Digital Scrapbooking

Everyone’s heard of book clubs where the group reads the same thing and gets together to discuss, which is great… if you have time and interest in whatever’s chosen. This is a different type of book club where you bring whatever you’re currently or recently reading (or just a book you’re super excited about) and talk about it with fellow book lovers. We’ll start with people arriving/ordering food between 615-645, then go around and introduce ourselveslves and give a very brief synopsis of what we’re reading and why we’re excited (or not!) about it. Then devolve into informal conversations until people need to head out. The goal Is to create community and connections in a group of strangers - to facilitate this please make sure you have at least a clear first name on your profile. Upside on Moore has a great selection of food you can order from your phone or at the kiosks. There’s also a bar with happy hour, something for everyone! Arrival tips: if you’re taking the metro, it’s the building above the Rosslyn exit. If you’re driving, you can park in the public lot under the food hall (entrance from the one way bus street) and validate parking after 6!

Come Craft with us. Don't let the lack of RSVPs stop you, they aren't required, nor is membership to our group. Bring your project and join a boisterous group of crafters in the Kogod Courtyard of the Smithsonian Portrait Gallery - American Art Museum. This glass roofed space is climate controlled and has the most beautiful light for crafting. (If there's an event in Courtyard head over to the MLK library Cafe.)

For April's selection, we're reading All the Rivers by Dorit Rabinyan. For additional details and to register, click on the link: https://arlingtonva.libcal.com/event/15663422

## Is your cybersecurity about "fixing tech," or about protecting the reputation you’ve spent years building? Cybersecurity isn't just a technical expense or a concern for giant corporations—it’s the foundation of your clients' trust. If you want to move from feeling vulnerable to being digitally resilient today, not just "someday," this training is for you. Join us for **Cybersecurity: Protecting your business and your clients!** with Arian Mohammadi. **What you will learn:** * How to decode modern digital threats and identify your business's hidden vulnerabilities. * Practical, high-impact strategies to secure sensitive data and client information. * The essential steps to build a "protected environment" so you can focus on growth, not risks. Stop worrying about the "what ifs." Start building digital resilience. [\[](https://bnicentralmaryland.com/en-US/eventdetails?eventId=PBeOOx2GfolDaJlkw%2BhgTQ%3D%3D)**[Click Here to Register](https://bnicentralmaryland.com/en-US/eventdetails?eventId=PBeOOx2GfolDaJlkw%2BhgTQ%3D%3D)**[\]](https://bnicentralmaryland.com/en-US/eventdetails?eventId=PBeOOx2GfolDaJlkw%2BhgTQ%3D%3D)

Adam Sandman will be showing how you can use Kiro together with an MCP server to pull software requirements, designs and tasks from a project management repository (Spira) using an MCP server. From there we can use the power of agentic AI to create an MVP app, deploy and test it.

