- Discussion of the gap between idealized promises and real-world outcomes in technology: the “green revolution” was framed as feeding the planet but resulted in Monsanto’s IP-driven monopoly, illustrating how corporate control can subvert humanitarian goals.  
- Geo-engineering brainstorm: participants speculated about fleets of autonomous cloud-generating boats that increase Earth’s albedo to offset warming, with the tongue-in-cheek extension of using shaped clouds for aerial advertising.  
- A simple energy-balance model (q_out < q_in ⇒ positive q_stored) was proposed as a definitive test for global warming, asking whether NASA’s Earth-radiation-budget data already confirm the imbalance.  
- DIY-bio links shared: the world’s first amateur bio-fuel helicopter (Delta2), Andrew Hessel’s DIY-bio toolkits video, and the citizen-science blog citsci.blogspot.com; Hessel’s upcoming visit to Austin was announced.  
- Practical biohacking sourcing question: a Boston-based experimenter asked where to buy 20–30 petri dishes locally without mail-order, highlighting the ongoing need for neighborhood lab-supply networks.  
- NIST Digital Library of Mathematical Functions (dlmf.nist.gov) was posted as a reference resource for advanced mathematical work in open-source science and engineering projects.