TRASHFUTURE – "Michelin-Starred BLEMTRO" (Jan 20, 2026)

Overview

In this episode, the Trashfuture crew—November Kelly, Nate Bethay, and Hussain Kesvani (absent: Riley Quinn)—explore three main threads: the bizarre developments in global politics fueled by the US (namely the attempted occupation of Greenland under Trump’s reign), UK domestic news with a focus on antisemitism discourse and media dysfunction, and a deep-dive into dystopian food tech—specifically, automation and “slop bowls” in the restaurant sector. All themes are suffused with the show’s signature mix of sarcasm, dark humor, and left-wing exasperation over late capitalism’s psychic fallout.

Main Topics & Discussion Points

1. World News: The “Greenland Invasion” Saga

• US Foreign Policy Absurdity

  • Trump, apparently incensed over not winning the Nobel Peace Prize, sets sights on occupying Greenland—a development confirmed by a letter sent to Norway’s PM. ([02:52])
    • “The world is not secure unless we have complete and total control of Greenland. Thank you, President djt.” – November, reading Trump’s letter ([03:53])
  • France sends troops; Germany’s Luftwaffe come and go; UK infamously sends “one guy” as their entire commitment.
    • “We sent the one guy that controls Britain.” – Hussain ([08:34])
    • “If you send a lone British army officer somewhere, he will get deeply psychosexually involved with the culture of that place and we will have a guy who doesn’t realize he’s gay… leading an anti American insurgency in a couple of years time.” – November ([08:36])

• Tariffs & Economic Mayhem

  • Trump retaliates against European “protest” with immediate 10% tariffs, predicted to rise to 25% and hit the British economy especially hard. ([09:13])

• Meta-Analysis: History as Farce

  • The hosts marvel at how boomer-esque customer service grievances and “map-painter” mentalities bleed into high-stakes geopolitics.
    • “I am in some kind of hellish strategy game playing against the animating spirit of every next door commenter in America.” – Nate ([04:23])
    • “He [Trump] wants to have that kind of legacy... It makes Greenland look very big… and he wants that to be American for the sake of kids being taught in schools generations hence that Donald Trump did that, which is wild.” – November ([05:32])

• Satirical Predictions

  • UK’s “one guy” in Greenland as a Great Game protagonist; speculation about a “Danish Taliban” or “Snow Taliban” and endless knock-on effects (e.g., “feral sweater isis,” “Gaz Atreides,” and Hollywood treatments).
    • “The Snow Taliban, I think, is a very novel phenomenon. I think it’ll be really good material for the US film industry. Bradley Cooper probably will be looking for work at that point…” – Hussain ([17:17])
  • Running joke: the UK's diminishing capacity rendered in farce—one person sent abroad, single points of fragile resistance, “Greenland is Hamas.” ([28:27])

2. UK Politics: Antisemitism, Media, and Culture War Idiocy

• Trump Offers Asylum to British Jews

  • Story floats about Trump’s ex-lawyer Robert Garson trying to get the administration to offer US asylum to UK Jews, compared to the “white South African” asylum precedent. Garson’s bizarre career and self-description lampooned.
    • “The first time I met Donald Trump, I was as giddy as a schoolgirl. I was completely starstruck. What struck me… was how blue his eyes are. Very, very blue.” – November (reading Garson, [21:35])
  • Skepticism on both practicality and motive: “Who is this meant to own?”—with consensus that the move is more about tribalizing and “owning the libs” than helping anyone. ([37:28])

• Policing, Football Hooliganism, and AI Failure

  • West Midlands Police chief retires after an AI-generated report amidst controversy over banning Israeli club Maccabi Tel Aviv from a Birmingham match due to hooliganism fears.
    • AI systems, notably Microsoft Copilot, introduce “hallucinations” (inaccurate info); media and officials more interested in optics than substance.
    • “...they included some AI hallucinations about exactly how many Dutch police they needed to sort of contain Tel Aviv hooligans at, like, another match.” – November ([23:22])

