Trendesota Zeitkings 9/23: McDonalds, NY/DoorDash, Samsung, FBI Hack

0:00 Hello, the internet, and welcome to this episode of Trend-A-Soda Zeitkings. That one courtesy of Donaghy Caraby on the Discord in reference to this morning's episode where I called you a Minnesota thigh king.

0:17 Mm-hmm.

0:19 And also, so our conversation about how the thigh AKs ended up becoming... more about Blake and I than you. I think I was lumping myself in with Blake. Blake was obviously the starter, the beginner. I don't want to be claiming false valor here. Blake started the plumpers. I jumped on it because I love talking about my thighs.

0:48 But Blake is the OG and any implication otherwise... I've seen, I've seen. La Caroni was like, no, Jack, it was Blake.

0:57 Yeah.

0:57 I was like, yeah, no. Every time I introduce him, I say he's the coiner of the disgusting phrase plumpers. I think. How much clearer can I be?

1:05 I think because you just, you just kind of let assumptions, you just didn't correct it.

1:10 You kind of got in there. Sort of like Rachel Dolezal. You know what I mean? You're like, oh, you thought so? Okay. I mean, I won't correct you. Should I capitalize off of that? I mean, I do have luscious thighs.

1:21 Okay.

1:23 I'm not saying I do. I'm not saying I don't. But you know what? You're saying I do. He said it, not me. So do with that what you will. Anyways, how are you doing today? Great. Great. So good. So fucking good, man. It's crazy how good I am. It's fucking crazy, bro. All right. Let's talk about McDonald's. Because there's two... pieces of food news in the past day.

1:57 Let's kick it off with McDonald's because they have some exciting news. And I think these are related in some ways. But McDonald's are like, we've decided to really invest in food. Whom? In themselves. How?

2:16 You know, that's the thing. I love reading things like this. So, like, McDonald's, right? They're trying to figure out, how are we going to get customers back in the stores?

2:26 You know? Sure.

2:27 And like any American company that's publicly traded, they're thinking of everything except for the obvious way to bring customers back.

2:34 Lower your prices. So the original pitch of McDonald's was our prices are cheap. You can get a meal here for less money than should be possible. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Bring the whole family. Come through And then They You know Got Got involved In the mentality That happened to Basically all of Late stage American capitalism Which is like What if we just like Squeeze them for as much money As we possibly could.

3:05 Every single Penny out of them So Yeah What if we just held them by their ankles and shook the nuggets out of them. Yeah, just shake the nuggets out of their pockets.

3:15 This is from Business Insider, because I love the way they write about this stuff.

3:18 McDonald's is spending big to bring customers back to its restaurants.

3:22 Oh, really? Are they now? Well, okay. I'm like, okay, what's going on?

3:26 The fast food chain plans to devote $ 8. 5 billion over the next 10 years to improvements to its restaurants. Okay, it said on Wednesday, the plan called McDonald's Next is Includes adding more technology.

3:40 Miles, I'm already on board. I need to hear nothing else. McDonald's next. Oh, wow.

3:48 Because when you can't afford what we have on offer, we're going to say next.

3:52 Not you, man. Get the fuck out of here, bro.

3:55 This includes adding more technology to stores, new training for employees, and increasing the burger chain's market share of chicken menu items. And look, I know as a busy parent, my first thought when feeding my family with a quick bite is, how much technology is in the store?

4:12 And also, what is their market share of chicken menu items? Okay. Um, cool. Uh, the goal is to be quote.

4:21 The first choice for more customers more often while making our restaurants stronger and easier to run.

4:26 McDonald's CEO, Chris comes in.

4:27 Kemp Zensky Kemp Zensky said, that was the guy who had their real cool, uh, burger bites that went viral last year. Um, he said, we were confident that executing across these components of next will unlock stronger restaurant economics, like it's just all this wall street talk for being like, okay, if we can't get a bunch of people to buy it, how do we just make it appealing to people with.

4:50 Cash that are like, Ooh, shit. I don't know.

4:52 McDonald's got a bunch of cool robots in here. Sick I feel like.

