Intelligent Conversation

We'll chat, eat, and maybe even play a few games. We'll be at the table with the green flag (unless I forget the flag!) Ni babilos, manĝos, kaj eĉ ludos kelkajn ludojn. Ni estos ĉe la tablo kun la verda flago (kondiĉe ke mi ne forgesos la flagon!). Hablaremos, comeremos, y quizás hasta juguemos algunos juegos. Estaremos en la mesa con la bandera verde (¡si no se me olvida la bandera!).

Saturday In-Person Writing Session – Join Us! Join us every Saturday at 9 AM for a live writing session at Lamppost Coffee on E Main in Round Rock. Whether you're diving into your novel, working on a short story, or just looking to get some words on the page, this is a welcoming space for writers of all kinds. * Drop in anytime during the session * Get feedback, give feedback, or just write * Say hello and meet fellow local writers Interested in organizing a future write-in, attending a writing conference, or submitting to a flash fiction contest? Let us know! We’re always looking for new ways to support our writing community and sharpen our craft. **Lamppost Coffee** 201 E Main St #101, Round Rock, TX 78664 If you don't see us at the big table in the front, check in the back room! See you on Saturday!

DUE TO THE INCREASING CHANCE AND ACCUMULATION OF RAIN, WE ARE HAVING TO POSTPONE AND RESCHEDULE THIS EVENT. toLet's go camping! This event is for never-before backpackers consisting of a leisurely hike and overnight camp-out in a close-by, safe county park environment. You will be carrying everything you need for your overnight stay along the trail to our campsite where we will learn to set up tents, cook backpacking meals and sleep in a primative-style campground and more! For this campout you will need: Water - 3 liters Backpack of about 50 liter size Tent complete with stakes Hiking shoes or boots Sleeping bag or blanket Sleeping pad is reccomended Layered clothing suitable for the weather Change of socks Snacks Lunch for before the first hike Camping stove and small (1 quart) water boiling pot if you have either Long- handled spoon or “spork” for stirring / eating Freeze-dried meals of your choice: Dinner, breakfast and lunch Small first aid kit Flashlight Any personal items you will need The tent, backpack and sleeping bag is available for rent from REI - reserve early. Freeze-dried meals are also available from REI or Amazon. If you have a small backpacking stove and small pot for boiling water, please bring it ! REI might rent stoves. We will hold a zoom call on Wednesday, April 8 at 7PM to go over the list, survey who can bring backpacking stoves, ask questions and coordinate carpooling, etc. I’ll notify all participants beforehand if I can get that set up. I HAVE SET UP THE ZOOM CALL: Alan Felder is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting. Topic: Alan Felder's Zoom Meeting Time: Apr 8, 2026 07:00 PM Central Time (US and Canada) Join Zoom Meeting https://us04web.zoom.us/j/72104050795?pwd=StuL6kYm8SdyCGRAIH3ZSwX0GGkJfF.1 Meeting ID: 721 0405 0795 Passcode: MfVPz0 WE WILL MEET AT THE PARK BY 2PM ON SATURDAY THE 18th AT THE WEST TRAILHEAD PARKING LOT, WHERE WE WILL GO THROUGH WHAT GEAR WE HAVE COLLECTIVELY AND ADJUST BACKPACKS, DISCUSS OUR PLAN AND ANSWER QUESTIONS BEFORE HEADING OUT ON OUR HIKE. WE WILL COVER TENT SETUP AFTER WE ARRIVE AT THE CAMPSITE. The park is asking for names of all participants for the reservation, and license plates for the cars as there are limits for both at campsites. There is a limit of 15 people for the two campsites that have been reserved in the park for this event. Please Provide that by Wed the 15th. OUR RESERVATION ONLY ALLOWS FOUR CARS so we will need to carpool or additional cars will cost $5. Ask friends to come as we still have about 7 spots left!

Update: Tickets going fast. Be sure to get yours before they are gone. Prizes will be awarded! Come join me for our First annual Event Staff Buyers Group Casino night!!! Fantastic idea for a date night or a girls/guys night out! And you help raise money for young deserving kids in Texas who are involved in agriculture through local youth project shows and livestock auctions. Last year, we invested over $10,000 in Texas youth. Please help us make this year even better for our kids. Each $50 ticket includes entry, a barbecue dinner, and $1000 in chips. BYOB, and set-ups will be available. You must purchase a ticket in advance using this link: https://app.betterunite.com/eventstaffbuyersgroup-1stannualeventstaffbuyersgroupcasinonight Hope to see you there!

