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At President Donald Trumps inauguration on Monday, Detroit pastor Lorenzo Sewell took the stage to pray for the incoming administration, peppering his remarks with ham-fisted allusions to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.s I Have a Dream speech from some six decades earlier. That same day, Sewella longtime Trump booster who spoke at the Republican National Convention and hosted the candidate at his church in Junetook the logical next step in his quest for conservative influencer superstardom: launch a meme coin and watch rubes throw their hard-earned money at it. I need you to do me a favor right now. I need you to go buy the official Lorenzo Sewell coin, he said in a video posted on X, promising to never sell on the community but rather just earn fees as our token continues to flourish. After reaching a peak market value of $4.5 million, $LORENZOprepare to be shockedlost 93% of its value in a matter of hours, leaving some traders with five- and six-figure losses. I am guessing Sewells congregants will not be hearing a sermon on the cleansing of the Temple anytime soon. Sewell, though, is only doing what everyone in Trumps orbit, including Trump himself, is doing right now: cashing in as quickly and as often as possible. Days before taking the oath of office, Trump launched his own cryptocurrency meme coin, inviting prospective buyers to join his very special Trump Community and urging them to Have Fun! His eponymous meme coin, $TRUMP, should not be confused with $MELANIA, a separate meme coin launched around the same time by his wife, shortly before she once again became first lady of the United States. The terms and conditions onI swear I am not making this upgettrumpmemes.com warn prospective $TRUMP buyers that they could incur substantial losses, and require anyone who buys to first agree to waive their rights to a jury trial or to participate in any hypothetical future class-action lawsuit, which are generally not signs that you are dealing with blue-chip investment opportunities. When asked by reporters, Trump did not do much to inspire additional confidence in the venture: I dont know much about it, other than I launched it, he said, but noted he did understand that it had been very successful. For now, he is right, and especially compared to $LORENZO: At the time of the inauguration, $TRUMP was the worlds third-largest meme coin, behind only Dogecoin and Shina Ibu. As of Thursday afternoon, The Wall Street Journal estimated the $TRUMP market cap at $7 billion and valued Trumps stake at $28 billion, which would be between three and four times his estimated pre-meme coin net worth all by itself. The ethical challenges of a chief executive with the power to shape cryptocurrency policy engaging in a little light eponymous cryptocurrency profiteering do not require a detailed explanation. But this episode is a mere preview of an administration that will function as a glorified cash cube, where everyone in the White House (and everyone who is sufficiently adjacent to it) will have a chance to grab as much as they can hold before the clock runs out. The political dynamics of Trumps second term are unlike anything that anyone alive has experienced: a term-limited president who is interested in ruling but not governing, who ran for office more or less to avoid the possibility of prison time, and whose position on any given issue depends largely on whichever well-dressed man with a firm handshake pitched him last. Unlike most presidents, Trump does not care about setting up his party for future success, because he has never cared about the GOP beyond its utility to his political ambitions. Nor does he care about using a second term to secure his legacy, because in his mind, exacting electoral revenge on Joe Biden was the only thing he needed to do to accomplish that task. For the next four years, then, all Trump really wants is to bask in the glow of winning an election that the haters insisted he would lose, and enjoy the spoils of victory that come with the office. In previous decades, these perks would have consisted largely of lengthier-than-usual stays at Camp David during the high season. In 2025, they include the right to slap your name (and your wifes name) across a digital token and sell it to anyone who will pay for it. The heads of some of the worlds largest and most powerful corporations, too, realize that the regulatory environment might never be as friendly as it is right now, when a president who is as unapologetically profit-driven as they are is calling the shots. Luminaries of the artificial intelligence industry, who understand that their companies will need staggering amounts of cash to have any hope of delivering on their lofty promises, are flocking to Trump, eager to exploit his disinterest in regulating an industry that needs it badly. Billionaires like Metas Mark Zuckerberg, Amazons Jeff Bezos, and Googles Sundar Pichai similarly understand that showing up in person to kiss the ring is both the cheapest and surest way to protect their bloated monopolies from federal oversight. The quarter-billion that Elon Musk spent to back Trumps reelection campaign is pennies on the dollar next to the value of the government contracts for which his companies now enjoy the