- The Pope’s November prayer intention—“that the progress of robotics and artificial intelligence may always serve humankind”—was circulated via Eliezer Yudkowsky’s tweet, prompting ironic discussion about the prospect of real-world “Techpriests” and the tension between spiritual authority and accelerating AI capabilities.  
- Participants traded Warhammer 40k “Techpriest” memes and Babylon 5 quotes, using the Elric monologue (“We are dreamers, shapers, singers, and makers…”) to frame the transhumanist community as modern-day techno-mystics preparing for an impending “black and terrible storm.”  
- lsneff demonstrated browser-based control of an iCE40 FPGA dev board by writing JavaScript that speaks directly to the on-board serial bootloader, bypassing the need for native flashing tools once the bitstream (generated with the open-source IceStorm flow) is ready.  
- kanzure pressed for clarification on how the iCE40 was being used without explicit mention of IceStorm, leading to confirmation that IceStorm is indeed in the toolchain for synthesis and place-and-route, while only a generic serial protocol is used for uploading the bitstream.  
- The exchange highlighted the growing ease of web-centric hardware development workflows and the continued centrality of the fully open IceStorm project for Lattice iCE40 FPGAs within DIY and biohacker circles.