4:59 The Introduction of technology Has also never been a strong suit For them so we're going to double down On the thing that has never worked for us Every time we try and do this Because they're like franchised right So it's not like they can't Centrally incorporate A piece of technology and just be like And it is so They are trying to introduce this technology Out to franchisees Who then like you know, it, it is American capitalism.

5:27 So companies find ways to kind of insinuate themselves into that transaction. And soon you have the disaster that is the McDonald's soft serve machine, which is like, yeah, you have to pay to like your franchisee has to pay some third party company to use. Yeah. To like hack the machine. Yeah.

5:48 Uh, so I mean, they're improving everything except the prices. Um, yeah, Yeah, and even then, it's like, it's like just all, I mean, I'm wondering how much the historians, when they look back decades from now, talk about like the C-suite psychosis that basically just brought everything down as part of like this era of capitalism we're in, like where all these people are just have no idea even who their customer is anymore.

6:14 Right.

6:14 And they're just like, yeah, man, it's like, we need more technology in the store.

6:20 Everyone's telling you shit costs too much. Yeah, yeah.

6:24 So you don't need something that then justifies you raising the price because you invested eight and a half billion dollars on McDonald's next.

6:31 Um, but I will say even wall street's not falling for this shit because their stock price is going down. This is like, they, they did, uh, we're like, we did, we, we pitched this whole thing directly at wall street and their stock price is, uh, right. Taking a shit. It would appear, which is not something I, uh, really pay attention to other than when somebody makes a move that is this explicitly like, Do you like us now? Yeah.

6:56 Are you friends with us? Are you sure? I mean, we're going to improve our restaurant economics. You're not going to believe the way that we incorporate technology, just like vague platitudes. Yeah. Um, but generally when you announce some shit like this line goes up and if you lower prices, line go down.

7:14 Yeah.

7:15 It, What's a boy to do? Yeah. Maybe ignore the fucking line. You know what I mean?

7:20 Because I'd imagine if your prices get lower, you're going to have a higher volume of sales, which will make your own line go up.

7:28 And yet so much of the CEO's compensation package is tied up. Oh, God. Level of line. Someone think of the Rizzless accountants that rose up to CEO. In other kind of big corporate food news, DoorDash. just got brought to account, um, in New York city, New York city, uh, where Zoran just announced that there would be a big settlement, like $ 131 million settlement because, uh, DoorDash was, uh, according to them, just whoops, guys, this is a big whoopsie on our end. We've been underpaying our delivery drivers. but the, legal findings seem to indicate that there was nothing accidental about it. But again, also underpaying or stealing. Yeah. That money was, we were actually holding onto that money for

8:27 them is how they're kind of like escrow, you know, like a vibey escrow. You know what I mean? It's just, it's very frustrating that the only way to protect, for like people to protect themselves from corporations in this country is like basically class action lawsuits, which are very slow and rarely make the company pay enough money to affect their behavior. Because again, as we said, like line go up, line go down is the only thing that's going to affect their behavior. Cause there's $ 131 million. Yeah.

9:00 Yeah.

9:00 $ 131 million is like, Apparently not enough because their stock price has stayed about where it's not like it's not flying high, but it's not doing great. And this is wage theft. This is the sort of thing. If somebody, if an individual stole $ 131 million. You'd beat their ass. The American system would officially. I believe you get your ass beat for doing something like that around here. Oh, yeah.

9:34 I got a case of the Mondays. You'll kick your ass on Monday when I see you. Just think about that. That's so wild that we are in a place where if an individual or a group of individuals tried to do this, they would all go to jail probably for the rest of their lives.

9:53 I don't know. I also think of it like this too. Like, you know, Americans are really good about complaining about service. You know, it's like, I think one of the all time superpowers as a nation is like, we, we breed consumers who like to fucking talk to the manager. Well, I think more Americans should actually think that in the context of how your taxes are paid, you're paying for it.

10:13 You can actually be like, this is what I'm getting for my money?

10:17 Yeah. And really think about that, too, because maybe you'll be a little bit more upset.

