TRASHFUTURE - I-D-C-A-R-D Find Out What It Means To Me
Episode Date: September 19, 2023Riley, Alice, and Hussein look at the growth of no-fun Britain, "Spotify for Food," and an interview with Tony Blair in the FT where he applies for the job of Starmer's vizier. What does he want Starm...er to do as a number one priority? ID Cards, of course! If you want access to our Patreon bonus episodes, early releases of free episodes, and powerful Discord server, sign up here: https://www.patreon.com/trashfuture *STREAM ALERT* Check out our Twitch stream, which airs 9-11 pm UK time every Monday and Thursday, at the following link: https://www.twitch.tv/trashfuturepodcast *WEB DESIGN ALERT* Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here: https://www.tomallen.media/ *MILO ALERT* Check out Milo’s upcoming live shows here: https://www.miloedwards.co.uk/live-shows Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and Alice (@AliceAvizandum)
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Hello everyone and welcome to this free episode of TF. It's free, it's Thursday, yes, it's
the free episode. How is everybody who's saying in Alice?
It's the free one. I was trying to be
the ghost thing. Didn't really... I was saying
and I realized, oh no, this sounds like my normal
voice but slightly slower down. Is this
where you realize that you've been dead and
from the 1800s the whole time? Also you'd
never aged the book 10. And I'm still
licking one lollipop. It hasn't like...
Which size hasn't checked? I'm at this
ozu screening at the BFI and I'm like, why is therellipop. It hasn't like, which size hasn't checked. I'm at this Ozu screening at the BFI.
And I'm like, why is there this 10 year old
haunted ghost child here?
This remarkable young man who said
you would rather go see Ozu.
I don't know, finish that sentence yourself.
That's one ticket for a Tokyo story, please.
Okay, no more ghost children.
The ghost children have been exercised. We got Russell Crowe in here to exercise the ghost children. They're all gone. Just met this remarkable young man who said he'd rather go see Tokyo story than vote.
See, this is, this is the thing, this configuration of the three of us is a, a, a rare kind of chaos, right, because it gives me in his saying the chance to be that like a bad kids in school which we never really do
Yeah, yeah, you guys are always sitting really close to the front of the bus and Milo's back there smoking and
And you know like throwing stuff out the bus window and things of that nature and now
The good students are all revolting
Can't believe it. I want to talk about a bunch of stuff
and so on revolting. Can't believe it.
I wanna talk about a bunch of stuff,
because we have some news, we have a startup,
and then of course, a rare,
we gotta do a rare buddy check on the FT, I'm afraid.
Oh, okay.
Everyone knows that we in the FT,
we get along very well, but when your buddy gets out of line,
you gotta check your buddy.
Rob Smith has been saying stuff.
That's true, on the streets.
No, the thing is, we're not loyal.
And you know, you know this about us.
This is a price of being friends with our podcast
is that we have no loyalty to anyone.
The reason why we like the FT,
Alex, would you say we got no loyalty that we're demon?
That we're like a demon.
How can you trust a podcast that's like a demon?
No, the reason why we like the FT is
because they do good journalism,
but the reason why they do good journalism
is because that's the place where power goes to read the news,
and they want actual news.
This also means that they do some ideology.
And we have to go like a demon mindset on them.
Yeah, we got a, we got a, we got a choke him out
to the paramargella gloves on.
A series of incomprehensible references.
Yeah, they're comprehensible to us.
But first I want to start out with a little bit
of Australian excellence and in excellence.
Ah, okay, a land of contrast.
Yeah, yeah.
Finally, Australia has produced a contrast because Australia must have had their top scientists
working on this for a while, but an Australian company has produced and is now marketing.
This is to me, this is similar to like a kind of production level cure for cancer generic.
A roast chicken vape juice, they did it.
Great.
You know how a bunch of lefters got very
excited when Cuba sort of debuted their loan cancer vaccine?
For the left tendency that we are, this is that.
This is the roast chicken vape juice is now or yet.
I mean, look, I had some great roast chicken when I was in Australia.
I'm very excited for this.
What if you could have breathed it in?
What if I could have, yeah,
what if I could breathe it in, blow it out all the time?
So we will be ordering a 55 gallon drum of this
to the studio.
You're using it just for any number of purposes,
cologne, it's in the gray water system.
So if you'd like wash your hands,
yet like some a little bit of roast chicken in there too.
I love this to the degree that's so in combination with the death of the of the alphabet
Which I also am very much supportive of because it does mark for return of like the old the OG vapor
Sure, the guys with the big rig. Yeah, the guys are the big rigs who spent a very long time learning how to blow rings within rings
Only to then be like uncertain by like fucking idiots Who don't even who don't even know how to blow rings within rings only to then be like uncertain by like fucking idiots.
Who don't even know how to do any tricks. You're suggesting that people who vape with elf bars or posers?
Yeah, I think they're fake.
I'm just picturing you in the front row of the BFI Southbank watching us,
the blowing smoke rings with a giant vape rig like Cape Fear.
That would be so good.
One of my favorite things that I found when, like,
this was years ago, when I went to a vape
convention actually, for work reasons,
there was a guy with a big vape rig
and it had a no-fear sticker on it.
And I thought that was like one of the best things
I've ever seen.
And he blew like such a, he blew vape rings really well.
And I want that to come back, but the vape rings are all chicken, roast chicken, like olive
taponards, smoked salmon roe.
This is the first one of, we hope many, and we will keep you posted on the progress of
the savoury vape movement.
Can I, can I also mention another Australian thing, but I thought I found, but actually Andrew
Law found, which is that a parent there is a wine called
Goon wine in Australia.
That's all bagged wine.
Yeah, it's like a bag of goon, yes.
Yeah, so you spin the goon.
You're just gooning with your friends.
I don't see what's wrong with that.
Some would call it a wine cellar,
but I call it a goon cave.
Take me back, take me back.
But that's all excellent out of Australia,
but unfortunately, and again,
this is lots of people have asked us to talk about this.
A billionaire property developer has been caught on film
at a conference saying that unemployment should be higher
so that asset prices go up again.
For easy.
KELSEPRIES.
But what I found, this guy, Tim Garner.
Tim Garner.
Yeah, Tim Garner.
Tim Garner.
Tim Garner.
Tim Garner has been Garner in my gun cave.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's what you call the rumor.
You call it to end to be a man alone.
You have to hang out in my Garner cave.
Swing in my jaw.
Yeah, Tim Gunner has decided to get back.
And this guy loves being in the news
and people to hate him.
He was the guy who said avocado toast
is why people can't buy out.
He was the person that said that in 2017.
It's just more of the same.
In fairness, we had been hanging out a lot at that point.
And as you know, I do eat about 28,000 portions of avocado toast a day.
So it's right.
I think he kind of just generalized from me just distilled down into a vial of vape liquid
with the essence of 20,000.
Yeah.
My sort of my vape juice that's avocado toast, it costs like $100,000 per vial. And that's
why I can't buy a house. He said, you know, that employees need to feel like lucky to
end their jobs and they need to be scared of employers again. The usual ship. I mean,
there's nothing new to say about this other than, yeah, there's one new thing. One new
thing, which is I got to see an element of his personality that I found to be very at once interesting in pathetic, which is that in addition to being this, he
is also sort of experimenting. One of these rich guys is trying to experiment with immortality.
Oh, okay. Like the horrors billionaire that like we see all the time. Yeah, but unlike
Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys,
a fucking Tim Gunner doesn't even have a blood boy.
