Distractible - This Is Our Roman Empire

Episode Date: February 26, 2024

AI Will Smith, Helldivers 2, and listening to your heart. That's what Distractible is really all about. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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whoa what are you listening to this for wait Wait, who's talking? You know you're driving a 2024 Ford Escape with available Alexa built-in, so you can change the music. Oh yeah. Alexa, change station to 99.2. See? Purchase a 2024 Escape ST-Line all-wheel drive with Tech Pack at 3.49% APR for 72 months with down payment. That's just $267 bi-weekly. Cash value of $40,294. Plus, eligible Ford owners get a $1,000 bonus. For details, visit your local Ford store or Ford.ca. Good evening, gentle listener, and welcome to Distractible. This episode, Bogus Bob is fearless before computerized competition

and gives the perfect synopsis of Helldivers. Malevolent Morning Mark has canine calamity, analyzes and explains AI operations, and nerve-jack you what now? Wayfish Wade is his family's funkle, buys into fully earned hype, and shows his pussy. From vexillology to freedom-loving heroics,

yes! It's time for This Is Our Roman Empire. Now sit back and prepare to be distracted and enjoy the show. Hello and welcome to another episode of Distractible. I'm your host, I think. I mean, I am hosting, so that's what's happening anyway. If you've never seen the show before, I'm a host.

Wow, holy crap. If you've never seen the show before, I'm hosting because I won the last one. Clearly because I'm such an eloquent speaker. And my two fellow people here, Mark and Wade, are going to be competing in this episode. To be clear, I think you won last episode because you lost less points than Mark did. Yes, I'm very good. Yes, excellent. You know, considering how much of a belligerent host you have been in recent memory, I feel like you're really jumping in a lot and stepping all over me pretty early on in this episode, Wade. I feel like you could mind your tone a little bit better.

Can I have points for that? No, and I do have a pen, and I do have a paper, so I'm not going to get in trouble today, but we'll see how long that lasts. Anyway, if you've never seen the show before, I host, I pick a winner. We made a constitution last time. This is a summary from the subreddit, so I hope it's accurate. There shall be a semi-annual meeting of the three fellows.

On a boat. Once every two years, we'll have a boat episode. We get a boat? Hell yeah. Why didn't you say hell yeah when we were literally making that law that whole set the whole episode you were just like i hate this that is dumb i hate this this is dumb and then we said boat your favorite thing and you said nothing we literally put that in as like an appeasement for you because we were like oh wade loves boats he'll be into this if you want

to see a summary of all the rules of Distractible, there are several versions of our constitution. The main thing is you have to keep track of points on a notepad now. There's going to be no favoritism. There's going to be no unfairness. The rules are still made up and the points still technically don't matter. Oh yeah, and there's something about red flags. The theme park?

Yeah, red flags over Atlanta. Dude, a flags the theme park yeah red red flags over atlanta dude a red flag theme park would be so wild you just go you while you're waiting in line for a roller coaster and just like you see in the distance just like explosion you know what you get in soccer whenever you misbehave that's a card you're on it today wayne i love it um hey i'm here physically but are you here mentally? One point for honesty. I've been witnessing like just this. It's like two AI chatbots talking to each other right now. Like watching the two of you.

Bob will say something way just completely unrelated. Bob has to spit off of it. You know, AI stands for intelligence, which means we have some. Oh, dude, we've got AI stuff to talk about today. We do. Yes, yes. don't ruin my small talk there's zero percent chance that your small talk was going to be about the thing that mark and i are both excited about uh but anyway yeah that's so that's how the show works we're moving on to the portion that we do usually before we get into the media episode small talk so mark i'm excited to talk about the thing that you're excited to talk about i'm imagining so i'll let wade go first so we can get that out of the way i was just on

vacation florida with molly's family it was very nice and i ate lots of fish and i apparently won the title of fun uncle i'm funcle however my nieces were trying to find names to call me that they thought would offend me they're like four and six and they're like uncle bald unicorn butt poop head and then at some point i don't know why they said this but they said big daddy and i had the visceral oh no no don't call me that they were like oh so big daddy's what we call you that's the winner then yeah how long how many big daddies did they drop on you over the course of the trip if dozens if not a hundred were they doing this in public were other adults around at some point when little children were referring to you as big daddy mostly not but there were times where it dropped yeah and it's like kids oh god that's a good way to react so that no one's concerned about it yeah

that'll really dispel all of the all of the other third party concerns just lock eyes with the nearest stranger and like don't worry they do that all the time uh but only at home and private but i learned my lesson though whenever a child says something absolutely horrible you cannot show fear they can smell fear from a mile away. Molly and I had a Valentine's Day lunch at one of our honeymoon spots, which was cool. It was unrelated. We don't really care about Valentine's Day. It just happened to be the day that we had off.

Then we came back to Cincinnati, and it was like 60 degrees colder, and it was one of the worst blizzards I've ever driven through. Yeah, that was cool. Yeah, that was like Friday, whatever the date was. It was a Friday. Just like horrible blizzard slush, one foot visibility. The road, nothing.

Like the salt truck went through, nothing happened. It was just piles of snow and I'm sitting there just sliding my way around trying to get home on the highway. It was terrible. I drove around in the blizzard a bunch,

mostly for fun. It was cool. I drove back in the dark of night with Molly and the dogs in the car, hoping that I was in a lane. And many times I was not. Did the dogs go with you on the trip? Why did you have the dogs? Were they just on the side of the road or did you drop them off?

They had fun. They were at my mom's. I thought just, yeah, you let them hunt for a little bit. Yeah, we found a tent on the side of the road. We're like, we just zipped it closed. Like they could probably survive for a week. Hot small game. Don't forget hot small game.

You're you're low to the ground. You're a mouse hunter. That would be them. I think that if we died, they would eat us. I mean, most animals would even dog, but dogs apparently wait the longest to eat you.

Real quick. This is a small aside. This only seemingly happens Monday nights. It hasn't happened in a while, but you see this like red mark on my lip where I bit my lip in my sleep? I only do this before podcast recording days, and I wonder if it's some kind of trauma you all have instilled on me that I bite my own lip to try to maybe get out of being here on Tuesdays.

