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After the president announced tariffs would go into effectsparking a trade war that sent the S&P 500 plummeting 1.8% on Mondaya new meme has begun taking hold on Bluesky: Trump Take Nest Egg. Its being delivered in context-free drops, in response to tariff-centric news clips, and accompanied by screenshots of the stock market declining in real time. While the loaded phrase may leave some observers scratching their heads, it should be instantly recognizable to many folks who have spent too much time online latelyparticularly on Bluesky, where the simple line, “Trump take egg,” has become the go-to meme for commenting on the presidents chaotic second term. The Tarzan-esque catchphrase began as a way to highlight Trumps ownership of the recent egg shortage and subsequent price surge. Joe Bidens critics spent much of the former presidents lone term blaming him for grocery store sticker shock; now, the shoe is firmly on the other foot (especially after the Trump administration made moves like accidentally firing the team responsible for curbing bird flu, which may have directly affected egg prices). Trump Take Nest Egg, the latest iteration of what may be 2025s most infectious phrase, isnt the first time it’s evolved. Though originally used as a caption for photos of depleted store shelves, and still frequently deployed that way, the cadence of the phrase quickly spread to other Trump-related topics. When the president sought to end New York Citys congestion pricing program recently, Blueskiers wrote Trump cause traffic.“ As the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) seemingly fed whole segments of the federal government to the wood chipper, it was Trump take job. Some have used the phrase to comment on Trumps broken promises around IVF treatment, which was highlighted in a viral Washington Post profile recently. And of course, many have used the phrase to comment on the abundance of recent plane crashes and near misses. Over the past month, Trump take egg has become a Swiss Army Knife of a meme that has reverberated widely online and off. Its as if social media is putting all their Trump-related memes in one basket. It’s been amazing to see the egg meme organically evolve like it has, says Michael Tae Sweeney, the Daytime Emmy-winning TV and film editor who created it and has egged it on every step of the way. Not just the many variations like Trump take nest egg, but also seeing examples of it out in the real worldpeople holding Trump take egg signs at protests or even slapping Trump take egg stickers on empty supermarket egg cases. The nest egg iteration, however, might be the purest and potentially most resonant distillation of the idea since it initially hatched. While Trump and Elon Musk have both previously admitted there could be temporary pain from the retaliatory tariffs, many of their already-pressed constituents are ill-equipped to weather it. Sweeneys hope, though, is that those consumers will soon have more proactive defenders, armed with better messaging around Trumps actions. With a few notable exceptions like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and JB Pritzker, Democratic politicians have so far been unable or unwilling to lend their supporters effective language to express the pain and frustration we’re feeling with Trump’s incompetent and destructive economic policies, he says. That it’s fallen to random idiots like me to step in isn’t great. Of course, no amount of posting on social media will make the president reconsider his least-popular economic initiatives. But its not yet clear if Trump Take Nest Egg signifies the beginning of a bigger offline movement. Scrappy grassroots catchphrases have certainly morphed into nationwide rallying cries before. (Lets go, Brandon, for instance, made its way to Congress.) As variations on Trump take egg burrow into national consciousness, and the anger behind them becomes more visible, it could wind up translating into more public protests. And that might be what it takes for Trumps love of tariffs to crack.
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The internet posts and side projects of Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) worker Jordan Wick could give some clues for how Musks efficiency group might attempt to use AI to downsize and retool the government. During the last half of February, Wick, who has a DOGE email account associated with the Executive Office of the President and now is embedded in the General Services Administration (GSA), posted to his GitHub page the code for several tools that appeared to be related to DOGEs work. The page was discovered by political reporter Roger Sollenberger at the end of last month. Wick posted the code for a tool that automatically downloads DMs from Twitter accounts. The code specifies Twitter accounts, which existed only until the social platform rebranded to X in October 2023, suggesting the possibility that the tool could be used to search through the digital past of government employees looking for disagreeable opinions or references. Another tool appeared to be designed for collecting sensitive data from government agency org charts. The tool contained fields for capturing the employees office, a 1-5 satisfaction rating, union status, and whether or not their position is statutorily mandated. Both the Twitter DM and org chart tools could be used to capture and structure data for use in an AI model. One source within the GSA believes the sensitive data collected by the tools could be used in a potential AI federal employee evaluation/firing-bot. Wick has now set his GitHub account to private. (DOGE didnt immediately respond to Fast Companys request for comment on Wicks GitHub posts.) Wicks tools appear to be designed for evaluating and firing more federal employees, but his professional background suggests a deep interest in modernizing government IT systems using AI. After graduating from MIT in 2020 and working at the self-driving car company Waymo, Wick cofounded (with ex-Palantir employee Anthony Jancso) Accelerate SF, which put on hackathons looking for ways to use large language models to improve local government services in San Francisco. In 2024, Accelerate SF renamed itself AccelerateX and began courting federal agency contracts with its own modern OS for government. A recruiting post on X said the company hopes to use AI to reduce expenditures, automate tedious work, and help interpret government policy language. AccelerateX claimed last May that it already had contracts with two of the largest transportation agencies in America, but a search for the companys name in the federal procurement database came up empty. Those contracts could be with local or state governments. (AccelerateX did not respond to Fast Companys request for comment.) One key challenge of using AI tools to streamline the government is that they must be deftly integrated into existing mission-critical systemssome of them old and brittle like the COBOL-coded mainframe systems used to process Social Security payments. Any interruption to those legacy systems could deprive millions of people of benefits they depend on to live. And there are many such systems active in the government.