I mean, if you don't have a blood boy,
you're not taking this seriously.
All he's done is created a chain of like more expensive
Australia only equinox gyms and like says,
oh, you can have like a like a protein kombucha here.
He doesn't have a blood boy.
He's not measuring his dick,
and he's not selling an extra virgin olive oil
that's supposed to make you live longer.
I hate to say, I hate to give it to Brian Wilson
from the Beach Boys, but Tim Gunner does not have the Hutzba
to be one of these immortal immortal.
He's no immortal Joe.
He's no immortal Brian.
Tim Gunner is an Elphbah,
to Brian Wilson's big no fair
vapor. Well, though, what if he's
what if he's right, though? What if that
like none of the blood boys shit, none of
the dick injections, none of those save
Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys and let
him live to the age of forever. But
opening a sort of Australian chain of gyms
turns out to be unexpectedly the thing
that does it.
And we're just stuck with this guy like Koshai the Deathless.
Well, what I think is really funny though is that so he goes on the Australian financial
review says unemployment needs to be higher.
People need to be afraid of their boss, usual trolling shit, but then because he forgot
that he now since he did the 2017 thing now also owns a business with many employees.
He's not just like a property owner.
He had to then reassure his employees, like, I didn't mean you, people that work at my
chain of equinoxes, which then led to him issuing an apology specifically to Australia's
noble tradeys.
So we salute you.
The one country where you can hoon and goon at the same time.
I mean, I think that's gorgeous.
Yeah, so Tim Gooner, first case of Australian in excellence
that we have covered on the Dua Sainte-Soul group.
Yeah, aside from all the other stuff, I want to do
a little bit of news though.
Britain news.
Oh, it's the worst kind.
Yeah, well, there's no, as far as I know, there's not a single gunner in Britain.
There are a few things I've now sort of adding to the no fun Britain chronicles.
The nanny state, not in the sense that the right uses it, which is just like saying,
like, hey, we'll give you health care so you don't tie, for example, but a kind of nanny
state in terms of embodying the most curtain twitching hall monitorish tendencies of the
British like psycho nanny state.
We've talked about this.
Skolding you like your grandad.
Yes.
Exactly.
So if I didn't know if that's everyone's experience of their cram
So like that is not representative. Maybe that's just me projecting my own my my ground
Just had kind of like a
contradictory series of both being racist but also
Extremely Irish Republican. So
Is that the what the government is doing? I kind of support that to be honest.
You know, like, qualified in a qualified way, like,
critical support if they adopted like my grandmother's policies of like just blasting
rebel songs out of 10 Downing Street to annoy the neighbors.
So one of the things that's coming up in the no fun Britain Chronicles is of course the long awaited promise
of a crackdown on shoplifting led, of course,
by the mirror, which is suggesting that
if you see a anyone shoplifting,
you should send a video into the mirror,
which of course we should say as a show,
if you have any fun videos,
then I'm sure the mirror would love to see them.
I think the thing is,
you don't abuse that, it's serious, it's for the news, right?
You would all fuck with it.
You wouldn't abuse the news.
So, the thing that always happens when we talk about shoplifting in this country is the
thickest cunts in the entire country go, ah, but you know what people aren't shoplifting
to like feed their families or for necessity, they're shoplifting in order
to like, in an organized way to sell on basic necessities to don't worry about it.
This definitely makes a difference to my argument, but there's this extra step of a middleman
involved.
In a, yeah, in a country where there are lots of professional middleman and where in
many cases your ambition growing up is to be a well-paid middleman. It is a crime to now be a middleman.
So there's a lot about society. I don't think anybody is living that high on the hogo,
that like aspirationally as a reseller of baby formula.
Right. And I don't think that that's the kind of...
I mean, on stock acts, you can get some serious,
I mean, speaking of baby formula,
like, you know, I had to run an errand
for a friend of the show, producer of the show Nate.
There was a very specific kind of baby formula
that was very difficult to find.
If there was some, and, you know,
maybe there's someone who stole all of that specific
kind of baby formula and was reselling it on StockX.
So you see, piracy hurts legitimate buyers, you know.
You wouldn't download a baby formula.
Like, shot, like the idea that shoplifting
is something that people do for fun or a lark
or one step on the value chain that people buying
their groceries from people who steal them at a cut rate
doesn't somehow reflect that the cost of living has gone way up,
prices have gone way up, and wages fucking haven't for the vast majority of people.
Like, I always come back to, yes, wage growth is very high.
Where? In what sector? What's leading it?
And again, it's the highest wages, like like the financial services, for example,
that have big bonuses.
The Bank of England report states, again and again and again, those are the wages that
are growing.
And so, you know, the idea that, and again, like this is the rally round, the idea that
this is to be the source of yet another crackdown, you know, to me that just says like it's,
there is no intention among anybody serious to deal with any of these problems,
just to continue guarding a shrinking social order
of people who count.
We're also barely gonna do that.
I mean, like none of this is even enforceable,
even if people wanted to, they shouldn't want to.
If you see someone shoplifting, you should ignore it, right?
But like, even if you'd like decide to make an issue of it,
it will be a drop in the bucket and it will be a pain in the ass.
And like, it will change nothing because of, you know,
our beloved material conditions.
And besides, besides that, besides that, like shoplifting is in a sense,
it's a pillar of British culture.
You know, we built this country on shoplifting.
We went around the world.
We shoplifted stuff from country after country after country,
you know. We didn't even resell it on stuff. No, that's right. If you wanted like a set of marbles
from Greece, we just had those in the pocket, like in the secret pocket of the Tract Zoo bottoms,
and we were gone out the door. And now a couple of hundred years later, we're acting as if this is some like huge, unprecedented crime, you know?
Yeah, if you want to go see the spoils of shoplifting, then I welcome you to the Tower of London, and you can see what made this country great
It's very funny to describe like the Koei Nora's having been shoplifted. I mean accurate
I think there is like another component to this, because like on the one hand you do have
like the shoplifting, which is there for like, you know, in reflection of course, of living
crises. And, you know, you have other forms of shoplifting, which are very much due of
people wanting to make, you know, who do it in order to resell, right? Like they're,
you know, it's not to say about doesn't exist. But it's the more to say about like the
conflation of the two in service to kind of building up a moral panic is kind's the more to say about the conflation of the two in service to building up a moral panic
is the more cynical element to this.
Because the reality is that even if the government and all the media organizations were serious
about tackling this, that requires police or it requires security guards.
If you're a private security guard who is very likely a contractor and a very low paid contractor at that like you know very certain element there are certain
things where it's just like you know the risks are just kind of higher than why would you
bother right why would you bother trying to stop someone who is starving for your minimum
way at that point unless you unless you are like inspectors j? Like, it's not worth getting a knife pulled on you over like,
you know, the sort of evil organized crime reseller
who is gonna like steal, you know,
five legs of lamb, whatever, you know?
Maybe people just like buying meat down the pub.
I'm gonna carry on now.
I'm gonna carry on.
Cause there's the other, there's one other thing, right?
I think this sort of ties in,
which is the
The final scrapping of the triple lock on pensions and
You thought you were safe, you old fuckers know you were wrong
You you thought you were inside the Wyatt night wires changed again
We did an episode about pensions a while ago where we did one of those like half and halfs
We're in the back half. I like talk to an academic and you know It's the thing to remember about British pensions is that they're very ungenerous
even even with the triple lock all that happened is the triple lock preserved the state pension
to for Americans who don't know what that is it's that the triple lock made the state pension rise
every year by either the rate of the rate of inflation 2.5% or like one of the
thing. It basically means that you were guaranteed in real terms to never lose money on the
pension.
