TRASHFUTURE - PREVIEW: pump.gov ft. Molly White

Episode Date: January 24, 2025

Molly White joins Hussein, Riley, and November to talk about the role of Cryptocurrency in the incoming administration, specifically synergising their desire to "trigger the libs" with their desperate need to grift the morlocks who worship them. Also, Cooler Screens' war with Walgreens heats up, a stand up comedy scene develops on the moon, and yes - any hand gesture Elon makes is by definition a Nazi one. Check out the full episode here! https://www.patreon.com/posts/120688440?pr=true 

This is one I've been promising to do for a couple of weeks, and we are getting to it. This is something very dear to everybody in the Chicago metro area as well. Who remembers cooler screens? Oh yeah, the um, what if instead of looking through glass into a fridge to see what's in the fridge, you could have like a massive like LED billboard saying like beer with a little animation of beer being poured. Yeah, Molly, did you come across cooler screens in your time on this earth? I have seen them like once, and I think it was when I was in New York City for the Sam Bankman Free Trial. So obviously, you must have loved them, right?

Because they're awesome. Oh, immediately. I mean, why would I want to look at the real thing when I could look at a picture of the thing? Or you could also participate in the economy by viewing an ad, and that's important. That is true. Yes. So to those of you who don't remember, Cooler Screens was a company we talked about a couple of years ago, I think, and we updated when they were involved in some very contentious

litigation with Walgreens, who basically sponsored their rollout on the basis that their screens didn't work, really? I mean, that's a pretty minor issue in the grand scheme of things you would think. Well the great thing is also if your screen that you've replaced your glass fridge with doesn't work what you're left with is much worse than a glass fridge which is nothing. You're left with just a normal opaque door. So these are these are smart freezer doors that played ads triggered via proximity sensors, like someone walking by. I mean, I just cannot for the life of me imagine what it would be like to work stocking shelves in a Walgreens where you could not walk to any of the many

work tasks you have to do over an hour without hearing the same, I don't know, fucking Doritos ad played for you over and over and over again. Sort of a Mariah Carey, all I want for Christmas is you sort of situation. Yeah. Yeah. Now this, this story that's been come out about it updates from their contentious lawsuit. So we last talked about this in 2023. In December, 2023, this is now being written about sort of for the first time in detail. Cooler Screens and Walgreens relationship got so fraught that Cooler screens bricked all of the freezer doors at Walgreens out of spite. How?

Like, why do they have that capability? This is like a really low level Russian cyber attack is to be like, you know, we'll see how the West does without their fucking fridge screen. This is like a nice, yeah, it's a nice kind of sort of like consumer case for like all the sort of like IDFs, like like, you know, genocide technology. It's like, well, yeah, it kills populations, you know, you can sort of like destroy populations, but also it can prevent the person that you dislike from getting a drink from the fridge. Yeah.

There's that red alert going off on my phone that's just like the fridge doors are broken. Yeah. People are no longer able to just like the fridge doors are broken. People are no longer able to see where the Arizona iced tea is. I've been getting texts nonstop by the way about that since. Yeah, the fridge doors. Tell them it's okay. Yeah. At first, the outage didn't arouse suspicion because the screens were so terrible that

they were always flickering, crashing or showing the wrong products. This is a quick direct quote from the article. Every so often they caught fire. What's in this fridge? Oh, I guess it's fire. I guess it's a surprisingly realistic depiction of the fire. They're just trying to emulate the Tesla business model. Yeah.

Well, it's just like, hey, what's in here? Well, it used to be ice cream. Now, not so much. But store managers were stuck with them due to Walgreens agreement with the company to roll out the technology and share ad revenue. And that's why, by the way, Cooler Screens could control the screens from Cooler Screens HQ in Chicago is because they were like, it was a hardware business where the main revenue was going to be ad sales. And you might wonder why they got such a sweetheart deal with Walgreens. And that's because Arson Avakian.

Did you say Arson Avakian. Uh-huh. Did you say Arson? Yeah, Arson Avakian, Chairman Bob's brother. Yeah, Chairman Bob's fire-starting brother. It's nominative determinism once again. You know, you had that dormant guy, and now you've got Mr. Arson. The guy who fights corporate America

with the power of fire, Arson Avakian. He co-founded Cooler Screens with the former Walgreens CEO Greg Wassen, which is basically how they got this incredible sweetheart deal and why Walgreens was stuck in a contract with Cooler Screens, which could not deliver more or less any of what they promised. Delivered a lot of stuff being on fire. You got to give them credit for that. If you want a hot Arizona iced tea, then it's great.

