- Bert Simons’ paper-craft heads and wall-mounted sculptures were discussed; links to his work and to Japanese origami CAD tools (ORIPA, ORIDRAW, Paperizer, Blender’s unfold.py) were shared as possible ways to turn 3-D meshes into flat, foldable nets.

- A live demo showed Blender’s built-in “unfold” script exporting an icosahedron to SVG with metadata describing fold angles and polygon relationships, validating a rapid paper-prototype workflow.

- Douglas Reay’s von Neumann Constructor Prize and its associated Google Group were highlighted as an open competition for self-replicating machines.

- Vedestin proposed a “nootropic steroid” that would accelerate synaptic strengthening the way anabolic steroids accelerate muscle growth, asking whether a molecule could pharmacologically reinforce memory formation.

- The channel critiqued academic incentives (“publish or perish”), noting that researchers optimize for citation metrics rather than reproducible engineering, and lamented the resulting jargon-filled papers.

- Boulder’s computational-neuroscience faculty opening (O’Reilly lab) was circulated, along with links to Markram’s cortical microcircuit simulations and cholinergic attention-control literature.

- kanzure’s high-school course load—second-year calculus, physics, anatomy, literature, and government—was contrasted with university expectations, sparking debate on how much of a curriculum can be compressed into a 30-minute explanation.

- Practical travel advice (cheap student airfares) and a brief discussion of switching majors from chemistry to biomedical science were also exchanged.