Same thing we were claiming we were going to do with the NHS, what we ring fenced old
people against the economy.
Yeah.
Well, so now there is a broad consensus that the triple lock is too expensive to be affordable.
And I think at a cursory glance,
I mean, the Tony Blair Institute and onward both love
to talk about scrapping the triple lock on pensions
to pay for like national service or ID cards.
And it would depend, take your pick.
But the point is, right, the triple lock on pensions
is not particularly generous.
A state pension is not enough to not live in poverty.
It's a couple thousand pounds a year short to not live in poverty.
And all that really it was, was it was one piece of Britain's mid-century social democratic
architecture that wasn't residualized in the aftermath of the long 1990s, right?
That's all that it was. It was the bare minimum thing that wasn't cut down
to below the bare minimum, well, it actually is below
the bare minimum.
It's just not as below the bare minimum as everything else.
You know, and the thing is, right?
The reason that it can be scrapped now
is that the people who it pandered to, their support,
is not necessary anymore, because they have nowhere else to go.
No one is, there is no one who is going to one is there is no one who is going to rebuild.
There's no one who's going to rebuild the state.
There is no one that was going to protect it against austerity.
And you know what, the work of austerity was done.
The triple locket can go.
That coalition now, not important because it doesn't really matter who gets in.
I mean, it's talking about electoral politics like this is quite depressing, but this is
an example of the, if this does get cut, if this does get removed, it's an
example of the wire shrinking precipitously. And yes, those people, those voters will probably
abandon the Tory party in droves, but where are they going to fucking go, Starmer?
I had like, whatever kind of freak, musen, right wing movement is yet to come, perhaps.
Yeah, exactly. That's the alternative.
The talk of scrapping it is like, yeah, it was almost certainly always going to happen.
At least it held out this long, I suppose.
Welcome to Britain.
No littering, no vaping.
Welcome to careful drivers.
Please die quickly.
And don't complain about it. That's the main thing. Just don't complain about
any of them. Yeah. Because if you do, that's woke. Yeah. All right. All right. I want to move
on from news. I want to talk about startup. This is a fun one. It's not one that I found via
the news. It's one that I found by looking at a venture company, a venture capital company's portfolio and then found that they had a bunch of shit written about it.
It's called Cloud Chef
and I'm just gonna give you their three or a gauge.
That is the savory vibes.
No, that would be cooler.
Cloud Chef, it's right there, you know, in the name.
But no, I'm afraid not.
I'll tell you what it is, is it is Spotify for food.
Spotify for food?
Yeah, Spotify for food.
I don't see how I could make it any clearer.
At the end of the year, I get my like,
cloud chef wrapped in the like,
you ate so much lasagna, dude.
Like genuinely, are you okay?
Of all the lasagna fans in the world,
you were one per se.
You weighed 900 pounds. You hate Mondays. of all the lasagna fans in the world you were one percent you win nine hundred pounds you hate
Monday so by that logic then it's like a service that sort of a database of like recipes for meals
you can make but ultimately it's still just kind of you know it it advertises itself as being like
you know we can introduce it to all these new recipes to try out but ultimately it's like the
same meal but like slightly kind of jazzed up saying you were so close can introduce it to all these new recipes to try out, but ultimately it's like the same meal, but like slightly kind of jazzed up.
Saying you were so close.
I mean, it feels like Spotify for food,
there's like, there's not really that much.
He's trying to get me to like cook
from the Ethelcane cookbook.
Yeah, here's the thing.
It doesn't give you the recipe, it gives you the food.
Oh, okay, so just like, like a palette,
like a hello first palette of like stuff just arrives at your house.
No, the completed meal does.
Oh, okay, this is fantastic. It's like a star track like replicative with no controls.
Is it like a delivery thing, but it decides what meal you should have.
They give you a menu and prison. You get an option of two things at least.
If you were menuin' prison, like you get an option of like two things at least. You're having the Mr. Beastburger account, I don't care if it's been four months.
This is why that guy escaped from once worth is he couldn't face another day of Mr. Beast
burgers.
Please my head, at least have a Mr. Beast feastable.
No, only the burgers.
None of Mr. Beast's other brand of, she'll pass through one's worth prison.
Um, yo, so what's for dinner?
Memorable meals, when the most iconic global chefs
and restaurants made available to you locally.
Uh huh.
So they're just gonna like,
imitate and make something from, uh, I,
Oh, so yeah, so it's kind of like, uh,
you'll advertise, I don't know, like Marko P.L. White, it's like fucking codfish,
but actually it's made in a ghost kitchen
by some guy from Bungle and stick.
That's fantastic.
Okay.
Yes, that's the business model.
You have nailed the business model, who says,
it's cool.
Okay.
So it's kind of like, it's like masterclass,
like you know, there's masterclasses,
where it's like, they advertise the celebrities with the ones that,
like, you know, you can take a creative writing class
with Salmon Rushdie, but then the actual app is just like,
I would love to take creative writing class.
Like an Iatola pissing off class with Salmon Rushdie.
The heavyest vetting for like a weekend masterclass
you've ever seen.
But like, when you actually went on to the platform,
like because anyone could upload anything,
it's just like, here's some guy sort of telling you like how to get back with your ex girlfriend and like by using magic tricks
I think for someone rush to be telling me
So that's who's saying you really are about 90% of the way there
So imagine dishes they say from the most I can, and by the way, this was a press release
that just got reprinted word for word in like four media outlets.
Imagine dishes for the most iconic restaurants and chefs
from around the world delivered to your doorstep.
No passport required.
Just order and enjoy.
Food technology startup Cloud Chef
has made this a reality with the debut
of its proprietary recipe record and playback technology,
which impeccably recreates dishes from any chefs,
allowing consumers to enjoy their favorite dishes and recipes
from anywhere in the world home delivered.
Okay, so this is going to fuck up spectacularly, right?
Because there's no quality control.
Well, I'll tell you, in blind taste tests,
Michelin-starred chefs could not detect the difference
between their dishes and those created by cloud chef.
Uh-huh.
Okay.
What Michelin star chefs you might ask?
Yes.
Why the ones who have been engaged by cloud chef and stand to benefit from the company going
big.
So Marco Pierre White is being like, yeah, fine.
Whatever.
Yeah, this is, this is, this is like my culture.
It's a perfect souffle.
It's like just going to give a fuck.
Wow, Anthony Bourdain said what?
No, so basically what they say is, look, we can get a big chef to come into our kitchen,
our proprietary kitchen.
So we've already outmoded the traditional British little chef.
We have big chef that will be stomping on it. No, we have, this way a famous chef comes into the Cloud Chef
Central Office, and then they cook a recipe like they would in their own kitchen.
The Cloud Chef Central Office is full of sensors, cameras, infrared sensors.
Oh, see, you're doing it like the way they used to record music in like the 20s and 30s,
where you like record a master,
and then they just kind of like go down off of that fantastic.
Okay, I'm excited to get the kind of like wax cylinder
of like a Gordon Ramsay burger or something.
So then they say this,
the tech codifies the chefs intuition.
So people have absolutely no context for this dish
can recreate it.
There are things that are very hard for humans to pick up
that often get lost in written recipes,
but are straightforward with sensors.
So a chef like Thomas Zacharias
may not cook his onions the exact same amount of time
every day, but he cooks them to the same level
of brownness every time.