• Endless Culture War/Crisis Fatigue

  • British political and media establishments are indicted for chasing “the most stupid cultural stuff,” offering only manufactured outrage and inadequate responses to real crises (trans rights, economy).
    • “It’s also worth noting… sort of saying that... we have a sort of media climate in the UK that is, it's a very sort of exclusive club. And that exclusive club has decided that like only the stupid stuff really matters because they're largely incapable of actually explaining anything else that's going on.” – Hussain ([32:12])
    • “Everything is sort of like terrible, terrible things happening all the time… yet you go to... the UK Politics tab... and it’s just this. It’s just this. It’s all we’re capable of focusing on.” – November ([30:48])

3. Main Feature: “Slop Bowls” and Dystopian Food Tech

The Infinite Kitchen & Wonder Group

• Bloomberg Article Dissected ([40:03]–[70:12])

  • Wonder Group—a startup on a spree, buying up failed food tech and automation ventures, most notably the “Infinite Kitchen,” a fully-automated robot lunch bowl assembly line.
    • “Once everything has been added, an employee plucks the bowl off the line to attend to those tasks that are too delicate for the machine… it can make 500 bowls an hour, approximately 10 times the capacity of a human worker.” – November ([41:00])
  • Founder Marc Lore (ex-Diapers.com, Jet.com, now aspiring “city builder”) is mocked as the archetype of ADHD, post-capitalist “e-commerce disruptor.”
    • “He was, listen, he made the first million on Diapers.com and then he made the first billion off of Jet.com—you gotta scale up…” – November ([43:17])
    • “He’s basically tracing the course of career progression for the boss, baby.” – Nate ([43:29])

• The Business Model: AI Food as Content

  • Automation means anyone can “launch a restaurant” by uploading recipes or letting AI generate concepts, menus, and price points—reducing food to slop in a bowl, with influencer tie-ins.
    • “With generative AI, you can basically say, ‘I’d like you to build me a fast casual Mexican concept geared for Gen Z at a very approachable price point’… AI would come up with the restaurant name, menus, recipes, descriptions and prices.” – November, quoting founder Mark Lore ([47:44])
    • “We have all the sum of human knowledge, and yet… we cannot make the robots create anything close to a fucked up Guy Fieri meal. It’s just not possible. You have to be ensouled to be Guy Fieri.” – Nate ([47:44])
  • The hosts riff irreverently on launching their own “Trashfuture restaurant” serving forbidden, cursed British meals and AI-generated “sauces.” ([48:22])

• Automation, Surveillance, and the Worker

  • Wonder’s kitchens are modeled on fulfillment centers, with cameras tracking worker movements and AI-driven inspection.
    • “Its kitchen appliances mostly use electricity… its kitchen appliances mostly use electricity… so they don’t have to do any venting and they don’t need permits.” – November ([53:36])
    • “All the software, the screens, the low skilled labor, all those principles, the cameras, all come from the fulfillment center world. But it’s really tough to tell people, oh, your food got made in a fulfillment center.” – November ([58:31])

• Psychic Toll & Cultural Degradation

  • The endless proliferation of “slop bowls,” AI “creativity,” and the vision of restaurants as mere “ideas” rather than places push the panel towards existential revulsion.
    • “I kind of just want to go to a place where the food is good. It’s like a nice ambience so I can sit down and eat… I don’t want to visit a guy’s American kitchen and grill of the mind.” – Nate ([58:06])
    • “I hope we’re all excited to get dinner tonight from just an AI hallucinated thing whose name is just letters.” – November ([67:16])
    • “I feel like I’m fucking hallucinating. I feel like this is Ubik. I feel like this is straight up Philip K. Dick stuff. Everyone is really excited to live in a shoe and get fed from a hamster tube. I genuinely feel like I'm dissociating with every detail..." – Nate ([63:49])

• Endgame: Class Stratification and the “Slop Bowl”

  • Only an elevated elite gets “real” restaurants; everyone else is funneled into this mass-automation, “slopification” future.
    • “The actual chefs involved… still want restaurants to exist. It’s just that they want restaurants to exist for like 1% of people. And everybody else… you’re getting the thing that draws your blood and goes tacos.” – November ([64:05])
    • “You talk about the idea of restaurants are no longer places but their ideas. It’s like, I kind of just want to go to a place where the food is good…” – Nate ([58:31])

