Free Republic

ZDNET's key takeaways - Treat the AI like another developer, not a magic box. - Encode design systems and user profiles in system prompts. - Every fixed bug becomes a permanent lesson learned in the project's DNA. Ever since the days of punched cards, I've self-identified as a programmer and a computer scientist. The programmer side is the practical side of my engineering identity, the person who crafts code line by line. The computer scientist is the theoretician, the scientist, the strategist, and the planner. While I love the theory and science of computers, I've always enjoyed the hands-on feeling...

Give me a phone and a list of registered Democrats, and I’ll find you one who thinks Donald Trump's the greatest thing since sliced bread — and Gavin Newsom is the devil incarnate. That’s essentially the level of polling rigor Audie Cornish brought to Tuesday’s edition of CNN This Morning. Discussing issues ahead of the State of the Union address, Cornish said: “We called up one of the people we polled, a Republican voter, Sean from New Mexico. He said: ‘I think people were expecting Trump to provide a bit of relief to their suffering. Grocery prices are just through...

You just can’t script this kind of pure gold. Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) just delivered an absolute masterclass in political comedy, and his target was none other than Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Appearing on Fox News alongside political analyst Charles Hurt, Kennedy launched a full minute of straight-up stand-up comedy that left Hurt visibly struggling to maintain composure as the Louisiana senator rattled off one punchline after another. Hurt can be heard laughing in the background as the senator compares AOC to Kamala Harris, only with more bartending experience. He also jokes that AOC’s strategy is “Operation Let Her Speak.” Sen....

A Pennsylvania man is being accused by federal prosecutors of traveling to California to have sex with a 13-year-old girl in a plot that would have culminated in both their suicides if not for law enforcement intervention. Officials with the U.S. Department of Justice held a press conference and released a complaint surrounding the allegations against Matthew Edward Pysher on Monday morning. The complaint, filed Sunday in Los Angeles, charges Pysher, 18, with travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct. According to the complaint, Pysher groomed and encouraged a girl, listed as “Minor Victim One,” to send him...

Office of the DNI@ODNIgov·6h🕘🇺🇸SOTU COUNTDOWN: This is what America FIRST leadership looks like.@POTUS designated violent cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, enabling our National Counterterrorism Center to deploy two decades of counterterrorism expertise against narco-terrorists.We are dismantling their networks and protecting American lives.TRANSCRIPT BEGINS~~Tulsi Gabbard:President Trump has already taken historic action,immediately, to secure our borders in record timeand designated several cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations,a move that has empowered our National Counterterrorism Centerhere at ODNI to deploy over two decades of counter-terrorismexpertise towards detecting and deterring cartels andgangs like never before.In just one year, this designation by President Trump preventedmore than...

You can now get paid $30 an hour to shovel snow in New York City. New York City is urgently hiring emergency snow shovelers to help remove snow and ice from public areas, including bus stops, crosswalks, fire hydrants, and step streets.

Atlanta, GA — After months of public drama among the employees and higher-ups of Planned Parenthood Southeast, six former PPSE employees recently filed discrimination charges against the affiliate, submitting the charges to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). One filing submitted by Jessica Swanson, PPSE’s former Director of Education, alleges she was fired by the new interim CEO, Mairo Akposé, in retaliation for voicing concerns about Akposé. Before being suddenly promoted to CEO, Akposé was the Human Resources Director. Swanson alleges that she first complained about Akposé in her HR role when Akposé failed to refer to the current...

After a Tourette syndrome advocate shouted the N-word at “Sinners” actors Delroy Lindo and Michael B. Jordan during Sunday’s BAFTA Awards, Lindo says organizers of the event had yet to reach out about the incident. John Davidson, the inspiration for the BAFTA-nominated biopic “I Swear,” disrupted the ceremony with several involuntary outbursts of expletives and slurs, a symptom of the nervous system disorder.

A Texas man has died after he and his ex-wife reportedly worked together to plan and carry out his suicide. Joseph Cheffo was found dead in his Odessa home on February 13. Though assisted suicide is illegal in Texas, authorities allege that his ex-wife and primary caretaker, Sarah Regmund, helped facilitate his death after being in contact with Final Exit Network. Investigators say a copy of Final Exit by Derek Humphry was found near his bed. The book, written for the terminally ill, goes beyond arguing for “the right to die.” It provides instructions. In one disturbing line, it states:...

Feb 23, 2026

"It's very clear that this administration is not interested in legal immigration," she told the publication backstage at the Target Center. “They're interested in violent theater," Carlile continued. "Violent theater and dominance over other people. I don't believe most people signed up for that. Even people who voted for Trump, who I'm angry with, I don't think they voted for this, and I do think that they can still change their minds."”