inside track. A month ago, TikTok was facing a ban in the U.S.; now that Trump is in power, a few well-placed compliments were enough to keep the lights on and the bottom line intact, for the moment. No industry is going as hard in Washington as the crypto industry, which threw a star-studded celebratory ball the night before Trumps inauguration, complete with performances from Snoop Dogg, Rick Ross, and Soulja Boy. David Sacks, a member of the Silicon Valley reactionary clique, who Trump recently named as his AI and crypto czar, told cheering attendees that Washingtons reign of terror against crypto had at last come to a close. Yes, some industry leaders have criticized Trump for his $TRUMP stunt, but on the whole they have little to complain about: At the very least, a president who is willing to launch his own meme coin right before moving into the White House is unlikely to be a thorn in te side of the crypto industry anytime soon. The cashing-in presidency slows down onlyand even then, only slightlywhen one persons big score threatens that of another. On Tuesday, Trump announced a new AI joint venture, Stargate, billed as a collaboration among OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle that would invest up to half a trillion dollars in OpenAIs work. (Like many things for which Trump takes credit, Stargate was in the works months before his press conference, and since the money is coming from the private sector, his administration does not have to fund it.) But just hours after Trump declared Stargate a resounding declaration of confidence in Americas potential, Musk, who has been feuding with Altman since breaking with OpenAI in 2018and whose xAI product is a rival to OpenAIs ChatGPTpublicly undercut Trumps grand pronouncements. They dont actually have the money, Musk wrote on X. I have that on good authority. As it turns out, Musks purportedly close relationship with the president started fraying the moment he perceived that as enthusiastically as he might be cashing in these days, one of his Silicon Valley rivals was cashing in even harder. The other tech oligarchs with front-row inauguration seats will probably have their loyalties tested soon, too. Zuckerberg, whose company lobbied aggressively for the TikTok ban and stands to gain billions in ad dollars from its enforcement, cannot be happy about Trumps decision to stay the apps execution; Google and Pichai, whose YouTube Shorts product aspires to compete with TikTok, also must have felt the sting of defeat. Earlier this week, Trump expressed interest in the idea of Musk or Oracles Larry Ellison saving TikTok by acquiring the platform from ByteDance. The more Trump picks winners and losers among those competing for his favor, the less valuable these alliances of convenience with the White House will be. Trump is often described as a grifter, or a con man, or some variation thereof, which is in my view a fair characterization of a man who is unable to cite his favorite Bible verses but nevertheless sells officially licensed Trump Bibles for $59.99 and autographed copies for $1,000, a price that somehow does not include shipping. The difference between his first administration and this one is that this time, many of the business leaders who previously distanced themselves from Trump have figured out that ingratiating themselves is the most lucrative path of least resistance in recent memory. When the president is chasing a payday this hard, no one has to be shy about following his lead.
Category:
E-Commerce
If you have spent any time traveling in the U.S. over the past 10 years, you may have noticed a curious vending machine filled with jars. Instead of crinkle-cut chips or wired earbuds for that movie you want to watch on the plane, these vending machines sell freshly made apple pecan salads, blueberry chia overnight oats, and mediterranean bowls. They are run by a company called Farmers Fridge, and they are slowly taking over airports in the U.S. Since it launched in 2013, the company has installed its vending machines at about 20 U.S. airports, including LAX, Chicago OHare, Dallas Fort-Worth, and most recently, Las Vegas. (I first stumbled on its leafy offerings at JFK airport, while on a quest for a meal that didn’t involve a side of soggy fries.) And it’s not just airports. These fridges are cropping up everywhere, from hospitals like New York Presbyterian and Boston Medical Center, to Amazon fulfillment centers, college campuses like Northwestern and Harvard, and stadiums like L.A’s Crypto.com Arena. Today, the company counts 1,600 locations around the country, and in the next 10 years, CEO and founder Luke Saunders is hoping to reach 100,000. How? With an understanding of cold chain logistics, an ever-expanding menu, and a swanky new fridge. This month, the company is debuting a new design that could help the company roll out more fridges at a faster clip. Five years in the works, the new fridge comes with a pitched roof that stands out from its flat-topped competitors. It boasts a new UX where various parts of the machine (from the payment module to the recycling bin where you can return your jar) light up to guide you through your purchase. And perhaps most importantlyat least when it comes to business growthit is made of two flat-pack modules that can be assembled in just 30 