- A new arXiv paper (1603.09723) argues that “magic” (illusions, misdirection) is an under-used experimental paradigm in neuroscience and proposes two explanatory models: “equations of motion coupled with magic” versus “just magic.”  
- Discussion of “fulgurkinesis” (the fictional power to control lightning and electrons) led to tongue-in-cheek speculation about resurrecting Nikola Tesla to wield gigatesla magnetic pulses.  
- A 2.5-BTC bounty (address 37k7toV1Nv4DfmQbmZ8KuZDQCYK9x5KpzP) was posted for producing a SHA-1 collision, illustrating continued crypto-security concerns.  
- Channel members debated the feasibility and geopolitical consequences of draining the English Channel to expose Doggerland for archaeological exploration and to restart Anglo-French hostilities.  
- A broader geo-engineering proposal was floated: artificially inducing an ice age to drop sea levels ~100 m, cool northern latitudes for data-center efficiency, and keep human populations near the equator.  
- Meta (formerly Sciencescape) announced “Meta Science,” an AI platform that claims to help researchers cope with the 1.5 million annual biomedical papers by surfacing the highest-impact literature.  
- Participants rejected the notion of “information overload,” arguing that the real issue is weak signal quality and researcher laziness, not volume.  
- The 25th anniversary of arXiv prompted a user survey (https://cornell.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_brM4ULfjHGClNJj) to guide future directions for the open-access preprint repository.