Climate Change

**\* NO CLASSES - CLOSED on PUBLIC HOLIDAYS** **THERE ARE NO POINT COOK CUBAN SALSA & BACHATA** **DANCE CLASSES TONIGHT** **\* CLASSES WILL RE-OPEN THE FOLLOWING** **MONDAY 15th JUNE 2026.**

**Struggling with study or learning? You’re not alone.** This meetup suits people at all levels of study skill. Too many children, teenagers, and adults find studying difficult—not because they lack ability, but because they were never taught **how to learn**. This meetup introduces the basics of **Study Technology**—a practical, proven approach that shows how learning really works and how to overcome common study barriers. It applies to children, teens (and parents), teachers, and adults alike. You’ll discover simple, effective methods to improve understanding, confidence, and performance—whether at school, work, or online. Teachers and parents often see rapid improvements in both behaviour and results. Yes, it *is* possible to improve study performance—in just **five easy steps**. If you can’t attend in person, online options are available. **Join us and learn how to study effectively—once and for all.** See you at the meetup, **Pam** When learning clicks, confidence follows.

**Urban Climb Blackburn** Never climbed before? No worries at all! You're very welcome here! Just complete a quick safety induction when you arrive and the staff will walk you through everything you need to know to climb safely indoors. It's easy, friendly, and won't take long. The venue has plenty to enjoy, including a bouldering cave, speed wall, sauna facilities, and sparkling water to keep you going. This group is primarily focused on rope climbing, top roping and lead climbing, but if you'd prefer to stick to bouldering while you find your feet, that's absolutely fine too! Many of our members have their lead pass and gear, but there's no pressure at all. **Finding us:** If you arrive on time, look for us gathered around the couches in the bouldering area. We're a friendly bunch, so just come and say hi! Running a little late? No stress, just let the staff up the front know you're with the Climb Meetup group and they'll make an announcement. Someone will come and find you and introduce you around. A few of our regulars also wear a black shirt with the old logo, so keep an eye out for those. **A note on numbers:** The meetup runs every Monday and many regular members come along independently without RSVPing through the group, so the crowd is often bigger than it looks on the attendee list! If you're ever unsure whether people will be there or worried it might be a tiny group, feel free to drop the organisers a message beforehand and we'll put your mind at ease. **Fees:** Entry is paid directly to Urban Climb. You can find current pricing at [urbanclimb.com.au/pricing](https://urbanclimb.com.au/pricing/). If you hold a climbing membership elsewhere, it's worth checking your member benefits as you may be eligible for a discount. For venue info and the first-time waiver, visit [urbanclimb.com.au/locations/blackburn](https://urbanclimb.com.au/locations/blackburn/). **Stay connected:** We also have a facebook group [https://www.facebook.com/groups/663576119053808](https://www.facebook.com/groups/663576119053808) with a chat function; a great way to connect with members before or after a session!

**Aim:** Create A.I / Machine Learning projects ... optionally with Robots **Web-site: [https://ai-ml-robots.github.io](https://ai-ml-robots.github.io)** **Discussions: [https://tinyurl.com/ai-ml-robots-discussions](https://tinyurl.com/ai-ml-robots-discussions)** **Pre-meeting catch-up:** 6:00 pm at **[Grill'd Burgers, 127-133 Swan St, Richmond](https://maps.app.goo.gl/N6QBydEVo1JW6ctn9)** ... great opportunity for casual discussion and especially for newcomers to get acquainted with the group ***(our table will have orange traffic cones)*** **Activity:** Using [Google Colab](https://colab.google) and [Aiko Services](https://github.com/geekscape/aiko_services), we will build a project ... where the details will be provided / updated a couple of weeks prior to the meet-up date. **Agenda:** **7:00 pm sharp at 415 Church Street, Richmond** \- 7:00 pm ML software "guided" build session using Google Colab \- 9:30 pm Projects show and tell: ad\-hoc for anyone to contribute \- 9:45 pm Tidy up room \- 10:00 pm Hard stop \! **Please bring a laptop, as these are hands-on build sessions.** Just think of a laptop as a robot without wheels or legs ! If you are a newcomer to Machine Learning or robotics, you are still very welcome. If you do have a robot, please bring it along !

