The Jack Reacher series, launched in 2022, received widespread acclaim for avoiding most of the woke tropes slathered all over the majority of streaming series and movies at the time. For those with short memories, in 2022, the idea of a project featuring a 6'3" 240 pound white guy as the main protagonist seemed impossible. The series felt like a refreshing callback to the 1980s and the action/thriller apex era of Stallone and Schwarzenegger.
Solving big problems with unfiltered masculine violence is something audiences love, but Hollywood usually hates. If the hero is not a 90 pound wheelchair-bound minority lesbian boss babe kicking patriarchal ass, Tinsel Town usually isn't interested. It was a miracle that Reacher was greenlit.
That said, just because an actor plays a cool character on screen does not mean they're also a cool person in real life.
Enter Alan Ritchson, who smartly kept his mouth shut through most of the filming for Jack Reacher. Unfortunately, Hollywood has a way of energizing people's worst impulses and a lot of actors feel compelled to loudly virtue signal in order to stay in the good graces of industry elites. Ritchson has been increasingly unhinged in recent months and his latest rant went off the deep end into violent territory when it comes to Trump and conservatives.
Alan Ritchson has decided the best use of his time is to attack Trump, and to throw a few jabs in at Catholics for some reason😂
You’d think he’d be smart enough to keep his mouth shut because fans of Reacher happen to also be right-wing. But nope. pic.twitter.com/JNCwgRRziU
Ritchson now attacks Trump and MAGA voters regularly on issues ranging from immigration to the Epstein Files, and falsely accused Trump of assaulting a 13-year-old girl (an anonymous and baseless accusation that conveniently popped up in 2016 just as Trump was beginning his campaign for the presidency).
But where was Ritchson's steroid fervor during the Biden years? Where was the big, tough actor back then when it came to the trans grooming of children or Biden's bizarre hair sniffing habit? It's fascinating that celebrities only seem to find the voice to speak up when Democrats are out of power.
Ritchson was raised Catholic and voted Republican in his early years, until, he says, he had an "awakening" on the "black and white" nature of the church. Catholicism as an institution has also been overrun with progressive ideology in recent decades (nearly 50% of Catholics vote Democrat, 60% support legalized abortion rights and 75% support "trans rights", for example).
This would explain Ritchson's position that abortion is "spritiually wrong" but he still supports legalization. It also explains his argument that Christians who oppose immigration are going against the Bible. Being raised Catholic definitely doesn't ensure a conservative mindset.
It is a common tactic of progressives within the church to assert that conservative policies are "anti-Christian"; as if open borders, transgender acceptance, pacifism and killing babies are Biblical requirements. At bottom, the spread of these concepts would effectively mean the death of the Christian West, but hey, they're the good guys because they're "empathetic".
Some critics argue that Ritchson's continued affiliations with Christianity are a ploy to keep his large conservative audience intact, but if that's the case, then he has failed miserably. The actor has been on a tour of interviews to promote his latest movie "Motor City" and Reacher Season 4, but his comments have alienated a huge portion of his fans. Motor City opened last week to resounding crickets.
Although it was released in over 1600 theaters, Motor City grossed a dismal $1.6 million in its debut. Its per-screen average was a only $1,015, placing it 18th in the per-screen-average derby. Motor City’s production budget alone was $30 million, there is no reported information on the marketing budget (likely around $10 million). In any case, the film is a financial disaster.
Get Woke, Go Broke prevails again.
As for Ritchson, the collapse of his latest film suggests a dwindling fan base for future projects. When will Hollywood celebrities learn to shut up and keep their Reddit inspired political opinions to themselves? Probably never, but at least it's easier than ever for movie goers to figure out who and what these people are before spending their hard earned cash.
Tyler Durden Wed, 07/29/2026 - 18:55Authored by Stacy Robinson via The Epoch Times,
Elon Musk's artificial intelligence platform is challenging a Minnesota law that says companies can be held liable if users "nudify" real people by altering an existing photograph or video.
The screen shows Grok app in this photo illustration. Oleksii Pydsosonnii/The Epoch TimesMusk's company xAI, maker of the popular Grok AI tool, is suing Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison to block the law, which is set to kick in on Aug. 1. Violators can be fined up to $500,000 for each image.
According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, approximately 117 million people had used Grok as of March 1 this year. If 100 of those users violated Minnesota's law, it could cost the company $50 million in fines.
xAI said it would disable Grok's image-editing feature for Minnesotans. Ellison said he will "see X in court."
"There are plenty of worthy debates to have about AI. This is not one of them. AI nudification robs the target of their dignity and could cause them immense harm on many levels," Ellison responded to the lawsuit in a social media post on July 28.
Grok's terms of service already prohibit users from "nudifying real persons, or otherwise altering a real person's image or likeness to depict them in an intimate or sexual context."
But xAI's lawyers argue that the language of Minnesota's law is too vague, and companies may be on the hook for pictures that are harmless.
The complaint stated that the law "punishes AI platforms that allow users to alter images of real people to depict an 'intimate part.'" According to Minnesota law, that includes things such as the inner thigh, or part of a breast or buttock.
