Three paintings worth $10 million stolen from Renoir Museum in southern France

Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]

“Three paintings have been stolen from a museum dedicated to French impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir in southern France in an early morning burglary. Two thieves broke into the museum in Cagnes-sur-Mer, near Nice, a little before 6am (0400 GMT) and took four paintings, Mayor Bryan Masson said in a post on social media on Tuesday. ‘Spotted thanks to the town’s video surveillance cameras, the two individuals fled, abandoning one of the stolen paintings as they ran,’ Masson said, adding his office estimated the value of the stolen works at 9 million euros ($10.5m). … The theft comes less than a year after eight items valued at about $100m were stolen during a daylight robbery from the famed Louvre Museum in Paris.” (09/08/26)

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/9/8/three-paintings-worth-10m-stolen-from-renoir-museum-in-southern-france

Quibbling Over the Definition of Private Property

Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Wanjiru Njoya

“Property rights are defined in many ways. It often happens that academics who are interested in the scope, regulation, or protection of private property rights debate endlessly at cross purposes because they do not share the same definition of property rights in the first place. Some debaters attempt to beat their opponents by initiating a definitional game of ‘gotcha.'” (09/08/260

https://mises.org/mises-wire/quibbling-over-definition-private-property

No, Abdul, My Kids Are Not “All of Our Kids”

Source: Town Hall
by Derek Hunter

“Leftists are coming for your kids. They always have been, so that’s not breaking news, but you have to be reminded of this on occasion so no one forgets and everyone can act accordingly. Kids are easy to indoctrinate; easy to convince of stupid things, that lies are truth. If you have kids, you know how this works. I’d never realized how easily you could joke and have everything you say be taken seriously by your kid because they don’t really understand the concept of joking yet. Once they get it, they can still be convinced of just about anything by anyone in a position of authority or someone they’re told to respect. Most adults don’t abuse that position, but liberals do.” [editor’s note: I didn’t know Hunter was a “liberal!” – TLK] (09/08/26)

https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2026/09/08/no-abdul-my-kids-are-not-all-of-our-kids-n2682591

PA: Ex-priest charged in nearly $750k theft spree, targeting church groups and his mother

Source: Fox News

“A Pennsylvania priest is facing charges after prosecutors say he stole more than $740,000 from churches, church affiliates – and his own mother. Gregory Allen Madeya, 69, was arrested last month in Vero Beach, Florida and was later extradited back to Pennsylvania. Investigators say he is a former Ukrainian Catholic priest whose crimes started in 2018. He served at Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Ukrainian Catholic Church in Derry Township, according to the Latrobe Bulletin. Madeya allegedly stole from various churches and the Knights of Columbus as well as ‘nearly $250,000 from his mother, who was of the age when she could not manage her own finances,’ the attorney general’s office said. Following a lengthy investigation, detectives uncovered that Madeya allegedly fraudulently misappropriated nearly $320,000 from churches and donors.” (09/08/26)

https://www.foxnews.com/us/ex-priest-charged-nearly-750k-theft-spree-targeting-church-groups-mother-officials-say

25 years after 9/11, the US still doesn’t know “why they hate us”

Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Scott Hibbard

“The failures of America’s war on terror were rooted in a misdiagnosis of the problem. The Bush administration promoted the idea that the 9/11 hijackers were motivated by their hatred of American values and rejected any notion that U.S. policies contributed to either anti-American sentiment or violent extremism. ‘They’ hated us for who we are, it was argued, not what we do. … While the intent of the American military strategy was to deny terrorist groups safe havens, the practical effect was the opposite. American military interventions destabilized entire regions and created the kind of lawless anarchy in which militant groups proliferated. U.S. interventions also exacerbated anti-American sentiments and allowed militant groups to portray themselves as nationalist defenders fighting an occupying enemy.” (09/08/26)

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/911-25th-anniversary/

God Help Us, Let’s Try To Learn About Mechanistic Interpretability Techniques

Source: Astral Codex Ten
by Scott Alexander

“Mechanistic interpretability is the science of ‘reading an AI’s mind’. Large language models are ‘grown, not built’. Researchers run training data through a neural network. Eventually this creates a working AI; nobody really knows how. But a neural network is just a set of simulated neurons on a computer. The person with the computer can see the neurons, the connections between them, and which ones activate when the AI answers questions. So it seems like it should be possible to ‘reverse engineer’ the AI. … Unfortunately this is very hard.” (09/08/26)

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/god-help-us-lets-try-to-learn-about

Australia: Regime targets social media algorithms with new user-choice rules

Source: Reuters

“Australia on Tuesday proposed giving social media users the option to select the content they see on their feeds, marking the next step in the government’s ​push to improve online safety, following its world-first social media ban for children. Under ‌draft laws proposed by the centre-left Labor government, social media platforms will be required to notify users and offer them a choice over their default feed. Users can choose to opt in to having their default feed ​include personalised content recommended by an algorithm. Alternatively, they can opt out of algorithmically ​recommended content and instead see posts only from the friends and creators they ⁠choose to follow.” [editor’s note: If users want that and are willing to pay for it in some way, they’ll get it without government requirements – TLK] (09/08/26)

https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/australia-targets-social-media-algorithms-with-new-user-choice-rules-2026-09-08/