10:20 Some people who maybe are kind of trying to figure out where they are in their sort of evolution of thought and what my relation is to the government. Yeah, you should be in an active outrage about what's being done with your money because it's not going to your schools. It's not going to your health care. it's going to explode people and build other technologies that are going to destroy the earth or industries that are going to destroy the earth. So, you know, I encourage more. Everyone should encourage their, their grandparents, their older relatives to think about that, to get outraged in that sense.

10:54 This is what they're doing with it. Don't, don't get mad at the DoorDash delivery driver who has to eat some of your French fries. Get mad at the DoorDash corporation who, They made it so they can't afford to eat because they're not paying them. They're literally not paying them the money that they erode. We just didn't. We forgot, man.

11:16 You know. It's much easier. It is really a beautifully designed system by, you know, late stage hyper capitalism. No, this is the guy you're mad at. Look. Got fucking french fries on his breath. Oh, man.

11:31 See, now we're going to have to put stickers on the bags so they don't open them.

11:35 And then you'll know. I mean, although that is good for sanitary reasons. I will say, just in line with that, because it is... Uh, like the, the fact that this is being announced in Zoran's New York city is good for the brand and just generally the brand couldn't be stronger. It feels like, uh, and it's funny to see, like, I was just noticing that a new poll came out that, uh, you know, as we always say, can't trust polls, but this poll is generating some headlines because It says that Nithya Raman, former guest on this show, candidate for mayor, running against Mayor Karen Bass, is leading in the polls by quite a bit, like 10 percentage points. Which, all right, like we said, you can't trust... polls um another poll

12:30 had karen bass leading her by a wide margin um unfortunately for karen bass's campaign days after the poll that had her up was released the company admitted they were just making shit up and permanently retired from doing polls so this is like the first uh more more reliable poll.

12:48 Pretty honest from pollsters because they're they love to take you know campaign money and and be like yeah that's what i found dude yeah yeah yeah it's great but it's.

12:57 Like they're like uh yeah that was a social experiment we were fucking with you we like literally made those numbers up out of whole cloth to see what it would do that oh dude yeah no dude you're getting cooked right now anyway so this is good news because uh you know, we had Nitya on and, uh, she did not, not endorse my plan to take down LA's golf courses. Uh, like I've always planned to and turn them into public parks just by, uh, so, uh, Good news for that. But I was also noticing like a lot of the reaction to this news from the right, like Spencer Pratt is like, oh, what did I tell you?

13:44 Look at look at that. Read it and weep, guys. You're about to have a commie as your mayor. I'm just no one is going to vote for you. Like, it's self-evidently terrifying. And it's like, buddy, you gotta read the... Like, look what's happening in New York. Like, if Zoran had... one and then come in and it had turned into fucking snake Plissken escape from New York. Yeah. Like I would understand this, but they're, they're acting like that's what happened.

14:14 Maybe like, I don't even know, like are, are people generating a bunch of clips of, of like crime in New York to try and make that case? I'm not like the only thing I saw recently was somebody being like, this car is playing the call to prayer loudly on the streets of New York at 6.

14:30 A.M.

14:31 This is what you voted for. 25 years after 9-11. Yeah. It's like, wow. Been happening for a while, my man. But okay. Okay. Yeah. I mean, like Karen Bass is just so wildly unpopular.

14:46 So you just needed somebody, you know, that wasn't a Republican who actually had decent ideas for the city. And they were going to, they were most likely going to be a better candidate. Because again, Karen Bass wanted to run against Spencer Pratt.

14:58 Oh, yeah. In fact, she's still she's still campaigning against it. Like there's footage of her like talking shit about Spencer Pratt. That's like the best she can muster up is like, yeah, remember this asshole? Oh, God. And, you know, like not on top of that, too.

15:14 Like there was a hearing recently where some activists were just like calling out the police commission because they were hiding the fact that there were like LAPD officers off duty were working for ICE contractors.

15:27 Right.

15:27 And they're like, you said this wasn't going to happen and we're trying to get that information and you're hiding it. And again, this is under the watchful eye of Karen Bass's police commissioner.

15:37 So, I mean, there's no matter what way.

15:39 You look at it, there's just a lot of minus signs around.

15:43 Yeah.

