21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: The Least Laid Generation in History: Gen Z Is Ghosting Sex — and the Implications Are Huge.

THE E.V. BUBBLE CONTINUES TO DEFLATE: Honda’s EV Bet Is Costing the Company Billions. “The costly mistake of investing too much, too soon in EVs is not a phenomenon felt only by North American automakers. Japanese companies may have been more reserved in their foray into electric vehicles, but that did not make them immune as every carmaker invested in EV development and tooled up plants to make them.”

SO DON’T DO THAT AGAIN: Virginia is What Happens When Gun Owners Lose Elections.

HMM: Outdated mortality benchmarks risk missing early signs of famine and delay recognizing mass starvation.

FRED HOYLE HAS ENTERED THE CHAT: Scientists Think Asteroids May Have Provided the Ingredients for Life on Earth.

I GET SCOPED EVERY FIVE YEARS: Your colonoscopy could save your life—here’s how to make it easier.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: 7 mistakes you’re probably making in the shower, according to doctors.

IF YOU ASK ME, THIS CALLS FOR A DAMAGED SCREW EXTRACTOR, ON THE OFFCHANCE YOU HAVE ONE OF THOSE: BMW Patent Reveals Branded Screw Design That Limits Access to Vehicle Repairs.

I REMEMBER WHEN HIGHER EDUCATION WAS DEFENDED AS ENCOURAGING CIVIL DEBATE: Ohio State University professor on leave after tackling independent documentarian.

STANDING UP AGAINST RACISM AND BIGOTRY: White student sues after Albany Law School protects professor who allegedly went on racist rant. “Rowland Rupp, a student at Albany Law School, has filed a lawsuit after he says Anthony Farley, a black professor, shut off the classroom’s recording equipment and went on a tirade in class aimed at whites and conservatives. The lawsuit alleges that the school did not investigate Rupp’s complaint, but rather aggressively pursued a retaliatory complaint filed by the professor.”

LIKE CLAVICULAR, NEWSOM IS HANDSOME, BUT IN A RATHER OVER-EFFORTFUL, EFFEMINATE WAY: “… Clavicular said he would vote for Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a Democrat, over Vice President JD Vance because he preferred Mr. Newsom’s looks to Mr. Vance’s. “

I’d rather hear who the ASU frat president who framemogged Clavicular likes. My guess is it’s someone with shoulders and a non-pencil neck.

#JOURNALISM: Media Actively Cover Up Obama Lawyer’s Chummy Ties to Epstein. “Democrats Sure Got It Good…Need I even point out what these headlines would look like if Epstein’s gal-pal spent five years in Donald Trump’s White House, or if she had been Trump’s legal counsel, or even if her association with Trump were something as fleeting as she was once his Uber driver?”

MY LATEST SUBSTACK ESSAY: Cuba’s a Mess, but What Happens When it is Libre at last?

As always, if you enjoy these essays please take out a paid subscription. I will thank you, and my family will thank you.

THERE SHOULD BE CONSEQUENCES:

Gentle reminder that after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, and the attempted assassination of ICE agents it was revealed that the Dem AG candidate in Virginia wanted to kill Republicans and their children

The Dems continued to…

— Auron MacIntyre (@AuronMacintyre) February 12, 2026

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: “Her and I have wrote papers about this company!”

A RUBIO/VANCE TICKET IN 2028? One Veep, Two Prez? On a historian/pundit musing over one vice president serving under two presidents. Not unprecedented: “Two U.S. vice presidents did, indeed, served under two successive presidents apiece. In addition, two other ex-veeps were nominated to serve under second presidents, but the later tickets were defeated in the November polls. And in the most bizarre case, one former vice president considered a return to the vice presidency after having served as president.”

ROGER KIMBALL: Trumponomics is Working.

All the accredited experts have been wrong about Trump. He came back to office last year on a platform of common sense. They don’t teach that at Harvard. But in the real world it works like magic. Just a few days ago, the jobs report for January came out. “Unexpectedly,” the economy added 130,000 jobs. The green-eye shade chaps predicted 55,000. Another bright light: the government lost about 42,000 employees: that’s 42,000 paychecks that taxpayers will not have to pick up going forward. The unemployment rate ticked down to 4.3 percent – a number that, when translated into English, means close to full employment. Inflation rose just 0.2 percent in January, and fell to 2.4 percent on an annual basis.

The jobs report “strengthens the case for higher US Treasury yields and a rebound in the dollar over the coming months,” Jonas Goltermann, a senior economist at Capital Economics wrote. Can someone get Jerome Powell on the phone for me? Trump’s aggressive deployment of tariffs was supposed to wreak havoc on the economy. All the experts said so. But growth was 4.4 percent in the third quarter of 2025 and is estimated to have been above 5 percent in the fourth. Wow. More misery for the doomsayers. More goodies for the middle class.