In its court filing, the company references a viral AI-generated photo posted by President Donald Trump to his Truth Social account on May 1. The photo depicts Trump, Marco Rubio and JD Vance, along with an unidentified woman, sitting in the Washington Memorial Reflecting Pool, which was undergoing renovation ordered by the president at the time. All are wearing bathing suits.
"People routinely wear shorts in public that expose some or all of their inner thighs; men may go shirtless in public, exposing their breasts; a woman's swimsuit may expose some or all of her inner thigh; men and women wear Speedos, bikinis, or other types of swimsuits or apparel that expose their breasts and buttocks, at least in part," the complaint said.
Aside from being overbroad, xAI argues, the law violates the company's First Amendment free speech rights, and those of its users. Other laws also make the new statute unnecessary.
"Minnesota law and the federal TAKE IT DOWN Act already prohibit and provide remedies for the knowing, nonconsensual dissemination of deepfakes" showing nudity, the complaint says.
Tyler Durden Wed, 07/29/2026 - 18:30Update (1800ET): As this evening's conference call went on, we finally got to the meat of the matter as Microsoft kept its CapEx forecast unchanged on Wednesday, ...becoming one of the first hyperscalers to hold the line on the market's insatiable AI spending spree.
Against expectations to spend $190 billion on capital expenditures this calendar year, Microsoft tonight maintained this spending outlook (due to an accounting change, this CapEx guidance is now $175 billion, but, in reality, Microsoft is keeping its AI capex plan the same for this year).
This is a major step for the AI trade. MSFT is up 8% on the comment...
Given the after hours spike, and if it continues, then other hyperscalers may be forced to hold/cut their CapEx as it is clear that investors are willing to give credit to that idea.
And with that the hyperbolic narratives underpinning the entire compute shortage edifice.
* * *
Microsoft walked into tonight's fiscal fourth-quarter earnings report carrying the most bearish positioning it has seen in more than a decade, and it does so on an afternoon when the Fed - now run by a chairman who has made a point of telling markets nothing - triggered significant volatility in stocks and bonds.
The positioning data tells the story first. According to S3 Partners data reported by CNBC, roughly 92 million Microsoft shares are now sold short, or 1.27% of the public float - the highest short interest as a percentage of float since May 2015, and the largest short-interest build anywhere in the Magnificent Seven. More telling than the level is the behavior: S3 says there has been virtually no short covering into the print, which means the bears are not taking profits on a stock that is already down more than 18% year-to-date and, as GeekWire notes, sitting near a one-year low despite consistently beating estimates. They are holding, and they are holding into the report.
The reason is not mysterious to anyone who watched last week.
Alphabet delivered what would once have been a triumphant quarter - revenue up 24%, cloud up 82% - then raised its 2026 capex forecast by roughly $15 billion to as much as $205 billion, and for its trouble watched the stock fall 7% the next day and slip below its prior $4 trillion valuation.
Crucially, the lesson from GOOGL is that the market has stopped rewarding hyperscalers for spending money, which is inconvenient for companies whose entire strategic posture is spending money.
"Alphabet's capex boost increases the odds of similar behavior" from Microsoft and Amazon, Evercore ISI's Mark Mahaney wrote in a client note last week, which is precisely what the shorts are betting on.
And so, with all that in mind, what did MSFT report?
The headline is a strong top-line beat out of the gate:
Microsoft Q4 Revenue was $90.01 billion, up 18%, and better than the consensus $87.7 billion.
Q4 diluted earnings per share jumped 23% (on a non-GAAP basis) to $4.74 (but this is not entirely comparable to the $4.25 consensus thanks to $3.2billion gain from their investment in Anthropic and 7c/share loss from OpenAI's investment)
Under the hood, MSFT's cloud unit posted a larger-than-expected increase in sales, suggesting that the company’s computing infrastructure and artificial intelligence services continue to make inroads with businesses.
Azure cloud-computing revenue increased 43% during the fiscal fourth quarter, the company said Wednesday in a statement. That exceeded analysts’ average growth estimate of about 40%.
Nadella highlighted progress on the “cost-to-outcome curve” and noted two major milestones
“We are advancing the frontier on the cost-to-outcome curve, ensuring every customer can turn tokens into business results," said Satya Nadella, chairman and chief executive officer of Microsoft.
“This year, Azure revenue surpassed $100 billion for the first time, and Microsoft 365 Copilot reached over 30 million paid seats, reflecting the confidence customers are placing in us to power their AI transformation.”
All units beat on revenues:
Microsoft Cloud Q4 revenue $59.3 billion, estimate $58.71 billion, up 27% YoY
Intelligent Cloud revenue $39.31 billion, estimate $38.17 billion
Productivity and Business Processes revenue $37.85 billion, estimate $37.27 billion
More Personal Computing revenue $12.85 billion, estimate $12.17 billion
Net income was $35.8 billion and increased 31% on a GAAP basis, and was $35.3 billion and increased 22% on a non-GAAP basis
Finally, and perhaps most crucially, Capital expenditures (including assets acquired under finance leases) increased 70% to $41 billion in the quarter, which is notably less than the $42.5 billion expected, on track to meet their roughly $190 billion annual guidance, but Capital-spending details on the conference call are more important, given the metric exceeds 50% of calendar 2026 sales.