15:44 But generally, too, there's just like there's other good polling, too, where the Cook Political Report just. Just just moved a couple races over to the Democrat column, which, you know, you know, the Cook Political Report kind of gives you this sort of like wider sort of idea of like, OK, is.

16:02 This a district like a Republican plus two district? Is it a Democrat plus one?

16:08 And, yeah, we've got a few more Senate districts that got put into the Democrat column in terms.

16:14 Of just vibration. Where were they in 2024? Like, in terms of... Because I know that there were some people who were like, Trump is going to win this pretty definitively. And then some people who thought Kamala had more of a chance. Was Cook, like, kind of in the toss-up range? Do we remember? I'm just like, I... this is stupid this is like one data point but i am like you know burned by 2024 and like ever having hope in uh that it was.

16:48 Pretty tight he doesn't do a lot of like real hard prognosticating like that yeah.

16:53 Um so it was like like general.

16:55 Vibes what would it would it cook say about that but again normally it's just it's more of like he's looking at other data and just kind of switching what the tone is based on polling and other things like that.

17:07 Sure. Sure. Sure.

17:07 But again, polls, they don't put you there. Don't lay your head on them. However, they give you an idea. Like if it gives you an idea of like the weather you're about to enter, You know what I mean? It's not nailed on, but you're like, okay, it'll be kind of a sunny day. I'm not expecting full on rain.

17:24 And this is a meteorological report before a doge or after? After. Oh, fuck. That's not good. It's bad. All right. Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. And we are back. It can't be said, Miles, that we're not back from that ad break. It can be said. So we've talked before about the fact that they're trying to stick AI and everything against people's will. But again, this is just another thing. When the incentive, the entire incentive structure in the C-suite is like, do the thing that Wall Street's going to like the sounds of. You're going to put, you're going to stick AI in fridges. And results be damned. Anyways, we'd been hearing for a while about AI fridges. Samsung put some out. And it's... So... First of all, I

18:32 will say that the AI fridge will give you some recipes. Oh, yeah. If you ask it to, it'll give you. For some reason, it has that option.

18:44 Dude, I haven't been keeping any of this food refrigerated in here, man. But yeah, you're going to get diarrhea.

18:50 FYI. But it'll tell you in like, you know, paragraphs. english you know it'll speak to you and tell you hey i fucked up um no they they will give you recipes based on what's inside your fridge um which i don't know that sounds like it could be cool i'm sure it fucks up and does not do a good job of doing that uh but the another big problem like with these i i haven't tested that yet.

19:20 How good the recipes are that it's giving you. Where is it pulling these recipes from? Presumably the internet, but... any any like i i've not had good success like talking to people who've like tried to do ai recipes they're like no i just just google recipes yeah yeah yeah that works much better rather than them trying to like average like in the same way that like it when google ai gives you the average answer from like five different sources and it's like well this paragraph is contradictory like yeah yeah you know so they're averaging out recipes anyways.

19:56 Asking ai for like a recipe is like like having a friend who's like on like in the middle of an acid trip but also has like the ego of someone who won't admit they're wrong to tell you a recipe and they're like oh yeah man i got a recipe seven lemons cayenne pepper chicken leg sugar it will do it with the confidence and sincerity of those you remember that person who like was the fake ASL translator of the speech But was just like doing fake hand gestures In the back And with all the integrity Of that fake sign language translator Anyways One.

20:39 Bad thing And this is Depending on how you use your refrigerator This could be a major or minor thing Okay But a ton of these fridges shut down in South Korea after an update accidentally included internal test software that wasn't meant to be rolled out. As a result, the screens stopped working. So, OK. And then and this is like the thing that has some people kind of pissed off. Um, I don't know. I don't know how you use your refrigerator listener, but, uh, the fridges also lost the ability to cool, uh, which, uh, that, that is how a lot of people, that's kind of the main thing that a lot of refrigerators do for people. Um, depending on who you are, how weird you are, if you're a freak, who's like, oh, I like to have,

21:35 food like I like to be able to have.

