- Discussion of Charles Stross’s novel “Accelerando” and its depiction of hyper-intelligent, hyper-dimensional lobsters (Panulirus interruptus) as a metaphor for post-human cognition.  
- FourFire finished Greg Egan’s “Permutation City,” prompting debate about whether the book offers any genuinely new ideas on simulated universes and the continuity of consciousness.  
- juri_ shared an open-source Arduino-compatible TCP/IP stack (ajkstack) and reported successful ARM porting; chris_99 countered with interest in the closed-source CycloneTCP for non-Arduino boards.  
- heath linked two Nature-family papers on nanoporous single-layer graphene for water desalination and a broader review of nanotechnology innovations in water treatment.  
- kanzure highlighted a successful clinical trial of MRI-guided focused ultrasound (ExAblate Neuro, Insightec) for essential-tremor thalamotomy, noting 2 mm spatial resolution and asking whether the same technology could ablate cysts.  
- kanzure circulated multiple intelligence-genetics resources: Project Einstein (Rothberg/BGI, 400 math/physics geniuses), the COG-genomics consortium, and a Science paper identifying three SNPs that together explain ~0.02 % of educational-attainment variance.  
- NASA’s High Altitude Venus Operational Concept (HAVOC) for crewed, inflatable floating habitats in Venus’s upper atmosphere was introduced and briefly discussed.