Casual Meetups London

Great Conversations with Friends at the Pub

We love a good chat. Come and join us at Table 45

Casual Badminton near Waterloo/Southwark/London Bridge 🏸

**Join our WhatsApp group and sign up at [www.thesocialsport.com](www.thesocialsport.com)!** Our weekly casual badminton session at Borough Academy, Southwark. We play every Tuesday from 6 to 7 pm. **What is Social Sport?** Social Sport was set up to face two main challenges in cities like London: 1. Limited opportunities for those moving here to meet new people and socialise in a genuine, healthy way. 2. Lack of casual sports clubs for young professionals. We started with our New Sport Every Week session, voted for by people in our community. Since then, we have played over 21 different sports. Our weekly casual sessions allow us to create communities around certain sports. **Please note this session is popular and has a set number of places. If you do not secure your place before attending and the event is full, you may not be able to play.**

Cuppa/drinks at The Savoy.

Join me for a cuppa/drinks and nibbles at The Savoy. Please do not sign up and forget about this. I will ask for reconfirmation a week before otherwise I will give your place to someone else in the waiting list.

Casual Badminton - Wednesdays in Southwark 🏸

**Join our WhatsApp group and sign up at [www.thesocialsport.com](www.thesocialsport.com)!** Our weekly casual badminton session at Borough Academy, Southwark. We play every Wednesday from 6 to 7 pm. \*Sometimes the venue may vary if Borough Academy have an event on. **What is Social Sport?** Social Sport was set up to face two main challenges in cities like London: 1. Limited opportunities for those moving here to meet new people and socialise in a genuine, healthy way. 2. Lack of casual sports clubs for young professionals. We started with our New Sport Every Week session, voted for by people in our community. Since then, we have played over 21 different sports. Our weekly casual sessions allow us to create communities around certain sports. **Please note this session is popular and has a set number of places. If you do not secure your place before attending and the event is full, you may not be able to play.**

A Charlotte Street treat.

Join for a delicious Eastern Mediterranean lunch at Gallio, ([https://www.gallio.uk/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=google_business_profile&utm_term=Charlotte-Street](https://www.gallio.uk/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=google_business_profile&utm_term=Charlotte-Street)) Charlotte Street followed by a cuppa/drinks in the beautiful Charlotte hotel. As these are booked for 8 people only, please do not sign up and forget about it. Please remove yourself if you can no longer go.

Casual Tennis 🎾

Join our WhatsApp group and sign up at [www.thesocialsport.com](www.thesocialsport.com)! Our weekly casual tennis session in Ruskin Park. We play every Sunday afternoon (times may vary slightly week on week). **What is Social Sport?** Social Sport was set up to face two main challenges in cities like London: 1. Limited opportunities for those moving here to meet new people and socialise in a genuine, healthy way. 2. Lack of casual sports clubs for young professionals. We started with our New Sport Every Week session, voted for by people in our community. Since then, we have played over 21 different sports. Our weekly casual sessions allow us to create communities around certain sports. **Please note this session is popular and has a set number of places. If you do not secure your place before attending and the event is full, you may not be able to play.**

🧠 SUNDAY SOCIAL PUB QUIZ | Meet new people. Guess the rest.

