- BodyHacking Con 2018 (BDYHAX) was announced and a volunteer slot secured, underscoring the growing mainstream visibility of DIY biohacking events.  
- A cluster of cutting-edge biology papers were circulated: neuronal cell-type classification challenges, non-neuronal roles of acetylcholinesterase in organogenesis, a newly discovered filamentous dsRNA virus, EBV’s epigenetic suppression of B-cell differentiation, and flagellar type-III export apparatus assembly.  
- The retraction of the controversial NgAgo gene-editing study was noted, highlighting ongoing reproducibility issues in next-gen genome-editing tools.  
- FlyPi—an open-source, €100 optogenetics rig—was re-shared as an example of ultra-low-cost lab hardware for neuroscience experimentation.  
- A Cell Stem Cell paper on CRISPR-engineered skin grafts that correct diet-induced obesity and diabetes in mice was highlighted, illustrating in-vivo therapeutic use of ex vivo edited epidermal progenitor cells.  
- Robin Hanson’s Overcoming Bias post arguing that corporations are “harmless” and therefore future AIs will be too sparked debate; participants countered that corporate inefficiency, not benevolence, limits harm and that advanced AI could remove those inefficiencies.  
- Discussion framed AI safety as a spectrum, with the consensus position that “all possible cognitive architectures should be treated as inherently unsafe” until proven otherwise.  
- A practical machine-learning link was dropped: the Prodigy annotation tool from Explosion AI, emphasizing active-learning workflows for rapid data labeling.