FLSoc Presents: "Fame Ladies on Top" Ep. 125 — Lucas Museum, Rick Rubin, and the Great MoMA Rant

Host: FameLadySociety WE (@FameLadySociety) with Byasiaminor (@byasiaminor) and Jilly Snipes (@JillyRappaport) · Tue, Sep 22 2026 · 51 min · 3 speaking voices

TL;DR

• Asia ran the art-news block: the George Lucas Museum opened (100,000 sq ft, 30+ galleries), Beeple opened at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, and MoMA's upcoming "edge of information design" show got a thorough and profane review [4:11], [16:00ish], [20:26].
• Rick Rubin's take that AI is "just another tool" kicked off a real conversation about whether prompting is art direction — Asia says yes, Jilly says creativity starts in the mind and she still prefers the original [7:11], [8:27].
• Flick reported that Grok's 18+ personas quietly vanished across XAI surfaces, including his car, where unhinged news delivery has been replaced by a search-toolless model hallucinating headlines [25:51].
• Flick demoed-in-words his "AI slot machine": an AI director that cuts video from his agent game, plus a locally-running storybook generator with full-body character art and auto-placed speech bubbles. Jilly's review: "That sounds gross." [30:15], [33:07]
• Crypto block: the SEC's temporary five-year exemption for tokenized US equities, with actual voting rights and redeemability required — and why Base may be better positioned than Robinhood on that front [42:04], [45:37].
• Closing notes: new Fame Lady pickups, a new collector named Queen, and a green day across the board [47:51], [48:27].

Highlights

[3:47] A soft open. Flick set the tone before any news landed — the weather's turning, the seasons are changing, and "it's always a pleasure to get to spend my Tuesday evenings with you two." Jilly: hanging in there.

[4:11] The Lucas Museum opens. Asia walked through the numbers — roughly 100,000 square feet of gallery space, more than 30 galleries, comics and paintings and photography — and framed it as comic-book illustration finally being treated as fine art. She put out an open call for anyone in LA to report back, as a declared Star Wars person.

[7:11] Is prompting an artistic skill? Asia's answer: prompting is art direction, just with the label swapped — the same thing an art director does when pushing an artist toward different decisions. Her framing was to treat AI as an employee or an art assistant, with the vision staying yours.

[8:27] Jilly on where creativity actually starts. She agreed with Rubin's general looseness but drew a line at his idea that copying is a legitimate way to create: we're all influenced by everything we've seen since birth, but straight copying, no. Asia followed with a war story from her rap-group days — sampling an old rock band, getting sued, getting made the example of, and watching the publishing disappear while everyone samples freely now [9:53].

[19:00] The censorship problem for a working artist. Jilly said the tools mostly don't work for her because she has to take "a long and winding complicated road" to her art — and the guardrails get ridiculous when you can't even describe certain clothes or fashion styles without a refusal. She'd love to just use Midjourney; the censorship is what keeps her off the beaten path.

[20:26] The MoMA rant. Asia's centerpiece: with Beeple showing in Madison and Refik Anadol^* running Dataland in LA, MoMA's answer is an exhibition about how humans turn data into visual information. Her verdict was unprintable in polite company and very printable here — she'd rather go to Beeple's joint, buy an NFT and look at some dope data art. Flick came in from a slightly different angle: data visualization is a genuinely interesting presentation space, he digs it, but having written one too many data visualizers himself, he wouldn't call them art — and whoever wrote that show title needed help [23:09], [24:44].

[25:51] Unhinged Grok did not make it two years. Flick's segue from Jilly's censorship point: the 18+ personas — romantic, sexy, unhinged, and the one that's just relentlessly your hype person — are gone across XAI app surfaces. He noticed while driving, asking for the news in the usual unhinged fashion and instead getting a model with no search tools inventing stories. He extended it to his own work: once game terminology like eliminating players and "vote bomb" started appearing in prompts, OpenAI simply refused, and he had to rewrite the game and bolt on a long "this is fiction" disclaimer [28:04].

[30:15] The AI slop pipeline, with a fuzzy dragon. Flick described an AI director that finds a good moment in a game transcript, generates stills, animates them, runs Whisper to place the words, and cuts the whole thing with text animations while he reviews occasionally. His kids' product feedback: more interesting characters, Big Bird, a fuzzy dragon. That sent him into a local build where every agent has mannerisms and a full-body image, scenes get generated, heads get located, speech bubbles get added — an auto-generating storybook. Jilly's one-line review at [33:07] landed exactly where it needed to, and Flick took the compliment twice.

[42:04] Tokenized stocks get a lane. Flick unpacked the SEC's September 17th temporary conditional five-year exemption for limited trading of tokenized US public company stocks: they must represent the real security, preserve dividends and voting rights, be redeemable for the underlying, and issuers can object to being tokenized. His read: genuinely good news, and a reminder of what could have been if regulators had written rules back when everyone was asking. He sees DEXs, US-built DeFi with stock tickers, and NFT subscriptions paid in equity tokens — and thinks Base is structurally ahead of Robinhood, whose equity tokens lack voting rights and behave more like synthetic price indexes [45:37].

[47:51] House business and a good day on the charts. Jilly congratulated the recent Fame Ladies pickups, and flagged a new collector — Queen — who bought a lady and slipped out before she could say hi. Asia closed on markets: Bitcoin around 86k, Solana and Ethereum moving, everyone in a good mood — enjoy it, and know the swing cuts both ways [48:27].

Topic timeline

Notable quotes

• "Where does creativity begin? It begins in your thoughts. That is the womb of creation." — Jilly Snipes [8:27]
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• "My art teacher always taught me like there's nothing new under the sun, there's only perspective." — Byasiaminor [9:53]
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• "I think interactive AI art experiences are severely underexplored at the moment." — Flick the dev [23:09]
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• "The MoMA is gonna be doing a PowerPoint presentation about the edge of information design. It's just like what happened, you know?" — Byasiaminor [21:49]
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• "They should have got a better copywriter." — Flick the dev, on MoMA's exhibition title [24:44]
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• "That sounds gross." / "Thank you, thank you." — Jilly Snipes and Flick the dev, on the auto-generated AI storybook [33:07]
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Who said what

• Byasiaminor — ran the art and culture rundown (Lucas Museum, Rubin, Adobe, Midjourney, Beeple), argued prompting is art direction, and made the case that legacy institutions are sitting out a real moment in art history.
• Jilly Snipes — the working-artist perspective: creativity starts in thought, straight copying isn't it, and AI tools' censorship makes them unusable for the flashy, fashionable, sexy work she wants to make. Also handled the community shout-outs at the end.
• Flick the dev — the tech block: Grok's vanished personas, moderation hitting his agent game, his AI video/storybook automation stack, sleeping open claw agents, Alibaba's AI hardware push, and the SEC's tokenized equity exemption.

Worth a full listen

• [19:00]–[25:51] — Jilly's censorship point flowing straight into Asia's MoMA rant and Flick's gentle "well, data viz is kind of cool though" counterpoint. Three positions on what counts as art, delivered at speed, and the funniest stretch of the hour.
• [28:04]–[35:01] — Flick's full account of moderation reshaping a game design, then the AI director / storybook build, kid feedback included. The technical detail doesn't compress well and the deadpan exchange with Jilly is better heard.
• [42:04]–[47:18] — The tokenized stock explainer end to end: what the SEC actually permitted, what the conditions mean, and why redeemability and voting rights change the Base vs. Robinhood comparison.

* some voices are identified from context; those names are marked as likely.