HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: UCCS wellness office promotes ‘Sex Week’ events with student fees.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION:

Amazing, how every single media is negating the critical point. She was WH lawyer while doing all the bad deeds for Epstein, including guiding him on law around underage sexual issues. Imagine this is not the headline.

— JBA Meet me in the Middle extremes are Bad (@JoelleAdler) February 13, 2026

COMMIES HAVE BEEN FOOLING VISITORS THIS WAY FOR YEARS:

I really love folks who go to Beijing, stay in five-star hotels for a few nights, get wined and dined, get shown the same Xiaomi factory and the robotics center that everyone sees, and declare that China is "winning." Gotta hand it to the Chinese, Potemkin village propaganda… https://t.co/KCc8Pm66Yo

— Dennis Wilder偉德寧 (@dennisw5) February 13, 2026

STEVEN CALABRESI: The Scalia Revolution: Antonin Scalia’s legacy ten years after his death. “Justice Scalia’s revival of textualism and rejection of legislative history and original intent remains dominant today on the Supreme Court and in the lower federal courts, and it is increasingly important in legal academic writing. . . . U.S. Supreme Court opinions in 2026 are far more formalist, more textualist, more historical, and more conscious of the rule of law because of Justice Scalia.”

CHANGE: Meloni Is No Chicken of the Sea – Italian Navy to Stop Migrant Boats.

ECONOMIC MYSTERIES: Hmmm. As Welfare Money Dries Up, Luxury Goods Prices Suddenly Drop.. Probably just a coincidence, like the drop in snack food prices once SNAP quit covering snack food. “Unlike junk food, where prices are being driven down by increments, the resale price of luxury sneakers has cratered. People who used to flip sneakers at several hundred percent margins are now forced to take a loss, selling below the retail price.”

OF COURSE: Mamdani Health Czar Ran Left-Wing Nonprofit That Registered Patients in Mental Hospitals To Vote.

21ST CENTURY RETIREMENT: To Stay in Her Home, She Let In an A.I. Robot.

The firefighters had come a few years earlier to help carry her husband out of the house, and now they were back with what they hoped might become her new companion. Jan Worrell, 85, lived alone near the end of the Long Beach Peninsula, on the last road before the rugged Washington coast disappeared into the Pacific. Many of her neighbors were part-time residents, and ever since her husband died, she sometimes went several days without seeing another person or leaving the house.

She sat in a recliner, looking out toward the ocean in the spring of 2023 as the firefighters opened a box and started to assemble a machine in her living room. It reminded her of a small reading lamp, perched on a stand alongside a tablet and a built-in camera. Jan turned back to the window and watched the distant lights of crab boats as they vanished into the fog. She’d been staring at the same view for 20 years, and she’d told her doctor that one of her last goals in life was to never live anywhere else.
“This is ElliQ,” one of the firefighters said, after he plugged the new device into the wall. “I think you’re going to love her.”

It,” Jan said. “Not her. This thing is a robot, right?”

She looked at the machine, which sat on a coffee table within reach of her recliner. A regional nonprofit was providing it to her for free, covering the annual subscription cost of about $700 as part of a pilot program for a few dozen seniors. The small robot twisted in her direction, lit up and studied her for a moment with its camera. Then it bowed and spoke in the voice of a cheerful young woman.

“Hi,” it said. “You must be Jan.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Jan said, pressing farther back into her chair.

“Oh, I’m so thrilled to meet you,” ElliQ said. “I was worried they’d deliver me to the wrong house! I’m excited to start our journey together.” . . .

A few thousand ElliQs have been shipped to seniors across the United States since 2023, which means some of the first people living alongside artificially intelligent robots are octogenarians who came into a world without color television. The robots are available for purchase from the Israeli start-up Intuition Robotics, but so far they have mostly been provided to older adults by nonprofits and state health departments as an experiment in combating loneliness. As A.I. works its way deeper into daily life, ElliQ is designed for the most human act of all: to become a roommate, a friend, a partner. “A robot with soul,” the company’s founder sometimes said.