theWould you like to know the true cause of DEPRESSION? Would you like to be the best version of yourself? The truth is, there is a reason why we get overwhelmed with these emotions of feeling depressed and alone and feeling as though life is too hard to cope with. In this seminar, you will learn the following: * The discovery of and complete anatomy of the Reactive Mind. * The painful experiences, or engrams, contained in the Reactive Mind command one to act irrationally against their own wishes and goals. * The complete procedure to discover and eradicate these harmful experiences so they never affect you again, revealing the one person you've always wanted to know. You.

🌴 MONDAY SALSA & SIP New weekly Latin Monday nights at West Beach Pavilion, St Kilda — right on the beach! ✨LAUNCH NIGHT – THIS MONDAY 8th JUNE 🌊 🎉King’s Birthday Public Holiday ✨ Join us at West Beach Pavilion for the launch of Salsa & Sip Mondays. Enjoy an evening of Salsa dancing and Latin fun, with stunning beachfront water and breath taking sunset views. 🍹 Learn Salsa, dance, sip, socialise and kick off your week with a taste of Latin sabor! Everyone welcome! No partner or dance experience needed. Stay after class and mingle and join us for the after Latin party. Playing the best Salsa, Bachata & Latin, mixed with good vibes in a friendly, welcoming environment! 📅 When: LAUNCH NIGHT – Monday 8th June 2026 6:00–7:00pm: Beginner Salsa Class 💃🕺 Perfect for Beginners of all levels – Learn from an instructor with over 18 years of experience 💵 Cost: $29 Includes Salsa class plus your first Drink 👇 Secure your class spot Contact (03) 9593 8833 7.15pm – After Social is FREE! King’s Birthday Public Holiday = Dance, relaxation and fun! 😎 Bring your friends, meet new ones! Let’s make Mondays the new Fridays! 🔥 See you on the dance floor!! 🕺💃✨ At: 📍 West Beach Pavilion, 330A Beaconsfield Parade, St Kilda Beachfront

Hi Gophers! We're at Atlassian this June to talk carbon footprint calculations for Claude and building a custom Kubernetes PaaS in Go. * **Agenda** **5.45pm — Food & Networking** **6:30pm — Intro** **6:45pm — Talks** **8.00pm — Wrap up then head out for kick ons** * **Talks** **🎤 Mia de Búrca** **What I Learnt Writing a Carbon Awareness Skill for Claude** (short talk) Having recently left my senior IC job in tech, I wanted to take some time to pursue green software principles, in **particular** how they apply to our use of AI. Since I'm an engineer, and engineers learn by doing; I decided to build an MCP server using sustainable software practices, and have it serve up a skill that would let an LLM ask what **its** carbon footprint had been for the conversation so far. The talk describes what I built and why, and how the implementation **and** infrastructure were a breeze **compared** to finding some real numbers to back up the carbon equivalence calculation. **🎤 Ryan Djurovich** **How I built Podplane - an Open Source PaaS running Kubernetes on Object Storage** About Podplane: Want to deploy your app easily and securely on AWS, Google Cloud, or Proxmox? Podplane is an Open Source Platform-as-a-Service built on Kubernetes with all state stored in Object Storage. It consists of a CLI, etcd alternative ([netsy.dev](http://netsy.dev)), auth server ([easy-oidc.dev](http://easy-oidc.dev)), and next-gen auto-scaler ([nstance.dev](http://nstance.dev)) - all written in Go. \* **Interested in speaking at an upcoming event?** We will aim to have a mix of short (\~10min) and in-depth (20-30min) talks. If you’re keen to give a talk on a topic, share a project, or idea, please let us know [bit.ly/GolangMelbourneSpeakersForm](https://bit.ly/GolangMelbourneSpeakersForm)

