TRASHFUTURE - *PREVIEW* Reversed Stomach Syndrome ft. Nina Eichacker

Episode Date: February 21, 2025

It’s a goons rights bonanza, with Devon subbing in for November to talk about the ongoing wave of gig economy apps for ex-Navy SEALs to turn random people into clouds of pink mist on behalf of crypto influencers who want to look richer than they are… also we check in on Humane, and read a column by Rafael Behr. In the second half, Economist Nina Eichacker joins Riley half to talk tariffs (specifically) and how Wall Street’s “Masters of the Universe” traded their pre-eminent positions in capital markets for revenge on their woke, home-working employees (generally). Get the whole episode on Patreon here! *MILO ALERT* Check out Milo’s UK Tour here: https://miloedwards.co.uk/live-shows Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and November (@postoctobrist)

You know I love to read press releases from Humane AI. If you recall, Humane AI was the... The AI that just traps the mouse in a little box. It is the pin that you wear. Oh, fuck. That's what it is. Okay, yeah. I was like, I've heard of the Humane thing before. I watched the Marcus Brownlee video.

It's the, if you recall, it is the AI pin that when you ask it to live translate for you, just does a racist accent in English of the person that it is trying to translate. Or is dad AI? Do you miss your dad? And also get so hot that it burns your chest when you put it on. Just like my dad. Yes, that's right. So I have a press release from their website. Hewlett Packard, HP, accelerates AI software investments to transform the future of work.

Now, I'm going to read a couple paragraphs in here. And when you when you see what this is really saying, let me know. HP Incorporated announced a definitive agreement to acquire key AI capabilities from Humane, including their AI platform Cosmos, highly skilled technical talent and intellectual property with more than 300 patents and patent applications. The investment will rapidly accelerate our ability to develop a new generation of services that seamlessly orchestrate AI requests both locally and in the cloud, including creating an intelligent ecosystem across all HP devices, including printers and connected conference rooms. Motherfuckers. You know what's happened? Humane has gone out of business and has been bought by HP. No, very much.

Humane has been subsumed now into HP. Yeah, but humanely. Yeah, humane has been killed with the Anton Sugar gas gun from No Country for Old Men. It didn't feel any pain. Yeah, and now an HP printer can do a racist accent, which is pretty fun. It still will not print? No, no, it won't do that. Crucially. That's crazy. But it'll tell no, it won't do that. Not usually.

That's crazy. But it'll tell you that it can't print in like a really racist one. Yeah. Like it's doing the eyes somehow. So this is like, I think like... A little face display on it. I didn't even know this was a capability. God damn it, Humein.

It's gonna be like one of those like Japanese or Korean rice cookers where the way they talk to you feels racist, even though they were manufactured by actual Japanese and Korean people. Like you're kind of like, I'm not sure if you can do that accent actually. Yeah, yeah. So this is, this is really funny. Humane's team, they are, they want it to sell for a billion dollars. And what boggles my mind is they still got 116 million for the racist

pin that burns you. Awesome. A billion is so funny. A billion is such like, I don't know what it's worth kind of a guess. Yeah, we could probably get like a billion for this. Yeah, like surround it up or down to a billion. To the nearest billion. The nearest one billion. Yeah, it's like, a billion maybe? Billion? Which is why every bit of merch that ends up on the Kill James Bond website is like 20

quid. Because I come to price and I'm like, fuck, I don't know. 20 quid? It's not zero and it's not two billion. So call it a billion. I reckon. Fuck a billion. Easy.

Round it up to the highest first integer billion. Yeah, that's right. It was sold for 116 million. It got 240 million in funding from investors, including Mark Benny, Office Salesforce, and Sam Altman of OpenAI, who valued it at 850 million. Rounding to the nearest 850 million. And yet HP is so ubiquitous that it's like, oh, you thought you could escape the terrible humane pin AI? No. If you work at an office or use a printer, you're going to be fucking

forced to engage with this dumbass company. You are going to have to talk to your printer and that printer is going to be fucking forced to engage with this dumb ass company. You are going to have to talk to your printer and that printer is going to be doing racist like imitations of you. Your printer will burn down your house. It just repeats what you say back to you in a racist accent. It's not even your race. It's not even like your race.

So like you'll be like photocopying something and then they'll like try and make fun of you in a Chinese, like in a sort of Chinese accent. But you're just like, why are you doing that? Big John's Chinese AI sit down. Because they've adopted the humane pin, like AI image recognition thing. So it's just like, yeah, Chinese maybe. I don't know. You have to say maybe Chinese.

I love that they were like, oh, yeah, the humane pin will tell you what kind of restaurant you're looking at, which you love. Which you couldn't do yourself. But you had to give it a wide enough field of view that it could see the whole sign So you had to stand in the middle of the road I just take that like that idea of what it means to interact with technology make that utterly ubiquitous in in a fucking scapeable billion dollars

I'll say the sentence the racist pin that burns you has been bought for a billion dollars is like the sort of thing that could Be said both on this podcast and as Sotheby's auction of Princess Michael of Kent's personal possessions. In the announcement, HP said it was you use Humane's technology to become a more experienced led company. Could you, how could the company, how could a company that makes printers and connected conference rooms be more experienced led? What do you want me to experience? a racist conference room? Yeah, you've heard about the Chinese room, but what about God?

