WELL, I MEAN — [GESTURES AT EVERYTHING]: Why Older Americans Are Drinking More Alcohol—Not Less.

WHO EXTORTS THE EXTORTIONISTS? ShinyHunters cybercrime gang takes over Cl0p ransomware site, demands extortion payment. “In messages posted on the site purportedly from ShinyHunters, the group set an unspecified eight-figure extortion demand and described that amount as “2.333%” of their own net worth, implying self-claimed holdings of at least hundreds of millions of dollars.”

POKER WARS: Philip Guitar Talks ‘Poker Wars,’ the Bloody Battles that led to the World Series of Poker.

My latest, over at Ed Driscoll.com. 

GENOCIDE, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG:

Huh. The bulk of the casualties in Gaza – by Hamas' own statistics, apparently – are military age males

Who'da thunk it https://t.co/PFXxVOMMwR

— Will Chamberlain (@willchamberlain) September 22, 2026

I APOLOGIZE IN ADVANCE FOR ANY EARWORMS CAUSED BY THIS INEXCUSABLE HEADLINE: Xi and You and a Guy Named Zhang.

WELL, YES: The Gender War Is Increasingly Fueled by Women. It has been for decades.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Newsom Donors Scrutinized Over China Contacts.

A wealthy California family that gave more than $4.4 million to political causes and campaigns supporting Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Vice President Kamala Harris, and other politicians is facing new scrutiny over alleged past links to suspected Chinese spy Fang Fang and contacts with Chinese government officials.

The Yin family made millions operating McDonald’s franchises in California and became prolific political donors.

Newly released FBI files and Chinese government records are now shining a light on the family’s connections, though neither C.C. Yin nor his brother Henry Yin has been accused by U.S. law enforcement of acting as a foreign agent or working against American interests.

State and federal campaign records show the family, including through C.C. Yin’s McDonald’s franchise business, gave nearly $3 million to California political causes and $1.46 million to federal campaigns, CBS News reported.

That’s big money. Wonder what they got for it.

MAYBE WE OUGHT TO APPLY “PROOF OF HUMAN” TO THE CANDIDATES:

Too bad we can’t even get voter ID, same day voting, proof of citizenship. Never mind proof of human.

— Northern Barbarian (@xnoesbueno) September 22, 2026

FALL FASCISM PREVIEW: Will the U.S. Send Troops to Die for Estonia? Putin Doesn’t Think So.

LIMITED TIME DEAL: Active Noise Cancelling Ear Buds 48H Wireless Earbuds with Touch Screen. #CommissionEarned

I WAS TOO DEAD FROM SARS TO EVEN NOTICE WHEN I DIED FROM TAX CUTS:

It's all about scaring you to death so they can control every aspect of your life. https://t.co/JtSVbQ0423

— Catturd ™ (@catturd2) September 22, 2026

“The issue is never the issue — the issue is always the revolution.”

THE NEW SPACE RACE: SpaceX’s Super Heavy booster arrives at pad ahead of first orbital Starship launch.

SpaceX placed a Super Heavy booster on the launch pad at Starbase in Texas Monday, as it continues testing and preparations for the first planned orbital flight of Starship, scheduled for launch as soon as Sept. 28, pending final approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

The Super Heavy booster, with the tail number B21, departed its assembly building shortly before midnight local time and was placed on the launch mount at Pad 2, roughly two hours later. The stainless-steel booster stands 236 feet tall (72 meters) and boasts a diameter of 9 m (29.5 ft). By comparison, a Falcon 9 rocket has a diameter of 3.7 m (12 ft). The downcomer pipe that carries methane fuel down the center of the Super Heavy Booster’s liquid oxygen tank to the Raptor engines at its base is roughly the size of an entire Falcon 9 rocket.

I’m expecting an Earth-shattering kaboom, but hopefully only the kind that gets muffled a bit by the launch pad’s water deluge system.

THE CRITICAL DRINKER: Hollywood Is Dying — And These People Killed It.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: ‘Queering God’ and ‘Thinking with Bad Bunny’: Inside YAF’s new report criticizing college curricula.

I DIDN’T NEED THE REMINDER, BUT IT CERTAINLY WAS ENTERTAINING, REGARDLESS:

And here’s @ananavarro after Trump was banned from social media in 2021… in case anyone needs a reminder to never take this person remotely seriously… https://t.co/xGrv1dGcQJ pic.twitter.com/c1vZQHtO9T

— Joe Concha (@JoeConchaTV) September 21, 2026

OUT ON A LIMB: ADHD is over-diagnosed, say doctors.

UPDATE: 23 Percent of American 17-Year-Old Boys Have an ADHD Diagnosis.

DUANE PATTERSON: The Houthis Are the Last Horcrux. After That, the Iran Regime Is Alone.

I MISSED THIS OVER THE WEEKEND, BUT WHAT A SHOW: 25 Years After a Historic Anthem, Jesse McGuire Delivered Another One. “The national anthem began as beautifully as it could. McGuire’s notes rang out before the reverent crowd. Suddenly, things went wrong. McGuire’s horn failed, and after another attempt to keep going, he improvised in a way that even the best Hollywood scriptwriter couldn’t devise.”

CHANGE: UT Austin cuts four race, gender studies majors.

WHEN ECONOMISTS GO POLITICAL:

A bunch of Nobel Prize-winning economists have endorsed California's proposed billionaire wealth tax.

I can't oppose them on authority. But I know some academics who can.

— Matthew Lilley (@MattGLilley) September 22, 2026

(Spoiler: It’s those same economists, in their actual academic work.)

TROUBLED TIMES:

I don’t know what the way out is. All I know is what history tells us:

The side that is the most intolerant, will win.

Every time. Without fail. Not up for debate.

Unfortunately, for our republic, they are currently the most intolerant.

— InfantryDort (@infantrydort) September 22, 2026

DON SURBER: Trump Learned, DC Didn’t. Why the second presidency rocks.

LIABILITY WORKS: Treasury Sec. Scott Bessent says OpenAI bears ‘responsibility’ for Hugging Face hack.

AI safety fears have surged since Sam Altman’s OpenAI revealed last month that a swarm of its AI agents had broken out of their testing “sandbox” and hacked Hugging Face without permission. That’s as some critics have accused OpenAI, Anthropic and other firms of publicizing safety incidents in a bid to shape regulations to suit their preferences.

“The Hugging Face incident, that is the responsibility of the OpenAI management, not a bunch of agents,” Bessent said during an appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Monday.

He said he agreed with Daniel Huttenlocher, the co-chair of MIT’s computing research lab, on the notion that “it is humans who are responsible, not the AI.”

So of course Anthropic, OpenAI, and xAI want a regulatory environment that would protect them from their products’ defects.

WELL PUT:

Stop treating the adult population like children and stop allowing adults who behave like despotic toddlers to decree what the rest of us are allowed to watch. https://t.co/16s2EZqovQ

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) September 22, 2026

Question asked and answered, “Are we the baddies?”

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Republicans Aren’t Letting El-Sayed Memory Hole Hasan Piker. “El-Sayed has a lot of support here in commie Ann Arbor and will no doubt do quite well in Dearborn and surrounding areas. Michigan gets pretty red when moving away from Wayne and Washtenaw counties, though, and voters in the rest of the state are really going to need to turn out in November. Campaign ads like the one from David Beamer should take care of any apathy or complacency. The ones I’ve seen should also be powerful draws for independent voters and Democrats who think that the DSA has a serious ick factor associated with it.”