What have you done to me? Why is it instantly our fault? Yeah, that's quite a leap. Well, I don't know who else to blame. It can't be my fault, so it's got to be someone else. I'm blameless. The lie was so hard it pushed me out of focus. I don't know who else to blame. It can't be my fault. So it's gotta be someone else. I'm blameless. The lie was so hard. It pushed me out of focus.

Mark went flying across the room and lost focus. Well, that sounds like a lovely trip. Great job, Wynn. One point for having small talk. Go ahead, Mark. I'm very excited about yours. Two points for Mark having good small talk. Thank you.

Thank you. It hasn't even happened yet. It's fair. Fair is fair uh henry done shit himself oh right i forgot that that's the thing we're gonna talk about too you deserve two points for sure uh so yeah if you guys didn't know la is now a tropical rainforest uh it rains non-stop here it has been raining for like the past two days straight it's going to keep raining for another two days and then this is right after the second like big what they call it the rain channel floodway the

the rain slipstream the sky goosh the sky goosh yeah sky ussy is opening up upon you yeah so the drought was over two rainstorms ago right maybe three it was over last year it's still raining the grass on the hill is so long that it's starting to weed its way over the roads it's a lot of rain that's that's weird yeah it's it's actually quite strange um because usually in la if it rains the all the plants are like no no no and you know they just desperately try to grow and they've been going no for like months that's what i said last year is like they got so confused there was a second spring because the plants all thought that winter happened and then because after winter rain happens and then they grow all the flowers blew

or all the the fruiting trees fruited twice yes last year dogs don't care dogs don't care it's raining they want to go outside and it's like okay all right so i gear them up for a walk and henry's been begging me all morning and i'm like dude it's raining um but he didn't care got my raincoat go out it's fine there was a little break in the rain i was like okay let's make it quick go all the way out get to the farthest point henry's like i'm gonna poop and he does this little waddle where he's like he starts to like it's like a truck lifting. You know, it's bad, but in reverse, his butt goes higher and higher.

He poops at an upward angle. I don't know if you know that about Henry. That's wrong. That's wrong, Henry. That's wrong. That's hilarious because if he has a hill to poop on, he will start to do this. This is his butt, right? So he's like, and and then backs up the hill so

he poops up the hill at an upward angle so it'll be sure to roll down through his feet right sick he is speaking of sick he had a little diarrhea and he just poops all over himself everywhere uh sorry about the poop talk this early in the morning uh or whenever people some people listen to this like right at midnight so i know it's very early for some no i'm pretty sure everyone listens exactly in the morning yes absolutely on the drive out uh so he poops all over himself and this ordinarily would be fine we'll get back and clean up but it's raining right did you remember that so the rain cleaned him off for you and it's perfect oh no so dogs when they are in the rain cleaned him off for you and it's perfect. Oh no. So dogs, when they are in the rain, I don't know if you knew this, they like to shake. So they shake.

So Henry with poop all over his butt shakes a lot. And we're at the farthest point and the rain just kicked up. So every few steps he has to stop and go and then just everywhere on his butt is just like these, his long hair is And it's a nightmare. And I have like quarter of a mile to get back home in the rain that's picking up uphill. This is not a lie. Both ways? No, just the way back.

So then I had to get back and I was late for the podcast because I was haphazardly with scissors cutting, giving Henry a butt haircut. Just because there was no way that I was going to be able to get him in the bath in time so i was just like hey have you thought about using dogscape oh that's pretty good one point for dogscape all right that's fair that's fair uh yeah so that was my morning and that's the ai update that i was so excited for mark to talk about what did you expect me to talk about no well i what i was like we got to talk about ai and you were like oh yeah i was like okay mark's gonna bring it up but i forgot i forgot you did say before we started recording that you had a story about henry hen poop so sorry for your poop situation having a baby i feel like i can commiserate with that in a way.

I've diarrhea before. Did you have to cut it off of your own ass? I sometimes I really shake it to get it out. You know, did you leak out your diapy? Oh, man, it's been a few years, probably. All right. We'll dig into that later. Anyway, Mark, Sora, OpenAI, Sora.

Yeah, everybody's excited. Wait, have you seen this? Is that the main character from Kingdom Heart? Yeah, actually's excited. Wait, have you seen this? Is that the main character from Kingdom Heart? Uh, yeah, actually, but I don't know how I know that. Open AI came out with a new AI. It's text input to video AI thing, so it's generative in the same

way that, like, Dali and MidJourney and other photographical ones are, but it makes videos, and I'm assuming all three of us, I don't know why I'm assuming anything about Wade. Have you seen Will Smith Eat Spaghetti, Wade? No, I watched him punch Chris Rock. Have you seen the AI generated video of Will Smith eating spaghetti?

Where it's like an absolute horror show and his hands are becoming spaghetti and his face is more... I think I've heard of it, but I've not seen it. Okay, see, this is why I didn't assume that you had seen it. Because you don't see things. Because you're not a seer of things. That was a year ago. About a year ago that came out.

It feels to me like it was longer, but it wasn't. It was just a year. And the new AI stuff from Sora is, like, ridiculous. It still has a lot of artifacts that make it look very AI, but, like, how screwed are we? artifacts that make it look very ai but like how screwed are we i want to flash back to maybe a year and a half ago when i was telling you guys ai is coming for our jobs and you both were like okay mark maybe in 20 years okay all right you said i was it was definitely a ways out. Definitely not going to be a problem immediately. And look at all this. I warn you, we're doomed.

Now, the only thing we're waiting for to fully finish the story that I'm talking about is Will Smith Eat Spaghetti 2. I'm dying to see what it does with that. But there's some there's some fascinating stuff in the new AI videos. I mark my question was rhetorical. I still don't think it poses a serious threat to us. I agree. I think I was right.

I think I was dead on. Point to Mark for thinking he had me. Point to me for knowing he didn't. Yeah, anyway, I just think it's fascinating how good it looks if you look at very small parts of it. But there are puppies that spawn out of other puppies. There are legs that morph into other legs and extra. This still does all the same AI stuff, but it does think it has persistent backgrounds.

