ROB ORLEY ENDORSING MIKE ROGERS IS KIND OF A BIG DEAL: Michigan Jews Turn Against El-Sayed.
September 3, 2026
READER FAVORITE: Ensure Max Protein Milk Chocolate Shake. #CommissionEarned
HOW MANY PEOPLE DID TRUMP SHOOT ON THE SOUTH SIDE LAST WEEKEND, ANYWAY? Chicago Mayor Blames Trump for City’s Persistent Violent Crime Problem.
THE BEST THING THE AMERICAN LEFT HAS GOING FOR IT…:
Ooph.
People thought academia was less liberal-biased than it is, and when they learned how liberal it is, their confidence in it declined.
With the exception of Democrats, whose confidence in academia was unchanged by the news. https://t.co/3Yc2YuGgut pic.twitter.com/CwZKyfyIo2
— Crémieux (@cremieuxrecueil) September 3, 2026
…is that the press has been largely successful in shielding the public from just how radical and dangerous the Left actually is.
Even so, people have a difficult time believing it when told: Republican activists say they have to water down the reality of their opponents’ agenda in focus groups. ‘They just don’t believe it’s true. It can’t be.’
A FRIEND IN THE INDUSTRY CAN’T SAY ALTMAN’S NAME WITHOUT ADDING “SNAKE OIL SALESMAN”: Sam Altman’s Most Serious Warning About AI Yet. Is It Hype?
A $600K BLOW TO MANDATORY ‘LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS’ ON CAMPUS. Congrats to University of Washington professor Stuart Reges and the FIRE litigation team who defended his right to parody the university-approved “land acknowledgement.” This is America. Public universities don’t get to write sacred texts and make you respect them.
FASCINATING:
I don't think people really understand the fight between Paul Graham and Palmer Luckey which played out this week. To the general public, from a casual perspective, it seemed like two rich guys getting in a heated, impulsive debate on Twitter, dragging out for days.
It's not.…
— Fugitive Caesar (@ThomBrady5) September 2, 2026
Read the whole thing, but here’s the takeaway: “Palmer Luckey is the face of a new military-industrialist consensus which is seeking to hire American workers for American jobs, to build factories and weapons at home, to remilitarize and reindustrialize, to get away from asset inflation and FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) as a sterile, parasitic rent-seeking economic system.”
RISE OF THE MACHINES: Your Smartwatch Could Be Lying About Your Workout.
MY LATEST SUBSTACK ESSAY: In Which I Ask the Machines for Criticism: Grok, Claude, and Chat GPT weigh in on my Demonic AI piece.
And, as always, if you enjoy these essays please take out a paid subscription.
IN THE ’80S, SEX-POSITIVE AT COLLEGE MEANT YOUR FLOOR HAD PICKED UP A COUPLE KEGS AND LET THE GIRLS KNOW:UW-Madison ‘sex positive’ group awarded more than $130K in mandatory student fees.
ELECTING A RED-DIAPER BABY HAS CONSEQUENCES:
Everything started getting noticeably worse in America around 2008.
Women became more radical.
Media pushed hate and division in reporting at increased rates.
Race relations became worse.
It’s crazy how it can be tracked to almost that exact date.
What happened in 2008? pic.twitter.com/3W9rjiH1vP
— C3 (@C_3C_3) September 3, 2026
Of course, the electorate was also primed for a smooth-talking red-diaper baby, so maybe the cause and effect are all swirled together.
LEFTISTS: You can’t just take down statues!
Related (From Ed): It’s fine; I’m sure the Trump administration followed all of the safety tips published by — checks notes — Popular Mechanics in June of 2020: How to Topple a Statue Using Science. Bring that sucker down without anyone getting hurt.
RYAN REYNOLDS JUST SLANDERED THE ’80S — PEOPLE HAVE OPINIONS:
“The 80s was a brutal, brutal time for people,” he said for some reason. “It was a fu**ing mess and people forget that. It was a tremendous strife. Socio political tensions everywhere. We were still pretty fresh off a Cuban missile crisis, which was only 15-20 years before. It’s a tumultuous period, but you look back at it now and you’re like, ‘Oh, yeah. ‘Top Gun.’ Cocaine!’ Like, ‘No!’ It was really scary.”
Yo, bro. That’s people’s childhoods you’re talking about. It was a time of patriotism and hot dogs and Fourth of July fireworks. The only places where it was a “fu**ing mess” were communist hellholes like the Soviet Union, who ate it in the 1980 Olympics “Miracle on Ice,” and East Germany, where people were trying to escape the Stasi.
It’s unfortunate that modern liberals didn’t take the hint that you shouldn’t model your country on places millions of people try to flee — to the United States, by the way. When the Berlin Wall came down, we expected it to stay down — not for control freaks to put a Digital Curtain back up with Flock cameras.
Also, people really didn’t obsess about politics the way Woke Hollywood actors like yourself do today.
So, when you start attacking the 1980s as if you were given a script to revise American history, you’re really striking a nerve. And people weren’t bashful about letting Ryan Reynolds have it.
For obvious reasons:
What made the 80s special was that almost NO ONE — except some teachers who still thought it was the 60s — was uptight.
Everyone was cool. Everyone could take a joke. You never had to walk on eggshells. The girls were cool. Race relations were cool. We all had part-time jobs.…
— John Ocasio-Rodham Nolte (@NolteNC) September 1, 2026
Also, was it over when the Russians bombed Pearl Harbor?
