Michelin-Starred BLEMTRO
It's the free one!
A rare assemblage of November, Hussein, and Nate discuss the happenings of the day: Europeans deploying forces to Greenland to stave off Trump actually doing the thing; Trump's coterie of freaks claiming they're going to offer refugee status in America to British Jews; an article about an AI-powered restaurant chain where the machine not only cooks your food, but also invents your food. It doesn't sound great, if we're being honest!
Comments (75)
Oh, boy. I love living in the - Trashfuture - , I can't wait to work my way back to find out the context for "chain restaraunt disguising itself as an independant or small-name restaraunt on delivery apps to trick/exploit people who are unaware and hungry". Yay. Wahoo. Give me a glass of that good Puddle.
Trashfoodture
Greenland isn't full of Danes. Greenland is >90% Greenland Inuit. Donald Trump wants to do imperialism to take land filled with Native Americans who don't want anything to do with America from another colonialist European power. Trump really is a 21st Century Andrew Jackson.
I live down the street from the Wonder in Brooklyn! It’s been around for a couple years, the vibe was initially “satellite of celebrity chef restaurant,” but when I walked by a couple weeks ago and saw “LimeSalt” on the window, I realized that something was amiss. If TF Twitch or Discord or whatever is still a thing, I’ll tune in with a live review. Maybe the room can vote on my order?
this decade is just Infinite Jest and now we're at the Eschaton sequence
hey coworker you wanna go get lunch downstairs at the BLEMTRO? I'm gonna order a Bowl 1-Unit Rice Bean Chicken Item Food Great For Lunch/Snack/Various Amazon Prime Delivery and/or Home Re-Heat Great Taste Multiple Flavour Choice
This was an especially fun dessert story. The nonprofit where I work assists under-resourced food entrepreneurs (among other programs) and we are building an outdoor food hall where the businesses can launch and incubate for the first few years before moving out on their own. This is dependent on grant funds and has taken years of development, and we've been lapped by several rounds of similar-ish projects with ample private funds: - food halls made up of chain restaurants - ghost kitchens - ghost kitchens pretending to be local food halls The lack of humanity behind them has led to quick closures for so many. A fulfillment center model would stand no chance.
You've heard of soul food now get ready for soulless food.
wait if that guy was a true believer he would ONLY eat a bowl chosen at random that is created in duplicate form s random citizens order
That's very close to what he's doing.
they are now letting AI make slop you can eat
I had to pull over after “veloutte coming out loose”
Predicting football hooliganism from this crew is less a pre-crime and more “planning to open cooling centers during a heat wave”
Wow I can’t believe they finally created the Liver Loaf Lunch Arranger from Ernest Goes to Camp https://youtu.be/av_OIaefSq8
Re Alaska, makes me real interested in thoughts on https://www.npr.org/2026/01/18/nx-s1-5681372/us-military-troops-on-standby-for-possible-deployment-to-minnesota
Praying France exercises it's weird nuclear warning shot doctrine by deploying a tactical nuclear weapon against American troops in Greenland
I would rather buy ceviche sold by a stranger from the hot trunk of a car than eat some tech dickheads robo slop
a dude sold tamales out of his van by the park near me a few months ago and i keep praying he comes back, best tamales of my life
Making a rogue TF restaurant that sells nothing but broth, getting your dick stocked dot com
Israel has committed another heinous crime: making me agree with a decision police made
I worked at a summer camp in 2019 and was responsible for a bunch of 11 year old boys. I came back from a day off to discover they had basically all gotten scabies and we had to treat them and take all their stuffed animals and shit. It took like 4 hours.
Look - we may bristle at an AI telling us what to eat and then feeding it to us for every meal but that’s essentially the relationship I have with my dog and she loves her food so, I don’t know, maybe the future is dog
In case anyone is confused why Trump was writing to Norway, the Nobel committee is based in Sweden not Norway but the Peace Prize is controlled by a body in Norway which is appointed by the parliament. I don't know why they do it this way. The hosts glossed over this very quickly today and I wanted to clarify in case anybody else was confused listening to that section. On a related note, the Nobel Memorial Prize for Economics has nothing to do with either of these groups. It is a fake prize put out by the central bank of Sweden and is awarded in a separate ceremony.