Monthly meeting: Second Saturday of the month International House of Pancakes (IHOP) 775 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD 20852 7:00 PM – 10 PM. Late arrivals always welcome. Look for the table with someone wearing a red hat. Questions, please call 1-240-644-5230 Agenda: What are more things we can do to wake people up? What can we do to get more people involved? Other things people would like to talk about. This will be a joint meeting with: DC 9/11 Truth [https://dc911truth.org/](https://dc911truth.org/) dc911truth Facebook page [https://www.facebook.com/groups/dc911truth/](https://www.facebook.com/groups/dc911truth/) 911 Meetup Group [https://www.meetup.com/meetup-group-kyegaoqu/](https://www.meetup.com/meetup-group-kyegaoqu/) Central Bank Digital Currencies CBDC Meetup Group [https://www.meetup.com/central-bank-digital-currencies-cbdc/](https://www.meetup.com/central-bank-digital-currencies-cbdc/) Freedom of Speech Meetup Group [https://www.meetup.com/silver-spring-freedom-of-speech-meetup-group/](https://www.meetup.com/silver-spring-freedom-of-speech-meetup-group/) One way to make it more difficult for them them to impose a digital currency on us is to use cash. Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) With Digital Currency they can: Have a complete government dossier on every detail of your life. Use your purchase history to maintain a detailed social credit score for every person. Provide tax breaks to corporations who hire people with admirable social credit scores. Only grant government contracts to corporations with employees with admirable social credit scores. Adjust health insurance premiums to incentivize people to develop admirable social credit scores. Connect your social credit score with a digital ID to encourage you to look at only approved web sites when surfing the internet. Viewing conspiracy web sites could lower your Social Credit Score and make it difficult to get a job. With their electronic chain around your neck, they can control where, when, how you travel, what food you are allowed to buy etc. They will love the power to only allow you to use your digital money only where they want you to shop and allow you to buy only what they prefer you to buy. Require you to have to have a license to use your money. They will call it a Digital Currency License. Require you to take any vaccine they want you to take to maintain your digital currency license. Tax you in ways we have not even imagined. Adjust your income tax rate based on your social credit score. Use AI to increase your income tax rate if you eat too many hamburgers because they will tell you eating too many hamburgers will increase global warming. This is just one example of many behaviors they might not approve of. Adjust individual prices for different individuals. They will be able to make you pay more per pound for hamburger if you purchased too much red meat during the past 30 days. Require you to buy so many pounds of soy burger for every pound of hamburger to save the planet and increase the profits for the soy burger manufacturers. Turn off the digital money of people they consider to be spreading misinformation. Turn off the digital money of people they consider to be dangerous conspiracy theorists. Turn off your money at 8 PM if they want a curfew at 8 PM Turn off your money in another state if they do not want you to drive to another state without permission. Turn off your money when buying guns or ammo if they do not want you to buy guns or ammo. Turn off your digital money more than three miles away from your home if they want you to stay within three miles of your home during the next epidemic. Etc. etc. etc. From the standpoint of the government, one beauty of digital money is that your money is one “state emergency” away from being the government’s money. All they have to do is to take your digital money out of your Central Bank Digital Account for the “good of all”. It is not as easy for them to do this with physical cash, gold, stocks, or silver etc. Anything they **can** do, they will do. The essence of slavery is control. Digital Currency will enable them to make you, their slave. (in a global digital concentration camp). .

• What we'll do Learn how to take great pictures BEFORE you go on that expensive trip! And we will teach you how to use your camera IN THE FIELD, not in a classroom! Join our standard Monuments and Memorials workshop, offered Wednesdays and Saturdays, in which the instructor takes you to some of DC’s most popular attractions: White House, Lafayette Park, the Einstein, Lincoln, Korea, and Vietnam Three Servicemen Memorials, and finally to Union Station, where you learn to make all the moving people DISAPPEAR! Remember, it was Confucius who said: "I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do, and I understand." At Washington Photo Safari, we help you "do " and understand! That is why our motto is "See. Click. Learn." This $71 Safari (a 20% discount from the regular $89 price) begins with a 45-minute travel photography orientation, giving you basic tips in composition, F-stops and shutter speeds, portraiture, and interior photography. While you are taking pictures, you receive hands-on guidance on how to make those images even better! Advanced and smartphone photographers will appreciate the instructor’s extensive knowledge of the best camera angles in DC. This is suggested as a preliminary course before taking special safaris. Open to any photographers at any skill level with any camera, phone, or tablet. Transportation from site to site is provided by the instructor. • What to bring camera and all lenses • Important to know travel, architectural, portrait and street photography techniques

[Profs and Pints Northern Virginia](https://www.profsandpints.com/washingtondc) presents: **“What Digital Detectives Find,”** on the afterlife of your digital data and the methods of those who investigate it, with Jim Jones, associate professor at George Mason University and cyber security and digital forensics expert. [Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at [https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/nv-digital-detectives](https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/nv-digital-detectives) .] What happens when you delete digital data such as a picture, video, or email message? The truth is that “deleted” doesn't mean “gone,” and digital forensic investigators can extract and make sense of the residual fragments left over from data often assumed to be gone forever. Learn about the field of digital forensics—and the lessons it offers those who worry about sensitive data being exposed—with Jim Jones, who has been a cyber security and digital forensics practitioner, researcher, and educator for more than 30 years. You’ll learn how all investigations today, criminal and otherwise, to some degree involve digital forensics, an interdisciplinary field that draws from computer engineering, computer science, information technology, law, and ethics. Digital forensics doesn’t just respond to specific incidents, but also seeks out threats within organizations, analyzes malware, and buttresses cyber security. Much of the work of Dr. Jones, his colleagues, and students involves examining digital systems of all types to understand how data persists and decays and how it can be found and recovered. Dr. Jones will discuss how what happens to the digital data that you deleted depends on the type of device you are using, along with a host of other factors. You'll learn how digital data is stored on different devices and what does and doesn’t happen when you delete that data. You'll see examples of data extracted from different devices, demonstrations of what can be inferred from these remnants, and how investigators can tell if such remnants are genuine or not. Finally, you'll learn about strategies to mitigate the risk of exposing sensitive data. Dr. Jones will sort those that work from those that don’t. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.) Image: A digital forensics examiner works with evidence in the FBI’s New Jersey Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory (FBI photo).

