- Piezo-electric inchworm motors were discussed as a DIY route to sub-millimeter-precision linear actuators; Phreedom outlined a home-fab process using PZT powder, a car-jack press, and a furnace, claiming 0.1–0.4 m/s speeds and 150 N force from two 3–5 cm-diameter motors driven by 1 kV MOSFET/IGBT bridges.

- kanzure demonstrated a scripted BRL-CAD workflow that generates 3-D spiral microfluidic channels for membrane-less filtration, exporting both native .g and 5 MB .stl files; the current 1 000-cross-section approach produces blocky geometry and needs refinement to keep spacing uniform toward the outer turns.

- Open-source CAD tool chain preferences were compared: qcad for 2-D DXF sketching, Inkscape for 2-D SVG work, and BRL-CAD for fully scriptable solid modeling with Tcl/bash hooks, all aimed at feeding the SKDB packaging system.

- A cache of 1 cm-tall, ~1 F, 5 V cylindrical ultracapacitors prompted suggestions to pair them with surplus mini-solar panels for autonomous solar-powered LED “blinkies.”

- Debate on AI governance versus human oversight referenced Eliezer Yudkowsky’s “Not Taking Over the World” post, with gene advocating AI or enhanced-human rule while kanzure argued for redundancy and distributed checks instead of a single-point dictator.

- Links shared: MIT graduate-application essay (fennetic.net/pub/irc/mit-grad-app.html), piezo-motor vendor sites (piezo-motor.net, piezo.lt), CMU’s Coda distributed file-system paper (coda.cs.cmu.edu/ljpaper/lj.html), and humorous media (break.com crash-test video, goats.com comic).