Yeah. And who doesn't? Check it out. So basically what happens is, as we know, Cooler Screens, once Walgreens was like, this is obviously a terrible product that's broken and we regret buying it, was sued by... Walgreens got sued for $200 million. So you say, why would they want to fuck off? A digital display, this is from the article again, could be adjusted over the internet, but they depended on store staff to physically stock goods according to the adjustments made. Too often, customers would open a door projecting rows of milk only to discover soda or empty shelves instead when the screens worked at all." So yeah, you could say in like cooler screens HQ.

This is the fridge that Frank sees. Frank fridge. In so many ways. It could be nothing. It could be on fire. It could be completely different. I think that's beautiful. It could be a goat. It could be completely different. And I think that's beautiful. It could be a goat. It could be a car. You should often switch by the way, mathematically, you should switch the fridge doors. The Monty hole fridge. Yeah. Basically as they were, so this is a terrible product, right? And again, the, the whole idea, like when you actually think about it,

when you take a step back and think about it, say, we're going to manage the stock of every Walgreens from our 75 person office in Chicago and that's gonna be sort of semi-automated. Like that's never gonna work ever. Well listen, I mean, why this negativity, you know? Like I think the sort of prank fridge that's under the thumb of a guy who can just destroy it remotely is, you know? Like, I think the sort of prank fridge that's under the thumb of a guy who can just destroy it remotely is, you know, I think that's a great piece of technology. Yeah. They call it vendor risk. Boy is it. And so basically, in all this like legal battling,

that's when Arson Avakian bricked the fridges. Quotes. The team secretly cut the data feeds to more than 100 Walgreens stores in Chicago. Customers assumed the fridges were out of order and instead had to rummage through them one by one. Staffers pasted pieces of paper on the opaque screens and when service requests were filed with cooler screens, they simply marked them all resolved and didn't fix anything. Which is hilariously petty and is where I want to get into the story of Arson Avakian, the CEO of Cooler Screens. And man, I cannot believe we didn't talk about when we talked about the company initially. That's a little bit by the way of shoulder malpractice by me. Avakian said

about the company, and by the way, he has such Trump diction. He says, we're somehow surviving an assassination attempt by Walgreens. Okay. really good sentence in and of itself. And it will be a miracle if we do. He said he had to cut off the store data feeds to get Walgreens to respond to overdue invoices. By the way, when we see how this guy ran his business, we'll keep that in mind. He then said, but as soon as we flip that page, which we will

very shortly with Walgreens, everyone's going to say, let's look at the core of the product. Is this real shit or is it bullshit? I got the Trump, the Trump diction for me was as soon as we flip the page, which we will very shortly with Walgreens. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, I really enjoying paranoia. Fridge, fridge, fridge magnets, I guess. I'm the world's only gang stock CEO. I do think it is important though when we're evaluating products to determine is this real shit or is this bullshit?

I'm so often asking that. Well, when I look at the core after we flipped the page, which we will very shortly, if that is I survived the assassination attempt by Walgreens. And it will be a miracle. Yeah, by the way, the Walgreens is going to kill me. I'm the most prosecuted Walgreens. And it will be a miracle. Yeah, by the way, the Walgreens is going to kill me. I'm the most prosecuted man in the entire world. It'd be a miracle if I survived.

But when we turn the page, and we will very shortly, it's going to be amazing. It's really weird how all of those Walgreens whistleblowers kept turning up missing. The Walgreens wetwork team, Arson of Achean went on, I got dozens of life threatening emails over a freaking screen in a store. What's a life threatening email?

What? Email from CEO at Walgreens.com. Oh, I'm so mad at you. Email from CEO at Walgreens.com. Subject line, I am going to kill you. Main text. The only way to prevent this is to brick all of my fridge doors. It's a blank email. It's just like an EXE file and you've really got to like figure out whether you're going to open it or not.

The Walgreens CEO just sending like the saw video, to the Avakian wakes up in a fridge that wakes up in like a door with a room with eight exits, all of which are covered in brick fridge doors. It's like, you want to play a game? Avakian began working on his idea in 2017. He had previously made his money starting a well-regarded cafe chain called Argo Tea in Chicago and said he fantasized about Argo becoming the Starbucks of tea, but eventually set his sights higher, saying actually Argo will not be the

Starbucks of tea, Argo will be the Apple of tea. I think Starbucks is kind of the Starbucks of tea on account of they sell tea there. It's very easy to co-locate tea and coffee like that. It's uh, I dunno. No no, it's never been done before. No no no. it's never been done before. No, no, no. The apple of tea. I will say there was an Argo tea in the library

on my college campus. And one of the worst things about it was that they did not co-locate coffee and tea, and you could not get coffee there. What the fuck? Tea only? Yes. What the hell? That's why you know that fucking Arthur Neveikian is crazy, right?

Because he'd be like, I have an actual successful tea store. I want it to be the Starbucks of tea. Should I do what Starbucks did and like try to be everything to everyone? Absolutely not. I will not be doing that. I will never back down from my principles. I would like to be Apple, please.