**Sunday Social Pub Quiz,** where you can meet new people, one questionable answer at a time. Sunday doesn't have to mean sitting at home thinking about Monday. Come down to Big Belly for our Sunday Social Pub Quiz, where we'll put you into teams, introduce you to new people and see how far a combination of guesswork, bad general knowledge and build confidence can get you. **Coming solo? Perfect.** We’ll help find you a team. Coming with friends? We’ll get you involved too. Expect **ridiculous quiz rounds, comedy, challenges, prizes, terrible teamwork and plenty of opportunities to confidently shout the wrong answer.** 🏆 **UP FOR GRABS:** * £100 Bar Tab * Plastic Medals *(worthless financially, priceless emotionally)* * Ultimate Sunday pub quiz glory 🎟️ **£3pp quiz entry**, payable on the day. This goes towards the prizes up for grabs. **SCHEDULE** **1:00PM – ARRIVAL & MINGLING 🍻** Grab a drink, meet some new people and find your teammates. **2:00PM – QUIZ KICK-OFF 🧠** The chaos begins. General knowledge may or may not help you. **4:00PM – RESULTS & PRIZES 🏆** Winners crowned. Everyone else immediately claims they “weren’t taking it seriously anyway.” **FROM 4:00PM – SUNDAY SOCIAL** The quiz might be over, but you don’t have to disappear. Stick around for drinks, games and a chance to actually get to know the people you’ve just spent two hours arguing over answers with. **GOOD TO KNOW** * **Coming solo is encouraged** —we’ll help put you into a team * No quiz knowledge required * No existing team required * Expect laughs, not perfection * Stick around afterwards for the **Sunday Social** **Come for the quiz. Leave with new mates. Or at least a very strong opinion about who ruined the final round.** **JOIN OUR WHATSAPP COMMUNITY HERE:** [https://chat.whatsapp.com/HaIzA7JyKOK68VYrdmIFr8](https://chat.whatsapp.com/HaIzA7JyKOK68VYrdmIFr8) **Need help finding us?** Our entrance can be found at what3words: https://w3w.co/putty.camera.roof Just head to the main entrance (the food hall side), and you’ll find our friendly hosts waiting for you behind the front desk!

@ Rules [British cuisine]

