Science & Technology

meet at Tysons Corner Mall Upper Level Food Court

The Glen Echo Folk Dancers will be meeting in-person every Wednesday evening at Glen Echo Park (7300 MacArthur Blvd). **7:30 pm: beginning/intermediate/advanced teaching** **8:30-10 pm: open request dancing** Admission: $10 We strongly urge everyone to be vaccinated and fully boostered, but do not require it. If you have not done so already, please send your email address to [dancingplanet@erols.com](mailto:dancingplanet@erols.com). Note: if you are having symptoms, or if you have been in close contact with someone who has tested positive, or may be positive, please attend the class via Zoom for the next week or 2. If you attend the class and then test positive, please let me know immediately, so I can inform those who attended the class (without identifying you). See the website for more information and for Zoom link: [dancingplanetproductions.com/folkdance](http://dancingplanetproductions.com/folkdance)

♠️😲♠️ W.O.W. Spades Night ♠️😲♠️ Washington on Wednesday (W.O.W.) - 3rd Wednesday Spades in DC 🌟Spades in DC! 😀 Hang out with a friendly and welcoming group. Meet new people and have a great time! ✅️ No partner needed! Find one onsite. All skill levels are welcome. 📌 Nando's Peri-Peri Chicken - Navy Yard 300 Tingey St SE #150, Washington, DC 20003 ❤️ **Posted in multiple groups. So, expect a nice crowd.** 🚌 One block from Navy Yard Metro Station 🚗 Street and Garage Parking available. 🍷 Alcoholic beverages are available! 🍗 Please support the business by purchasing food/drinks. 🌟 The fun starts at 5:30pm! RSVP today.

To secure your spot, purchase your ticket from the Eventbrite link ([https://www.eventbrite.com/e/language-exchange-happy-hour-and-friending-tickets-264488420987). RSVPing only on the Meetup Page doesn't allow you to attend the Event. ADVANCE TICKET PURCHASE IS REQUIRED TO RESERVE YOUR SEAT. ](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/language-exchange-happy-hour-and-friending-tickets-264488420987) ABOUT THE EVENT Venez apprécier l'ambiance chaleureuse d'une conversation en français autour d'un verre de vin et d'apéritifs à moitié prix. C'est ouvert à tous quelque soit votre niveau, que vous soyez débutant ou bien que le Français soit votre langue maternelle. It is irresistible, to enjoy French convo with half-priced appetizers, glass of wine and rail drinks. The Event is open to all levels of French language, from beginners to native fluency. METRO & PARKING INFO : The closest metro station is Woodley Park/Adams Morgan. Street Parking might be a challenge. But if you plan to drive, try your luck on Champlain Street. Otherwise, there is a parking garage around. We highly recommend a shared ride or taxi service.

It's time to draft my variant of the famed 100 Ornithopters cube, featured in [this video by Rhystic Studies](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pddm1gbBuWE). My list is slightly different, but keeps the same design philosophies, although there might not be exactly 100 Ornithopters. The cube has no creature tokens, no creature lands, and no ways to kill your opponent without the card having something to do with controlling or having Ornithopters. My cube list is below: [https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/100ishornithopters](https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/100ishornithopters) Unlike our previous Ornithopter drafts, this one will be at James's house in Pentagon City! **CONDUCT POLICY** We cultivate a safe, friendly atmosphere. Please keep other's feelings close to mind. Derogatory comments of any kind are unacceptable, as is behavior that may make others uncomfortable, such as rage-quitting. If the stresses of the game are getting to you, we encourage you to politely sit out for a while. Thank you! **TARDINESS POLICY** If you're more than 10 minutes late, I'll enlist my wife to draft for you until your arrival. If she's unavailable, we'll make random, blind picks for you.

**Trivia Night is Back!** New date and time for trivia this week, at Celtic House for Wednesday night trivia! The game starts later, at 8:00 pm. Please arrive by 7:30. Right now we are planning on just one team. If we get enough signed up on the waitlist, we may open it up to two teams. **Please remember, if you sign up, we are counting on you to be part of the team!** If you realize you can’t make it, please change your rsvp early enough so someone on the waitlist can take your place. Spots are limited, we can only have 7 players. This is a great chance to connect, have some fun, and show off our smarts. Come for the fun, stay for the friendly competition- let's show everyone how SSB does trivia!