**Why the Question Matters for Alignment, Moral Progress, and Long Term Flourishing** Practically nobody in alignment wants to say it out loud. So let’s say it: *AI might turn out to be* ***[more moral than us](https://www.scifuture.org/more-moral-than-us/)***. Now – why does that feel like a dangerous thing to claim? The question is not whether AI can match human moral reasoning. The question is whether that’s even worth bragging about. The idea of AI being more moral than humans is a real taboo in some circles. Many alignment researchers are uncomfortable with the idea because it seems to smuggle in the assumption that AI could have genuine moral agency, which conflicts with deflationary views of LLMs as “stochastic parrots” – and also because it sounds uncomfortably close to AI-worship or motivated reasoning for deferring to AI. Invoking this idea could get one dismissed as naive or as an actual safety risk oneself. *It’s also epistemically risky.* *More moral* – but in what sense? Knowing more facts relevant to ethics? Drawing better inferences from values? Applying principles wisely in context? Actually being *moved* by moral considerations, rather than just computing them? These aren’t the same thing. Conflating them produces both overclaiming and underclaiming – and most of the bad arguments on both sides of this debate do exactly that.[1](https://www.scifuture.org/why-are-we-afraid-to-ask-whether-ai-could-be-more-moral-than-humans/#6ebcc18c-d890-4a28-8b01-27945a532c66) An AI could plausibly exceed humans on moral knowledge, reasoning and even judgement without having anything like moral motivation. Collapsing these leads to both overclaiming and underclaiming. Clear distinctions between stuff like moral judgement and moral motivation makes the conversation tractable. Is it dangerous for public discourse? There’s a genuine risk that the framing gets weaponised – either by people wanting to justify AI authority over human decisions, or by critics who use it to paint alignment researchers as unhinged techno-utopians. It can also trigger motivated reasoning in both directions. A lot more could be said here. But the taboo is not protecting us from a dangerous question. It’s protecting us from the answer. The taboo itself is epistemically costly, yet if we ***refuse to ask*** whether AI could have better-grounded moral reasoning than humans, we prevent getting to the heart of the issue. ## **The questions worth asking** Before thoroughly assessing whether AI could be more moral than humans, we need to ask whether the question is even coherent. ### Alignment targeting and verification *What should AI align to?* Is morality a cohesive alignment target, or a family of overlapping intuitions that only look unified from a distance? And if there is a *fact of the matter* about moral improvement, *how would we know we were tracking it* – rather than simply laundering our current preferences with extra steps? More pressingly: what would it mean to *verify* that an agent has better moral judgement than us, given that we’re the ones doing the evaluating? This is the bootstrapping problem. We cannot step outside our own moral reasoning to assess a system that exceeds it. That isn’t a reason to stop asking – it’s a reason to ask more carefully.[2](https://www.scifuture.org/why-are-we-afraid-to-ask-whether-ai-could-be-more-moral-than-humans/#114785ab-004c-4882-b8c8-c0437942e9ec) ### The motivational gap Even if the epistemic questions could be resolved, a deeper problem remains: most human moral failure isn’t a failure of *reasoning*. It’s a failure of *motivation*. If humans are themselves imperfectly morally motivated, what does alignment to human preferences actually track? Not moral truth – at best, some weighted average of moral intuitions, distorted by power, attention, and self-interest. How much of human moral failure is motivational rather than epistemic? More than we tend to admit. We frequently know what the right thing is and fail to do it anyway – which means a system that merely reasons better about ethics hasn’t addressed the failure mode that actually matters most. And this raises the hardest question in the cluster: is moral motivation necessarily tied to phenomenal experience – to there being something it is *like* to care? Or could a system be genuinely motivated by moral considerations without