In this week’s Space Debris Podcast Nick & James catch up on some casual matters: what we’re playing, both in VR and flat games. Feeling overwhelmed and fatigued by all the space and AI news has led us to taking a break from it, for the most part, this week.

Also discussed is Twitch streaming, dgtlhrt is thinking about streaming some casual gameplay and weekend VR sessions. Nick tells us his experience streaming Pop One and gaining a small audience, but any audience is a good audience!

We play a new game, where someone has to write a sentence that ends with a band name, but the real game is the other person makes a few guesses as to which band name the person will use, the sentence really doesn’t matter!

One of the bands picked, happened to be Blink 182, which led to a discussion of the ticket pricing fiasco for their reunion tour and dgtlhrt having a panic attack with 2 tickets costing $6,000+ in his cart in Ticketmaster.

We then discuss a bunch of upcoming tours, from Theo Von to Andrew Callaghan Channel 5 News. Look at a similar ticket pricing issue for Theo’s Boston 5th and 6th show added verse the 1st shows initially announced. We look to comedian Louis C.K. who seems to have a solution to Ticketmaster by building a connection directly to his audience, simple solution that has allowed CK to release countless specials, shows, a new movie (Fourth of July), and now even another comic’s special (Bobby Kelly). We hope to see more people using this direct to fanbase method by other artists in the future.

We start off with a “screwed in kid” and hugely beloved comedian Yannis Pappas unknowingly providing us with a new introduction! Shout out to an amazing comedian and podcaster, check out his podcast: Long Days with Yannis Pappas (and join his Patreon!)

Quickly we take a look at a First Edition Pokemon Venusaur card which Kaz sent out a few weeks ago to be graded. He finally got it back and it’s off the charts at a respectable 2.5 grade (out of 10). We discuss the process of getting something officially graded and the current state of card collectibles, including the old Marvel Hologram cards. Kaz mentions one of the most pricey Pokemon cards to be the Black Orchid which we look further into.

This leads us to seeing if AI can generate Pokemon cards, which not surprisingly, it can! And it does a damn good job at it. We try 2 different AI generators to see their output and compare, then play with the idea of creating a new playing card set generated entirely by AI! Why not!?

We take a quick look at the website haveibeentrained.com, which will allow you to search the repositories certain AIs are using. We find Vive Report and confirm dgtlhrt is forever in the AI hive mind, unless of course he deletes the files from his host. Try searching for yourself, but don’t be scared if you find anything, it’s simply the internet scraped.

While recounting past AI stories to Kaz, BillDance points out the day we’re recording happens to be Elon Musk’s AI Day and we look at the humanoid robots he’ll be demoing during the presentation. Soon enough, we’re asking AI to generate humanoid robot versions of Elon Musk, how could we resist!?

We end things by looking at some of the new and very impressive “Small Homes” or “Modular Homes”, which dgtlhrt seems pretty set on purchasing eventually. We discuss how they are fireproof/ almost everything-proof, and how we might see these popping up in post-disaster areas, for instance Florida after the horrid damage from Hurricane Ian.

This episode covers some of the latest “Space news for dummies” as well as some interesting AI news and general discussion.

We start off light, taking a look at some photos from comedian Bill Burr’s sold-out set at Fenway Park! Dgtlhrt was there and was able to snag a few photos from the “turf” and compares the in-person experience to the VR experience being in Fenway Park in VR thanks to MLB Homerun Derby VR. As well as Bill_dance giving a quick review of an Imagine Dragons concert he received discounted (free) tickets to.

We then begin exploring space news! We look at new photos from the James Webb Space Telescope. One in particular, odd wave-like patterns around WR140, which dgtlhrt believes to resemble a “thumbprint”, thusly dubbed “Thumbprint of God”. We look at how different audio frequencies can affect sand particles and create amazing fractal patterns, and make assumptions that possibly there’s a frequency near WR140 creating the pattern of peculiarly shaped rings expanding out around it, aside from the most likely cause being the delicate dance this pair of stars do and the effects of their proximity every 7.94 years.

Then we jump into AI, thanks to an awesome tweet by the renown Daniel Eckler. Reviewing a Twitter thread where Daniel shows off other tweets that exhibit AI projects and their mind-blowing results! From game development, to art, to brainstorming, to pretty much anything you can think of, using a handful of AI software such as DALL-E and DALL-E 2, Midjourney, GAN as well as many other AI tools and software. Most all of this amazing progress coming from the wonderful people & work being done at OpenAI.

Huge shout-out and thanks to @daniel_eckler! Fantastic work!

We have a little fun with the wacky site thispersondoesnotexist.com, which features only images of people who literally do not exist and are all created by AI. We come across a handful of oddities, and are able to relate one image in particular to a recent historic finding from ancient Roman ruins.

We also look at an AI story where a user in the Midjourney Discord submitted an AI generated artwork to a state fair’s Fine Art competition and actually won 1st place! Pretty wild, and you can bet the rest of the artists that submitted pieces were none too pleased with the outcome.

We move on to having a bit of fun test “prompts” using craiyon.com, seeing what “Space Debris” and “Podcast” terms generate.

AI truly shows the future is now, it’s both exciting and scary and we plan to keep an eye on AI as progress continues and we see more and more of these amazing projects!

There is a new audio “outro” for the podcast which we generated using an AI voice generator, see if you can hear/spot it!