I think one of the most fascinating things I've seen highlighted is there's a video of a woman in like a red trench coat walking in like kind of a downtown Tokyo looking kind of scene. Lots of like bright neon lights, tall buildings. And there are signs in the background where the sign goes behind her head. It's completely blocked from view by this woman. And it comes back into view and is the same,

which is shit that AI can't do. AI now has object permanence? Yeah, there's something about the way this version of the video rendering stuff is working, where it has some amount of object permanence with assets that are in frame that are out of frame or not visible for some amount of time, but come back and are still persistent. It's fascinating. So yeah, that I think is the most interesting thing about this is the consistency across all the frames,

having that kind of spatial awareness, quote unquote. It definitely is a step in the right direction. But for those that are thinking they're going to be able to type in a prompt and get a movie in near time, not only is that still a ways off, but the average person is not going to be able to do this. I guarantee you that the the the computer, quote unquote, that did this is not going to be able to do this. I guarantee you that the computer, quote unquote, that did this is not just a computer. It is a warehouse of a supercomputer had to do this, or at least like a server rack had to be dedicated to each one of these, because I imagine I'm not 100% sure, but I imagine that the memory required to be able to have this kind of consistency across a whole video is probably in the terabytes of just memory, not just RAM, but video card memory.

VRAM? Yeah, VRAM, video RAM. It's on a level that the average person is not going to be able to get. And then when it actually, if it were to become a service, the cost effectiveness of it to do this, I mean, ChatGPT runs at a loss for open AI to use it, even if you pay a subscription of like, what is it, 25 bucks or something like that a month? Yeah, something like that. Even if you pay that, they're not making money on that because it costs more for the computational effort to be able to just generate that text. this. If you had to calculate the amount of

infrastructure and hours to do it, it's probably thousands of dollars just to make these once and iterating. Forget about it. Like you're not going to be able to iterate. You get one chance at it because it's a thousand dollars per. It's got to run all that stuff like again and again. And yes, there'll be a way to iterate upon it, but like down the road, way down the road. And yes, there'll be a way to iterate upon it, but like down the road, way down the road. Yeah, well, that is in general, that's one of the big hurdles with generative AI at large is not only that it's not really accessible because you need so much computing power to make it work, but the actual computing power that the world would need right now, the way it works to have generative AI at the scale that people might imagine where like most

of what you watch on TV or YouTube is using generative AI or it the the earth would not sustain that the earth would die we would cook ourselves alive the amount of energy consumption and repercussions that would flow out from that in terms of climate issues and resource issues there's a physical limit to that and like so that's that you're i think you on something there. That's the thing where AI is stuck at needs to become more efficient. If it's going to become prevalent in the way that I think a lot of people might be afraid it might, or are imagining that it might become. And it probably will. It probably will. But that's really where the iterative developments are going to come because this has come a long way in a year. And it's like, yeah, it'll be amazing to see what it can do in like another year. you see it with uh so 3d modeling software is there certain ones

that can do simulations of like water simulation building simulations destruction simulation 10 20 years ago that was impossible for the average consumer to do that because the home computer wasn't powerful enough or efficient enough to be able to do that. Now, I can do it on a laptop. Now you can do it on a laptop. Exactly. Because that's the actual iterative process. When you have the capabilities, these are pie in the sky. This is the state of the art.

That's what the phrase means. This is where the art is currently to do this. If we put our whole servusy into it you know every single bit of what we can do goes into making this that's what it can do and it's still not quite there so you can extrapolate yeah next year it's going to be amazing not for everybody not everyone's going to be able to do this uh right now the entire world is dedicating every bit of their graphical power to developing these models and this is the progress i'm they're deleting me i'm going out of focus again they heard you talking shit about their ai and they were like don't you want access to it and you

better not or mark has been ai this whole time and the servers are just updating and he's getting blurred out because they can't process him while also updating yeah every time mark goes out of focus or his light turns off and on again that's just the ai losing object permanence for a second having to remember you can tell because it's an older model because i don't have a headband on i can't i can't understand how so many people thought there was a conspiracy theory around like why is he wearing a head a hairband probably? Probably for hair reasons. To hold my hair back, because it was always in my face. And I'm like, why though?

I've never had to worry about such a thing. So I think maybe you're not being truthful. Hey, if Wade started wearing a hair band religiously, that would be a conspiracy. At that point, it's called a sweat band. What if it's purely aesthetic? What if it has zero absorbent properties? Was it made of?

Silicon. Silicone. Cone? Silicon? No, silicone. aesthetic what if it has zero absorbent properties was it made was it made of silicon silicone cone silicon no silicone silicon is the element silicone is the material what's silicone a that's right that's the french version uh definitely real point that i'm definitely really writing down in the notebook for wade for that one can i generate more i will put as much processing power as i need i will write them as really as i am writing that one that i just said i'd like it more really i'm sorry i can only give you weird surreal ai version of reality for these points and that's that that is the trick of uh ai right now is like it's still people misunderstand what it actually is there's there's terminology that i think we've talked about before which is like this is not ai but this is a perfect description of what mass effect

called the difference between these kind of things is this is virtual intelligence this is vi um and that's what mass effect said it's like when you would talk to these virtual intelligence and they would be the people the kiosk you could ask them questions they would get answers but they're they're just exactly this. They're like a language model. They take an information, they do their little bit of that means that and predictive text, whatnot. And there's no understanding. There's no conceptual understanding. And these can be refined, but I don't know how far it'll go without that actual understanding of context of what it is. There's associations that can be made and those can be refined incredibly.