How nuts do you have to be to cite the Cuban Missile Crisis as a reason the eighties were traumatic? https://t.co/lh0yCM8x0x
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) September 3, 2026
*Parachute pants. Maui & Sons board shorts were also acceptable
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) September 3, 2026
PROBABLY NOT NEWS TO MOST INSTAPUNDIT READERS: 8 Hidden Fire Hazards Lurking in Your Home.
MICHIGAN ISLAMISTS, I HATE MICHIGAN ISLAMISTS: Abdul El-Sayed To Join Panel With 9/11 Conspiracy Theorists at Islamic Convention Days Before 9/11 Anniversary. “Pakistani cleric Tariq Masood was scheduled to appear at the event, but he was pulled after the Free Beacon reported that he admitted to forcing his 13-year-old niece into marriage, in compliance with Islamic law, and that he’d been accused of ‘pedophilic rhetoric.'”
EVERYTHING GETS HACKED:
In 1991, RSA published a series of insanely long numbers to see if anyone could factor them. Somehow, one of them has just been factored for the first time.
The foundation of many cryptographic algorithms like RSA — algorithms that keep your online communications safe — is that… https://t.co/J4zVoBhXZE
— Whole Mars Catalog (@wholemars) September 3, 2026
More:
The foundation of many cryptographic algorithms like RSA — algorithms that keep your online communications safe — is that multiplying two huge prime numbers is easy, but starting with the product and figuring out which two primes made it is incredibly hard. That difficulty is what makes encryption impossible to crack.
One of those numbers RSA published (to challenge people to try and factor large numbers and see if the assumptions RSA was built on really were secure) was RSA-260: 260 digits, 862 bits. It sat unfactored for 35 years.
Today Eric Lu just posted a 130-digit number with the words:
“divides RSA-260”
And it does.
That single number is enough to factor RSA-260, apparently setting a new record for the largest RSA challenge number ever factored.
Now the really interesting question is: how the hell did he do it?
The previous record required enormous amounts of traditional CPU compute. Did he use a giant GPU cluster? Improvements to the number field sieve? AI to optimize some part of the attack? Some new technique entirely?
Nobody has any fucking clue.
Exit quote: “Now most RSA used in production today is 2048 bit or more, so we still haven’t found a way to crack RSA quite yet… but this is one the largest numbers that’s ever been successfully factored.”
NOT A HUGE SHOCK: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott Goes for a Fourth Term.
GLORIA STEINEM, A POTENT VOICE OF US FEMINISM AND CO-FOUNDER OF MS. MAGAZINE, DIES AT 92:
Steinem began her career as a journalist, notably reporting in 1963 on degrading conditions in Hugh Hefner’s Playboy empire — an undercover assignment she came to later regret. She credits a meeting six years later, where women spoke out in favor of abortion rights, with changing her career path.
“That speak-out was the beginning of activism for me,” Steinem, who had undergone a secret illegal abortion herself at age 22, told the AP in an email in 2022, reflecting on the reversal of Roe v. Wade. “Either our control over our own bodies is equal, regardless of sex or race, or we’re not living in a democracy.”
Those who watched Steinem denounce discrimination for so many years likely never suspected that she’d had to overcome a deep fear of public speaking. She would have simply stuck to writing, she said, if only editors at the time had been willing to let her write about the women’s movement.
But they weren’t interested, she told the AP in 2015. “So I ended up going out and speaking, which was my nightmare,” she said. “I mean, I was terrified. But I’m grateful, even though I still get scared even now.”
Curiously absent from the AP’s obit: CIA Funded Feminist Icon Gloria Steinem Dies: “In my experience the Agency was completely different from its image; it was liberal, nonviolent, and honorable.”
DANA WEIGHS IN ON TUCKER’S LATEST:
Waiting for Tucker’s allies in the admin to say anything about his repeated attacks on Americans in favor of sharia candidates. Would criticizing him help or hurt the post-liberal establishment who thinks they’re being clever by ignoring it? 🤔
— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) September 3, 2026
SO GET GUNS TO THEM: Trump says Iranians won’t rise up because ‘they’re being shot’ and refuses to say if CIA would aid protesters.
“I understand their plight, they’re being shot,” Trump said. “When I ask that question, I ask it sort of knowing the answer. The only answer is that they’re being shot.”
He asserted that close to 65,000 protesters have been killed following the attempted uprising that took place in December 2025 and January, which saw the mass mobilization of citizens into the Iranian streets. It was these protests that inspired Trump to promise Iranians that “help is on the way.” He eventually launched Operation Epic Fury, the large-scale assault on Iranian leadership and military infrastructure, in February.
But a crackdown from the government and military quashed the protests before the United States began its operations. Thousands of demonstrators were gunned down in the streets, and many more have been arrested and executed in the months since.
“That’s why it’s not happening — and who can blame them?” Trump said Wednesday.
They need the chance to shoot back.
THE NEW SPACE RACE:
BREAKING: Sierra Space has secured national-security and commercial payload contracts for Dream Chaser’s inaugural flight, expanding the mission beyond NASA cargo.
The reusable spaceplane is set to launch from Kennedy Space Center, spend several days in orbit, then land on a… pic.twitter.com/uPRdIK9HXX
— Outer Space Today (@outerspacetoday) September 2, 2026