It was Alfred Nobel's personal wish that the peace prize be given out by Norway.
God, the blood-draw restaurant is so much less interesting than the (also stupid) techie idea: donate a tissue sample and they'll make you a serving of your own lab-grown meat for ethical autocannibalism
Yeah sure that second one is stupid but at least it's like, hot.
Calling it the "Infinite Kitchen" and the whole hallucination/slop-generated menus is *remarkably* close to the Torment Nexus joke but for Jorge Luis Borges' "Library of Babel". Every possible combination of ingredients, none of them good.
I worked at a giant company where M. Lorre was my super-uber-boss. He had a "random sample" of his reports lined up as 5-minute chat sessions; I was one of them. A few months later he quit. Clearly, he was trolling for people to recruit for his next project. I was DEVASTATED not to make the cut.
They are doing research for the right thing, but are aiming it at the wrong thing. The food world does not need automated slop bowls, it needs automated 1/2-hour preparation of recipes that are wildly impractical for restaurants. For example, an American fancy grocery was selling boeuf bourguignon sauce without the beef during xmas; I used it to make an insane carrot-and-pearl-onion stew.
Really interesting idea. I still don't think it would work in this case just because freshness is such an important factor in food, and storing or reheating it can have some pretty unpredictable effects. I feel like "making kitchen ingredients in a factory" is a pretty filled niche already. A lotta stuff comes outta cans and boxes even in high-end kitchens just because it's the best way of doing it.
I know the Star Trek Replicator is the main touchpoint for the food slop machine, but they guy outsourcing his meal to the ai who tells him what to eat rings to me like they watched the Lets Go Eat Italian Food episode of Diamond is Unbreakable. This dude is trying to make AI Tonio Trussardi and AI Pearl Jam.
A proper intro right out of the gate? What is this nonsense?! I DEMAND A CHAOTIC INTRO 17 MINUTES IN! Like God intended!
Barbarism. If I want delivery, I order pizza or General Tso’s, and I tip the driver.
I ain't got no quarrel with them Inughuit.
Strangely enough, Trumps annexation attempt is not the first time a country tries to take control over Greenland in modern times. A handful of Norwegians tried to annex East-Greenland in 1931. They gained support from the Norwegian government. Quisling in particular was an avid supporter. Norway abandoned the claims after losing in the international court of justice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erik_the_Red%27s_Land
The claims was based on the fact that Greenland was part of the medival kingdom of Norway before the union with and subsequent annexation by Denmark in late medival/early modern times.
I greatly appreciate that the AI-restaurant uses a "contraption", you don't get a lot of contraptions in this day and age.
This day and age has seen the death of much intentional whimsy in favour of unintentional folly. This world would be a merrier place if the stupid gimicks and doodads were the result of purposeful creation of something a little bit fun but knowingly useless, rather than failed attempts to make the ridiculous real Take Neom. Conceptually risible, but very fun as something Emperor of the United States Norton I (and Protector of Mexico) would propose with no actual intention of making real except maybe as a very silly scale model used to sell cotton candy at seaside carnivals. Horrifying as something they pretended to try to make happen knowing full well it could never work, killing slaves by the thousands
Ghostrider ghostrider usa tchka tchk tchk This is for Nate
how many times are people gonna try to 'save capitalism from itself' before they realise it's perhaps a futile endeavour?
But also we already had that, it was called the new deal. These people just aren't anywhere near wordly or empathetic enough to actually make that work though, them being greedy cowards aside.
Knowing how much he likes his food, I think that robo-kitchen bit might actually have radicalised Riley had he been present for this
Walked into a bakery famished, did a Danish jihad.
i read this in the Dracula Flow voice
Fabulous job leading the episode, November. The thing about an AI slop bowl restaurant that puzzles me is that with a rice cooker and a single pan almost everone can easily make superior slop bowls at home for less. That'a basically what I eat. I pick one of three sauces, some protein, some veggies, 30 minutes, violá I have slop dinner with leftovers for lunch tomorrow. If I go to a restaurant they have got to provide a better experience than that.
