- The channel debated the modern role of academic tenure: L29Ah claimed universities now avoid granting tenure because targeted grants create better incentives, while jrayhawk countered that tenure’s original purpose is to insulate researchers from politics, and L29Ah replied that this merely shifts politics into the tenure-award process itself.  
- Marshall Brain’s early-2000s essays were revisited: fenn linked archived copies of “Manna” (post-scarcity automation dystopia), “Discard” (consumerism critique), and “Wholesale Price Transparency” (real-time market data), prompting discussion on whether Brain’s work offers genuine insight or mere self-promotion.  
- Participants noted a scarcity of truly transhumanist fiction: fenn observed that “alien aliens” are already rare, let alone stories featuring non-human or heavily augmented protagonists; L29Ah cited Peter Watts’ *Blindsight* as the most alien depiction they know, while RangerMauve recommended Daniel Suarez’s *Change Agent* as a near-future biopunk example.  
- A brief exchange on nanotechnology pathways occurred: alethkit asked whether anyone is experimentally pursuing the “Waldo path” (Feynman’s recursive miniaturization of machines), and kanzure replied that the #hplusroadmap community is presently focused only on direct mechanosynthesis rather than the “tiny hands” scaling approach.  
- The notion that “the singularity is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed” (paraphrasing William Gibson) was floated by L29Ah as a framing for current technological disparities.