minutes, compared to four hours for the previous model. For now, the team is rolling these out at new locations onlythe first 50 fridges are already on the ground in Chicago and New York. But if these fridges prove as efficient as hoped, the company will begin swapping them out, one airport at a time. As we look to expand into new markets, our strategy is always to start with the airport, Saunders told me. Once we have the airport locked in, we build out the market with other verticals to saturate the market. [Photo: Farmer’s Fridge] The vending machine boom Lipstick, guacamole, earrings: You can buy pretty much anything out of a vending machine today (especially in Japan.) But in the early 2010s, when Farmer’s Fridge was just a seed in Saunders’s mind, vending machines in the U.S. were only beginning to diversify. Best Buy launched its first airport vending machine in 2008. Sephora launched its in 2009. Benefit followed suit in 2013 with their now-iconic kiosk designed to look like a pink bus. Saunders’s biggest influence, however, was Redbox, the now-defunct movie rental kiosk company. That, and ATMs, he says with a laugh. Prior to [ATMs], you had to go into a bank, talk to somebody, wait in line, and now you could go anytime you wanted, he says. ATMs, like vending machines, were convenient, and they were available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Why has no one done this for food? he wondered. At the time, most vending machines sold snacks with a disturbingly long shelf life. The reasons for that are obvious. When food doesn’t need to be refrigerated, the level of urgency to get it from the facility where its made and into people’s mouths is significantly lower than when it’s fresh. A granola bar, for example, can take anywhere from two weeks to six months to make it into a vending machine. A salad from Farmer’s Fridge can only spend 24 to 48 hours in transit. After that, Saunder says, the fridge won’t let you buy it. Farmer’s Food makes every meal in-house, from a 100,000 square-foot facility in Chicago. The workday begins at 4 a.m. with washing and chopping veggies, cooking pasta, and mixing dressings. The assembly line begins at 8 a.m., and by 6 p.m., the company has to decide where these meals will be shipped off to. The team makes this decision based on a cost-function algorithm that Saunders himself built in the early days to calculate the probability the company will sell an item against the profitability of that item. The algorithm takes into consideration purchasing data, historical foot traffic data, and other variables like the weather. Today, the software mostly gets it right, but that wasn’t always the case. Ten years ago, Saunders says about 50% of meals were left unsold. Now, that number has dropped to 5%. (Unsold meals get either donated or composted, depending on the location.) [Photo: Farmer’s Fridge] From salads to . . . sushi? From the beginning, Saunders suspected that the biggest hurdle to scaling wouldnt be a lack of interest, but a lack of infrastructure. To prove out his theory, he set out to find a pilot location and eventually installed his first Farmer’s Fridge in a food court in Chicago. As Saunders recalls it, the food court was desperate for a tenant, and he himself was desperate for a landlord. The food court ended up shuttering soon after that, but the machine had done its job, and interest snowballed from there. In the first year, the company made about $350,000. This year, Saunders says it is projected to make 30 to 40 times that, which could amount to as much as $140 million. To date, the company’s best-selling item is the chicken southwest salad. In 2018, the company introduced sandwiches (and won a packaging award in the process). This year, they are rolling out protein bowlsand even contemplating sushi. The idea of eating raw fish from an airport machine might put some people off, but Saunder is convinced the idea has merit. And it’s not just intuition. Every time people buy something from Farmers Fridge, they are asked to fill out to a survey with their wish list. The most requested item? You guessed it. Sushi in a vending machine is not an entirely new concept. Japan has them in troves. But for Americans to buy in will likely depend on a variety of factors, including how much confidence the fridge can inspire. People get nervous about stuff like that, and Im the guy whos like, ten years ago, people were telling me that about salad, says Saunders. If you make good sushi, people will buy it. If its bad, they wont buy it. That the company spent five years fine-tuning the design of its fridges suddenly makes sense considering every fridge bears the burden of luring customers. Back in 2013, the first fridge looked as if a vending machine and a restaurant had a baby, says Saunders. It came with wood paneling, fresh plants on the roof and astroturf. Now, the company has pared down the aesthetic in favor of something clean and bright. The plants are gone. The wood paneling has made way for powdered-coated metal. But what the company has lost in rustic charm, it’s hoping to make up for in brand trust. This new design might not win any awards for hygge designbut it acknowledges that the fridge is just a shell, and the actual star is what’s inside it. Whether it comes with a side of soy sauce, or not.
