Source: Washington Post
by Megan McArdle
“Covid-19 gave everyone a harsh lesson in the power of exponentials, and that memory haunts any analysis of artificial intelligence. Sure, everything looks fine — now. But then, everything also looked fine in early March 2020. By the end of the month, we were locked in our houses with our strategic reserves of toilet paper. In a viral essay on X this week, Otherside AI founder Matt Shumer draws the parallel explicitly. ‘I think we’re in the ‘this seems overblown’ phase of something much, much bigger than Covid,’ he writes, before launching into a description of what’s already here for coders: AI agents building ‘usually perfect’ software from a plain-English description. He’s predicting a world soon in which AI blows up software development and moves on to every other profession.” (02/13/26)
https://archive.is/RPlHo
Source: Fox News
“The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is shut down after Congress failed to fund the agency before the midnight deadline. The partial shutdown is due to deadlock over federal immigration operations, but it also means TSA agents at airports across the U.S. are expected to screen passengers and bags without pay. About 95% of TSA workers are deemed essential personnel and required to keep working.” [editor’s note: They’re not required to do anything. They can give up the thug life and go get real jobs any time they want to – TLK] (02/14/26)
https://www.livenowfox.com/news/dhs-shutdown-tsa-agents-working-without-pay-again-what-means-travelers
Source: Los Angeles Times
by LZ Granderson
“The general public’s awareness of Epstein’s heinous crimes came with political baggage. However at this point, the question we all should wonder is: How does redacting the names of the men who helped fund Epstein’s operation benefit either political party? It may be good for the rich and powerful men trying to avoid accountability, but it’s not exactly a campaign platform. … We have seen Congress kept out of session to avoid voting on the release of the Epstein files; we have heard equivocation about whether Epstein was a pedophile. We know Epstein’s island was a place where evil resided. The investigation, or lack of investigation, into Epstein’s fellow abusers should not be seen by anyone as a political quandary in which the object of the game is to keep your party in power.” (02/14/26)
https://archive.is/mLtKg
Source: Adam Smith Institute
by Tim Worstall
“The latest critique of capitalism from Jason Hickel and Yanis Varoufakis …. ‘Capitalists are the ones who determine what to produce, how to use our labour and who gets to benefit. The rest of us – the people who are actually doing the production – do not get a say.’ This is simply factually wrong because markets. Capitalists might try to direct our labour into the production of things that we out here, we consumers, might not want. The Ford Edsel, say. But when we don’t want it then the capitalists stop so directing our labour into the production of what we do not want. For if they don’t they then go bust — as the death of four out of five new attempts at capitalism show. … This is not a complicated logical proposition but it’s one that seems to entirely escape two university professors here.” (02/14/26)
https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/apparently-you-should-not-want-what-you-do-want
Source: Bitcoin.com
by Sergio Goschenko
“The rumors of discussions on Russia’s return to the dollar system sparked speculation about the strength of the financial alternatives deployed to bypass sanctions. While the central bank denies being involved in such talks, the Kremlin clarified that Russia never left the dollar: it was excluded.” (02/15/26)
https://news.bitcoin.com/russias-return-to-the-dollar-a-non-existing-dilemma/
Source: Unattended Baggage
“We’re not suicidal either.” (02/14/26)
https://unattendedbaggage.substack.com/p/episode-329-were-not-suicidal-either
Source: Tenth Amendment Center
by Mike Maharrey
“‘American Independence was then & there born. John Adams wasn’t talking about July 4, 1776, and the Declaration of Independence. He was referring to the beginning of the real American Revolution that kicked off years earlier in February 1761. That’s when James Otis Jr delivered a fiery 5-hour speech railing against the writs of assistance. While the Declaration of Independence was a seminal moment in the Revolution, it was the culmination of more than 15 years of radical changes in the minds and hearts of the people that started with Otis’s speech.” (02/13/26)
https://tenthamendmentcenter.com/2026/02/13/1761-when-american-independence-was-born/
Source: Common Dreams
“As early voting began for the state primaries, North Carolina college students found themselves walking more than a mile to cast their ballots after the Republican-controlled State Board of Elections closed polling places on their campuses. The board, which shifted to a 3-2 GOP majority, voted last month to close a polling site at Western Carolina University and to reject the creation of polling sites at two other colleges: the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNC Greensboro), and the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (NC A&T), the largest historically [b]lack college in the nation. Each of these schools had polling places available on campus during the 2024 election. The decision, which came just weeks before early voting was scheduled to begin, left many of the 40,000 students who attend these schools more than a mile away from the nearest polling place.” (02/14/26)
https://www.commondreams.org/news/north-carolina-students-mile-voting
Source: Independent Institute
by Scott Beyer
“Assessing the freedom and liberty orientation of both parties on 10 key issues.” (02/13/26)
https://www.independent.org/article/2026/02/13/which-party-is-more-libertarian-republicans-or-democrats/
Source: New York Post
by staff
“With Vladimir Putin’s war machine sputtering, it’s time to push the Kremlin even harder to force an end to his war on Ukraine. President Donald Trump’s moves such as seizing ‘shadow fleet’ tankers and piling on new tariffs on importers of Moscow’s oil are plainly hitting hard: You can tell because Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is whining that Washington won’t make Kyiv agree to de facto surrender (e.g., Russian control over Ukraine’s post-war government) as he claims President Donald Trump had agreed to do. Why does Russia need America’s intervention, if it’s winning on the battlefield? ‘The United States has effectively declared a goal of economic domination,’ Lavrov cries — a clear sign that Putin’s feeling squeezed.” (02/14/26)
https://nypost.com/2026/02/14/opinion/putins-finally-starting-to-sweat-time-for-trump-to-turn-up-the-heat/
