NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT:

There are thousands of cartel operatives in the United States.

DHS is the department tasked with finding, arresting and removing them.

Democrats have defunded DHS.

— Stephen Miller (@StephenM) February 23, 2026

Kurt Schlichter warned us.

OPEN THREAD: Ring out the weekend.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: What’s the point of a space station around the moon?

OR HOWEVER MANY LIBERALS THERE ARE AT ANY GIVEN MOMENT:

We all just take for granted that the three liberals will vote on party lines. https://t.co/YSFHSI18HV

— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) February 21, 2026

THEY’RE ENDLESS: Health Benefits of Squats.

HARSH TRUTHS:

You….kinda are.

Statistically, you are an outlier person on either the left or the hyper-hard right, so committed to insane ideas ("Borders should not exist!!!") that you dislike your own nation's flag at a time of global dominance.

You are a weird loser. https://t.co/dIYKorJAie

— Wilfred Reilly (@wil_da_beast630) February 22, 2026

MUSIC: Why Music Producers Are Finishing Tracks Inside Cadillacs: At the 2026 NAMM, music producers listened to their tracks inside Cadillacs to pick up imperfections after completing them in the studio.

Back when I was producing music, I’d always audition mixes in my car, and sometimes in more than one car.

FOLLOW THE SCIENCE: We’ve Been Running a Huge, Real-World Experiment in the Expansion of Carrying Guns in America…Here Are the Results.

21ST CENTURY LAWYERING: A judge was so mad about a lawyer’s use of AI that she immediately ruled against the client.

SO MAYBE BEDWETTING EVOLVED AS A PROTECTIVE MEASURE? Water is bed bugs’ kryptonite: The parasites avoid wet surfaces at all costs. “‘Bed bugs have extremely flat bodies and small respiratory openings called spiracles on their belly sides. “If they physically contact a body of water, they’ll get stuck to its surface, blocking their respiratory openings,’ Choe said. ‘Due to its strong adhesive power, water could be very dangerous from a bed bug’s perspective. So, it’s not surprising to learn that they’re extremely averse to moisture.'”

TECHNOLOGY: MRI antenna can boost image quality and shorten scan times—without changing existing machines.

GUT FEELINGS: A silent signaling network deep in the gut protects against inflammatory intestinal disorders, scientists find.

WHY IS HIGHER EDUCATION SUCH A CESSPIT OF NAZISM? Survey: 1 in 4 Jewish students say they’ve been excluded from campus activities.

PROF. JENKINS: My interaction with a ‘gender studies’ professor shows why open syllabi are needed: Open syllabi are critical in preventing gender, sexuality, identity, race, and politics from being taught in otherwise unrelated courses.

Taught, indoctrinated, whatever.

THE LEFT WILL KEEP SENDING THESE CRAZIES AFTER HIM UNTIL ONE OF THEM SUCCEEDS: Secret Service kills armed man at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago after he broke through security perimeter. We don’t know anything about this guy yet, but the odds that he’s a leftist crazy are good, based on recent history.

ROGER KIMBALL: The Left’s Elastic Principles On Judicial Authority: Democrats cheer or jeer the Court as convenience dictates; their lone consistency is power—pursued relentlessly, defended fiercely, and projected onto opponents.

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.

AND THEN CALL STUDENT AI USE CHEATING, NO DOUBT: Some Colleges Use AI to Read Applications.

I THINK SOCIETY IS LOSING ITS Y CHROMOSOMES: Men Lose Their Y Chromosome With Age. We Finally Know The Cost.

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.

YES.

This is a very good point.

Does @netflix stand by their board member threatening punishment & persecution for half of America that dares to disagree with her? https://t.co/JqZzYmgOkn

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) February 21, 2026

HEY, IT’S NOT LIKE THEY’RE VOTING OR SOMETHING:

UPDATE: To register to shovel snow in Mamdani’s NYC you must present two forms of ID, plus a social security card 😱 pic.twitter.com/RhAB0inaOu

— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) February 21, 2026

HE’S A MOLE PUT IN BY THE REPUBLICANS TO CARRY THEM TO VICTORY IN THE MIDTERMS AND 2028: Mamdani Is Collapsing Faster Than We Thought. “You can’t say we didn’t warn New York what was going to happen if it elected Zohran Mamdani, but I gotta say, I don’t think anyone predicted it would start collapsing so quickly. But, alas, it has. That socialist utopia that Mamdani was supposed to deliver has instead turned into a slow-motion fiscal catastrophe a mere two months in — and even the liberal media is starting to notice.”

OPEN THREAD: Party like it’s Saturday night.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Firefly Aerospace prepares Alpha rocket for 1st launch since explosive mishaps last year.

To build a working rocket requires going through some explosions along the way.