- Dark chocolate and other household chemicals were floated as possible positive photoresists; the group converged on cheap silk-screen emulsions and PCB spray-on resists as the most accessible micron-scale lithography materials for DIY labs.

- A deep technical debate concluded that biological neurons do not literally implement machine-learning backpropagation; instead, synaptic “weight” changes are driven by postsynaptic receptor trafficking, STDP, local dendritic mRNA translation, and Dale’s law, all without retrograde sign-switching of transmitters.

- Participants flagged a major open-science gap: no large public datasets pair multi-neuron spike trains with synaptic protein levels, limiting reproducible modeling of plasticity mechanisms.

- Algae biofuel economics were dissected—heterotrophic growth in stainless-steel tanks (Solazyme model) avoids light-mixing limits but pushes energy demand upstream to sugar production, while ethylene-secreting cyanobacteria and salt-water species with engineered membrane pumps were highlighted as promising next-gen routes.

- Existential-risk framings split the channel: some dismissed climate change as a “paper tiger,” whereas others warned of mass migration and death; engineered pandemics, asteroids, and runaway AI were listed alongside Jevons paradox as brakes on technological abundance.

- Practical biohacking advice included sourcing mammalian cell lines via university side deals, using ibidi μ-Slide microfluidic chips and Simpore nanoporous membranes (5 nm–hundreds of nm tunable) for in-vitro DNA synthesis, and a $48 k suitcase-sized “Mochii” SEM (0.25 m tall, wireless tablet control, integrated metal evaporator) as a field-deployable imaging tool.

- AGI timeline skepticism was voiced, comparing current optimism to 1960s symbolic-AI hype, yet neuromorphic architectures finer-grained than today’s networks—and possibly leveraging cortical micro-column parameters—were still expected to yield brain-like systems.

- Links circulated: LessWrong on survivorship bias in government stability, NREL on CO₂-to-fuel catalysts, kanzure’s “human-like cognitive abilities” notes, 1,227 M&M 2015 microscopy papers, Mochii patent US8598527, autism-minicolumn research, and SemGlu vacuum-compatible adhesive demo.