The camera looks at the contents of the pan
or other appliance and checks against what was happening
during the recording.
It does things like measure the consistency
of the dish, the amount of water lost to the atmosphere.
So the idea is, right?
Marco Pierre White comes in, makes his codfish,
or all what happened.
In my head, he's doing this in the kind of like motion capture
rig in the like black jumpsuit with all the bubbles on it.
Yeah, he's moving like smegel.
Andy Circus is lasagna, delicious.
Delicious, but very involved. So you go in, right? You get captured. And then the their AI system surrounds you will be able to beam that recipe
to someone who works in like food they get from Fiverr or whatever, to be able to make
you Marco Pierre White's codfish,
but without understanding what they're doing or why,
they're essentially trying to make a Chinese room for food.
A delicious, a Chinese room takeaway.
So when asked, what are you hoping this technology will accomplish?
They say, so we are trying to reimagine the food industry,
where the chef gets credit for their recipe
and is not tied down with the constraints of brick and mortar. So Thomas Sakurai is arguably one of the they say, so we are trying to reimagine the food industry, where the chef gets credit for their recipe
and is not tied down by the constraints of brick and mortar.
So Thomas Sakuraius is arguably one of the-
But chefs sell cookbooks, routinely.
You can already do this.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, of course you can, but not when,
but if someone's gonna make you Marco Pierre-Wyte's
cod fish, then Marco Pierre-Wy a, you know, a fifth of a penny
every time you order. Can I, can I ask a very basic question? Is someone who doesn't like really
eat at fancy restaurants, like very much? Sure. Um, which is when I have it in a fancy restaurant,
part of the appeal of it is that you go to the restaurant, right? Like the atmosphere is sort of
a big part of why you go,
you know, there is a whole sort of like restaurant ecosystem,
like, you know, it's more than just the chef,
but even if, even if you were able to cook Marco Piers
called white wine, I don't know what he does,
but let's say that you like,
I've just been doing lasagna as a place hold,
because I think the second thing.
Yeah, let's say that you got Marco Piers white,
it's like lasagna and it's like, it's called lasagna. And it can't be lasagna as a placeholder. Yeah, let's say that you got Marco, Marco PS white like lasagna and it's like,
it's kind of a lasagna.
And it covers the lasagna, it's perfect.
But then you still got to rely on someone delivering that to you,
which requires it to go into a takeaway box.
The temperature like will be affected by that.
The composition of it will be affected.
Then by the time you get it, it's quite likely,
but you probably have to reheat it to some capacity.
So then it's not the dish, it's not the same thing.
It's a different thing.
If you've been to a fancy restaurant
with an open kitchen, you'll know that an essential part
of the process of making like, art cuisine
is sort of workplace abuse.
Every sort of like a big name chef will have sous chefs
who like, or chef to party, who will like make the exact same thing to spec
And then they will need to like humiliate them in front of the entire brigade
That's like if you don't have that if you don't have Mark O'Pierre white slapping you over the back of the head and calling you a cunt
Then you're not gonna have the like the dish as conceived, right? Because this thing isn't, you know, the
work of art in an age of mechanical reproduction has to include a kind of robotic Mark O'Pier
White, right? Otherwise, for the birds.
You know, they say, right, do you think this technology is the potential to save fine
dining to which I can say, should it be safe?
No, I'm probably not. I mean, it's probably not. It's just regular dining, but you melt like a stick
and a half of butter into every spoonful.
Yeah, and Thomas Daccarai is one of the chefs
that's one of the Michelin-starred chefs
that's working for these people, says,
yeah, because it's an additional source of revenue.
And especially now, in the age of social media,
so I didn't know we were having this interview from 2016.
This is from this year.
Chefs and restaurants finally have fan bases around the world.
Look at Apple.
None of Apple stores are necessarily profitable, but the idea...
But not a restaurant either.
They're a different thing.
They're a different thing.
They don't even sell apples of Apple.
You're going to the Apple store and asking for the apples.
You can't even walk into one with an Apple.
I walked into one eating an Apple like years ago and they were like, you've got to finish
your apple outside before you come into the store.
It's a different thing.
It's very, very, very, like, primate as semiotics there, you know.
But the idea is that they've built such a great brand that they can monetize it around
the world.
These amazing chefs and restaurants have brands, but they don't have distribution.
We want to do that for restaurant.
Look, I don't know this world very well,
but the appeal of Apple and the branding of it
is because it produces the same product around the world,
right?
It's a ubiquitous product.
That's why it's known because there is a universality
and a compatibility to it.
I could move to another country and bring my MacBook
and I would sort of be fine, right?
But like, the point of like a restaurant,
especially a fine dining restaurant,
is that there's only one, there's one, maybe two,
but they're called different things,
even if they're the same.
Otherwise, if you're just trying to,
your venue's making a franchise,
you may as well just do a fast food.
You may as well do Mr. Beesberg,
as I don't understand any of this.
And also it's like, what are the other things that you experience when you go to a restaurant You may as well just do a fast food. You may as well do Mr. Beespeg. I don't understand any of this.
Also, it's like, one of the other things
that you experience when you go to a restaurant
is you're with people out in the world.
You're not just like sitting at home,
being like, ah, time for my, like, you know,
time for my nine course,
Markle Pierre White, Michelin Star Feast,
prepared by a five-er guy in a ghost kitchen
and a fucking like a shipping container that I'm gonna eat
well watching the goddamn Netflix. It's ridiculous. It's fucking ridiculous. I'm glad this will never take off.
Godfisher lasagna, yeah.
And from another article, right?
This is actually like a fendin piss off all of us for different reasons, which I think
I really cherish, you know.
Hmm.
So how it actually works, right, is that the AI is trained by pro chefs, and then amateur
cooks, meaning like just, I get people who they can, you can't even throw a panic in
AI.
Yeah, where is it?
Yeah.
But, right, and the serious note right is this is just an
extremely, they're, they're, they're talking about what capital uses technology to do,
which is break up and take more control of work to de-skill it, not even necessarily to
automate it, but to make each work or more replaceable because their knowledge, their domain
experience, their status as an artisan is demolished by the
presence of a steam loom, or in this case, a lasagna loom.
This is a lasagna loom.
Thank you.
And so what the idea being, right, is that what this essentially aims to do is create
even more inequality within the food industry.
By making it like the performing arts industry was made,
by saying there will be a small number of,
I get, if it works, which it won't,
it says there will be a small number of elite chefs
who will make up the recipes and they will be scanned,
they'll have their masters.
And then there will be lots and lots of people
who are completely disposable,
who are working on the other end are completely disposable, who are working
on the other end of this deal, who are never going to really get the opportunity to, for
example, become skilled artisans, who are just going to be...
Totally brands.
The technician.
Only the same brand.
This is a perfect way to ossify an industry is the other thing.
If you did this, all it would do would be to freeze the entire restaurant industry in amber.
And 50 years in the future, you would be like, what genre of food do you want? Do you want like
Marco, P.A. White or Michelle Rue? And know where in that is anything new being developed.
And it sounds like it would suck, to be honest.
The new thing that's being developed is the AI.
Oh, crap.
Oh, okay.
So like, you freeze it in like current year.
We're all like eating what,
Riley, you need to like help me out with the thing here.
What's something characteristic of like fine dining in like 2023?
What's a fad that we do? Uh, it's something characteristic of like fine dining in like 2023? What's a fad
that we do?