21:37 Milk for my children you don't put your sneakers in your refrigerator just put them in the freezer dude keep them nice and crispy that shit on ice bro yeah uh kill the mold um But the fix requires, speaking of McDonald's, this might sound familiar to McDonald's franchisees who are having trouble with their soft serve machine.

21:56 The fix requires an engineer to visit in person, which seems extra annoying because this is all happening right before the national holiday Chuseok, which people are reporting that they can't book Samsung technicians until after the holiday is over and all the food they bought for Chuseok is just going to spoil. Jesus Christ. That seems bad. Seems poorly timed.

22:25 What's that?

22:25 What's, what kind of festival is that? It's just kind of like a time where people just take off work.

22:29 I'd imagine it sounds like. Yeah. You got some half moon race. I'm just Googling it right now and trusting the answer at the top of Google AI, but we don't, we don't do big shoe soak. I think this is like the Thanksgiving evening. Oh, it's an, okay. Interesting. Autumn evening.

22:46 I love, love an Asian festivity period, especially one that's, like, sacred, you know, because Asian people work so much. Like, there's only a couple times a year where they're like, dude, I'm fucking no. No one fucking does anything right now. And now the refrigerator is going down. Like, I need a fucking engineer.

23:03 They're like, no. How about no? How about wait for the holiday to end? Which is one of my favorite foods in the world is a traditional way, which involves a lot of pork. Pork, I actually haven't looked into whether that needs to be refrigerated and we're just going to keep moving and not look into it. You can get, there are definitely some fish dishes, which again, who knows if fish is supposed to be refrigerated. Not me, not you, you know, or remains to be seen. Who knows? Who knows?

23:32 We're still looking into it.

23:35 This is how I feel about so much smart home technology. The second the thing, I'm like, cool, you can hit a button and every light in the house goes to this very specific dimness setting or whatever.

23:48 But if the internet shits out or whatever, I.

23:52 Know most of those bulbs can function, but there's so many other things that are tied to the internet or whatever or that kind of connectivity where I'm like, dude.

24:00 I should just once I plug it in, it's over, bro. That's it. Is there power? Yes. Then the shit should work.

24:07 Not do I also have a fucking firmware update or over the air update or whatever.

24:11 We moved into a house that, uh, had like the person before it was like a real smart home freak, real smart home freak, but also like obsessed with technology that was at me, you know, was already old. He was the older white guy. Um, and so, uh, They're like every room has like dimmer switches in it. And I just like don't like that is beyond me. Like how to operate even a dimmer because you have to get like specific and they're like breaking down now. You might have noticed that I'm always in studio this week because the dimmer switch in my home office. is making a noise it's like making like a noise like no no like a click click click click like it sounds like a fucking bomb counting down and the lights in

25:02 the studio have gone haywire and are like going up and down at random uh so i'm like i have to get an electrician i'm not i'm not up to it i can't take the switch it's actually pretty easy I'll come over and show you how to do it. Yeah.

25:17 It took my best friend's dad, who's an electrician, like when I needed help with something to shame me when he's like, Miles, you can do this yourself. I'm like, dude, Robert, I don't know the first thing. He's like, watch this. He just goes like, unscrew that. Don't let those wires touch. He's like, I'll show you how to do it without going to the panel and turning it off.

25:35 Wow. this seems like bad advice this seems like advice that is going.

25:39 To get maybe not yeah yeah maybe that maybe not for you actually i'm remembering who i'm talking to yeah i've been electrocuted 30 times just changing light bulbs um that's why i'm so jumpy i think you die from if you're electrocuted right yeah or electrocution right it's like electrocution electrified what have i been No, I just remember I, I like met, I remember at a random bar or some, I said something about being electrocuted.

26:07 I remember that. I think I was there. Cause I remember somebody was getting mad at us about. No, this is a different one for sure. You weren't there.

26:14 Cause this is before we worked together because then that person was like, like badgering me over electrocuted and electrified because they said they had been, they're like, they're like, no, you, I've been electrified.