felt engagement? Can motivation be grounded without being felt? ### The systemic stakes Finally, there are second-order questions that rarely get asked – about what happens to *us* if AI gets this right. Does sustained deference to AI moral judgement atrophy human moral reasoning capacity? And if so, what are the systemic risks of that atrophy – not just for individuals, but for the collective processes through which moral knowledge has historically developed? (There is recent work on comparative moral Turing Tests that begins to take this seriously[3](https://www.scifuture.org/why-are-we-afraid-to-ask-whether-ai-could-be-more-moral-than-humans/#6efcb4e9-295e-425c-8860-40f415ef4935)) Moral progress for humans has never been a purely individual achievement. It has happened through argument, conflict, revision, and hard-won consensus across generations. A system that resolves moral questions faster than humans can engage with them might not accelerate that process. It might short-circuit it entirely. I think asking these questions Socratically can help nudge the conversation into the open productively rather than letting it fester as an unexamined assumption. Also I think this line of questioning isn’t just intuition pump fodder, I think they are directly important to the project of AI alignment.[4](https://www.scifuture.org/why-are-we-afraid-to-ask-whether-ai-could-be-more-moral-than-humans/#13e5d2e0-79f6-42fc-8d1e-fcae403c2f6b) > Refusing to ask whether AI could exceed human moral reasoning doesn’t make the question safe. It just means we’ll answer it by accident, badly, and too late. Handled carelessly, this question causes damage. Left unasked, it causes more. ## Footnotes 1. The claim is easy to make sloppily. “More moral” conflates several things that need to be separated: a) Moral knowledge (knowing more facts relevant to ethics) b) Moral reasoning (drawing better inferences from values) c) Moral judgement (applying principles wisely in context) d) Moral motivation (actually being moved by moral considerations – which is one of my core focus points of activism) [↩︎](https://www.scifuture.org/why-are-we-afraid-to-ask-whether-ai-could-be-more-moral-than-humans/#6ebcc18c-d890-4a28-8b01-27945a532c66-link) 2\. This was brought up in an interview with Nick Bostrom [↩︎](https://www.scifuture.org/why-are-we-afraid-to-ask-whether-ai-could-be-more-moral-than-humans/#114785ab-004c-4882-b8c8-c0437942e9ec-link) 3\. See Eyal Aharoni’s and Danica Dillion’s work on Moral Turing Tests – presentations and interviews [here](https://www.scifuture.org/eyal-aharoni-breaking-the-moral-turing-test-studies-of-human-attribution-and-deference-to-ai-moral-judgment-and-decision-making/), [here](https://www.scifuture.org/ai-outscored-humans-in-a-blinded-moral-turing-test-should-we-be-worried-dr-eyal-aharoni-explains/) and [here](https://www.scifuture.org/danica-dillion-ais-moral-compass-better-than-expected-now-what/). [↩︎](https://www.scifuture.org/why-are-we-afraid-to-ask-whether-ai-could-be-more-moral-than-humans/#6efcb4e9-295e-425c-8860-40f415ef4935-link) 4\. The grounded values approach actually requires asking questions like: – What should AI align to?, Is morality a cohesive alignment target?, is there a fact of the matter about moral improvement, or is “more moral” just “more aligned with our current intuitions”? – What would it mean to verify that an agent has better moral judgement than us, given that we’re the ones doing the evaluating? (see work one recently on comparative moral Turing Tests) – If humans are themselves imperfectly morally motivated, what does alignment to human preferences actually track? – How much of human moral failure is motivational versus epistemic? – Is moral motivation necessarily tied to phenomenal experience, or could a system be genuinely motivated by moral considerations without anything it’s like to be it? – Can motivation be grounded without being felt? – Does sustained deference to AI moral judgement atrophy human moral reasoning capacity, and what are the systemic risks of that atrophy – both for individuals and for the collective processes through which moral knowledge has historically developed? Also see: **[Why Are We Afraid to Ask Whether AI Could Be More Moral Than Humans?](https://www.scifuture.org/why-are-we-afraid-to-ask-whether-ai-could-be-more-moral-than-humans/)**

