- Thomas Paviot has launched a community fork of the OpenCASCADE CAD kernel on GitHub, aiming to fix long-standing problems with the original project; participants debate whether version-control alone can cure deep architectural issues.  
- A 1991 talk by Luca Turin titled “A Quantum of Solace: Molecular Electronics of Benzodiazepines” was located after a search across arXiv and Google Scholar, highlighting early quantum-mechanical theories of drug action.  
- Backyard Brains’ open-source cockroach-leg neurophysiology demo was replicated: a severed leg twitched to music when driven by amplified audio signals, illustrating low-cost BCI experimentation.  
- The Heidelberg “FACETS” neuromorphic-computing training network (Python/PyNN, Blue Brain ties) was noted as a desirable but Spain-absent collaboration; links to the Vision group at KIP Heidelberg were bookmarked.  
- A curated list of all past iGEM projects was found on OpenWetware (http://openwetware.org/wiki/IGEM:Projects_categorized), though still incomplete, serving as a starting dataset for synthetic-biology meta-analysis.  
- Personal nootropic testing reported: piracetam produced clearer perception of social subtext but also headaches relieved by lecithin; kyo-green tablets praised as a convenient “raw-diet shortcut” while others warned of possible lectin irritation.  
- Hurricane Party, a group-messaging startup, received New York Times and Mashable coverage; the channel dismissed most group-chat apps as hype, noting that XMPP chatrooms already cover the use-case.  
- Emacs vs. Vim plugin fatigue surfaced, with one participant considering a return to Emacs/org-mode to manage sprawling research tags such as “neuromorphics,” “quantum computing,” and “spanish wife good life.”