Category:
E-Commerce
Several years ago, a little-known drug named Ozempicpreviously used only to treat diabetesemerged as a promising new drug for weight management. The Food and Drug Administrations approval of Ozempic in 2021 for weight loss treatment ushered in a new era for the class of drugs called glucagon-like peptide-1 agonists, or GLP-1. Today, GLP-1 drugs, including Wegovy, Mounjaro, and Zepbound, have become household names and key tools in the fight against obesity: 1 in 8 American adults say they have used a GLP-1 drug, and forecasts show that by 2030, 1 in 10 Americans will likely be using these medications. Now, research from my lab and others suggests that GLP-1 drugs could help treat dozens of other ailments as well, including cognitive issues and addiction problems. However, my colleagues and I also found previously unidentified risks. I am a physician-scientist and I direct a clinical epidemiology center focused on addressing public healths most urgent questions. My team works to address critical knowledge gaps about COVID-19, long COVID, influenza, vaccines, effectiveness and risks of commonly used drugs, and more. On January 20, 2025, my team published a study of more than 2.4 million people that evaluated the risks and benefits of GLP-1 drugs across 175 possible health outcomes. We found that these drugs lowered risks of 42 health outcomes, nearly a quarter of the total that we analyzed. These include neurocognitive disorders such as Alzheimers disease and dementia, substance use and addiction disorders, clotting disorders, and several other conditions. Unfortunately, we also found that GLP-1 drugs come with significant side effects and increase the risk of 19 health conditions we studied, such as gastrointestinal issues, kidney stones, and acute pancreatitis, in which the pancreas becomes inflamed and dysfunctional. Cognitive benefits One of the most important health benefits we found was that the GLP-1 drugs lowered the risk of neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimers disease and dementia. These findings align with other research, including evidence from preclinical studies showing that these drugs may reduce inflammation in the brain and enhance the brains ability to form and strengthen connections between its cells, improving how they communicate with one another. These effects contribute to mitigating cognitive decline. Two other key studies have shown that patients treated with a GLP-1 drug for diabetes had a lower risk of dementia. All of these studies strongly point to a potential therapeutic use of GLP-1 drugs in treatment of the cognitive decline. Ongoing randomized trialsthe gold standard for evaluating new uses of drugsare looking at the effects of GLP-1 drugs in early Alzheimers disease, with results expected later in 2025. Curbing addiction and suicidal ideation GLP-1 drugs have also demonstrated potential in reducing risks of several substance use disorders such as those involving alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, opioids, and stimulants. This may be due to the ability of these drugs to modulate reward pathways, impulse control, and inflammatory processes in the brain. The effectiveness of GLP-1 drugs in curbing addictive behavior may explain their spectacular success in treating obesity, a chronic disease state that many have suggested is indeed a food addiction disorder. Our study demonstrated a reduced risk of suicidal thoughts and self-harm among people using GLP-1 drugs. This finding is particularly significant given earlier reports of suicidal thoughts and self-injury in people using GLP-1 drugs. In response to those reports, the European Medicines Agency conducted a review of all available data and concluded that there was no evidence of increased risk of suicidality in people using GLP-1 drugs. Now at least two studies, including our own, show that GLP-1 drugs actually reduce the risk of suicidality. Other benefits In addition to the well-documented effects of GLP-1 drugs in reducing risks of adverse cardiovascular and kidney outcomes, our study shows a significant effect in reducing risk of blood clotting as well as deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism. One puzzling finding in our study is the reduced risk of infectious diseases such as pneumonia and sepsis. Our data complements another recent study that came to a similar conclusion showing that GLP-1 drugs reduced risk of cardiovascular death and death due to infectious causes, primarily COVID-19. This is especially important since COVID-19 is regarded as a significant cardiovascular risk factor. Whether GLP-1 drugs completely offset the increased risk of cardiovascular disease associated with COVID-19 needs to be thoroughly evaluated. GLP-1 drugs may also be useful in treating fatty liver disease and conditions ranging from asthma to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, sleep apnea, osteoarthritis, depression, and eye disorders. Risks and challenges Despite their broad therapeutic potential, GLP-1 drugs are not without risks. Gastrointestinal issues, such as nausea, vomiting, constipation, and gastroesophageal reflux disease are among the most common adverse effects associated with GLP-1 drugs. Our study also identified other risks, including low blood pressure, sleep problems, headaches, formation of kidney stones, and gall bladder disease and diseases associated with the bile ducts. We also saw increased risks of drug-induced inflammation of the kidneys and pancreasboth serious conditions that can result in long-term health problems. These findings underscore the importance of careful monitoring in pople who are taking GLP-1 medications. A significant challenge with using GLP-1 drugs is the high rates at which patients stop using them, often driven by their exorbitant cost or the emergence of adverse effects. Discontinuation can lead to rapid weight gain. Thats a problem, because obesity is a chronic disease. GLP-1 drugs provide effective treatment but do not address the underlying causes of obesity and metabolic dysfunction. As a result, GLP-1 drugs need to be taken long term to sustain their effectiveness and prevent rebound weight gain. In addition, many questions remain about the long-term effectiveness and risks of these drugs as well as whether there are differences between GLP-1 formulations. Addressing these questions is critical to guide clinical practice. Ziyad Al-Aly is a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Category:
E-Commerce
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