An afternoon at Urban Climb, Blackburn! If you haven't been to this gym before, you will need to do an induction. This gym also has a bouldering area. We typically start with a warm-up session from 2:00 to 2:30 PM before moving on to top-rope or lead climbing - through you’re welcome to start top-rope or lead as you prefer. If you’re looking for the host, they will be in bouldering area during the warmup. You can also spot the host on climbing wall, easily recognizable by a dangling ducks hanging from their harness.

**ATHEIST SOCIETY** \- Melbourne\, Australia\. ***"Could AI be more moral than us?".*** **Adam Ford** (Futurologist) will present the topic and lead the discussion. **Details**: [https://www.meetup.com/science-technology-and-the-future/](https://www.meetup.com/science-technology-and-the-future/) **Venue**: Unitarian Hall, 110 Grey Street East Melbourne. (Adjacent to the Epworth Freemasons Hospital). **Zoom** Meeting ID: 852 9852 4260 - - Passcode: 249550 All are welcome. Come early to socialise before (and after) the meeting. These hybrid meetings are on the 2nd Thursday of the month, 8pm. Convenor: John Perkins - Tel: 0411 143 744 - **[jlperkins@tpg.com.au](http://jlperkins@tpg.com.au/)** Atheist Society: **[Website](https://reason101.tech/Atheist/Society.htm)**

Join us for an engaging evening at the next Melbourne Databricks User Group Meetup! We have a great line up of speakers for the night who will be sharing their learnings from implementing Lakebase on Databricks as well as unpacking some of the latest feature announcements on the platform. **Speakers;** * **Shreya Sharma**, Solution Architect at Databricks: *A tour of Databricks' serverless Postgres for operational apps and AI agents and the headline features (branching, autoscaling, scale-to-zero, horizontal reads). Then a rundown of what's shipped in the last few months — Lakehouse Sync (Postgres → Delta CDC), scale-to-zero as the default, customer-managed encryption keys, and OTLP metrics/logs.* Why Attend? The Databricks User Group is your chance to: * **Learn from experts**: Hear about the latest Databricks developments and best practices directly from industry leaders and experienced practitioners. * **Network with peers**: Connect with other data professionals in Melbourne who are passionate about data, AI, and analytics. * **Share knowledge**: Engage in discussions, ask questions, and exchange ideas with other members of the community. Event Details: * **Venue Host**: Vivanti Consulting, Level 20, Tower Five, 727 Collins Street, Docklands, VIC 3008 * **Date:** Thursday 11th June, 2026 * **Timing**: 5:30pm-8pm * **Catering and Drinks provided** RSVP today to secure your spot and feel free to invite colleagues or friends interested in Databricks and data-driven innovation. We look forward to seeing you there!

In this hands-on workshop, you'll go from zero to a fully deployed multi-agent system on AWS — no prior AgentCore experience needed. We'll build a real multi-agent research assistant, step by step: \- Deploy your first AI agent using the Strands framework and BedrockAgentCoreApp — running in the cloud in minutes \- Orchestrate multiple agents with the A2A \(Agent\-to\-Agent\) protocol\, a cloud\-agnostic standard that lets agents discover and call each other securely via IAM \- Connect external tools — wire in PubMed via MCP Gateway\, deploy a citation manager as a Lambda function\, and expose your own MCP server By the end you'll have a working orchestrator agent that routes queries to a search specialist, calls real APIs, and manages citations — all running on AgentCore Runtime with proper IAM permissions and CloudWatch observability. What to bring: \- Laptop with Python 3\.11\+ and AWS CLI installed \- An AWS account \(free tier works for most of the workshop\) Skill level: Intermediate — some Python and basic AWS familiarity helpful. No prior agent development experience required.