• Final Host Reactions

  • General sense that the future will be worse, more surveilled, emotionally empty, and actively anti-human; but that the system assumes enough people will settle for the Tuesday afternoon “slop bowl.”
    • “If this doesn’t work… the eating food industry is fucked. Which is just a great place for society to be in.” – November ([70:12])
    • “Everything is terrible. The future is trash.” – November ([70:12])

Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• On Trump/Greenland:
  “He wants to have that kind of legacy… so that kids being taught in schools generations hence [learn] that Donald Trump did that, which is wild.” – November ([05:32])
• On Global Strategy:
  “I am in some kind of hellish strategy game playing against the animating spirit of every next door commenter in America.” – Nate ([04:23])
• On UK Decline:
  “We sent the one guy that controls Britain.” – Hussain ([08:34])
• On Football Hooliganism & Policing by AI:
  “They included some AI hallucinations about exactly how many Dutch police they needed to sort of contain Tel Aviv hooligans…” – November ([23:22])
• On Restaurant Automation:
  “With generative AI, you can basically say… AI would come up with the restaurant name, menus, recipes, descriptions and prices… you will literally be able to build a restaurant in a matter of minutes.” – November ([47:44]) “It’s a prompt. And part of the reason why this is happening… is you remember we talked about ghost kitchens before, right?” – November ([50:57])
• On ‘Slop Bowl’ Dystopia:
  “I hope we’re all excited to get dinner tonight from just an AI hallucinated thing whose name is just letters.” – November ([67:16]) “I feel like I’m fucking hallucinating. I feel like this is Ubik. I feel like this is straight up Philip K. Dick stuff. Everyone is really excited to live in a shoe and get fed from a hamster tube…” – Nate ([63:49])
• On Emotional Connections and AI Food:
  “Food is complex because it’s emotional, it’s important to people.” – (consultant, cited by November, [59:41]) “Restaurants are no longer places but… ideas.” – November ([50:52]) “...Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. It’s just that the stupid prize that they probably would will win will be like kind of a destroyed economy, destroyed country.” – Hussain ([34:07])

Headings & Segment Timestamps

• [00:16] – Introductions and British scabies “epidemic”/Setting the tone
• [02:21] – World News: Greenland occupation, Trump's letter, response by Europe
• [09:13] – UK economic effects of tariffs
• [17:33] – More farcical predictions (Snow Taliban, movie potential)
• [18:03] – UK domestic: Antisemitism, policing, asylum story
• [25:20] – Football hooliganism, AI policing idiocy, culture war
• [32:12] – Media's role, Starmer's government, culture war failure
• [40:03] – Main feature: “Slop Bowls,” automation, and the Infinite Kitchen
• [47:44] – “You can build a restaurant in minutes…”: AI’s role in food
• [53:36] – Surveillance & working conditions in food automation
• [58:31] – Host reflections: ambivalence, disgust, desire for real connection
• [62:15] – Restaurant becomes “idea,” blood-drawing food tailoring, full dystopia
• [70:12] – AI bubble: existential threat if this model fails
• [72:03] – Closing: “Michelin Starred Blemtro” crowned as episode title

Tone

The hosts mix exhausted sarcasm, cynicism, and dark hilarity in the face of capitalist absurdity, navigating deep political malaise and techno-dystopian developments through irreverence, sharp critique, and meme-tier riffing.

Summary for Non-Listeners

In this quintessentially Trashfuture episode, the crew dissects the comically bleak state of Western politics—with Trump’s Greenland ambitions and Britain’s culture war fixations as highlights—before descending into a detailed, comic-horrific exploration of the current trajectory of food tech, where automation and AI threaten to render eating as soulless as every other human process. The show expertly ties together news commentary, lived experience, and cultural critique, making a persuasive case that “the future is trash”—and yet, through humor and sharp observation, making the doomscroll just a little more bearable.

Episode title: Michelin-Starred BLEMTRO
Key theme: “The slopification of everything—politics, media, and now, food.”