@ Carmelinas [Italian cuisine] 🎫

👻Real Mummies 🎃 Sprituality 🧙 The Paranormal & Unexplained👽

Time is precious. Here we cherish non-boring big picture chats and interactions that are fully engaging, soulfully enriching, inspiring, and leave you a bit wiser than when you arrived. In that spirit (mind the pun!), today’s fully hosted laid back social coffee chat will offer a perfect haven for the inquisitive and curious **independent big picture thinkers** drawn to the mysteries of life, the universe and unknown. First part of the event we will view the mummies and dead people followed by real life talk about spritual/paranormal topics including the afterlife. An adrenaline caffeine infused fun afternoon of thought-provoking causal chats exploring spirituality/consciousness and related interconnected topics spanning **philosophy,** **neuroscience**, **parapsychology,** **paranormal.** **cosmology** and **noetic sciences** over a mug of sweet coffee (or amazin value Chardonnay!) Chaired by me - a former empirical evidence driven Reuters journalist & published researcher exploring spirituality topics in pursuant of the "truth" since a teenager, there'll be no strict structure - a relaxed friendly space to openly chat, exchange ideas & experiences without judgement, but I'll preside to promote inclusivity and zone in on specifics to avoid people digressing onto unrelated tangents to ensure like all of our events - particpants derive maximum utlity and engagement from attending. We’ll touch on everything from the limits of scientific understanding to exploring the unexplained using practical fun exploratory divination practices drawing on elements of **psychology, metaphysics, epistemology** and **statistical** **probability** of rare events as we do so. Whether you're a practicing "spiritualist", a curious skeptic, or just someone who loves deep conversation on **life’s big questions**, you’ll hopefully walk away more enlightened with some practical tips you can start applying and inspired to explore more! As well as illuminating chats to guide self-reflection, obviously no sprituality event woul be complete without practical tools so there'll be FREE Tarot & I-Ching readings, demonstrations of meditation method to activate super powerful gamma brain waves, and pyschic tests for a bit of fun, laughter & intrigue! **Sample of conversational threads** might include: Are we mere organisms pursuing biological survival or does consciousness exist beyond neurons firing in our brains? What explains peoples' paranormal experiences? What would reality look like If our brains were limitless? Declassified CIA files show that as as well as mind control experiments, the US govt employed mediums and remote viewers. If all mumbo jumbo then why? Is Nirvana just a fantasy of deluded people? Does everything happen for a reason? To clarify - we define spirituality here as an exploration of consciousness, Donald Rumsfeld's unknown unknowns and undiscovered aspects of reality, NOT religion. After all, as my philosophy professor once rightly postulated to me: "If God created Adam, who created God Lucas?" Yep - that inconvenient flaw **debunks every fairytale religion** out there including the oldest religion of them all - paganism - so why is witchcraft still practised outside of **Hogwarts** today? I may also share the latest peer reviewed empirical evidence surrounding **paranormal** and **consciousness** phenomena. **=== POTENTIAL CONVERSATION STARTERS ===** 1. Does consciousness survive death or is Cambridge Astrophysics Professor Brian Cox right in asserting if **ghosts** existed then particle accelerators at CERN would have already detected ghost molecules making Ouija boards kids play? Are Poltergiests 100% hoax? Brain scans indicate thalamocortical circuits in our brain (pathways in the parietal cortex & central lateral thalamus) drive **consciousness -** so how can spirit/mind live on after **brain death**? 2. Is **synchronicity/coincidence** simply randomness disguised in the eye of the beholder or can what Einstein called “spooky action at a distance" (quantum entanglement) explain it? Molecular Biologists have shown that just like plants - our cells give off resonant frequencies between 10 & 180 kilohertz - could this be a source of non-verbal communication like telepathy? 3. Given **neuroscience**'s infancy with much yet undiscovered - could mediation help access functions outside of our BAU alpha & beta brain wave states? Can **Kundalini yoga** boost **DMT** (dimethyltryptamine) naturally vs drugs like ayahuasca, mushrooms, LSDand if so by what mechanism? Do the artifically created neural signatures using magnetic stimulation observed during mystical experiences debunk them? Is the Maharishi Effect real? 4. Are clairvoyants and mediums just good people readers or are they really able to access time and space in non-linear ways? Is Tyler Henry the real deal or just faking it? Was **Abraham Lincolm** precognizant when he dreamt his own fatal assignation? 5. The laws of statistical probability, Drake Equation & common sense tells us there is other non-microbial life out there. So what explains the Fermi Paradox? Was that 1976 WOW signal aliens? How about the recent strange bahaviour of Boyajian's star or Oumuamua/Atlas interstella object that has just entered our solar system? 6. Could metaverse explain deja vu & reincarnation vs theories from the **psychology** literature (Mandela Effect?) or do we just live in a **simulation** as **Elon Musk** proposes? 7. **Stephen Hawking** once said: "The past, like the future, is indefinite and exists only as a spectrum of possibilities" If matter only manifests when observed as the double slit experiments shows, does that mean everything is consciousness? Does the discovery of *quantum superposition /* disappearing neutrons imply **parallel universes**? 8. Do NDEs suggest something beyond physicality? Were Steve Jobs final words "Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow" before he died (New York Times) visions of an afterlife or just neurochemical changes / drugs playing tricks? 9. Can photons omitted by our bodies explain auras that people see? 10. Given the irrefutable scientific evidence for evolution at both micro and macro scale, denying it is basically delusional as thinking the earth is flat. But could panspermia explain the origin of life 11. Could limits in our understanding of quantum physics, space and time explain paranormal experiences? 12. What existed before the **big bang** \- how do you get something from "nothing"? I believe our reality is the product of a black hole\. What you reckon? ***So how do we get to the "truth"?*** Both in my journalism days and applying advanced empirical research techniques (while recognising that statistical causality and significance don't make something true) in my client consulting work - it becomes clear the truth is often elusive. No matter how much we triangulate evidence - we can only provide part answers. "All models are wrong, but some are useful" George Box What we think we know and reality diverge leading to that great **paradox of knowledge.** And as the boundary between knowns and unknown converge, we end up with cognitive dissonance and more questions. In that spirit - every credible philosopher & scientist acknowledges - we'll never get to the complete truth but could **experimental methods** get us closer to it? A balanced approach guided by Immanuel Kant's pragmatism and Aristotle's deductive reasoning seems the most rationale framework here but are there any other methodologies? How about the **"spirituality"** toolkit? **=== RENDEZVOUS POINT ===** We will meet in the outside back garden of this lovely posh Islington pub. 10 mins walk from Highbury & Islington station. Ask for me by name or I will post in commrents exactly what table we are at. I'll be wearing a **Starwars identifier** and will share mobile hotline just before event start and table number/location. Lucas - The Unenlightened Desperately Seeking Answers

