- Iceland is proposed as a live test-bed for an open-source socio-economic model that begins with geothermal-powered hydroponic greenhouses to achieve food self-sufficiency and could then “go viral,” accelerating global open-manufacturing and governance experiments.  
- A debate on the abolition of work pits the essay “Abolition of Work” against the view that humans intrinsically enjoy some necessary tasks and that money is merely a resource-allocation token, not an end in itself.  
- An $80 wired micro-electrode array (MEA) kit is discussed for neuron-culture robotics; custom 2 × 2 mm PCB etching and hand-wound RF induction coils would be required to make it wireless, but costs still exceed macro-electrode rigs.  
- Participants share 50–90 GB personal digital libraries (Nature archives, Gödel-Escher-Bach, TTC courses) and plan a SourceForge project to host every language dictionary plus periodic full Wikipedia-with-images snapshots (~150 GB) for redundancy.  
- Frustration with VTK’s complexity surfaces: naïvely adding actors kills performance, while pipeline tricks like ExtractGeometry render instantly; a two-hour Python script by jepler (axis.unpythonic.net/01169521961) outperforms a week of VTK work by generating CNC G-code directly from 3-D models.  
- Robert Lang’s TreeMaker 5 and ReferenceFinder are examined for computational origami: TreeMaker auto-generates crease patterns from stick-figure “shadows,” but ReferenceFinder cannot read TreeMaker’s .tmd5 files, forcing manual entry and risking misalignment.  
- A parametric spiral-membrane filter is prototyped in gnuplot (heybryan.org/bioreactor/membraneless_filtration/gnuplot_spiral_parametric.txt) and slated for STL export and laser-cut fabrication, illustrating a workflow from equation to physical prototype.  
- OpenFOAM’s CFD workflow is clarified: simulation → VTK file → ParaView or Mayavi2 for 3-D visualization, with OpenFOAM’s mesher accepting VTK input; Mayavi2 is praised as an easy, interactive viewer for bridging simulation and fabrication pipelines.  
- Hofstadter’s “created already in motion” AI argument and the anti-transhumanist video “Age of Transitions” (accusing the WTA of crypto-eugenics and job-stealing rhetoric) spark criticism that the WTA still frames enhancement as social welfare rather than a technological project.