But again, the computational limit of it in terms of everyone's ability to do it, like it's, it's restrictive because these models, this is the thing is it's not just about training, training a model of this complexity has a certain number of connections inside of it. Like most people probably have a general understanding, like, okay, neural networks, you have neurons and they connect and they do random operations. Those are literally random numbers that go through and to get a more complex one, they just scale it up. They do way more neurons. So some of them have billions. This one might even, who knows, trillions. I have no idea. That can't fit on your computer. It needs to sit in the VRAM and it needs to be able to have a persistent, very fast access to its entire

network so it can run things through it without losing track of anything. And it's just like the scalability is difficult. So they'll build this model and they'll make it huge. It's not going to run on your computer. I feel like training models is also challenging because they have to interact with one another. They have to be able to change outfits very quickly, not affect their hair, their makeup. They have to know how to interact with one another they have to be able to change outfits very quickly not affect their hair their makeup they have to know how to interact with each outfit look confident while they're walking know what walk to do not that one not that one that's one point for wade for making mark said i don't know why you know why you know why it's depressing wade because when you do jokes like that we can tell that you are listening but we can also tell

that you're just so sincerely disinterested that you're listening for the sole purpose of making an unrelated joke. Oh, I'm interested. I just don't have anything to add. You don't have to add. You could ask questions. You could state things that you think might be true. I can be hilarious. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Let me guess. The subreddit really liked that. I don't know. Minus one point to the subreddit for liked that i don't know minus one point to the subreddit for liking that so much my conclusion to this hard-hitting news story that we're delivering here that's definitely not news that were true even necessarily oh totally opinion-based uh disclaimer is it's coming at a really great time i really hope this does not get more widely accessible because in America, we're coming around to the election. I don't know if you've heard, we're coming around to

the election cycle. It feels like we've been in an election cycle since 2016 happened, but it's happening. And this has the potential to just create stuff where someone who's very AI literate, social media literate, whatever, media literate, would probably look at an AI video of Biden or Trump or a political candidate talking and be able to see like, oh, that's weird. That looks like an AI artifact. I press B to doubt this information. But anyone who is not, and the vast majority of people I would say are not media literate enough about where AI is and what's happening with this sort of stuff, anyone who doesn't know that it's possible might watch something that's generated in this way and just be like, wow, I can't believe he said that. And it would be, you know, it has a serious and real impact on

how they might vote, how they view what's happening politically, whatever. Like it's coming at a time, this development is coming at a time where I really hope it doesn't, I don't think it's likely to become publicly available, but I really hope it doesn't because we're already, there's already a world full of made-up crap and photoshop things and ai generated pictures and and voices there was an ai generated uh phone call in apparently joe biden's voice that was going around in new hampshire uh during the primaries or something like we don't need more of that it's gonna happen people want to affect things that's what people do it's but like we just don't need more of that this is not a good time i just hope the election isn't so divisive it would be nice if

joe biden george bush and donald trump could still play video games together and enjoy themselves i love that tiktok did you see when barack joined in i know you got an episode but speaking of video games have you guys played helldivers no no i wanted to talk about that too plus one to mark for being in my head no have you been following the helldivers 2 saga god i have yes i have i've been in the helldivers saga have you been playing yeah of course oh shit i haven't been able to get on i i'm not i can't i've not played at all it came out i had to leave it was one of those games where when i first saw it released i was like oh it just looks like one of those genero you know uh shooters like lower budget one i had no idea it wasn't until i started seeing the battle reports coming in about malevolon creek and how how they

needed help that i was like maybe it fell last night over i i think it fell i think it's gone i i haven't checked this morning um but i was i was i was fighting wait is there like a actual battlefield that like is maintained pause what mark is saying context hell divers 2 is a pve third person shooter video game you can play with a squad of up to four people you the way it works is there is one world map it is persistent the center of the map is a planet called super earth which is the planet that you're from and you are a hell diver which is like a you're like the frontline infantry attack force spreading democracy by force and so the world map is centered around super earth on one side there are the the insects what are they called the trick terminids which are like encroaching

on towards super earth and on the other side are the automatons which are like encroaching into super earth territory as well and it's it's a persistent universe at war type deal wherever you go wherever you there's different missions and stuff whatever you play by tiny increments you increase the amount at which the humans from super earth are liberating that area. And so you can, you can lose areas. You can lose planets. You can lose like systems. And so it's persistent. And so there was the terminates are where the game directs you.

Initially, the bugs generally are easier to fight is my understanding. And the automatons are kind of crazier and everything is just wild over there. And the, on the automaton battle front, uh, humans are losing.

It's not going well it has imagine it's like starship troopers that's the tone very funny you're spreading democracy by force super earth all that sort of stuff never seen it that's the con yeah so malevolent creek uh was in the sector that the automatons who some people cannot pronounce that so we go like automatons automatons automotons it's automaton um so malevolon creek was in the first sector that the automatons encroached upon and they quickly blasted through that sector and into the next one because everyone was over in the terminids is this lore is this in the game like can you actually lose sectors in the game this is happening in the game yeah you

are they are losing ground to the automatons they are getting closer to super earth so this is like they're keeping track of these battles like in the game and it moves where your locations and fights are when when you go to pick a mission you're you you you have a ship right you ever your crew is like on a ship you fly your ship to a planet and then you drop onto the planet each planet you can go to it shows you there's eight you're you have eight percent the automatons have 92 percent whatever shows you how the planet's doing and then it offers you missions to go and increase the percentage that the humans are winning okay and one of these is the creek and that fell no that was just one planet in a sector that was one planet in a sector and the whole sector got wiped yeah that was the last planet to fall in that sector and then they moved on to the other

sector and so when it moves into a new sector you have to evacuate the citizens of that sector and run a defensive campaign at the same time uh so malevolent creek however is one it like they lost the sector and they pushed past it but there were still people fighting on malevolon creek um and like holding this tiny tiny wedge in there so that it wasn't inaccessible um and there's like i don't know bob just said it fell like i was fading back to a memory yeah um but yeah no so wait when you're saying like, is this lore? Is this happening? The lore is being written as it's played. It's currently happening.

I want to play this right now. This sounds really awesome. It tells you too, how many players are in each planet in each sector. So when you mouse over, it'll be like, this is Malevolent Creek. Currently 600 hell divers here. You're 0.0008%. It is happening. I feel bad. I'm not doing my part i should be

helping i know i want to be there right now next episode we're doing hell divers the episode yeah how about we just do like non-stop barrage of hell divers uh distractible episodes well so the thing that i think is interesting is the first game in this series it's hell divers 2 right you guys know anything about helldivers 1? I do. It came before 2. Of course, Mark does. I didn't.