Maybe they're gonna like reinvent printing. It's gonna decide it wants to just print black page after black page And you have to refill the inkjet. I thought that they were like Imran Chowdhury and Bethany Bon Giorno will be joy Bethany Bethany Bon Giorno We'll be joining... Bethany Bonjorno. Bethany Bonjorno. That's my other favorite part about that. We'll be joining HPE to integrate artificial intelligence. Bethany Bonjorno, the inventor of the Bonjorno printer. That's right. We'll join HPE to help integrate artificial intelligence into computers, printers and

other connected devices. So of course, to the humane pen, a fond good night to what I would consider to be the ultimate tech product of the Joe Biden era. Yeah. Right. A senile, harmful, useless piece of kit that was based entirely on the idea that artificial intelligence was going to utterly change everything to the point of replacing the smartphone, but that forced you to wander through like traffic while doing a racist accent in order to identify a restaurant you were already looking at.

Good night, sweet prince. Talking, talking to the cops in the worst Vietnamese accent ever while I'm obstructing traffic saying like, no officer, I was just trying to find out what restaurant that is. You don't understand. A technology product that might as well be wandering around like the streets and it's like house coat and slippers. I mean, what do you reckon HP stands for? Humane pin. They've gone in. You think it's been subsumed.

They've actually gotten in there at the base level. They're there. The whole company is now joining HB to reform it from the inside. I think, you know, the other thing, look, you're all waiting for this, right? You out there in podcast land, as soon as Protectors, the sequel to Black Wolf, you know what it's, Protectors is the sequel to Black Wolf and it's like not even a Black owned business, like Black Wolf was, you know, Protectors. Black Wolf was a Black owned business. Yeah.

That's such an extra angle to it. Was that the armed taxi company? Correct, yeah. That was indeed Uber, but everyone is strapped. Yeah, amazing. Yeah, or Uber, but it has an option for strapped. Yeah. The Uber driver might peg you if you want.

No, this is, I cobbled this together from a series of news sources and their Twitter at is Book Protectors, which does sound like something much nicer. Like a thing you could use to like, you know. Nobody closing down his public library with a book protectors. So a protector, a new plan plan plan plan. Yeah. We have an active shooter situation defending the library. There's like a five year old wiping like greasy quaver hand on one of the books at the library. They just shoot him dead. No questions asked. Book protectors.

Honestly, it doesn't say fucking child protectors on his badge. Does it? That's right. That's a different guy. We had a shootout with them last week. Yeah. So a new app makes hiring security as simple as ordering an Uber. Oh, man. Launching Tuesday in New York City and Los Angeles, Protectors charges $200 an hour for a bodyguard and a driver with prices climbing based on the client's needs, including extra guards, a full motorcade or high level security measures, according to the app's 25 year old founder, Nick Sarath.

Yeah, I'm going to need the full motorcade. Yeah. Yeah. Who needs a motorcade, but only sometimes? Who? Yeah. Who needs a motorcade in New York City? Someone who's involved in a kind of bat type situation.

Like some kind of like, like, like you've been, you've been chatting up some girl at a bar and you were like two beers in and you got in way too deep With claiming you were like the vice president of the United States and then the next day Yeah, basically JD Vance. Yeah. Yeah, they call me the JD Vance I'm where I live. I'm JD Vance and I have no idea why I'm talking to this beautiful woman. I'm off. Yeah I'm yeah, they call me JD Vance because I've written a lot of bad books. But anyway, so I have a motorcade and then the next day she's like, pick me up in the motorcade and you're like, ah, ah, ah, and then you see this ad and you're like, great. How much is the motorcade?

It's so much money. I want to know how much the motorcade is so bad. So it's 200 an hour and a motorcade requires at least two cars and at least a driver and a bodyguard per car. Yeah. I mean, you're not having a two-car motorcade. Yeah. Okay, so let's say six times 200 times five, because the minimum booking is... Motorcade is going to be $6,000. Okay. Yeah.

Okay, cool. That's actually about what I would think it would cost to hire a motorcade for like one trip. That kind of makes sense to me. Also, I like the idea there. They say high- level security measures. Like, what is, are we going to have shooters placed in strategic locations? Here's the thing. I looked in who was responding to the announcement of like this goon for hire thing.

Oh, you could hire gooners much cheaper than that. And the main, one of the main suggestions was, oh yeah, you should, it's the people who would really need this would be people like the like LA Vape Cabal, which was a... The LA Vape Cabal. I knew you would say that it's a... So much going on. It's a hype house of people promoting Solana meme tokens. Ah, right. There's so much happening.

Okay. Yeah, there's a lot. Yeah. So what... Yeah, it's real Vape and Mirrors stuff. You know, you've got to try and get to the core of what's going on. So Sarath says ultra high profile individuals like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have dedicated full-time protection teams. But for most people, navigating security options is more

challenging than it should be. For most people, you just don't need any security. That's pretty easy. Yeah. I feel like for most, most people just don't need a motorcade. They're not, people aren't sat at home going like, fuck, where am I going to source a motorcade? It's easy if you're the like fuck where am I gonna source a motorcade it's easy if you're the president of the United States they just lay one on for you well

the rest of us have got to come up with a motorcade from somewhere