- **Planetary Resources asteroid-mining economics questioned**: moriarty argued that a 50 % ROI would require mining ~47 million tonnes of platinum-bearing ore at 140 ppm concentration from near-Earth asteroids, noting that typical wildcat-exploration investors expect payback in 6–24 months, far shorter than the multi-decade timeline implied.  
- **Optimism vs. realism debate**: strangewarp and Urchin acknowledged the inspirational value of Planetary Resources as a billionaire-backed “space-cadet” project, even while conceding the classical asteroid-mining business case is “financially dubious.”  
- **Cryonics & personal identity**: kanzure linked Mike Darwin’s long post questioning whether personal identity survives cryopreservation; strangewarp countered that brains already undergo massive fluctuation and that identity arguments are largely “bullshitting.”  
- **Open-access publishing milestone**: delinquentme highlighted a €40 billion open-research publishing initiative reported by Times Higher Education, framed as a move that makes Elsevier “squirm.”  
- **Solar-sinter 3-D printing demo**: Utopiah shared Markus Kayser’s SolarSinter project—using sunlight and sand to print glass objects in the desert—showing low-cost, off-grid additive manufacturing.  
- **Shangri-La diet discussion**: Mokbortolan_ solicited theories on Seth Roberts’ flavorless-calorie weight-loss protocol, but no detailed mechanisms were proposed in the log.