But since it came out, I have learned. And so the first game was a twin stick shooter, which is like just a totally different game completely, which is fascinating. But the lore, there were two other species or three other species. No, the Terminids were one of the species. But there were two other species in the first game. And there's rumors that one of like it's complicated but there's rumors that one of those species might be coming back as part of the development of what's happening around super earth

in the current game that the there's some actors behind the scene the lore is fascinating mark and you know what else is interesting uh this will this is a real callback to the early days of us playing games together um maybe it was us i can't remember you know what other game they developed what's the developer's name arrowhead no wait yeah it's arrowhead right yeah it's yeah i do remember playing an arrowhead did they develop like like a bigfoot game or something no no it was magica oh yeah yeah yeah so that's why that's why hell divers one was in that style because the same top down four squad thing uh and then hell divers came along and then hell divers two just like really god this is so much more interesting than when you guys talk about technology i'm so into this and you're contributing the exact same amount to this somehow i know i asked questions this time

i've asked about the lore i said i want to get into it i'm throwing out ideas for episodes i'm doing so much more the other thing about hell divers wait is it's basically impossible to actually get online right now the servers since almost launch the servers are so slammed when you launch the game it just says trying to ping server and it continuously does that there are workarounds where like if you join on a friend it gets you in because it ping instead of pinging the server every 20 seconds it pings the server constantly until you get through or something but they're the another issue they ran into is there's no auto kick there's no auto logout feature so people have been getting on and then leaving that session of the game open they go to bed the guy's just standing there on their ship there's no like inactivity this is why

this is why we're losing the war yeah there's a bunch of pad there's a bunch of non-active non-democracy loving traitors standing in their ships like cowards not fighting the fight i want to get in the fight i want it so bad so the thing is also is like everyone seems to be there well not everyone a lot of people are upset and this is like the kind of like this gamer rage around, look, your game's broken. Well, this is one of those cases where if it was a AAA studio that had an unlimited budget, it's like, yeah, of course, you know how many people are going to play.

They didn't think it would be anywhere near this popular because they were gauging off of the last game. The main, I think it's the CEO or one of the big, the leaders of Arrowhead tweeted before launch, like, man, I've got a lot. I think this game is great. I think Helldivers 2 might hit 50 000 uh like units sold that would be so odd they're sold like millions at this point like it's it's obscene well they're about to sell one more i'm getting

it right now four million copies sold according to steam spy as of you know whatever today dude between enshrouded and lethal company and now this i am so this has been such a great time period for games and this one is like there are bugs like they're patching it right now i can't get out of the easy levels but if i find other matchmaking like comes and goes if i was able to get into a squad with other people it's just it's only 40 bucks yeah that's the thing it's not a triple a game it's a $45 game. It's such a moment. This is one of those things where like, I can't even remember a very particular one. I guess it reminds me of Pokemon Go in a way, the summer of Pokemon Go. That game was still huge for years and like is still huge.

Our friend Pam, I think is at a Pokemon Go tour thing or was at one, like walking around with a bunch of other people. Still huge. But the summer when like every single human being that I knew was playing Pokemon Go, and every moment we weren't, everyone wasn't working, we were outside at parks collectively just being like, oh, over here, whatever. That was such a weird and interesting moment. I feel like this is potentially that. It's everything I've wanted in a game where it's like, in a space game, where it's like everyone is doing things and it's actually having an impact like that small it seems small but that's always

what i wanted because it gives you that incentive of like oh fuck what i do matters and every loss every time you lose that means like if you fail a mission that is detrimental to the cause and it's not just like it always erodes because the autopontons are always like have a steady effect but if you fail a mission like you really fucked up like it just contributes to losing the it's it's great i also appreciate that the the developer went out of their way people are like why isn't there pvp it's a shooter whatever the developer in no uncertain terms has said like we don't want the kind of toxicity that comes with competitive modes pvp modes that's not why this game exists

i love this developer god pvpers had their day now they can all go bury their heads in the sand and drown they had their fortnight era give us break give us a break yeah a lot of not a lot a very visible response to that of course was a bunch of sweaty keyboard warriors who were like oh you're just you're just afraid you don't want to one v one me bro and i'm pretty sure the developer looked at all of that feedback it was like good don't play our game go play warzone or something perfect that's for you this is for us i like some pvp games don't get me wrong but pvp my god we were drowning it for like five years it's been so nice especially like pvp only games like i love pve i love cooperative pve that's

my preferred game to play and shrouded has been great like i said have you tried in shrouded mark that's a fun one that's a really fun one it does look good the crafting and or the base building and enshrouded looks insane i've seen like dwarven mines and stuff it's insane and you can kind of like the world is interactable it kind of reminds me of like red faction in a way where there's like bombs and pickaxes you can just like take out parts of the environment if you want to well you want artillery barrages you get uh hell divers you you want more bombs coming from the sky than you know what to do with and that will kill you there's one that's so funny it's a 350 like millimeter barrage if you throw it at your max range to throw it you're in range of it so you have to throw it and run so far i know i kept doing that i swear i the

one time i got to play this game so far it was like on release day i got i got to that first because i thought that sounded like a great strategy. And I was like, sick, I'll use that a bunch. I couldn't throw it in a way where I didn't kill us repeatedly. I killed most of my squad like five times. It's impossible. I did that where it's like, you know, you got to go for this objective, destroy this camp.

And I'm like, I'll lob this in. And then all the guys run in and I'm like, ha ha. All right. Everything just blowing up around me you know it's just just a fucking i'm standing on the hill and then one comes down and blows me up what happens if we keep losing missions like eventually we just lose the game people are theorizing that like that's on purpose that there's a lore development that's going to happen where they want they want the humans to lose a certain amount of ground and then they're going to add a twist or they're going to change the change the landscape somehow by developing the story stuff of it.

But like, yeah, no, theoretically the battle could push all the way onto super earth. I'd be fascinated to know if there already are like maps and stuff that are, that would be crazy if it did. This is like second life war edition or something this is like nuts kind of stuff yeah i want it i want it i want it i want it i want it all right podcast is over we're never doing this again we're playing hell we're hell divers mains we really did feel a lot of i feel this is just a small talk man do you have an episode i know i feel like i don't have the topic is not small enough to fit into 75% of the episodes already occupied.

Well, that's fine. We can keep talking about it. I have a small one. I have a small topic I can bring up, but we don't have to move on from Helldivers. Oh, no. I mean, until we play it, there's really not much else to say. And they're working on patches right now. Next episode, Helldivers, the episode.