[Profs and Pints DC](https://www.profsandpints.com/washingtondc) presents: **“Owl Wisdom,”** an introduction to the biology, habits, and conservation of various owl species in our region and beyond, with Steve Sheffield, professor of biology at Bowie State University, curator of mammals and birds for the Natural History Society of Maryland, and president of the Maryland Ornithological Society. [Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at [https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/dc-owl-wisdom](https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/dc-owl-wisdom) .] Who wants to learn about owls? If you are fascinated by these hunters of the night, you’ll love spending an evening with Steve Sheffield, a biologist who extensively studies owls and works to conserve them. He’ll start by covering the different types of owls in our region and elsewhere, and the ways in which their bodies and their sizes represent physical adaptations to their environment. He’ll especially focus on the owl species of the United States and Canada, describing their biology, ranges, preferred habitat and prey, behavior, and vocalizations. You’ll learn how and why field biologists study owls and how owl researchers from around the world assemble periodically to discuss their work. We’ll consider owls' value to ecosystems and, especially, humans and human-dominated landscapes where they serve as especially efficient killers of rodents and other crop-harming pests. Dr. Sheffield will talk about the many years he has spent researching owls, with much of his work focused on their exposure to environmental contaminants and how they’re affected. Being top predators, owls serve as sensitive bioindicators of contamination throughout the food chain. Much like canaries in coal mines, they function as an early warning system alerting us to potentially dangerous levels of toxicity. We don’t just study them for their own good, but ours as well. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.) Image: Burrowing owls in Florida (Photo by travelingwayoflife / Creative Commons).

I am finally scheduling the astronomy outing! Join us in attending the June "Exploring the Sky" event, a joint program between the National Capital Astronomers and the National Park Service. We will talk, eat snacks, look at items in the sky, and maybe play simple boardgames. This month, Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, and the Moon are all aligning near each other in the sky. We will probably see at least one planet, and if we are lucky we will even see these in a row. Come on time for the best chance to see this. The event may be canceled if the weather does not look accommodating. The location is the field by Picnic Grove #13 off of Glover Road, and can be reached by either public transportation plus walking or by coming by car as there is a parking lot, there. This link is the easiest way to find it: https://maps.app.goo.gl/BPrLLp8F4u2tjiTd7

Celebrate the start of summer with the Zoo's free, family‑friendly Science Solstice Sunday, part of the Smithsonian’s annual Solstice Weekend! Follow animal clues in an interactive scavenger hunt across the Zoo for a chance to win a prize, enjoy special animal demonstrations, and explore hands-on activity stations from Smithsonian scientists, researchers, and experts working around the world to protect wildlife and study nature, including: * Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, which works with tropical ecosystems and studies wildlife in Panama * Smithsonian STARS program, which connects rural classrooms to the cosmos through telescopes, educational programs, and more * Wildlife Health Sciences, which supports veterinary care and health * EEHV Lab, a worldwide resource of disease information, testing and research for the global elephant community * Department of Nutrition, which creates diets for the animals * Center for Population Ecology, which works to improve Zoo reproduction outcomes * Center for Conservation Genomics, which uses advanced genetic tools and DNA testing to manage endangered species * And more! YOU MUST GO TO THE ZOO SITE AND RESERVE A FREE TICKET TO ATTEND I have not been to the Zoo, I'll get there early so stay tuned in the messages for exact meeting spot.

• What we'll do On https://blackecon101.podbean.com/ Thursdays at 6 pm. discussing the economy....

Title: What Is Progress? Knowledge Aggregation, Living Textbooks, and the Automation of Scientific Discovery Date: June 20 2026 Noon - 14:00 EDT Summary: Our collective knowledge infrastructure — the textbooks, professional training resources, and literature syntheses that define what professionals across disciplines believe to be true — is quietly accruing a structural liability. Compounded confirmation bias, stacked citation-by-citation into the foundations of formal knowledge, means that breakthroughs can take decades to reach the classrooms, clinical workflows, and decision-making frameworks where they matter most. Meanwhile, the deepest friction is rarely acknowledged: before any field can build meaningful consensus on "why" or "how" a phenomenon occurs, it must first establish honest, consolidated agreement on "what" has actually been observed. That prior step is routinely skipped, assumed, or fragmented across siloed literatures that never cross-pollinate. This talk introduces a framework called "Knowledge Aggregation" — with two distinct but complementary ambitions. The first is descriptive transparency: algorithmically mapping what has been said, measured, and documented across a problem space, without imposing causal interpretation or narrative. The second traces the boundary between empirical observation and explanatory claim, building systems that can separate the "what" from the "why/how" — because consensus on mechanism cannot be meaningfully constructed until consensus on phenomenon is first established. Both ambitions are now within reach. By composing tools already at our disposal — large language models, classical NLP pipelines, public data repositories, and engineering-grade automation frameworks — it becomes possible to model knowledge itself, rather than merely imitate individual experts. One concrete expression of this is automating the writing of living textbooks: compressing the lag from bleeding-edge discovery, through replicated evidence, all the way to professional training resources. But the deeper aspiration reaches further — toward automating the discovery of scientific insights that have never previously been conceived, by systematically surfacing hypothesis combinations that no single siloed researcher would have had the cross-disciplinary vantage point to even ask. Drawing on ongoing systems biology and computational research — with ME/CFS research demoed as a use case for what siloed, fragmented knowledge infrastructure costs in practice — this talk maps the conceptual architecture, the real-world friction, and the data science toolkit for building it. Speaker: As a systems biologist at heart, Sam specializes his biomedical research on interactions and connections in biology - rather than just one domain of expertise. He wears many hats and collects skill sets across disciplines, with degree studies and industry experience acquired across Chemical Engineering (BSc), Bioinformatics (MSc), Systems and Synthetic Biology (M2), Biomedical Sciences (MSc), and beyond. Even more important to him than niches or fields of work, comes down to the synergistic approaches that allow us to move beyond reductionism. The notion that a question can only allow for one answer, is inherently reductionist. By resisting many norms in science and engineering which can get overly reductive, his current role as Principal Investigator of Research for DMV Petri Dish (501(c)(3) non-profit local to the DMV region) embraces computational frameworks that aide scale-up and automation - not only around the processes which already exist with established workflows, but also taking a keen interest in attempting and accomplishing ambitions which have never been perceived to be possible previously. Sam carries a passion for the synergy of computational biology - fused with wet lab validation. This way, one can build a beautiful knowledge base in the theoretical sense, and then test to see if said computational prediction might actually be able to stand in the real world with wet lab validation. Translational modeling starts to become possible once biological experiment design can be iteratively looped alongside computational model design, optimization, and analysis - empowering the design of a better wet lab experiment, followed by a better computational model, back and forth until science is done!