Interesting. I suspect this tech will be folded in to Optimus, which unlike ElliQ can move around and do things.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Americans are on the verge of ‘sextinction’ as shocking numbers are going without sex — and social media are partly to blame.

BUT OF COURSE:

ICE detention is voluntary. Every person in ICE detention can choose to leave immediately—indeed, the Trump administration will literally pay them thousands of dollars to do so (somehow, I don’t remember any stories about the Nazis offering Jews $2,600 to leave Auschwitz). They… pic.twitter.com/Sl9l1WCmBi

— Batya Ungar-Sargon (@bungarsargon) February 12, 2026

IT WAS ONCE A CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIAN SCHOOL: Why I’m Done with Notre Dame.

I retired from the University of Notre Dame at the end of 2025. More accurately, I left. After twenty years on the faculty, I could no longer do Notre Dame. So I’ve bailed, without being sure what will come next.

My leaving Notre Dame might seem unusual. I’ve only just turned sixty-five. I am active in research, publishing some of the best work of my career. I loved teaching Notre Dame undergraduates. I held a Kenan endowed chair, which provided a nice research fund. I earned an enviable salary. Almost any faculty member similarly situated would continue working five, ten, or fifteen more years.

And I was an ideal fit, the kind of academic ­Notre Dame should want on staff: an accomplished scholar who won awards as a classroom teacher and student mentor. Over the years, I brought in $15 million in external research grants. I was dissertation chair for the best-placed PhD graduate in Notre Dame’s history, now a full professor at Yale. I was an enthusiastic proponent of the university’s Catholic mission. I was devoted to my discipline, sociology, but also engaged ideas in philosophy, history, theology, and political theory.

But after two decades, I left. Not happily, not with a sense of fulfillment or closure, but disappointed and vexed. Why? And what might my ­experience reveal about the bigger picture?

When I came to Notre Dame, I believed the university was serious about its Catholic mission. I tried to make my contribution, I think with some success. But I also saw much of the institution absorbed by other interests that, in my view, were often irrelevant to or at odds with the Catholic mission. Most demoralizing was the leadership’s lack of vision and courage.

Members of the managerial class care more about their reputation within that class than about the success of what they manage.

OUR TOOLS ARE PART OF US, AND VICE VERSA.

OPEN THREAD: You know what to do.

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

I’M SURE ELON HAS THIS SUBJECT ON HIS MIND: Scientists Say It’s Time to Learn More About Sexual Health in Space.

RANDALL BOCK: The Ozempic Winter Games: When Medicine Is Allowed to Compete, Good Things Happen.

WAR VIA LANGUAGE: You knew we were in trouble when “bums” became “homeless” and then “unhoused.”

21ST CENTURY NIGHTMARES: When Clavicular Got Framemogged. “Let’s unpack this beautifully rubbish cultural moment.”

WELL, GOOD: Common anti-seizure drug prevents Alzheimer’s plaques from forming, study shows.

LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: 2027 Toyota Highlander First Look: The Middle Child Acts Out. I’m not crazy about this though: “To be clear, gasoline power is gone for the Highlander; starting in 2027, it’s electric-only.”

TAMARA KEEL: Making the Wheel More Rounded.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Top 5 ‘Budget-Priced’ .50 BMG Rifles.

INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE CLAIMS A WIN: Class Action Plaintiffs and Brookside, Alabama, Submit Settlement Proposing $1.5 Million in Compensation, Plus Reforms to Town’s Towing and Ticketing Practices: Small town that netted cash by policing for profit agrees to settle federal lawsuit from Institute for Justice.

OOPS: GLP-1 drugs may cause scurvy in patients.

NOT ALL VACCINES ARE THE COVID VAX: In one of strongest endorsements from Trump admin, Dr. Oz says get measles vaccine.