Uh, it's like foam stuff. No, no, that was like that went out in like 2011. Then it was
a fermented stuff for a while, but then Noma closed. I don't really know what the fad
is now. We're all doing like wild forage vegetables and stuff, right? And we're doing
that forever. And if you want something different from that, then the third option is the insane cooking AI that we talked about when I was a supply
teacher a couple of weeks ago that just suggests that you put like Mapo Tofu and Draino
in addition, sort of like boil them up together.
And so what they say is that these chefs will reduce their labor costs because you can
just be like a studio executive dream, right?
You're the studio executive and then the AI does all of the work for you, which is you need to have a bunch of,
you just need to have a bunch of disposable fiber people you never see, right? That's the difference.
And that cooks could be replaced by lower wage workers without diminishing the food quality. Again,
this is said with pride. A chef's going to be okay without the ability to like abuse subordinates.
But you do think before turning the frying pan on himself.
Yeah.
Or he's just going to like mark up here.
Why it's just going to find the server room and bash it to pieces with the frying.
If you can't do a small bump of coke off of your Odomar Pige, and then go in and like terrify a 19-year-old
in a room full of like very sharp knives,
what even are you doing this for?
What are you in this industry for?
It says, with the AI guiding production,
cooks could potentially be replaced by lower wage workers
without diminishing food quality,
and chefs will receive a passive income stream from licensing recipes with AI kitchen
technology.
Recipes from in-demand chefs and restaurants can be replicated around the world, bringing
new flavors to faraway places without requiring the chef to travel and train.
And as you say, I was therefore never allowing any mixing of cuisines or cultures after
time.
Of course not.
The other sort of knock on effect of this, presumably is also,
because even if this was,
again, it's not gonna be successful,
but say just for example,
but it sort of gets rolled out or tried out,
you're still using,
you're still needing to use quite advanced cooking techniques
in these ghost kitchens, right?
Because with the Mr. B-shit,
like kind of putting together a burger and stuff is a fairly automated process anyway.
Sure. And you just kind of like, you know, it's not to say that that's not like a difficult
job to do and it's own right, but in terms of like cooking gourmet food, in terms of cooking
high-end food, like that requires a very specific skill. Yeah. So we're going to have to make
the five of guys learn how to use a sous vide. Yeah. So rather than, yeah, but rather than sort of getting, you know, your sort of low wage
workers who would work in a fast food restaurant to then work in a ghost kitchen, you're now
getting like kids from like who just graduated from the cordon blue or whatever to then go
into these ghost kitchens as well.
And which is a saver like these, you know, where there may have been a pathway where you
would sort of go from culinary school to like small time restaurant
and then you would kind of, you know,
work your way up to bigger restaurants
and maybe, you know, become like a head chef or a,
fuck, I don't know who else is, yeah.
Right, instead, like instead,
it's just like, well, everyone's gonna be
in a ghost kitchen.
Like that's your thing, like whatever happens,
you'll be in a ghost kitchen
unless you become like a big influencer
in which case we might let you license a recipe.
It's also, it's also like so terrible for chefs aside from the like abusing their regard thing because
like it's sort of flying this white flag of surrender that your cooking is never going
to develop or innovate from that point, right?
Because you don't have to do anything.
We have made the cod lasagna.
What else do you need to do?
That's right.
You have made that like Michelle Rue develops the perfect cod lasagna and is then sealed
inside Magneto's non-metallic prison, right, for the rest of his life, just collecting money
on cod lasagna streams. I mostly agree with that, but I think there's another way to see it, right? Which is that when this tendency gets a hold of an industry, what happens is it becomes
more like banking or any other bit of professional services, where the link between the actual
doing of the thing, right, between the actual, let's say, in movies, right, the link between
working your way up through becoming a production assistant whatever
uh... is broken like all those links get have been being broken for a long time right that though and then what happens is you go to professional education
and then you basically come in with a commission more or less and if you're enlisted you never rise above a certain level. And the point is, this is how, if this wasn't completely fucking stupid, this is how you
would do that for food, right?
That's how you'd break that length.
Imagine being like a sous chef or a commercial, when this comes in too.
It's like, you're sort of like, your boss just decides to become Darth Vader, right?
And it's like, actually, no, I think I will rule forever.
Um, so how it would actually work, right?
A lot of the recipes are Indian because it was started in India
and there's now expanded to Silicon Valley.
The person gathering at the ingredients in the company's kitchen
will have no understanding of the two
of the difference between turmeric and coriander.
But that doesn't matter because they are instructed
to pull spices off a rack, weigh them out
based on a system of barcodes,
and then a different person will collect the ingredients
and carry them over to the kitchen's tech enabled range,
and cook the dish by following instructions
provided by a video monitor.
These people have no understanding of like joy,
or creativity, or like just life, generally,
not to sort of like wax lyrical too much,
but like that sounds fucking horrible.
And it's like, this is an industry that is trying to crush joy and creativity and things.
By disrupting it further, we're just crushing it more. We're enabling the crushing.
So they say, there's no need to understand when the chicken achieves
done, so when the curry reaches the ideal thickness, the software does that from sensors
that measure the thermal temperature of the ingredients
and the relative weight of the food as it cooks down.
I mean, this is just an attempt to sort of like
implement the system of a fast food kitchen.
It's also misunderstanding like why people go to fat.
I mean, again, like it's not even just like you go
for the environment, but even if you're sort of thinking
about it in terms of like the status back going to these types of restaurants sort of offer.
Like, to me, it sort of seems like it's a very kind of like tech idea of, you know, if you can replicate like a fancy, if you can replicate like a Marko Pierre white meal, I really wish I knew more like fancy shaft names.
If you can replicate like replicate a Noma meal or whatever or whatever, then you can sort of be so dangerous.
I do.
Everything they're just fermented and forage.
I mean, those are the two things I know.
Marco Pierre right in Noma.
If you can replicate one of those meals
and you can sort of say,
oh, I had this meal that like,
oh, I had a Marco Pierre white meal.
And I wonder whether that sort of the objective,
but it's like, well, no, you're sort of missing the point,
which is that.
Yeah, it's Philistinism. It's a purest Philistinism because it's going to this restaurant and going,
okay, well, I assume that one of two things is happening here.
People are eating this foam because either they really like foam, or they really like the name of the guy who made the foam for them.
And at no point in that is the sort of like labor, whether that's the innovative like intellectual labor or the labor of actually making the fucking foam, like show up in this.
I'm really looking forward to like the first complaint online being like my delivery driver
like a all my phone.
And it's left the box outside and when I asked him where's my phone, he told me to fuck
off.
The Valor chicken curry by chef, Sri Gopinathan,
consisted of chicken breast covered in a mild spice brown sauce,
whose Michelin starred restaurant,
Gopinathan's Michelin starred restaurant,
Eton is not currently serving the entree,
but it used to be.
The review is,
overall this was not an outstanding Indian takeout dare
compared to other local choices,
and did not seem up to Michelin dining expectations
through the lack of garnishes in plain presentation. But they go on to say that if it was cooked by someone untrained, it was
basically competent, which is just, it comes back to, I think, that luxury and lifestyle tend to be
the thin end of the wedge as to how these ideas get sold, right? Because you're selling the idea of
anyone can, anyone can be a kind of, you can get, say, kind of luxury
indulgence through AI replicating it and making it mass
available.
What they really mean is we are proposing a way to completely
de-skill the job of Asia.
Yeah, I mean, because it used to be the case that Mr.