COMMERCE, Texas - A woman was arrested over the weekend after police allegedly caught her "testing" homemade bombs following a string of fires in Commerce, authorities said. Since Feb. 19, police have been investigating a series of fires reported across the city over a three-day span. On Saturday night, a patrol officer spotted a fire at Centennial Park and observed a woman leaving the immediate area. Officers detained the woman, identified as Jamia Howell, and discovered nine homemade bombs inside her backpack. Investigators also recovered a lighter and other materials used to manufacture explosive devices. Howell was taken into custody...

Candace Gesner I believe that facebook has just now made itself irrelevant. I am finding that AI is mixing and remixing posts so that a person will not notice that their and everyone’s posts have been corrupted. I can no longer believe anything I am reading.

Paramout+’s struggling new Star Trek series, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, has been unable to crack the top ten shows in the Nielsen Ratings as the eight-figure per episode series wallows in a constant stream of left-wing, identity politics like gay Klingons, bisexuals, lesbians, and girl boss characters irks fans the world over. The most recent plot rankling longtime fans of the franchise is the full-fledged gay Klingon character named “Ja-Den.” Ja-Den, portrayed by gay actor Karim Diane, breaks the Star Trek mold for the 60-year-old franchise’s war-like, aggressive Klingon alien race. Instead of being a warrior, Ja-Den is a vegan...

Explanation: Have you ever seen the Pleiades star cluster? Even if you have, you probably have never seen it as large and clear as this. Perhaps the most famous star cluster on the sky, the bright stars of the Pleiades can be seen with the unaided eye even from the depths of a light-polluted city. With a long exposure from a dark location, though, the dust cloud surrounding the Pleiades star cluster becomes very evident. The featured 18-hour exposure, taken from Bory Tucholskie, Poland covers a sky area several times the size of the full moon. Also known as the...

A group of internal investigators at the giant cryptocurrency exchange Binance made a series of startling discoveries last year. People in Iran had gained access to more than 1,500 accounts on the Binance platform over the previous year. About $1.7 billion had flowed from two Binance accounts to Iranian entities with links to terrorist groups, a possible violation of global sanctions. And one of those accounts belonged to a Binance vendor. After uncovering the transactions, the investigators reported them to top executives, according to company records and other documents reviewed by The New York Times. Within weeks, Binance fired or...

ANGOLA, Ind. (WOWO) — An Angola man has been arrested on multiple felony charges following a 14-month investigation by the Steuben County Sheriff’s Office into allegations of child molesting. Martin Joseph Boyd Jr., 44, was taken into custody without incident around noon on February 23, 2026, in the 1400 block of North Wayne Street in Angola. Authorities said he was arrested on a warrant charging him with eight counts of Level 1 felony child molesting. The investigation began in January 2025 after allegations surfaced that Boyd had sexual intercourse on multiple occasions with a female victim who was under the...

Glenn Greenwald The leading icon of the American Right in the 1960s into the 1970s was Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-AZ). He was so beloved that the party’s base made him their presidential nominee in 1964 despite the widespread belief that he was too “extreme” to ever get elected (LBJ crushed him in a landslide). He represented Arizona in the US Senate for 30 years. Goldwater (whose father was Jewish) talked to Pat Buchanan in 1988 about many topics. Here’s what he said about Israeli influence in the US:

Few courts were as important then—and as forgotten now—as those of the U.S. Navy. Created to prosecute crimes committed by Japan across the islands of the Pacific, the Navy’s would be the longest, and perhaps fairest, of all American World War II war crimes programs. It was a program marked by fidelity to facts, the cultivation of alliances, and the development of established law. In keeping with the character of law, the lessons from the postwar Navy’s writing of international law remain strikingly applicable to the modern Navy’s current and future practice of international law.Instead, working with Secretary Forrestal, the...

Poor Gavin Newsom. Who knew he grew up poor, had to hustle to stay alive, resorting to Wonder Bread and Mac-n-Cheese for meals, according to his latest guest appearance on the “All the Smoke” podcast? Most poor families back in the 1970’s and 1980’s ate generic, day-old store-brand bread, discounted canned soup and meats, and government cheese. I knew skinny poor kids. Here is the “All the Smoke” podcast: Notice during the podcast video Newsom slips into some street slang, claiming “It was about payin’ the bills, man.” “Wonder bread and Mac ‘n cheese. That’s how I grew up, bro.”...