- A Neuron paper cited 43 preprints (~25 % of its references), prompting discussion about journals that reject papers for citing preprints and the prestige-value-transfer model of citations.  
- Ctenophores (comb jellies) were highlighted as having evolved a completely independent nervous system that lacks serotonin, dopamine, acetylcholine and other canonical neurotransmitters, suggesting 9–12 separate evolutionary origins of nervous systems.  
- Participants explored implanting phased-array microwave emitters or metal heating rods around the stomach to “nuke” or emulsify food internally, debating beam-shaping and tissue-cooking risks.  
- Hyperloop engineering questions were raised: the need for extremely straight, level tunnels to permit high-speed travel without excessive lateral g-forces, and the role of gradual banking curves.  
- A proposal was floated to coat SpaceX rocket hulls with diverse bacterial cultures and recover them after re-entry to select for organisms that survive atmospheric re-entry, constrained by planetary-contamination policies.  
- Links shared included “Delegation to automaticity: the driving force for cognitive evolution?” (PMC4010745), the Shulman/Bostrom paper on AI evolutionary arguments, and the Allen Brain Institute as a candidate for large-scale comparative neuroanatomy.  
- Recent preprints discussed: “Exploration and generalization in vast spaces” (bioRxiv 171371) and “Natural language processing with small feed-forward networks” (arXiv 1708.00214).