26:25 And then only use that to hit on my friend's wife. okay yeah maybe i'm just remembering you telling me that story i've been electric shocked for you i'm like the guy in the great outdoors remember that character anyways how's everything going at the fbi i do great man look we checked out the beast stuff yeah man shack was there he was wearing shoes that were five sizes too big for him somehow uh but Also, I guess not a great day if you're an FBI agent doing any kind of undercover work or anything like that, because 404 Media has reported that the hacking crew known as Shiny Hunters has claimed they have hacked the FBI's jobs portal and now possess the personal information of almost all FBI agents and most applicants. That seems like a big one.

27:16 That seems like one that... This seems like the knock list from Mission Impossible. Like, isn't that the whole thing that they're like always trying to preserve? And they're like, well, we're going to have to risk nuclear annihilation to get this because otherwise everything falls apart. Yeah.

27:32 Well, right now the FBI is like, we're looking into it and trying to pretend everything's fine. But the hackers showed 404 Media, Reuters, a few other outlets like a what they call like a sample of information and it was like 5 000 agents that they handed over and they kind of they they put that they basically you know researched all that uh information they got and were able to connect the names addresses sometimes and like they have social security numbers to people that were legitimately fbi including cash patel Wow. Um, and like, they're saying this has every like names, home addresses, social security numbers, the, their assignments. Um, and in some cases, names of family members.

28:16 So yeah, pretty dire situation. The hackers have said they weren't, they're not looking for a payout because they mostly usually like, we'll be like, Hey, pay us or we won't share your shit there. they would rather, what they want to do is coerce the FBI into removing a report that the FBI put out last year or earlier this year about the group that they say has false allegations about how they operate. And their kind of, I guess, perspective on it is like, It's allowing other people to claim shiny hunters when they're not, whatever, like this is bullshit.

28:47 Either way, the FBI is, we're yet to really hear what they are saying. Because again, even if a fraction of this info is out there, that's bad news for the FBI. And would be a dream for like foreign intelligence operations and criminals. But I guess this was always going to happen, but not just at the FBI, but all over the government with all the Doge firings. Because you have nobody now, like all the people that know what they're doing are gone or have been basically so put off by the way this administration is that they don't want to work for, you know, any branch of government at this point. And, you know, like it's all a bunch of wannabes at the wheel. There's no actual subject matter expertise. Like if you look at the White

29:32 House cabinet, there's no, there's not a single person that like working in there that has any kind of subject matter expertise. You don't have a guy who's like, I know everything about oil. I know everything about water. Or if you do, it's like an oil man who's like, I know everything about oil, how to make money off of it, how to move it around.

29:50 How to get your money into my pocket. Yeah.

29:54 Not an expert or scientist in any field, just a bunch of sycophant slapdicks.

29:59 And also people who play experts on TV, right? Yeah, of course. Like Pete Hegseth or, you know, even isn't Dean Cain, like Dean Cain, they're always throwing on stuff just because he, I think he was Superman. Because he was Superman. And it's like, that doesn't mean shit.

30:14 He's actually an out of work actor, which is one of the most terrifying people on earth. Uh, so right now the U S I think is basically, we should look at this as a car being driven by a dog.

30:28 Um, and we are seeing those effects across everything. Like, so what you're saying is the U S has that dog in us and that's.

30:35 The U S the U S car has that dog in us driver's seat, uh, parenthetical. They don't know how to drive us. We'll crash terribly. Cause why is a dog driving a fucking car? At the very least, maybe the hackers can tell us who of the applicants who was looking for that bestiality carve out.

30:53 Right. There's that.

30:56 But yeah, it's still mum from the FBI. And slowly more and more outlets are reporting on it. This doesn't sound good. Not trying to get rich off it? Who is this?

31:06 General Francis X. Hummel from The Rock? My and his wife. Anyways, those are some of the things that are trending on this September 23rd. We are back tomorrow with the whole last episode of the show. Until then, be kind to each other. Be kind to yourself. Get your vaccines while you still can. Get your flu shots. Don't do nothing about white supremacy. And we will talk to you all tomorrow. Bye.

31:32 Bye.

31:33 The Daily Zeitgeist is executive produced by Catherine Law. Co-produced by Victor Wright. Co-written by J.M. McNabb. And edited and engineered by Brian Jeffries.