- A Nature article (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00699-0) on the push for “biosafety czars” was shared as evidence of tightening regulatory oversight on bioengineering.  
- Participants lamented the current limits of computational protein design, noting that even state-of-the-art tools still cannot reliably design a protein that folds into a complex macro-scale shape such as the Stanford bunny.  
- Concern was voiced over potential loss of open-source repositories, prompting the suggestion that all relevant GitHub repos be mirrored to local drives as a precaution.  
- A Substack exposé (https://www.aipanic.news/p/effective-altruism-funded-the-ai/comments) was circulated, arguing that large fractions of “AI safety” funding are now captured by organizations with strong financial ties to the very AI companies whose risks they purport to study.  
- A long-term Taiwanese cohort study (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2477708/) was discussed: residents exposed to ~60 µSv/h from Co-60-contaminated rebar reportedly exhibited only 3 % of the cancer death rate and 6.5 % of the birth-defect rate seen in the general Taipei population, leading to debate over the validity of the linear-no-threshold radiation model and calls for confirmatory mouse studies.  
- A philosophical maxim—“one must be program, programmer, and constantly programming that which is programmed”—was cited from the novel *Neverness* and linked to Sufi mystic poetry (https://wahiduddin.net/dance/ishq_allah.htm) as an example of transhumanist-spiritual cross-pollination.