• Pacific Biosciences (PacBio) was acquired for $1.2 billion; the 2003 foundational paper from the Watt Webb lab that launched the company was highlighted as a case study in how far graduate-student founders (Jonas Korlach and Stephen Turner) can scale a technology.  
• A biorxiv preprint titled “Novel childhood experience suggests eccentricity drives organization of human visual cortex” was shared, arguing that thousands of hours of Pokémon play by 8-year-olds created a natural experiment showing how the brain’s category-selective visual areas are shaped by consistent retinal eccentricity.  
• The Pokémon example was framed as an ethically impossible but naturally occurring longitudinal study, demonstrating that self-selected childhood behavior can reveal principles of cortical organization without deliberate intervention.  
• Discussion touched on the unresolved claim that a “cranial window” combined with a portable electron microscope had been used, with skepticism voiced about the technical feasibility of integrating EM optics through such a window.  
• Sci-Hub (http://www.sci-hub.se/) was dropped as a go-to resource for accessing paywalled papers referenced in the conversation.