**Let’s build the kind of friendships that make life richer.** **Once a month we gather for a relaxed and stylish Sunday Brunch at one of North Austin’s great restaurants. Each event is a chance to connect with other amazing women, share stories, laugh over great food, and create genuine friendships.** **This group is for women in their mid-30s to mid-40s who enjoy good conversation, positive energy, and building a supportive circle of friends.** **Each month we’ll rotate restaurants so we can explore some of Austin’s best brunch spots while creating a community of women who enjoy showing up for each other.** **Come if you enjoy:** **✨ Good food & brunch cocktails** **✨ Meaningful conversation** **✨ Laughing until your cheeks hurt** **✨ Meeting intelligent, kind, fun women** **Our goal is simple: build a great group of women who enjoy life together.** **Bring your good vibes and we’ll see you at brunch.**

[Get Details and Register Here - $25.00](https://dailyreikiaustin.com/round-rock-reiki-share/) This event is turning into one of our favorite monthly community moments! Please join us in the peaceful space that is the Mind's Eye Plants Yoga Room for a deeply powerful afternoon of Reiki and connection. This Reiki Share is open to practitioners of all levels — whether you’ve just taken your first class or you’ve been practicing for years. Even if you got your attunement MANY years ago and haven't practiced since! This event is perfect to get you back into the flow! We’ll gather in community, take turns on the table, and each receive Reiki from the group. It’s a beautiful chance to both practice your healing art and soak up some much-needed, incredibly powerful Reiki yourself, all while meeting and connecting with other practitioners. If you've never had Reiki given by multiple practitioners at once, this is a must try experience. Space is limited, so be sure to save your spot! Tea will be served.

Note location - we are meeting at Buzzmill Coffee on East Riverside this time. This core purpose of this meetup is fostering a community of people who enjoy intellectually stimulating conversations about the world around us. We talk about tech a lot, like cryptocurrencies and AI, but also topics adjacent, such as politics, economics, and foreign affairs. No topic is really off the table at all, as long as it leads to an interesting and stimulating conversation. The tone is relaxed and the conversation is free-flowing. There is no agenda and we go where the conversation takes us. To give a sense of the breath of topics we welcome here: we gone down deep rabbit holes about the meaning of life, economic theories of inflation, American foreign policy, the technological Singularity, viability of advanced alien civilizations, the philosophy of Mind and Consciousness and what makes for a perfect cup of coffee. We are blessed that Austin has a rich pool of smart and intellectually curious people and our conversations are often super engaging and interesting. We debate, we discuss, we disagree, sometimes we even argue, but its always done with a friendly spirit of intellectual exploration. If this describes a fun evening to you, then come join us. We are extremely consistent - meeting every single Sunday and very rarely miss any meetups (very bad weather, the Superbowl and major holidays are the only times we've cancelled a meetup). We also have an active Telegram channel: Telegram channel: 👇 https://t.me/+URbKID0XswY4ZWJh

Love poetry? We're devotees of the line and line break too. Whether you're a reader, a writer, both (or possibly even neither?), we invite you to hang out with us, have a cozy matcha latte or a big fluffy pretzel, and talk about poems. Join *Difficult Friends* for a casual mixer at Easy Tiger to celebrate National Poetry Month in April! **About Us** This group is a project by *Difficult Friends,* a community-run arts & humanities salon: [Website](https://www.difficultfriends.com/) ⟡ [Substack](https://difficultfriends.substack.com/) ⟡ [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/difficultfriends/) It's part of our Creative Friendship Lab events line-up! The Creative Friendship Lab encourages people from all walks of life to explore the rich emotional and social world around them, while pursuing individual and shared creative projects. We invite both serious artists and just-budding amateurs to come enjoy our events and experiments. **Event Details: Our National Poetry Month Mixer** This week, we'll be meeting at Easy Tiger at the Linc at 2 PM on April 19th to just chitchat. I'll be printing out some of my favorite poems to share with y'all and leave on the table as discussion starters, and there will be pens and paper available for people who want to doodle! But yeah, just a casual hang. No assignments or readings this week! If you'd like to see what we do when we're in full writing mode, check out our previous workshops on [Origin Stories](https://www.meetup.com/creative-friendship-lab/events/313938791/) and [Emotion, Memory, and Color](https://www.meetup.com/creative-friendship-lab/events/313994687/). Looking forward to seeing everyone there\~\~ Thank you in advance for bringing your passion for poetry to our group! I was particularly excited to see some people writing poetry for the first time at our events earlier this month. Whether you’re just starting to explore your own creativity or you’ve been committed to it for decades, we hope you’ll join us for this lowkey mixer of poets & lovers. **Supporting Our Community** Most of our events are offered on a donation basis to minimize financial barriers. Please consider making a donation if you would like to contribute to our mission, allow us to offer more meaningful events, and help defray the costs of our [meetup.com](http://meetup.com/) hosting fees. Or not! We appreciate the many ways in which everyone contributes to our community, whether via financial or other means—simply by showing up and being kind, you are doing a good thing :-) **About Me (Personally)** I'm a writer living in Austin with my dog, Cookie. If you're interested in following my thoughts, you can find me at [https://substack.com/@rachelsummercheong](https://substack.com/@rachelsummercheong) I love long essays, fiction, and philosophy. I also like to draw and go out dancing