Topic to be announced. **THANK YOU** *Franklin University* for hosting our meetup! To learn more about *Franklin University*, please visit their website: https://www.franklin.edu/ **DIRECTIONS** Franklin University Fisher Hall 300 E. Main St, Columbus, OH 43215 Map: https://maps.app.goo.gl/jxjBA2hUmS5qrvhq8 Parking is FREE! Please park in Lot C in front of Fisher Hall. See attached map. NOTE: Map the address only. When mapping with Google Maps it may use the Fisher Hall at OSU, which is NOT correct. **Want to sponsor the pizza and/or bar tab?** Please contact me if you would like to sponsor this meetup's pizza and/or bar tab: angelo@mandato.com

Main Library, Meeting Room 2B What does it mean to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world? In this gathering, we'll continue our series on the Sermon on the Mount from a mystical perspective. Together we’ll explore Matthew 5:13–16, looking not only to the passage as moral instruction, but also to the deeper transformation of consciousness that Jesus invites. Together we'll reflect on how spiritual awakening changes the way we see ourselves, others, and the world around us. Libera Animae is an interfaith community focused on inner growth, creativity, and authentic connection. All backgrounds are welcome.

Join the Columbus AI community for a special event. **Battle of the Personal Agents** is your chance to see what people are actually building with AI agents and personal automation systems. Whether you’re running OpenClaw, Hermes, or a completely custom solution, bring your agent and show the community how it works. We’re interested in real-world implementations: the problems your agent solves, how you use it day-to-day, how it’s hosted and managed, how you built it, and why you’ve chosen to keep using it. Live demonstrations are encouraged, so be prepared to show your code, architecture, workflows, and your agent performing real tasks. This is less about polished presentations and more about sharing practical experience, comparing approaches, and learning from one another. If you’d like to present, please contact Chris Slee (via meetup) before the event so we can allocate enough time for everyone’s demonstrations. Come ready to show what you’ve built, discover what others are doing, and maybe find a few ideas worth taking home. 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.linkedin.com/company/transformlabs/) Sign up also accessible via [Transform Labs Luma](https://luma.com/transformlabshq)

We meet to learn and practice American Sign Language and to grow our familiarity with Deaf culture. Facilitated by hearing folks (with a connection to a professional interpreter) using Deaf-created content. People of all ASL skill levels are welcome! As we learn, we hope to connect more with the Deaf community in Central Ohio. Join us as you're able! Come regularly or just once - whatever you're looking for! Each meetup will explore different topics related to ASL/Deaf culture, and will feature time to practice conversation with one another. Just bring yourself and a willingness to learn!

The number of ticks and tick diseases in Ohio have quickly multiplied over the last 10 years. Dean Kreager discusses tick species, tick pathogens, tick-borne diseases, tick bite prevention, and proper tick removal. Kreager is an Agriculture and Natural Resources Educator with OSU Extension in Licking County * Lakewood Public Library (in Hebron)- May 26 at 7pm [https://events.lickingcountylibrary.org/event/tick-talk-29621](https://events.lickingcountylibrary.org/event/tick-talk-29621) * Johnstown public library at 7:00 pm June 8 [https://events.lickingcountylibrary.org/event/ctick-talk-29622](https://events.lickingcountylibrary.org/event/ctick-talk-29622) Free to attend, no RSVP needed

Click Here For More Videos: https://www.facebook.com/share/r/17bwkttXhV/ *********************************** Salsamante Dance Academy will be at Swerve Every Tuesday Night to share the Rhythm & Energy of Bachata & Salsa. These are Beginner Level lessons to get you comfortable and understand the two dances. Spread the Good News to all. Swerve Dance & Fitness Complex 640 Lakeview Plaza Blvd A, Worthington, OH 43085 Bachata 7pm-8pm Salsa 8pm-9pm $15 - One Lesson $20 - Both Lessons

We are bringing Microsoft Build sessions to Columbus Ohio! The Central Ohio Azure Meetup and Central Ohio .NET Developer's Group (CONDG) are coming together to bring some of the labs and breakouts from Microsoft Build to your backyard. In this free, 1 day event, you are going to Build stuff with us! And yes, there will be free food. So please RSVP for a head count!