• Orbital-mirror geo-engineering: a 10 000 km² array can only focus sunlight to ~100 km on the ground, making it safer than an equivalently-scaled laser system, and is more efficient per square metre for climate modification than large opaque shades because most light simply goes around a shade.

• Hyperdimensional computing with 10 000-bit random hypervectors (Springer paper “Hyperdimensional Computing: An Introduction to Computing in Distributed Representation with High-Dimensional Random Vectors”) enables set/sequence operations and associative memory that may mimic brain-like data handling, drawing parallels to word2vec and modular neural-network “tag” architectures.

• DIY/open-source hardware opportunities: low-cost lab equipment, home-built PAP/BiPAP/ASV ventilators, and citizen-science instrumentation were highlighted as high-impact projects for broad accessibility.

• Longevity debate: extending healthy lifespan is framed as both an individual and civilizational good (accumulated wisdom, preserved relationships, long-term thinking), while one participant argues systemic issues (inequality, agency, environmental trajectory) take moral priority over individual survival.

• Personal recovery roadmap: one member outlined a plan—small coding projects, custom information-organizer tool, electronics self-education, and eventual frugal bio/citizen-science work—motivated by regaining executive function after medical treatment.

• Cultural links: Steam sale for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided ($4.50) prompted critique of transhumanist themes in games; “The Next Ten Billion Years” resilience essay and Adrian Tchaikovsky’s novel “The Doors of Eden” were noted for long-range future/past speculation.

• The Whole Earth Catalog’s legacy was discussed as a cultural ancestor of today’s open-source and internet freedom movements, emphasizing “grass-roots direct power—tools and skills” over referred political power.

• Global dynamics were framed as a neural network performing gradient descent on a composite human value function, arguing that “true cooperation” differs from “competitive compromise pseudo-cooperation” and that power centralization emerges from self-interested control over cooperative interactions.

• Technical tools: nMigen (Python HDL from m-labs) was highlighted for building complex digital hardware; links shared included Ken Shirriff’s teardown blog (righto.com), John McMaster’s Twitter feed (@johndmcmaster), and @szeloof for chip-reversing content.

• Community experimentation: ad-hoc video calls via Google Meet and then Jitsi (meet.jit.si/kob-cqjv-bat) illustrated preference for open-source tooling; generative-art screenshot (fennetic.net/irc/paintschainer/virtuality0.png) showed AI-assisted illustration experiments.