This will be our second (and possibly last) meeting on *Nature's God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic*, by Matthew Stewart. For this meeting, please try to read chapters 4 and 6. (You can skim chapter 5, which is particularly confusing). **Where did the ideas come from that became the cornerstone of American democracy?** America’s founders intended to liberate us not just from one king but from the ghostly tyranny of supernatural religion. Drawing deeply on the study of European philosophy, Matthew Stewart brilliantly tracks the ancient, pagan, and continental ideas from which America’s revolutionaries drew their inspiration. In the writings of Spinoza, Lucretius, and other great philosophers, Stewart recovers the true meanings of “Nature’s God,” “the pursuit of happiness,” and the radical political theory with which the American experiment in self-government began. [LINK](https://a.co/d/bkTWJNb) This book is not always an easy read. You may want to make use of AI tools such as ChatGPT. You can ask it questions like: "What does Matthew Stewart say about happiness in his book Nature's God?" OR: What does Matthew Stewart say about Spinoza? This may be our last meeting on this book. If you want to have a third meeting later, on the last two chapters, let me know. I hope to see you there! Fred

Let's meet at the beautiful Georgetown Neighborhood Library! We can draw inside or explore the park and find something to inspire you. I'll be at the entrance with a sign; we can meet back up later to share our drawings if you like.

Pay attention! We’re delaying a week for those of you who may be on Spring break and/or celebrating the holiday. Ok, no pancakes, but waffles-a-plenty. Join the local UX and Digital Design community for a casual monthly breakfast. Look for us upstairs!

* Second ever book club! April meet up. All are welcome. * The book will be Play Nice by Rachel Harrison (determined by votes from March Book Club. Let me know if you’d like a free digital copy of the book) * This event will be at the main library, meeting room 1B, the location will not be changed for this event due to the number of people attending, we will just add more chairs if needed! * Feel free to come whether or not you’ve started or finished the book ◡̈ * Small snacks will be provided. You’re welcome to bring your own snacks & drinks too! Starting in June I will try to keep future book clubs at the Dublin Library. Now that I understand their reservation system, I will be on top of it with booking that location as soon as the date is released for the month. Thanks for your understanding with the varying locations in the meantime.

AI is changing how art is made. But when does it stop being your work and start being the machine’s? This month we're going to be doing a panel with with digital image, music, and written word artists, talking about at what point, while using AI in the creation process, does the work become not the artist creation? We encourage audience participation during this event that will be moderated by Chris Slee. Whether you’re deep in the field or just getting curious, come connect with others building and exploring AI in Columbus. Sponsored by [Transform Labs](https://www.transformlabs.com/services) Sign up also accessible via [Transform Labs Luma](https://luma.com/55umjqta)

**Our April novel is: *The Hong Kong Widow* by Kristen Loesch** **This month’s novel blends gothic atmosphere with historical fiction and chilling horror, set against the haunting backdrop of China. The book is 368 pages in print and 10 hours and 42 minutes on audiobook.** In 1950s Hong Kong, Mei is a young refugee of the Chinese Communist revolution struggling to put her past in Shanghai behind her. When she receives a shocking invitation—to take part in a competition in one of the city's most notorious haunted houses, pitting six spirit mediums against one another in a series of six séances over six nights, until a single winner emerges—she has every reason to refuse. Except that the hostess, a former Shanghainese silent film star, is none other than the wife of the man who once destroyed Mei’s entire life. It is promised the winner will receive a fortune, but there is only one prize Mei wants: revenge. Decades later, the final night of that competition has become an infamous urban legend: The police were called to the scene of a brutal massacre but found no evidence, dismissing it as a collective hallucination. Mei knows what she saw, but now someone else is convinced they know what she did. She must uncover the truth about the last night she ever spent in that house—even if the ghosts of her past are waiting for her there. . . .

Join us for our April Book Club gathering where we will come together to discuss *[Stop Me if You've Heard This One](https://www.kristenarnettwriter.com/stopmeifyouveheardthisone)* by [Kristen Arnett](https://www.kristenarnettwriter.com/about) in a safe and welcoming environment. Make new friends who share your passion for books and connect with fellow LGBTQ book enthusiasts.