Beastburgers were only available to Mr. Beast and they took
like a week to make.
That's right.
You know, it's the, the meanest standard of living of the
worker worker today would be greater than that of the richest Mr.
Beast in all of history. Anyway, so that's cloud chef.
So much. Thanks. Yeah.
Gears to cloud chef. And now the earlier as promised, we got a buddy check the
FT. Um, was they, as promised, we got a buddy check the FT. Was they have interviewed me?
It should have been nothing to me, man.
They have interviewed the incoming Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Tony Blair,
yeah, yeah, about how basically he intends to govern behind the throne when Kierstover is most likely elected.
Somehow Tony Blair has returned.
So this is an interview.
I think an interview that is relatively softball for Blair and likes to not ask him all
difficult questions, assumes I think quite a few, let's say friendly premises.
So not asking him why he's been working for the most evil fuckers in the world for the last two
decades. Not two decades, one decade. Well, it says, it notes, I'll just jump on. I mean, I
guess he kind of was working for the most evil motherfuckers in the world like two decades ago,
but it was just George Bush. Yeah, it's, they do mention, they do mention the Saudi connection,
but I think they don't challenge his ideas.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So we'll get to it.
So, Sir Tony Blair has warned that Sir Keir Starmer
will inherit a quote, country that's in a mess
if labor wins next year's UK general election.
And that the party must accept it will not be able to
tax and spend its way out of trouble.
No, we should just fucking hedge it all on the markets again,
like you did, worked out perfectly.
Yep, that's right.
Country two, put it all on red.
Well, no, absolutely not to put it all on red.
Oh yeah, of course.
And I mean, I think the reason I'm reading this as well,
right, is that we've seen Blair
emerge as a kind of, almost advertising himself as a Sven Gali for Starmor ever since the
episode of an Eminence Grease, you know, he's around, you know.
And I think ever since the Tony Blair institutes, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Regime
Changes, their conference where Blair interviewed Starmer and it was essentially felt like
this sort of the least sold professional wrestling work I've ever seen.
Yeah, but blasts sort of like putting his fingers together in like, synth mode and being
like evil, evil, visual, tonight, okay?
The Tony Blair Institute is essentially poised to be to Starmer, as for example,
the policy exchange was to Thatcher,
or something like Onward was to Theresa May,
or Kristen Nemitz's Twitter account was to Trilis Truff.
Um, yeah.
And, you know, this, and so what he's giving us is
a sense of what Starmer is likely to do because we know what his policy shop is going. Yeah, this is where the ideas are going to come from.
I look forward to them easing shit once again on ID cards.
Hmm.
Whoa, well, just you wait.
Blair and Starmer would confront a much worse economic situation than the one Blair inherited. He said from John Maj's Tory government when he first won election in 97.
Saying, if starmer wins the election, which I think he has a good chance of doing, he'll
be the sixth prime minister in eight years, that's a country that's in a mess.
We are not in good shape.
You could ask, why does nobody trust politicians anymore?
Why are people so disaffected with the political process?
I wouldn't worry about it.
Things don't make that better.
Yeah, yeah.
He said, critics of Starmor, who said his policy offering
was to bland, bland, will we say bland?
It's actively harmful, maybe?
Yeah, all of the sort of like,
any one smokey, disposable vape will be executed
by a judged red.
I find like what a sort of bland set of policies.
Yeah, where's the spice in the vapes?
You know, which is why it's right.
It's citizen.
Is that a paprika vague?
But he says they were talking nonsense.
And that labor has to stop equating being radical
with just taxing and spending, saying the conservative party
has taxed and spent to the point
where we're in an economic crisis.
We must, the conservative party has beened and spent to the point where we're in an economic crisis.
We must, the conservative party has been too generous with British people.
Again, not someone you expect to hear agreeing with Liz Truss, but this is the sort of the
Blair Truss nexus, right, is the conservative party needs to cut taxes even more.
Yeah, why will nobody cut the taxes?
Is what you say when you are, um, I'd say like removed from, uh,
the actual activity of governing the country so much that you can just,
that you can just take and hold a ridiculous position.
And it doesn't matter because it will get you attention, which is what you want.
No, no, no, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Regime changes like banging on Tony's door saying that they need money
from the government to do like any basic service because he's out now. He's out of power.
And so this doesn't affect him. And also the idea that the conservative
cup party has taxed and spent the point where we're in economic crisis. What did they spend on
specifically? What was the spending that caused us to be in the, yeah, path ropes, that's it.
What was the level of taxation that caused us to be in an economic crisis?
What was the spending that caused us to be in an economic crisis?
If I recall, wasn't the last economic crisis brought on by a, among other things,
a tax cut that spooked global markets?
It didn't, isn't that what fucking happened?
That's because the markets a woke, you know?
Uh-huh.
Um, or the idea, the conservative party
has taxed and spent the point where an economic crisis,
but you, of course, we never talk about
what it's being taxed and spent on, right?
Uh, because very little of it got spent on doing the things
that are keeping people well, or from the point of view of capital,
keeping people working, getting people around.
Very little of it is actually getting spent on that, And Blair's answer, of course, is this says all
itself been too generous.
If you thought it was bad with almost no money, consider how much better it could be with
no money. He says, the radical agenda today is all about understanding, mastering, and
harnessing the technological revolution. This is why the podcast is what it is.
This is why we're so well positioned for this,
is because this is the way that they've decided
to resolve this impossible contradiction
that they've set up, right,
is the government needs to not tax,
not spend, not invest in anything.
So it needs to do something that's magic.
What's magic technology?
Yeah, what's magic is that,
oh, through AI and sensors,
we can recreate a kind of not as good version of a curry.
I mean, wow.
Economic crisis can withstand the cod lasagna.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's the idea. And also also, that was his radical agenda in 1997.
That's what gave it the whole idea of the information society,
the cognitive society that he pursued.
It was all posts.
And gave us all posting, right?
What happened there, right, is that, yeah, we created a class of,
of now, now,
downwardly mobile professionals with less and less
valuable university degrees that are just stamps
of entry to jobs, and that didn't create a more,
let's say, geographically, even global limbo workforce,
all it did was, it was essentially just a kind of
watch the birdie while the rest of everything else was
fucking residualized.
They also don't really want to invest in any infrastructure that would allow tech to
sort of be that driver, right?
Of course not.
There is, like within all this is this expectation.
And again, like very much one of the OG Moats, OG Moats of the show, a wizard will do it.
And what they are really depending on is the presence of wizards, plural.
And you don't really need to go into details about it. One of the details of these guys do
bring up from time to time, not sure if he does it in the F.T. article or not. But the fact that
a bunch of AI people are setting up camp in London, and this being example of how tech will be
the driver of social change.
But again, it is very much the case of like, they don't really elaborate any further on that.
Like, what is the AI going to do?
Also, we're adding. Do you know why all those AI people are setting up camp in London?
Because we have a gigantic amount of public funding for research in AI here. This map.
UCL, yeah, UCL is one of the world leading AI research
institutes.
That's why they're all fucking coming here
is because we're generating talent in a way
that the market doesn't fucking touch.
I mean, I was gonna say that would probably be only
placement sellers called lasagna somewhere,
so, in fact, could have that.
But also, this map so well onto a sort of like
fantasy setting, right?
That the evil vizier is like, we have to seek out the best wizards, you know?
This is, this is what the court needs is sorcerers.
We were used to be pleasing raw back when the Nile flood was abundant.
