- Engineered bacteria that polymerize a “bioglass” polysilicate shell can act as living optical devices, focusing and scattering high-intensity light for months; the community speculates this could evolve into programmable lenses or biodisplays and notes the need for post-mortem functionality.  
- A pre-print describing the bioglass bacteria was shared: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.06.03.597164v1.  
- Discussion pivoted to phased-array optics and the possibility of “laser eyes” or other implanted/organism-grown display technologies.  
- Vitara (https://www.vitara.com/) was highlighted as an artificial-womb company currently focused on extreme-premie life-support rather than full placental development or implantation.  
- The 2024 Mars Terraforming Workshop proceedings were posted: https://zenodo.org/records/11390070.  
- Claude-3.5 via the claude.vim plugin now supports tool-calling, prompting remarks on how much prompt engineering still influences LLM behavior.