We'll watch one of us play it. What if we do an episode? We'll do an episode of Distractible where we're recording the're recording the episode but we're also we're all playing hell diver we'll just have one of our perspectives being recorded so that the people on spotify can watch it's just three guys on on the podcast just like uh uh uh left left left uh help over here no i wear pants too yeah is it like um i forget which game it was that i played maybe it was battlefield that had like the counter where it's like if you run out of reinforcements that's when you lose yeah you have you start with a you start with a timer and a

number of hell diver reinforcements and you can run out of reinforcements yeah and how do you win there's usually well there's a mission there's different types of missions some of them are like kill a certain uh special determined or something some of them are like kill a certain special terminated or something. Some of them are like go to these locations and activate the whatever device, you know, like turn on the widget. Like there's a variety of types of missions where you have to go and, but you never like, you never kill everything. So far, my experience and what I've seen in videos, the end of every mission is like a

dramatic last stand. And then the shuttle comes in and you're like ah get on jesus christ and you barely escape because everything is always crazy in this game every moment is cinematic i don't know how it happens but every single moment the best mechanic is that you literally dive all the time so you like full body layout like and then my favorite thing is like jumping around the corner shooting max pain style and then if you fall too far down your your your character will instantly ragdoll and just like land right on your neck and then you're just stuck down there so every time you fail trying to kill someone you just flop on the ground for like five seconds and then they just

obliterate you it's great you should look up some edits too because there's some i want to play it before i watch stuff but yeah there's some great edits of that don't really honestly give anything away it's so it's just a movie it sounds hard this is a hard game too right like it's kind of hard i mean it's supposed to feel completely overwhelming right the whole the whole point of the game is it's supposed to feel like you're barely in the fight at all you're completely overrun every moment of every mission is like you're barely getting to the next part you're you're escaping you're not winning it sounds like early gtfo we started playing gtfo and we did like the alarms and we didn't know what the hell we were doing and we just got swarmed really quickly it's like that except constant panic yeah and way more

patriotism i think one of the voice actors is the voice actor of like um isn't it like plankton uh in spongebob because there's a voice line from one of the characters actors is the voice actor of like, isn't it like Plankton in SpongeBob? Because there's a voice line from one of the characters voice options. This is like, oh, my leg, sweet liberty, my leg. Very funny. This is already a stale meme at this point, but this is the first time I felt like this right now. Helldivers 2 is my Roman Empire.

The Roman Empire was never my roman empire but hell divers 2 lives in my head 24 hours a day right now you saying that malevolon creek fell made me sad i know i woke up today and i was like on social media and i said i don't it's not confirmed but i saw so i follow a tiktok already that's like a tail divers 2 news tiktok the one that goes and they said that malevolent creek fell and i was like i didn't even get a chance to help what am i doing can we reclaim it yeah we got you got to fight through the next sector if it's gone that was like the last one in there we gotta oh you have to you have to completely liberate like the current sector and then that allows you to push to the next one, I think. I don't know if they've made a lot of forward progress anywhere, but definitely not with the automatons.

Yeah, no. And with the bugs, some things aren't counting right now, so it's hard to say where things are. Not the bugs as in the Terminids, like bugs in the game itself. I haven't played this. I'm already so invested. I'm like, oh, God, we got to get it back. I've never even downloaded the game. That's how I into it it was tiktok and news i just saw his news but what the fuck is this and then just some uh i have so many likes of people and having

incredible heroic last stands like just the most dramatic things better than any movie i've seen it's just like holy shit i gotta go i gotta log in and see if malevolent creek is i don't know if i will be able to log in yeah good luck i don't you have some kind of magical markiplier login that lets you sir cut the line i don't know i i have a mini topic that i was not sure how to work into an episode and this works out perfectly i've learned a piece of information um also two points to wade for becoming so invested in what's clearly the best game of our generation uh and uh two points to mark for being as sad as i am about malevolent creek i got in no q oh shit okay that may i seriously considering booting up my gaming computer right now but i'm hosting i'm hosting focused i'm focused hey let me i'll just

check in on malevolent creek update us when you find out so i learned this piece of information unrelated to hell divers too and i think it's weird and i wanted to ask you guys it still stands 17 33 000 hell divers right now hell yeah they they must have clawed that back it was below 17 before i know it was like tibet durgan and ubanay are all at like 0.003 malevolon creek still stands 17 oh my god i gotta get into malevolon creek so bad right now like we're gonna lose the next sector in malevolon creek is still gonna stand yeah because drop near is uh not doing good that might be a little bit of wasted resources, I gotta be honest, but... 228,000 are over in the Terminid sector. Why?

Yeah, the babies over fighting the Terminids need to nut up and spread some democracy to the automatons. This is your official cue. I was just like, is it really easier than this? Maybe it's just as bad over there. It's... No, it's way easier than this? Maybe it's just as bad over there. It's like, it's, it's, it's. No, it's way easier.

It's not even close. There's more of them, which just makes it easier to shoot them all. All right, we're going to get outfits and we're going to host update. Our podcast is going to become news for this game. We're going to get outfits. It's going to become an official Helldivers 2 podcast. Helldivers 2 news. We'll be live reporting in the field.

Sam Alley just added us into the game. Just, you know, the backgrounds make us in the game crazy stuff going on the back i appreciate that thanks we're going to talk about not hell divers for a second okay i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry minus a point to me for changing the subject away from hell divers but i've i learned this and i'm fascinated about it so mandy told me this piece of information and apparently she and i both experienced this so we've never really talked about it but apparently not everyone can like feel your heartbeat in your body and i don't mean like sometimes it comes and goes sometimes it pounds i mean like 24 hours a day not in a like i don't feel good what kind of way and not in a way that's concerning i just feel like passively i can feel my heartbeat and it feels like it radiates out in my chest and's concerning. I just feel like passively, I can feel my heartbeat and it feels

like it radiates out in my chest and I can, it's just always there. And I've always experienced this. I've never thought about it. And apparently that's uncommon. I didn't know this. Do you guys, obviously, if you think about it, you can, you can pay attention. I will answer this. Just a question. There's a delivery that needs a signature. I'm so sorry. That's okay. Me and Wade will talk. I've got you. Handshake handshake no handshakes we should just pretend like we do a handshake while he's gone but we just made the constitution i don't know i got done oh yeah let's just have let's just be ready whenever he comes back we'll pull our hands back so like you can focus on it and feel it consciously but do you unconsciously feel like you can feel the pulse of your heartbeat only whenever i'm focused on