Until Donald Trump swept back into office, the left in this country wielded an implacable one-way ratchet to torment the populace. “Affirmative action,” DEI, climate hysteria, smothering regulatory excess: the people in charge delighted in making people’s lives more burdensome.

Government has been run this way for many decades. Occasionally, a Republican would get into office and attempt to tamp down the administrative state. The left didn’t mind because whatever modest reforms were effected could be undone in a nonce once the “right people” got back into office. They never lost their one-way ratchets. That was a major reason that government always got bigger, that the left’s hobby horses never went away, that the regulatory environment became ever more stultifying and surreal. Men in women’s bathrooms? It’s mandated by Title IX or whatever, my friend. Cars that turn off and restart at every stoplight? We have to save the environment, you peasant, and where is your mask and vaccination affidavit?

Trump has smashed the left’s one-way ratchet. It can’t get purchase anymore. It just doesn’t work.

It doesn’t have to be this way, and Trump has made that clear.

KURT SCHLICHTER: It Is Right and Proper to Laugh at the Suffering of Journalists.

I would tell them to learn the code, but that’s old and cliché. Instead, I’ve been on X, inviting them to earn a little money for their kombucha and rent by buffing out my sweet luxury ride, which I paid for with my writing jobs. I’m a professional writer, and they’re not. . . .

They haven’t taken their involuntary career tangent particularly well. They are all over X moaning about it and about us being giddy about it. Some people have told me that, because of my hysterical laughter at their situation, I’m going to be the victim of karma, but I think I’m actually karma’s enforcer. After all, these are the people who have done nothing but lie to us and about us for decades. From Russian collusion to Hunter’s laptop to J6 pogrom cheerleading to every other fraud and scam, they’ve obediently held to the Democrat line and done everything they could to screw with us patriots. Now that they’re being laid off en masse, we owe it to ourselves to take a moment and laugh at their pain.

Look, how about if I agree to care about them as much as they’ve cared about me for the last few decades? Agreed? Great. Now, back to reveling in their agony.

It’s been a few days, and I’m still laughing, and there is a smorgasbord of facets of their misery to laugh at. Certainly, the fact that a bunch of people who wanted us to lose everything – like our ability to govern ourselves, to be secure from criminals, and to keep our jobs (which they wanted sacrificed on the altar of their angry weather goddess) – are themselves losing everything is funny. There’s a glorious symmetry in their suffering, but there’s so much more. There’s their incessant whining about Jeff Bezos refusing to continue to subsidize their little bubble, like some bratty girl at Wellesley who graduates and finds that Daddy is cutting off her money and she’s got to actually work. Did these people actually work? They told themselves consistently how important and vital their “work” was, but mostly searched the thesaurus for admiring adjectives for dead monsters and retyped Democrat talking points for their dwindling coterie of readers. I guess that’s a kind of work, but it’s kind of hilarious how proud of it they were.

Plus: “Some people on the Right were kinder than I about the layoffs, cautioning that we shouldn’t take pleasure in our enemies’ suffering. This is so very wrong. I’ve never been a fan of the idea of conservatism without the concept of retribution. Too often, we are told that to be good people, we must forgo just consequences. But failing to pay back our enemies is only going to get us more reason to need vengeance. Our enemies aren’t going to take our weakness for anything but weakness. Time to give pain a chance. Time to laugh our tails off at the suffering of the fired Democrat transcriptionists of the Washington Post.”

Read the whole thing, and brighten your day.

THE EXPERTS HAVE SPOKEN:

On days like today, I like calling back to this headline from June 2024:

"Trump would make America’s inflation crisis worse, 16 Nobel economists warn"

CPI is at 2.4% YoY in January as gasoline declined 7.5%.

The "Nobel economists" were dead wrong. pic.twitter.com/89D9egXuoK

— Daniel Baldwin (@baldwin_daniel_) February 13, 2026

Related: The Suicide of Expertise.

OPEN THREAD: Ring in the weekend.

SPACE JUNK: BETTER PUT UP MY UMBRELLA. Satellite megaconstellations continue to grow. Could their debris fall on us?

Here’s a piece Rob Merges and I wrote about space debris a few years back.

MY LATEST SUBSTACK ESSAY: Cuba’s a Mess, but What Happens When it is Libre at last?

As always, if you enjoy these essays please take out a paid subscription. I will thank you, and my family will thank you.

PSYCHIATRIC RISKS OF CANNABIS: On cannabis, psychosis, and the long tail of the truth.

TIMING:

Friday at 5pm is the best time for NYT to put out this story. pic.twitter.com/LNk5ySOsUZ

— Karol Markowicz (@karol) February 13, 2026

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D):

Meet Julie Rizzitello, a former teacher at Wall Township High School in NJ, who was just SENTENCED after she was convicted of r*ping two students, which resulted in her getting pregnant.

She reportedly groomed the teens for years and then ABORTED the baby after getting… pic.twitter.com/vJEUYGvs6A

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) February 12, 2026