The Nile flood is no longer as abundant.
So rather than say, I don't know, working harder on farming, we need more
priests.
Be nice to the guys with necklaces with crosses, you know?
Yeah.
He said, Starmor had shown agility and determination and remodeling labor after its hard left
predecessor.
Was he on a fucking like dog obstacles?
Yeah.
Yes. And look at it. Look at his dance and game.
I like the love of C-coats.
He said, Starmer had shown agility and determination remodeling labor after his hard left-fret
assessor Jeremy Corbin adding, I didn't give up on labor, but I think the labor party would
have been finished if we had carried on under Corbin.
He made sure of that, didn't you?
Like, also, you were still responding to him.
He was last leader of the opposition four fifths of a fixed term parliament act ago, but he
also runs the country in a many people's hatch.
Genuinely, right?
This is the last thing that's actively threatened them was Corbin.
For like, and not always for good reasons, sometimes about one thing, but like, it was the
only thing that's like, even put a ripple on the surface of this.
Liz Trass, destroying the economy, just suicide bombing the bond markets, that really didn't
make much odds in terms of the blur vision of how government is going to be in the future.
Corbin did, and they will never ever forgive him for it.
It goes back to what I was talking about with the triple lock, right?
You retain these constitu, if you are a residualizing government,
your residualizing political tendency,
you retain these constituencies as long as it takes to dismantle and take apart
what you want to dismantle and take apart, then you no longer need them,
because it's really, really hard that the only thing that can stop that is either the forestalling of that dismantling and taking apart
or rebuilding new things that will then have constituencies that don't want them dismantled and taken apart.
And this idea that that process would be stopped or God forbid reversed was absolutely anathema to Mr. ID cards. And so this is why they can't stop responding to them because they need to sell that it
will continue to be residualized and taken apart.
But I don't even know why they need to sell it because that victory is now one.
It's just arguing over who does the residualizing.
So Blair's new mission is to persuade political parties, not just in the UK, that they
must embrace technology and change the way they got it.
All the greats, the UK took Manastan, Saudi Arabia.
If Blair had as much power as MBS, he would have put a fucking me on crisscrossing the country.
He would have bulldozed all the fucking Wiltschurchs to make a me on.
Just like bone sword alistac
apple
he said if this sounded like the kind of thing the current prime minister
rishi soonak would holy endorse that it was a good thing because it might
help starboard to build a consensus in office again it might also indicate
that all of these people are on the same side but hey how
uh... and this is where he gets to generative artificial intelligence saying
generative artificial intelligence and other tech developments can revolutionize
healthcare and the fight against crime, but only if governments understand how to use them.
Getting vaporized by the bluerite benefit scrounged drone when I like pick up a
maz bar and like forget to pay for it on the way out. Yeah, so the, um,
it's citizen. Is that an elf bar in your pocket?
Chum.
Yeah.
You said the civil service had to be completely overhauled
to reflect the coming change.
Sighting dominant comings as having a similar idea.
Says, he cited dominant comings drive to recruit
weirdos and tech nerds into the heart of government,
saying some of what he says is sensible,
but some I totally disagree with.
That's a vintage blarism too.
Yeah.
What is sensible?
It's the idea that a lot of the institutions
of government are quite sclerotic.
Sure, yeah, that's sensible.
But the idea that you have to hire a race-realist blogger
in order to address that fact,
rather than, I don't know,
stopping not allowing the treasury to just hold a nuclear bomb
under the country.
I don't know, maybe that would help.
Also, at the risk of making quite a conservative point,
one of the reasons why the civil service is conservative
and why it is sclerotic is because it has to run the country.
And that's something that sometimes requires you to like
act in a conservative way to keep the lights on.
Well, though, it's that the civil service
has to run the country while getting orders from people
who until, I don't know, a week ago,
were just like the back bencher from like somewhere in sorry.
And the thing is, right, that it's perfectly valid
to decide to overturn that.
And it's valid to sort of be a revolutionary,
and do sort of like leninist blarism,
as Blair seems to be doing here, right?
But the question is,
if you are gonna overturn the bits of the state
that like make the state function
in order to replace them,
what are you doing that for to what end?
And is it to like make anything better
for anyone who lives here?
Or is it just to, you know,
just fucking enrich your dodgy mates?
Well, it's that you have to believe,
I think as I think Blair does,
that it will actually make life better
for everyone working here,
and the idea is if only people would submit to the machine.
Or the best from the heart of the machine.
Yeah, I mean, I think no one has ever had
so much faith
in anything, as Tony Blair has had faith
that the British person cries out in their heart
for ID cards, you know?
Here's the next line.
Fucking hell.
Blair has called for all citizens
to have digital identification cards.
Yes!
Laying the heads.
He will never give up on it.
Like, find someone who loves you
like Blair loves ID cards.
It was right then, and it's,
but just a bad one more thing on my sort of thing
of saying about like civil service,
it's like if you're going to have a system of government
where like, where the prime minister can just say,
I like the look of that Liz Trust character.
Let's put her in charge of the foreign office
because that, let's just see how she does having a go.
Then you do kind of need them to be sort of stymied at every turn.
Yeah, genuinely.
Yeah.
And it's like, that is a profoundly undemocratic thing, right?
It's something that should be changed.
But as long as you're going to have the, I'm going to give my maid a go
at running the department for trade, then you do need to check your mate's successes.
It's profoundly undemocratic.
So many things about the way this country is set up is profoundly undemocratic.
It's like, are you trying to democratize it or are you just trying to destroy it and leave it in ruins and replace it with nothing?
And what are you trying to do that for?
leave it in ruins and replace it with nothing. And what are you trying to do that for?
I think any of the things that a Corbin ministry
would have had to have done to the civil service
or done to the treasury, for instance,
would have necessitated a lot of very dramatic
excising of the same stuff.
But I think it would have been for different reasons,
I hope, at least.
So it says, on ID cards, it was right then,
and it's a thousand times more right now.
What are you, who, when did he come to this conclusion,
by the way, what made this,
that his like white whale, you know?
Probably was walking around Mount Sinai,
and God said, one more commandment.
Just like, why, just one more thing, Tony, you specifically have been chosen by me to make ID cards a requirement
grant.
Nah, no, ID cards is idolatry.
I scrive an image, isn't it?
It says, Blair acknowledges that while there are big worries associated with the use of ID cards,
that the tech revolution was coming anyway and that politicians needed to regulate it just so they did with health and safety rules in
the wake of the industrial revolution. Was it politicians who did that with health and
safety rules in the wake of the industrial revolution? Can you remind me?
I assume so. I haven't checked. It was it was elected politicians, right? It was them.
That was that was the one who did it and they they did it because I, well, I suppose industries here, we might as well make it so
that you can't put kids inside the lasagna loom.
Yeah.
Well, also the, I, the thousand times more right now, the idea being, of course, that citizens
need to be able to engage with the 21st century strategic state.
But basically what he really means is more surveillance is necessary so that the state
can achieve its strategic ends
of controlling its citizens for their benefit,
of course, for their benefit.
It's not you engaging with the 21st century strategic state,
it's the 21st century strategic state engaging with you,
which is what makes it strategic.
Because you are the strategy,
part of the strategy might be that if you smoke a dispose
of you buy a disposable vape,
then we can you know cut off
one of your arms with like a monofilament katana yes yeah yeah yeah yeah we got the cyborg ninja
from metal gear now are going to be deployed against benefit sheets yes yeah says they also cite
of course that Blair's post downings three activities have draw always drawn criticism saying yes, he is still providing advice to the Saudi government in spite of the brutal
murder of Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.