or only when it gets elevated when i lay down sometimes i feel it but see i've been more conscious of it lately or conscious of it lately rather because i've got like a family history of heart issues like my dad obviously died when he was very young from alcoholism uh he was only 39 but like my grandpa had a heart attack my uncle had a heart attack uh my younger brother has some heart issues so like oh here we go okay okay uh yeah hard what the hell was going on what's going on oh oh you're out of focus that's weird yeah that's so strange segue uh heart stuff i've been more focused on it lately uh because of family

history so there i feel like i've been noticing it more than i used to but i'm still not like always aware of it there are times where i stop and i pause for a moment i'm like okay i don't feel it right now i'm fine but i do notice whenever it's elevated and it's like i start to panic a little bit because of everything going on with my family yeah is this just like a is this another communication thing where people aren't getting it because most of the time i don't feel my heartbeat but if i think about it of course i will sure because it's happening i guess i view this kind of like a fantasia i guess i've because i we talked about this i have have a fantasia it just means i can't imagine things visually in my mind now i'm i'm in internally i'm obsessed with like well what else is different right because we all we all only really experience our own bodies directly

everything outside of you that you experience in the world is subjective to what your brain thinks it is how your body interacts with it how you analyze it like i'm interested to see what what about the bodily experience is different between people because clearly everyone's body is different everyone thinks differently but like i i just do i all the time it's not annoying or anything but i feel it and it's like i have a radiating thing in my chest where it's just like. I'll let Mark talk because I also have to run to the door. Okay, bye. This is the episode where we take turns being here.

I think it mostly is a perception thing. I think if there's someone out there that being like, I can't feel my heart is lying. Whereas like imagining something in your mind. Sure. That's the brain's a complicated thing. It's hard to say what one's perception of reality is versus another. This is a physical boom, boom, boom in your mind sure that's the brain's a complicated thing it's hard to say what one's perception of reality is versus another this is a physical boom boom boom in your heart if you can feel anything you can feel your heart because it's pumping incredibly strong like your heart is very very very strong and able to like maintain a pressure of 120 bars or not bars, 120. But what's the pressure? Milligrams per.

I don't remember what it means. Yeah. Millimeters of mercury, which is such a dumb way of saying. That's a pressure unit. That's intuitive. One millimeter of mercury is equivalent to 0.001 bar. One bar of pressure is at one atmosphere is one bar i think also no let me check that it's pressure and it's very strong if you cut an artery it's gonna go you know it's it's

pressure just but like with anything if you ignore it you will lose the constant perception of it but if you keep it in your mind you will become more more aware of it. And that can become a habit just like anything. I guess. Are you saying that you think I'm just, it's always in my mind then that I'm not that different. It's just something I like think about unconsciously, very consistently for some reason. Yeah. I think gradients, gradients of perception are really where these things fall. Some people are very like more aware of it, which tends towards a default that is higher some people are ignorant of it and right now people listening to this are becoming more aware of it so everyone's like oh no oh what have you done to me i feel my heartbeat you know it's

kind of like georgia to ray charles always on his mind point to wade for an excellent musical reference it's like if i tell you that you can see your nose in your peripheral vision, you will suddenly notice that your nose is there. And it's there all the time, but your brain filters it out. Just like any other perception in your body. But now that you're aware of it, you can't help but see it. I'm too busy feeling my heartbeat to notice my nose. Yeah, try seeing your nose and feeling your heartbeat at the same time bet

you can't while also chewing gum is there anything that you guys experience in your body either that you focus on or that you experience in a in like a more passive way that you think is weird that you think is kind of confusing yeah a man i can't help but notice my gigantic penis just flopping around inside my pants all the time. Can't help it. Anyone else? It's like how you imagine a horse or a cow walking around with their tail just swinging between their legs, but it's like us.

I'm like, whoa. He just said no. Thanks for your question. Appreciate it. It's yes and. Yes and. My feet. My feet are very dry.

I have like insanely dry. I have dry skin in general, but my feet get really dry. They like insanely dry i have dry skin and my feet get really dry they get so dry that my my skin actually hurts my own feet if i don't like lotion my feet and take care of them it reaches a point where like the dry outer layer of skin starts like cracking and like pinching the not dry inner layers of skin and i think that's super weird if i if i like stop doing that as a habit, which I normally do, I'll be walking around and be like, ah, why is there a rock in my shoe? No, there's not a rock in my shoe. I just have like the driest skin ever on my heel. And it's

just like hurting. I'm hurting myself by walking. That's not really like an internal perception thing, but I think that's really weird that that can happen. Here's something similar, not feet related, but i started like consciously trying to breathe through my nose at all times about a year ago and since then most of the time i breathe through my nose what i noticed in the beginning phases trying to do that especially trying to sleep was very difficult because i felt every inhalation like it burned my nose it was almost like strangely like especially cold like if you if you were doing it in the cold like it can burn your nose but because i just kept doing it it doesn't hurt anymore it doesn't affect anymore and i think that's the same thing it's like the perception and that's actually a

physical uh phenomenon in the body like it's called nerve oh that's over excitation was it like nerve oh named for the famous doctor oh Oh. Get your nerve-ohs. Nerve overstimulation. Nerves basically have, I don't know if this is right, a refractory period. That's so right. Wait, do you know what a refractory period is, Wade? I'm about to. Oh, yeah, Google that.

That's good. Okay. Go on, Mark. So basically, when you have a nerve ejaculation oh of conduction it needs it gets real floppy for a little bit before it can nerve ejaculate again according to some studies 18 year old males have a refractory period about 15 minutes while those in their 70s take about 20 hours they can only conduct so much so quickly that's how any sensation in the body or any communication is done mostly it's through nerve

signals um or hormones obviously but when it's overstimulated it starts it doesn't it has an opposite effect of what you'd think it whereas like muscles if you work them they'll become stronger nerves when they're overstimulated they actually atrophy because they're like, oh, this clearly is too much. So there's a defense mechanism built into nerves where it's like if it's overstimulated, it will start to deaden. It will lose its ability to conduct more, which is a protective thing. It's like with nose, like when I breathe in, it burns.

