reforming CBS News in the hopes of suckering Normal People to once again trust, watch, and deliver clicks to this joke of a news outlet.

In previous articles I mentioned that if CBS was to truly reform we would see the reforms when and where they matter, not as window dressing, like asking far-left 60 Minutes for a little extra reporting on an anti-Trump segment.

No, a truly reformed member of the corporate media will openly defy and even shoot down the current media narrative. For example, a reformed CBS News would have questioned Anthony Fauci’s stupid COVID rules; a reformed CBS News would’ve dug into whether or not Kamala Harris really worked at McDonald’s; a reformed CBS News would’ve lambasted a health institution that said going to the beach will kill millions but rioting for George Floyd is healthy… Those are just past examples. Bari Weiss was not running CBS News then. Well, she is now, and rather than use the truth to puncture the prevailing (and dishonest) anti-ICE narrative, she’s using lies of omission to aid and abet this fraud.

Not impressive, to say the very least.

But there’s also this: CBS Evening News Producer Reportedly Quits in Fiery Note — Calls Out ‘Shifting Set of Ideological Expectations’ at Bari Weiss-Led Outlet.

Weiss had — still might have? I dunno — a chance to drag CBS News closer to the center, albeit kicking and screaming. But aside from a couple of cosmetic changes, we have yet to see much.

HAVING A PHOTO ID TO VOTE — IT’S SO SIMPLE, EVEN A CONGRESSMAN CAN DO IT:

Why do Democrats want to allow Trump and MAGA to cheat at election time?