Following an afternoon of pain (thanks to Warsh), MSFT shares are bouncing modestly after hours - up around 3%...
Tonight closes the books on a fiscal year in which Microsoft guided capital expenditures and finance leases to roughly $190 billion - up 61% from the prior year - including, per CFO Amy Hood's April guidance, a $25 billion hit from higher component prices as the global memory crunch feeds straight into the cost of building AI infrastructure.
The forward-looking problem is worse: BNP Paribas analysts are already penciling in $262 billion of capex for fiscal 2027. Cloud gross margin, guided to roughly 64% for the quarter, has been grinding lower as data-center depreciation piles up, meaning the spending is now visibly eating into the earnings it was supposed to eventually justify.
Along those lines, Bloomberg's Brody Ford reports that Microsoft added more than $130 billion in new data center leases in the past quarter, signaling an accelerating pace of spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure.
The company’s total commitments for leases that have not yet commenced were $329.1 billion as of the quarter ended June 30, Microsoft said Wednesday in a regulatory filing. That’s up from $196.6 billion in the prior period.
“That’s really a signal of the continued demand strength that we see,” Jonathan Neilson, Microsoft investor relations chief, said in an interview.
“These leases are going to be there to serve demand for many many years.”
The future costs, which come on top of active leases, won’t appear on Microsoft’s balance sheet until it begins making payments on them. The company said they are “primarily” for data centers and some are “subject to certain contractual conditions being met.”
This represents Microsoft’s largest quarterly jump in data center leasing by far.
The software giant continues to be held back by a lack of data center capacity after taking a pause on its leasing activity through much of 2025.
However, as we detailed earlier, simply put, until MSFT demonstrates some more tangible progress in AI (Copilot progress, proprietary LLM, proprietary chip, etc. as OpenAI potentially steals institutional share), it will likely remain on the battleground.
Microsoft will give its sales outlook for the current quarter, its fiscal Q1, as well as details on actual FY2026 CapEx on the conference call with analysts tonight.
Tyler Durden Wed, 07/29/2026 - 18:10Far-left foot soldiers linked with Black Lives Matter and Antifa have established a two-block autonomous zone along Williamson Street in Madison, Wisconsin, following the death of 38-year-old Corey Durrell Ruiz.
Good morning from Madison, where an encampment at Willy and Baldwin Sts is in its 7th day. pic.twitter.com/iR4kVl1hCQ
— Laura Schulte (@SchulteLaura) July 29, 2026Ruiz, who had reportedly been released from prison (read report) shortly before the incident, was approached by police while riding a bicycle after allegedly attempting to enter several vehicles. Far-left activists have since designated the occupied area the Corey Ruiz Autonomous Zone, or CRAZ.
The encampment appears designed to demonstrate control over public space while creating conditions in which any police intervention could be framed as state repression. However, reporting from local media and anti-communist commentator Karlyn Borysenko suggests the local government is accommodating, and potentially enabling, the occupation rather than moving to dismantle it.
"So who's funding the barricades and the porta-potties in the BLM/Antifa autonomous zone (the CRAZ) in Madison, Wisconsin? You're not going to believe the answer. And I provide the receipts to prove it," Borysenko wrote on X.
Borysenko pointed to reporting from local outlet WMTV 15 News that says the municipal government is funding part of the CRAZ.
So who’s funding the barricades and the porta-potties in the BLM/Antifa autonomous zone (the CRAZ) in Madison Wisconsin?
You’re not going to believe the answer.
And I provide the receipts to prove it. https://t.co/LkGZRaz91S pic.twitter.com/UMz5dGD1vm
Here's more color :
District 6 Alder Davy Mayer said he has heard from more than 100 constituents in recent days. He said the city has been working on basic services, including a plan to use city salt trucks as street blockades in place of the seized trash cans. The city has also placed portable restrooms in the area.
Mayer said a homeless population has also moved into the zone, adding to disruptions.
"There certainly have been poor interactions like that," Mayer said. "There's also a large number of our homeless neighbors have come in and have been taking up living in this area too. That's something that causes disruption."
Mayer said the group has implemented some self-regulation, including a 10 p.m. curfew for children and overnight quiet hours. He said he could not offer a timeline for a resolution.
"I don't think the city wants to see a permanent takeover of this intersection," Mayer said. "But we also don't want to see a violent clearing of it either. So it's working with all these parties to find a resolution, which is difficult, which takes time."
Mayer said he hopes the city can begin pushing barricades back to reopen parts of the street, but said planning is being done hour by hour. He also said he went door to door to nearly all homes in the area on the first day of the closure and has posted updates to his blog. Some residents said they have not received communication.
New as of yesterday afternoon, the city has placed a few trucks to help shield the intersection. pic.twitter.com/VtYRgjhPKY
— Laura Schulte (@SchulteLaura) July 28, 2026Borysenko: "So who is funding CRAZ and the leftist takeover of several city blocks? The city, the taxpayers..."
Tyler Durden Wed, 07/29/2026 - 18:05