If I do that constantly, that's how perception can be deadened of things in the body like that and that's how you can like become numb to certain pains or whatever or you can be um like the that's how nerves work when it conducts too much it will start to lessen the conduction of it and that's not to say like in the brain with thought conduction that's that's a different thing i'm talking about the physical like uh sensory nerves really you know what point to mark for nerve refractory period what about nerve ejaculation did i get it did i get a point for that yes another point to mark for nerve ejaculation i do have bad acid reflux i should probably be on medicine for it but like i am constantly aware when my stomach or my esophagus have like that burning sensation

because i get it all the time um but mark talking about the nose i think i've got polyps in my nasal cavity but i never very rarely maybe half a percent of the time can breathe through both nostrils one is always clogged so my understanding this might be completely wrong anyone who knows anything about this my understanding is that almost every some huge percentage of the population has some type of deviation in their septum which is like the thing in the middle of your nose that divides your two nostrils into two nostrils and some deviated septums are like so crazy that you need to have surgery to try and correct them but most people just have some sort of slight deviation and have like a dominant nostril. My right nostril is absolutely like my way, my more open nostril. My left nostril is almost always clogged or right on the verge of clogged because I just

can't, it's a hole all the time. And it's because of the shape of my like nasal passages and my septum. And that's what I, that's why I thought that was like that for people. I've actually gone. So years ago I went to an ENT and they told me I had polyps in my sinus cavity. Yeah. Because of their location, they didn't want to do anything. They're like, well, I mean, if we do so, I don't know what the risks are, but I imagine

messing with nerves inside your head is not ideal. So they didn't want to do anything. But like, if I lay down on one side, typically that side becomes the clogged side. Not always. Like last night I was laying down trying to fall asleep and it didn't do that. My left side was just like, nah, it's me tonight, bro. I'm staying clogged. And it still is. I think it's interesting that yours switches back and forth. When I lay down, that happens. Whichever side is down generally will be the one that gets more blocked for me because of

physiology or whatever. But if I'm upright and I'm like, I'm not just woken up or something, it's always my left one that is more clogged in general. And it's, it doesn't really go back and forth. I think it's interesting that that happens more to you. Did you know that there's a muscle in your soft palate that you can actually physically manipulate that will help raise and open up some of those spaces? It's kind of like wiggling your ears where it's like you, you don't do it enough that you would really, but once like you can, I'm trying right now to. You could train your body to be able to control it more readily.

Explode. I always imagine, imagine that you're trying to swallow the top of your mouth, but then don't do the swallowing thing with your tongue. So you're just like, it like pulls down your throat is what it feels like to me. That pulls my soft palate down and activates that muscle. Anyway, good topic, everybody. Today was a very balanced episode where I feel like everyone really engaged

and dug into my topic. Oh, yeah. Point for Wade, or whatever you said. Now I'm obsessed with trying to figure out how to raise my soft palate. Thanks for participating in the episode. Mark, I was gonna... I gotta be honest, Mark, you're up by a point right now,

but I'm a little concerned for your health. Should I give Wade the win just so you can have a little bit of a break here? You okay? No, no, no, I'm good, I'm good. I'm just- Are you sure? I'm exercising my soft palate. Wade has a soft palate too, and he doesn't look like that.

Is he raising it? It's up. Dude, it is fully erect. Yeah, Wade's, Wade's hard as hell right now. Are you kidding me? Yeah, call it a hard palate, not a soft palate. What are you talking about? Ha ha.

The refractory period for my palate after this is going to be nuts. No, call it a hard palette, not a soft palette. What are you talking about? Haha. The refractory period for my palette after this is gonna be nuts. No, please don't banish me to the shadow room. Why does that keep happening? Mark, stop going out of focus, goddammit. You always have something weird going on every time. I don't know why that's been happening. I did a firmware update for this lens, which

is a weird thing to say, but it still is a little funky. Oh, we almost had a whole episode without Mark saying the word lens. Points to Mark for saying lens. Unprompted. Oh, God, what have I done? Oh, sweet Jesus. No memory card.

Mark, there's no memory card in slot one. You madman. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. Yeah. Well, anyway, with your sweet, sweet lens talk, Mark, you already had the win anyway,

but you really secured it. Congratulations with a score of 10 to 8 that I writ down. I done wrote it down and everything. I don't want to. And I ended up with a score of minus two somehow. I have had some inquiries about sponsoring the loser speeches. We're going to have to talk to some people. I have some individuals who were like, I'm not a business orc but i just i would i would give you two dollars for the loser speech that's like that

that would be perfect actually give us a loser speech wade today's loser speech brought to you by mark and bob who will each be paying me two dollars toward my shakira trip thank you guys for sponsoring this loser speech uh bob fun episode uh you guided us throughout it really felt like we were on the battlefield and at times we were losing ground. But in the end, we came back and we had a solid time together. And I think that we held our ground and this sector will be secure in no time.

Mark, winner speech? Liberty. Most people know of the word, but few know its true definition. Liberty, liberty, liberty, liberty. It's written in blood, the blood of heroes like me.

And I survived, which makes me even more heroic. Not a loser. Didn't lose ground. Still fighting to this day. Winning.

Just like Super Earth. Just like managed democracy. It's a beautiful sensation to know you're on the right side of history, which I am right now. Thank you. I will judge fairly

and for all humanity united under the banner of Super Earth. Anyway, thank you for now. Thank you. I will judge fairly and for all humanity united under the banner of Super Earth. Anyway, thank you for listening. Thank you everyone for listening to this episode. Make sure you have us followed, checkmarked, plused, whatever it is

so that you always know when the episodes are coming out. You can watch the video only on Spotify. You can watch Markiplier at Mark. No, the other way around. Mark is Markiplier. It's, there you go. Wade is LordMinion777

or Minion777. I am MySkirm on the internet. You can watch all that stuff. I bet some of us are going to start posting Helldivers videos. I bet one of us already did. Yeah. Is it me? No. Well,

I honestly don't know. I unsubscribed. Sorry, buddy. Anyway. that's the end of the show podcast out that one hurt