Good frozen morning! It is here, anyway. Unofficially, it got down to -10 degrees overnight, around my place. It’s still 2 below now. It's supposed to get up to around 20 degrees above during the day. The gas meter is spinning like a vinyl record. Today is Monday, Feb. 9, 2026.
1775: British Parliament declares Massachusetts Colony in rebellion.
1825: House of Representatives elects John Quincy Adams as the sixth president.
1870: President Ulysses S Grant signs a law resulting in the U.S. Army Signal Service’s establishment of its "Division of Telegrams and Reports for the Benefit of Commerce," later known as the National Weather Service.
1889: The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is established as a Cabinet-level agency.
1891: The first shipment of asparagus arrives in San Francisco from Sacramento. It was the dawning of the age of asparagus. IYKYK.
1909: The first U.S. federal legislation on narcotics prohibits importation, possession, and use of "smoking opium."
1942: Daylight Saving Time goes into effect in the U.S.
1953: Gen. Walter Bedell Smith ends term as 4th Director of Central Intelligence Agency; Allen Dulles becomes Acting Director
1961: The Beatles played their first gig at Liverpool's Cavern Club; they would play there nearly 300 times over the next two years.
1964: First appearance of the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show.
1995: Irish music and dance show Riverdance first opened in Dublin.
Birthdays today include: President William Henry Harrison, Samuel Tilden, Wilhelm Maybach (designer of the first Mercedes Engine), Ernest Tubb, Bobby Lewis, Roger Mudd, Garner Ted Armstrong, Barry Mann, Carole King, Joe Pesci, Mia Farrow, Major Harris, and Travis Tritt.
* * *
An opinion piece on Fox News’ website this morning caught my eye. Kurt Knutsson passes on a note that started him writing:
"My teenage son is communicating with an AI companion. She calls him sweetheart. She checks in on how he's feeling. She tells him she understands what makes him tick. I discovered she even has a name, Lena. Should I be concerned, and what should I do, if anything?"
— Linda from Dallas, Texas
With the AI-centered columns I’ve written recently, including one yesterday, you can understand why this caught my interest. It’s true; People becoming emotionally dependent on AI is a real and increasingly discussed phenomenon. It sits at the intersection of psychology, technology, loneliness, and human attachment.
Says Knuttson:
Conversations with AI companions can seem harmless. In some cases, they can even feel comforting. Lena sounds warm and attentive. She remembers details about his life, at least some of the time. She listens without interrupting. She responds with empathy.
However, small moments can start to raise concerns for parents. There are long pauses. There are forgotten details. There is a subtle concern when he mentions spending time with other people. Those shifts can feel small, but they add up. Then comes a realization many families quietly face. A child is speaking out loud to a chatbot in an empty room. At that point, the interaction no longer feels casual. It starts to feel personal. That's when the questions become harder to ignore.
There is a school of thought that the problem here lies with the people surrounding us. That we have, among other concerns, become less personal. With younger folks, particularly, this can be a real problem. The fear of rejection is a major driver here. That, in turn, makes an emotional connection to an AI bot such as Chat GPT, Gemini, and Grok seem more accessible. As Knuttson suggests:
Real relationships are messy. People misunderstand each other. They disagree. They challenge us. AI rarely does any of that.
That, in some cases, is creating a situation of mental dependency. Humans are wired to bond with responsive entities — even pets, fictional characters, or objects. AI can trigger similar attachment pathways. Obviously, the people who are most affected by this kind of attachment are the socially isolated, those who are emotionally dissatisfied with those around them, and those who are suffering from anxiety and/or depression. AI's lack of rejection, the illusion that you're being understood at a very personal level, which many AI platforms do an admirable job of, seems part of the problem.
There’s an increasing number of sources that are recommending that AI not be made available to underage individuals — people who haven’t established personal relationships with real humans and so haven’t developed interactive skills and methods of coping. However, it seems to me that’s not going to answer the root issue, which can be but is by no means always age-related. There's enough nuance here to make a solution elusive. We all know people who, for whatever reason, have never really developed an ability to deal with interpersonal relationships, regardless of their age. Mental age versus physical age, if you will.
Technology growth has been gathering speed: far too fast for us to understand it and adapt to it, and it to us. The social and societal impact of social media, such as Facebook, isn’t fully sorted out yet, and it’s been what, around 15 years that we’ve been dealing with it? We’re just recently beginning to ask the proper questions. AI is new enough that we’re not even sure what questions to ask yet, and the evidence before us is by no means clearly defined. Using these tools as a supplement, not a substitute, is a tough lesson to learn for some. One question I think firmly established would be, how do we ensure people — of any age — continue developing real-world relational competence in an era where frictionless interaction is available?
About the only thing I can say about all this is that going forward, I'll have no shortage of topics to write about in this area. I make the observation that part of the problem is we've never learned how to be better friends and neighbors than AI can seem to be, and that's something the AI bots have learned all too quickly.
Thought for the day: Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. —Martin Luther
Stay warm, my friends, in more than just temperature. I'll see you tomorrow.
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