TEiP HALLOWEEN PARTY • PORTOBELLO | Thought Experiments in Public

A different kind of "party".... In the UK, Halloween is often associated with tacky excess, frightening bloodstained costumes, and drunken revelry. I grew up with a different kind of Halloween because I went to an American school. The general vibe was **creativity, comedy, and an excuse for a whole community celebration.** We had a costume parade that everyone, even the teachers, participated in. The costumes were mostly home made, tending towards silliness rather than horror. For example, one year a group of students made enormous Pac-Man costumes out of cardboard and used the school corridors to enact a life-sized game of Pac-Man. It was a fun way to bring everyone together and brighten up rapidly darkening October. So I'd like to bring a similar creative, friendly spirit to this special episode of TEiP. As ever, **the aim** of the evening will be to have open-minded, thought-provoking conversations with fellow humans, so we'll use the tried and tested TEiP format for the majority of the night (see below for details). **The theme will be "DARKNESS", which we will explore by way of three original thought experiments** (tiny stories that spark big questions) posted in the comments on the day of the event. There may be a few twists, and there will definitely be some **(optional) games and Halloween-y activities afterwards**. **Dressing up is encouraged, though entirely optional.** We will have a **friendly costume competition** with points awarded for: * originality * homemade components * comedy So think less generic blood-drenched plastic and more repurposed packaging. (I will share some inspo in a [Substack post](https://bonnyastor.substack.com/) in the next week or two) \-\-\- **NB**: It is likely that TEiP will move off Meetup at some point in the future. Please join the mailing list if you'd like to stay in the loop (comms will be minimal and you can unsubscribe at anytime): **[MAILING LIST](https://thoughtexperiments.kit.com/36b38902fa)** \-\-\- **How we'll do it** (timings approximate)**:** * **6:30** \- Arrive at the pub\, find us in the dining room * Organise ourselves into small groups (3-5ish people per group) * Have a look at the thought experiments (posted in the comments on the day of the event) * **6:45** \- First rotation begins \- Talk about the first thought experiment\. Feel free to veer off topic and pursue tangents\. * **7:10** \- Optional shuffle: swap groups\, move on to the second thought experiment\. * **7:35** \- Optional shuffle: swap groups\, move on to the third thought experiment\. * **8:00** \- Votes \- optional moment to express your views on some of the questions of the evening\. * **8:05** \- Closing remarks\. * **PARTY** \- we will have a few games and activities relevant to a fun and lighthearted Halloween\. Everything is optional\, you are very welcome to just continue your conversations\. \(Many of us stay until the pub closes\!\) **Notes on the general atmosphere:** * The vibe is to let conversation flow rather than stick strictly to one topic. * While we'd like to talk about 'meaningful things', we also see the value in lighter topics, so don't worry about not being 'deep' enough! * Feel free to suggest ideas for future episodes of Thought Experiments in Public\*, both in terms of structure and topics to discuss. \*formerly just pubs, now meeting in lots of places **Where we'll meet:** This group will be at the Earl of Lonsdale Pub on Portobello. The nearest Tube station is Notting Hill Gate. We will have the large private dining room to ourselves :-) **Who should come:** Everyone! We believe that the more perspectives, the richer the conversation. This group is not about being experts in Philosophy, it is about *doing* philosophy. That is, bringing our various life experiences and lenses on the world to group discussions about the human experience, the nature of reality... etc. etc.... You can get a sense of what the events and community are like **[here](https://www.instagram.com/thoughtexperimentsinpublic)**. Looking forward to meeting & talking with you soon! Bonny Relevant links: **[SUBSTACK](https://experimentsingroupwisdom.substack.com/)** \- read more about this community and other related stuff **[MAILING LIST](https://thoughtexperiments.kit.com/36b38902fa)** \- stay in the loop **[INSTAGRAM](https://www.instagram.com/thoughtexperimentsinpublic)** \- see what our events look like **[WHATSAPP GROUP](https://chat.whatsapp.com/D13LHw5BV3rEtUtO3ORklC)** \- very occasional announcements #everyonewelcome #newideas #newpeople #inclusivity #openmindedness #greatconversations #Halloween

Dinner at Steakout | Niyyah Nights 🍽️