Ignoring the AI of it all, I kinda get the concept. The idea is that most people don't really have the resources to experiment a lot with their slop bowls. So if they cook it themselves, they'll just end up making the same thing over and over again. But this idea is kind of like hitting the "random" button on a character creator where it mixes and matches everything together. And maybe you'll end up with a weird combo that you'd never have thought up on your own, but you find that it's kind of interesting.
21st CENTURY WINTER WAR LET'S GO also does nova think wes streeting is an example of an attractive man???? I'll admit I don't have any frame of reference for that but even relative to the rest of the Labour Party he really doesn't stand out
Nah, she was making fun of him.
Guided by Recipes
The Future Is in Eggs
This whole AI kitchen thing is getting eerily close to the Nutrimatic Drinks Dispenser from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
Where is Milo btw? It’s been a while since he’s been on.
on tour
look regardless of what you think about his politics i think everyone across the political spectrum can agree that it's very impressive that Donald Trump is the first person to physically possess both a Nobel Peace Prize *AND* a FIFA Peace Prize
Maybe we can distract him with another award. How about the honorary golden globe for deal making? It's a golden orb
Kitchens are now Battlefields
Oh my god!! They closed a daycare in my queens neighborhood and built one of these. I could sense its demonic energy. I tried it once out of morbid curiosity. Two bites had to throw it out. Also took almost 25 minutes
"A restaurant isn't a place, it's an idea" is an underappreciated line from V For Vendetta.
Shit I was going to make that joke
Is the only reason Riley doesn't transition is because then she couldn't go to lab. oritory? x
This is the plot of the Adrian Tchaikovsky book Ironclads... American can put as many troops as it wants in Greenland but as soon as the Finnish supersoldiers with their bioweapons get involved it's all over.
Raising an EU flag over Greenland is particularly stupidly colonialist considering the fact that Greenland left the EU in 1982: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_of_Greenland_from_the_European_Communities Honestly it would make more sense for Greenland to be part of Canada on similar terms to Nunavut than it does for Greenland to be part of Denmark. (It would make probably the most sense for Greenland, Nunavut, and Alaska to be a sovereign union of their own, but that seems less likely to happen anytime soon.)
There are chunks of Siberia that would join.
Well, it's one way to put on a US show
Gaz Atriedes 😆 outstanding, Nate
Finland sent 2 guys to Greenland, so they have the seppos surrounded.
"I am a glacier to my people!"
The Norwegian Government does technically appoint the Nobel Peace Prize committee. Of course it still doesn't make any sense to go straight to them but there is some sort of deranged Trump logic there, like someone read the Wikipedia entry to him and he immediately dictated a letter
Also, the King of Norway is 6'2". I feel like that fact has something to do with all this.
Have you taken a look at the King of Denmark?
To be fair the Danish monarchy put up a more effective resistance to the Nazis than most of their contemporaries. Weirdly the King of Denmark did this by not going into exile but nonetheless showing passive resistance, which helped embolden the Danish population to evacuate the Danish Jews to Sweden, in contrast to the Dutch, who did not succeed at rescuing most of the Dutch Jews from the Nazis. Obviously one shouldn’t give too much credit to a monarch for things such as this; the noteworthy thing here is mostly the contrast between the effectiveness of Denmark’s resistance and the relative ineffectiveness of most other anti-Nazi resistance movements when it came to saving Jews from being murdered. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_of_the_Danish_Jews
the pitter-patter of my hooves in the mud as I sprint for the slop
Trotters! Hogs have trotters!
Are we surprised? AI cuisine slop is a straightforward progression of digital slop. "You're right, I did add bleach to this dish. Your taste buds aren't just refined -- they're insightful!"
Bachelor chow for all.