• Embodiment debate: maaku argued that whole-brain emulation and AGI may require fidelity to the body’s hormonal and gut-brain environment for authentic personality and moral development, while kanzure countered that sociopathic, disembodied minds are acceptable for research.

• archels, a computational-neuroscience PhD student, reported on virtual-rodent experiments and an upcoming paper asserting that real brains resist neat modular decomposition and that embodiment must be tested in actual robotic systems rather than treated as a philosophical abstraction.

• maaku is rebuilding OpenCog’s CogPrime architecture on probabilistic graphical models and a datalog-style homoiconic language so that “mind agents” execute inside the same graph as the knowledge base, eliminating opaque external modules and enabling tighter integration.

• Participants concluded that OpenCog’s current patchwork of PLN, DeSTIN, and MOSES—combining GOFAI, deep learning, and evolutionary algorithms—is too complex to scale to mammal-level intelligence; archels advocated a more holistic, biologically inspired redesign.

• Discussion of “useful proof-of-work” considered replacing Bitcoin mining with protein-folding solutions; maaku dismissed the idea as a contradiction, and FoldingCoin’s reliance on a centralized BOINC server was criticized as incompatible with Bitcoin’s decentralized consensus.

• Links shared: CERN Courier on gamma-ray bursts as existential risk; Radboud University panel “Should we fear AI?”; Pacific Biosciences SMRT Grant; Zyvex Labs STM control system; Phillip Moriarty’s open-access update on single-bond mechanochemistry progress toward Freitas & Merkle’s minimal toolset for diamond mechanosynthesis.

• Pembient (IndieBio SF) is creating rhino-horn substitutes that are genetically and spectrographically—but not molecularly—identical, raising questions about whether spectrographic mimicry can deter poaching and about the legal status of synthetic horn trade.

• Tesla’s P85D will gain ~0.1 s in 0-60 mph acceleration via an over-the-air inverter-algorithm update, cited as an example of software-defined performance enhancement in physical products.