***Free Yoga For Mental Wellbeing***. This session offers tools to bring balance to the body and mind for a holistic experience of inner wellbeing. The practices offered include: * **Nadi Shuddhi**: A yogic practice that cleanses the *nadis* – the pathways through which pranic energy flows – resulting in a balanced system and psychological wellbeing. * **Miracle of Mind Meditation**: A 7-minute guided meditation empowering you to take charge of your mental wellbeing. Daily practice brings health, dynamism, peace and well being. Benefits: * Enhances vitality, focus, memory and productivity * Stabilizes the body, mind and emotions * Reduces stress and anxiety Location:Desi District - 12301 W Parmer Ln, unit 801, Cedar Park, TX, US, 78613 Sunday, April 19, 2026 at 9:00 AM **-** 9:45 AM CDT Open to all ages 7 and above. Those 7-17 to be accompanied by a parent/guardian. RSVP:https://online.innerengineering.com/en/event-details/23281 Contact Details; Austin@ishausa.org 512-655-9589

This month's prompt concerns the idea of the “warrior philosopher” (seemed appropriate in these times)--that is someone whose understanding of violence, power, and justice is forged through direct experience of war. We are looking at Major General Smedley D. Butler, a highly decorated U.S. Marine raised in a Quaker (pacifist) tradition who later became a prominent critic of American militarism (there is a wonderful biography of Gen. Butler called "Gangsters of Capitalism") Butler's argument in *War Is a Racket* (1935): that many U.S. interventions were driven less by national defense than by corporate and financial interests, with Butler portraying himself as an enforcer for business and Wall Street. We can consider the moral ambiguity of his insider critique—whether complicity strengthens or undermines credibility and also consider some of the concrete reforms he proposed (e.g., “conscript” capital before soldiers, restrict the military to coastal defense, and have only those who fight decide on war). Butler’s life arc clearly changed from pacifist upbringing to warrior to antiwar crusader—and asks whether true understanding of peace requires firsthand knowledge of war, and what that implies about the cost of suffering. So do we need to suffer to understand suffering? Do we have to experience war to appreciate peace? As one more question: in the movie "A Few Good Men" Jack Nicholson's character says that "you have the luxury of not knowing what I know" so do most of us go through life oblivious to real violence and suffering? See you at Drunken Philosophy!

Bienvenue! Columbus French Conversation group invites you to our Saturday morning French conversation club. Expect a casual and welcoming atmosphere in which to learn french! I will bring my laptop so we can look up new vocabulary as needed! The venue is a beautiful French restaurant so you can really get into the zone :)

Sleep in on Sundays. When you've had your fill of pajama-time, roll out and have some tasty brunch with your fellow Humanists!

Do you feel introverted when you are in a group setting? Are you shy? Do other people have more fun than you do? There are simple life hacks you can use to improve your connection to others and improve your social life. Talking is one thing. Truly connecting is altogether another. It's the whole experience of connecting with people and forming relationships. It includes the joy, understanding, and love formed among people. * In our meetings, you will learn: * A simple life hack to increase your liking and tolerance of other people, or even of yourself! * How to become more interested and enjoy conversations with people. * How to be comfortable in social settings. * How to be yourself * How to become more extroverted and, * How to make connections with people. Feeling lonely, isolated, or bored? This local meeting is exactly what you need! Come join us! Be sure to click on the red "Attend" button below to come to the local event. We look forward to seeing you there. This group is created by the Dianetics and Scientology life improvement center.

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)

Let’s meet, wander the exhibits and open galleries, and enjoy an evening out in the Franklinton Arts District. (Nearby pay parking is available in the garage on McDowell, right around the corner from One Line Coffee, and, past it along the curb as McDowell dead ends.)

ASH is Atheists, Skeptics and Humanists of First Unitarian Universalists of Columbus Ohio TBD Snacks are usually available, and you are welcome to bringing something to share!