That advice?
You actually do ID cards.
Yeah.
He's unapologetic, saying what's going on in Saudi at the moment is incredibly important.
None of that takes away from the terrible crime of Khashoggi, but if you look at what's
happening there, it's a social revolution, which I can say, it sounds like you're taking
away from the terrible crime of the Kishotchi.
I don't know. I would say so. Also, all of the most social revolution things get the activists
imprisoned for a long time, which is maybe not a great sign of a social revolution.
It's a social revolution, but it's conveniently already happened from the king.
Oh, it's a top-down controlled guided social... I see. Right. One of those. Yeah, it's it's it's like a top down sort of controlled guided social I see right one of those
Yeah, it's like what if what if hear me out here? What if king Louis right 1780 1785 right says you know what we're gonna do
We're gonna make Marseille long
Like I'm interested in the contradiction here between
So we're good. So like, I'm interested in the contradiction here between the civil service, very high
bound, very ossified institution that slows the pace of change and tries to control and
subsume any revolutionary change within it in a way that's profoundly detrimental to the
interests of the country.
Unlike the Saudi royal family, which is an innovative start-up pace, the civil service would never build a line.
I think that's true.
Blair said, yeah.
They would never start up a big fake company
talking about the civil service would never produce
a slick video talking about cognitive technology
without defining what it meant.
You know, the civil service would never try
to replace the NHS with the metaverse.
Never.
And so, like, let's think about this, right?
What is Blair's position?
His position is that he is going to be the policy shop for Starmor.
The policy shop is going to have one product on the shelf.
It's going to be ID cards.
And it is going to allow him to do...
Shopkeep.
I am going into battle and I require
your strongest ID cards.
Yeah, I'm gonna fussy the ID cards at people.
But what is this going to actually do politically?
Is it is going to provide a program that will look like change,
that will look like radical change, right?
But won't be because the things that keep you alive
and safe and thriving are the same now as they used to be,
right?
Maybe the only major difference, right?
In allowing the technological revolution
to actually change most people,
technolot in quotes, obviously, change most people's lives,
probably would have been free broadband for everyone.
Yeah, aside from that, it's more surveillance
and a worrying amount more fish in this lasagna
than you're used to.
Well, I can imagine that also the extended surveillance
is being seen as like one of the key drivers
of economic growth.
Because if you sort of build a surveillance state,
then you can also introduce companies that benefit
from that surveillance state be it in the workplace where you can be monitored at that benefit from that surveillance state, be it
in the workplace where you can be monitored at an even more micro level. There can be
whole companies set up in London, primarily measuring how much toilet time you spend
in your office per day. Or in the case of the startup that we spoke of, AI or identification being used to punish you if you use the wrong
amount of turmeric in the cod lasagna.
And so I do wonder whether the core of the Starmer Blair change program is very much rooted
in what if we built an economy based entirely on surveillance? Because they certainly
don't care about creativity, they certainly don't care about innovation in a very real sense,
they don't care about improving people's mental wellbeing or physical wellbeing, they don't give a
shit about infrastructure, but they also don't want to spend any money on anything else. So what if you
built your surveillance state but primarily without having to spend any money on anything else. So what if you built your surveillance state
but primarily without having to spend any money
other than on like laminate,
did cards and QR codes?
I will contract those out too, I'm sure.
Oh yeah.
It's never, the key thing here is
none of this ever actually has to be done.
It just has to be talked about and announced
and looked into and anything that will get done will probably get done through things like the DWP,
will get done through things like restricting the NHS, will get done through the home
office.
And raising moral panic, I think, is a very good way.
Like, to go back right to the beginning of this episode where we talk about like shoplifting
and stuff, back can obviously be used as like very good precedence to being, well, you
know, we need these ID cards because like, look at all this social disorder that's happening,
right?
All the sort of like crime that's taking place, all the, you know, it doesn't matter
about like,
sites crime specifically is right.
Right.
One place he thinks that the that Britain should be bringing in AI.
Yeah.
He doesn't say specifically how to the FT of course.
And then, and this is a really funny example again I was just like, okay, we're not going to
actually, even if we were taking this seriously, we're not going to introduce more police.
We're not going to introduce more like, we're not going to put more police on the streets
and stuff because that again would require money. We're just going to replace them with
AI.
It's more shit you have to carry around. Have we explored Blaz's like possible financial links
to the wallet industry?
Maybe he's the EDC guy.
Maybe he loves like, maybe he loves like small knives
and chill like carabiner clips.
Just like me for real.
Is that they are?
What we're saying basically is that they are,
is that continuing on the Praudatory Tradition
of police abolition,
but instead of just replacing the people from the town, he wants to replace them with
Ed 209, but he doesn't want to invest in Ed 209, so it's going to be an ID card
and a cardboard card out of Ed 209, that has a motion sensor on it that says,
halt citizen, present your ID card when you walk past it.
Yeah, please rend yourself limb from limb with cannon fire if you don't have your ID card.
Because eventually your border, your like volunteer border guards will want to eat food.
And if they can't afford food, then they will be like, hey, maybe I should be getting paid
for being a volunteer border guard.
But the AI doesn't have to eat.
Yeah.
So this is to finish up here.
This is on his legacy and taking control of the party back.
He says, we didn't have a credible labor leader in Corbin.
That's what gave us Brexit. It's citation needed. What? Asked if he will help Starmer in the forthcoming
election. Blair simply smiles and says, I'll help in any way I can. You can just, you
could hear him tenting his fingers. Yeah. Yeah. Sinister. Yeah. Yeah. He's like, he's just
tired of being Sven Goli to like, you know, to like,
take Turkmenistan.
He's wants to come and be Svengali at home.
He's going to come back different though from that experience.
He's going to like be whispering in Star Mazeera.
Hey, have you considered like boiling all of the dissidents in like a big pot maybe?
Hey, hey, hey, hey, Kierstacher, have you considered Bill and sit?
Look, we have two great cities you can build.
You could build Ashkabat or you could build the line. Which one do you want?
I love working. I love my job working in 10 Downing Street where I whisper into the
Prime Minister's ear, but he should build a line and also introduce Sharia law.
That's right. It's, we're going to do Sharia compliance ID cards.
We're in place to it. I did see someone online today being like, you know, the like shoplifters
should be punished like physically. And I did think to myself, like, do you want to cut their hands off? Like
cold Singapore. It's just public, public paintings, you know? Number one, shoplifters should be
punished. Number two, I hate interest rate. No more charging interest on what we're getting there.
We're getting the plan. Trust in the plan is it is it is about some. All right, all right. This is all we have time for today. So thank you very
much for being a free listener. You like this show. There is a Patreon. There is
$5 week for a second episode. We got a real humdinger of a bonus this week. We're going
to be talking about the new micro private micro state being built in California by the LinkedIn guy because he got two mad at San Francisco.
With friend of the show, Shanty Singh, so do check that out.
Additionally, there are bonus content that is left on red, there's writtenology, we have a stream, you know all the details, you know that the theme song is here we go by Jinsang, you can listen to it early in often, on Spotify, Spotify for music.
They finally made a Spotify for food for music,
where you can check it.
Claude Luzagne, while listening to various bits of episode.
That's right.
I think that's all the plugs
you don't have anything coming up.
So we will see you in a few short days on the bonus.
Bye, everyone. few short days on the bonus. Bye everyone!