Call it the “Lady Ghostbusters” effect.

The Legacy Media and the Left, but we repeat ourselves, went to war on behalf of the 2016 pop culture reboot.

Why?

Director Paul Feig replaced the franchise’s all-male heroes with women. That helped trigger the dawn of the woke era and told journalists to defend the film, sight unseen.

Proof? The Washington Post told us we were sexist for disliking the film’s first, awful trailer. That was just part of the media manipulation behind the film.

We’re seeing a lesser version of that playing out on behalf of “Supergirl.”

The new movie debuted in theaters this weekend to a terrible $40 million opening haul stateside. That’s super low for a Lycra-clad character. Here’s how it compares to recent fare in this genre:

• “Black Adam” – $67 million
• “Captain America: Brave New World” – $88 million
• “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” – $117 million
• “Birds of Prey” – $33 million
• “The Marvels” – $46 million
• “Shazam: Fury of the Gods” – $30 million

That’s terrible news for James Gunn, trying to re-establish DC as a movie franchise of consequence.

Look closer.

For all the girl-power energy behind the film, mostly concocted by the team’s stars and Legacy Media outlets, the movie couldn’t draw the one demographic it craved.

Women.

The Bulwark’s Sonny Bunch noted that inconvenient truth on Elon Musk’s X.

One of the things worth noting about SUPERGIRL is that the opening weekend audience was *59 percent* male. It’s not just that no one was interested in this, it’s that women specifically were not interested in this. pic.twitter.com/XZcSyoNq9Y

— Sonny Bunch (@SonnyBunch) June 28, 2026

Bunch followed it up with two important notes:

This is not new or unique (I believe CAPTAIN MARVEL’s audience was also something like 60% male) but the male-heavy nature of the audiences for these movies is probably something to think about when green lighting them/developing their stories!

Plus, he recalled that 2017’s “Wonder Woman,” a massive hit, drew more women than men to theaters. (And it didn’t trigger, or require, a woke defense at the time)

Hmmm.

Women love going to the movies, of course, Just look at the box office haul for this year’s “The Devil Wears Prada 2.” “Barbie” became one of the biggest hits in years, and that wasn’t drawing male viewers like flies.

Allegedly neutral media outlets shouldn’t go to bat for a film based on any woke advantages or angles. Nor should they attack audiences for having the “wrong” takes on a film.

More importantly?

Hollywood might reconsider making sulky, drunken Gen Z types the stars of movies. It might not be catnip for the demographic they’re so eager to court.

The post The Inconvenient Truth Crushing ‘Supergirl’s’ Woke Defenders appeared first on Hollywood in Toto.

Bernie Sanders, posting on Twitter/X Thursday (don’t complain to me that he doesn’t use his Bluesky account):

Corporate greed is Tim Cook, the billionaire Apple CEO, claiming that hiking prices on Apple products by over $200 is “unavoidable” after it made $112 billion in profits last year & spent $310 billion on stock buybacks.

These price hikes aren’t unavoidable. They’re unacceptable.

It boggles the mind how anyone could post this and not question the common sense napkin math of a company spending 3× its annual profit on stock buybacks. That’s theoretically possible, I suppose, but obviously unsustainable. A company would have to burn through a cash hoard or incur massive amounts of debt to spend 3× its profit on anything. It makes no sense. Someone who doesn’t consider the common sense of those numbers probably shouldn’t be spouting off on anything related to economics. And of course Apple files an annual report with the SEC, easily searchable via the web, which plainly shows that the company spent $89 billion on stock repurchases last year, and paid shareholders $15 billion in dividends. Those numbers make sense for a company that earned $112 billion in profit.

I suspect Sanders is so ignorant of basic economics that he sees the ampersand in his tweet as additive — that Apple made $112 billion in profit and spent $310 billion in buybacks and thus had something like $420 billion of money “in the black” with which they could eat the cost of rising RAM and SSD components. But they’re not additive. Stock repurchases are purchases. If Apple actually had spent $310 billion on stock buybacks last year — which, to repeat, they most certainly did not — even Karl Marx might excuse them for raising prices on their products this year, because they’d be in a $200 billion hole they needed to dig out of.

But such concerns, obvious to anyone who’s taken an Econ 101 course in college, seldom stop ideologues.