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E-Commerce
For many new mothers, one of the most mysterious and elusive parts of breastfeeding is the latch. While some babies’ mouths manage to automatically make an airtight seal around their mother’s nipple, others can have difficulties, or physical impediments, that make achieving good suction and proper nursing almost impossible. One solution care providers have offered is the nipple shield, a cuplike perforated silicone device that fits on top of a mother’s nipple and areola and improves the way babies make their latch. It’s typically a short-term method for addressing issues ranging from tongue-ties to flat nipples to engorgement. The problem with nipple shieldsand even for those nursing mothers and babies with a textbook latchis that it can be hard for moms to know when milk is actually flowing. [Photo: Munchkin] Baby brand Munchkin is trying to eliminate some of that mystery with the Flow Nipple Shield +, a new baby nutrition device that works like a conventional nipple shield but which also has an innovative extended channel for the milk to flow through, offering mothers a visual confirmation that babies are successfully latched and effectively nursing. Steven B. Dunn, founder and CEO of WHY Brands, Munchkin’s parent company, says the device addresses some of the literal pain points of breastfeeding while aiming at a bigger target. We describe our product as a nipple shield because it helps explain to mom what it is. We’re not selling a product to reduce pain, though it does reduce pain just like another nipple shield. We’re creating and designing a new category, Dunn says. This is a breastfeeding insight tool. [Photo: Munchkin] The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends exclusively breastfeeding newborns for the first six months of life, and supports continued breastfeeding for the first two years of life. But according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, only about 60% of babies in the U.S. are still breastfeeding at six months, and only about a quarter of babies are exclusively breastfed for the first six months. Part of the shortage is that many mothers think they aren’t able to breastfeed effectively. A 2013 study from Pediatrics found that a perception of insufficient milk supply was the leading reason mothers stopped breastfeeding, despite only 5% of mothers actually having those symptoms. That perception led to 60% of mothers stopping breastfeeding earlier than they wanted to. In the face of these numbers, Munchkin saw an opportunity to give mothers more information about what was actually happening during the breastfeeding process. The innovation of the Flow Nipple Shield + is a unique milk channel that brings milk on a looping path from the nipple to the baby’s mouth, jutting out from the latch zone so that a mother (or other observer) can easily see milk moving through. This channel, the width, and dimensions of it, went through a lot of test and learn, test, and learn, says Dunn. It was probably the most difficult product to manufacture in Munchkin’s 30-year history. The nipple shield’s design has been in development for almost a decade. Munchkin’s design and product teams worked with lactation consultants and engineers to fine-tune the form of the device, and to ensure the milk channel was long enough to provide visual confirmation without making it too hard for babies to get the milk all the way through. They also worked to reduce its overall size. We purposely made the product as thin as possible with food grade silicone to maximize the skin-to-skin contact between mom and baby, Dunn says. [Photo: Munchkin] During product development, Munchkin launched a 12-month clinical trial of the device, to gauge its effectiveness in encouraging more breastfeeding. Among the 301 participants in the trial, more than 93% were still breastfeeding at the six-month mark. Our research shows that if moms get confident, especially in the first month of breastfeeding, they’re much more likely to continue, Dunn says. Available in four sizes, the Flow Nipple Shield + retails for $40 and includes a special syringe for cleaning the surface and the milk channel. The device will be available in the U.S., Canada, France, and the United Kingdom. It’s probably the largest global campaign we’ll ever do, says Diana Barnes, chief brand officer at WHY. But the nature of the product has also posed a problem for its marketing. The best way to explain the product, Barnes says, is to show it being used during breastfeeding, which requires at least partial exposure of a breast. Some vendors have chosen not to show our assets, says Barnes I was actually quite disappointed. That hasn’t stopped the company from pursuing ad placements around the world, including in Times Square. Our goal is to normalize what is the most natural thing to women since the beginning of time, Barnes says. The Flow Nipple Shield + is an attempt to make that natural process less mysterious and frustrating. We do not want to be preachy. We don’t want to push. If mom’s goal is a day, if mom’s goal is a month, or six months, or a year, we want to do whatever we can do to provide insights, Dunn says. This just shows your milk is flowing, your milk is not flowing. It’s a green light or red light. And we think that information is so key for mom making her choices, whatever it’s going to be.
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