Putting aside Sanders’s factually incorrect and nonsensical $310 billion figure, let’s just consider this general scenario: A company makes a product that consists of essential components they must purchase from suppliers. Something happens — outside the company’s control — that causes those essential components to rise in price significantly. Therefore the cost of goods for the company’s product increases significantly. What should the company do? Raise prices and pass those increased costs on to their customers, maintaining the same level of profit for themselves? Or hold prices steady and eat those costs, accepting lower profits or even negative margins, so that customers remain unaffected?

One can hold logically consistent views at both extremes. At one end, the belief that business is business and higher costs naturally result in higher prices passed along to customers. At the other end, the belief that companies should put the welfare of their customers ahead of their own profit seeking. Perhaps you think the answer is somewhere in-between: somewhat higher prices and somewhat lower profit margins. What you cannot do is hold a philosophically consistent logically coherent view where your answer to how a company should respond in such a scenario is contingent on what the “something happens” is that caused component prices to rise.

When the “something happens” is a global RAM and SSD shortage resulting from the AI datacenter capex spending spree, Sanders’s tweet makes clear that he’s of the opinion that Apple should eat these costs.

But when the “something happens” was Trump’s tariffs, Sanders argued that (emphasis added) “Trump’s across-the-board tariffs are not the way to do it. We do not need a blanket and arbitrary sales tax on imported goods which will raise prices on products that the American people desperately need.” And again: “Trump’s blanket tariffs will just raise prices for American consumers and hurt our relationships with allies, undermining our global position.” Not “might” raise prices. “Will” raise prices.

Sanders arguing today that Apple should eat the entire cost of rising RAM and SSD components makes no more sense than this tweet from Donald Trump a year ago:

Walmart should STOP trying to blame Tariffs as the reason for raising prices throughout the chain. Walmart made BILLIONS OF DOLLARS last year, far more than expected. Between Walmart and China they should, as is said, “EAT THE TARIFFS,” and not charge valued customers ANYTHING. I’ll be watching, and so will your customers!!!

Sanders’s tweet is better punctuated and capitalized, but it’s the same illogic. Zero economic sense, 100 percent ideological wishful thinking. Yelling angrily doesn’t make your argument any more compelling or coherent.

Sean Hollister, writing for The Verge (gift link):

Since the Magnavox Odyssey came out in 1972, game consoles have been built with the same basic goal: to effortlessly play proprietary games on a TV screen. Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft have spent decades essentially selling the same product. A few consoles could do more, but the formula you know and love remains buy box, plug into TV, insert game, play.

The Steam Machine aims to be something bigger. It’s a vision of a box with fewer restrictions and an almost endless catalog of games — for those willing to spend nearly twice the price of a PlayStation 5.

That’s right. Today, Valve has announced the Steam Machine will start at $1,049 without a gamepad or $1,128 bundled with one, but you aren’t getting a significant boost in performance over the 5.5-year-old Sony PS5 you can still buy today. Even after three price hikes, a vanilla $650 PS5 offers sharper images in Cyberpunk 2077 and Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered in my tests. So how can Valve possibly charge over a grand, you might ask?

It’s because the Steam Machine is, let’s say, a PC-plus. It’s a PC that acts more like a console than any you’ve used before. It’s incredibly cool and quiet, so much smaller than a PS5, surprisingly smooth, and completely navigable with any modern gamepad you own. You don’t need a mouse, keyboard, or even Valve’s own touchpad-equipped Steam Controller to download, launch, or play games. Joysticks do the job.

The price is eye-opening, but that’s the theme across all consumer hardware this year. It’s hard not to root for Steam with its expanding hardware ambitions, but Hollister’s review shows just how far they have to go to achieve “plug it in, insert game, play” simplicity.

1. “Toxicity”

I’ve heard many people complain about “toxic masculinity” in the last several years. Some people dislike the phrase because they think its use implies that masculinity is, in general, toxic.

I don’t read it that way. “John ate a toxic burrito” does not imply that burritos in general are toxic. I read it as implying a distinction between two…

Read more

“The more big and active the state is, the more it is worth purchasing.”

– Deidre N McCloskey and Alberto Mingardi, The Myth of the Entrepreneurial State (page 97).

The post The dystopia of a world without growth appeared first on spiked.