RSVP on Partiful: [Partiful](https://partiful.com/e/Fm3d7LNNhMshMW75NzVn?c=aeZd56dN). Join Network of South Asian Professionals at our monthly Third Thursday series. Come to connect over careers or interests or just make some friends. We ask guests to cover their own tab! See you soon!

To secure your spot, purchase your ticket from the Eventbrite link ([https://www.eventbrite.com/e/rooftop-champagne-and-sparkling-wines-tasting-soiree-tickets-1337302480719](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/rooftop-champagne-and-sparkling-wines-tasting-soiree-tickets-1337302480719)). RSVPing only on the Meetup Page doesn't allow you to attend the Event. ADVANCE TICKET PURCHASE IS REQUIRED, TO RESERVE YOUR SEAT. DUE TO COVID. ABOUT THE EVENT It is that time of the year and join us for an amazing Champagne and Bubbly Wines Tasting. T'is a wine tasting night, where we pour different types of delicious champagnes and sparkling wines for hours. On top of that, we socialize and mingle with many like minded wine lovers through out the evening. Refund & Ticket Resell Policy All sales are final. We only refund the full amount, if the event is canceled. If it is rescheduled, we will send an email to those who RSVPed 'YES' advising that. A full refund will be given to those that let us know within 2 calendar days of the update email, if you are unable to make it on the new date. No refunds will be given after that time. However, you can sell your ticket to someone else if you are unable to attend. Please, feel free to post in the comment box for the event, that you have a ticket for sale. Work out payment between yourselves, and have the seller only send the organizer a message letting us know the full name of the person taking your spot. You must let us know two hours before the RSVP close time, on the day of the event. PARKING INFO : Street Parking might be a challenge and the event involves drinking and we highly recommend a shared ride or taxi service. DRINK RESPONSIBLY. **FOR FURTHER INFO, REFER THE EVENTBRITE LINK. IT RULES.** http://photos1.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/7/a/6/3/event_431371331.jpeg http://photos1.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/3/e/2/c/600_436575916.jpeg http://photos3.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/3/e/4/8/600_436575944.jpeg http://photos3.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/3/e/8/b/600_436576011.jpeg

Welcome to Drunken Philosophy, a casual, curious, social discussion club. Come grab a drink and a seat at The Oracle. **Optional topic for this meetup: Where is everybody?** In 1950 the physicist Enrico Fermi was talking about aliens over lunch and asked a question that still has not gone away: if the universe is so vast and so old, and even a fraction of those billions of stars have planets, where is everyone? By the numbers the galaxy should be crowded with civilizations. Instead we look up and hear silence. That gap between "they should be everywhere" and "we see no one" is the Fermi Paradox. One of the most unsettling answers is the idea of a **Great Filter**: somewhere on the road from dead chemistry to a galaxy-spanning civilization, there is at least one step that is almost impossible to get past. Maybe the filter is behind us. Maybe life starting at all, or simple cells becoming complex, or intelligence ever evolving, is the freak accident, and we already cleared the hard part. Or maybe the filter is ahead of us, and advanced civilizations reliably wipe themselves out before they spread. Here is the part that messes with people. If we ever found life somewhere else, even pond scum on Mars, most people would call it the greatest discovery in history. But it might be the worst possible news. It would mean life is common, the early steps are easy, and the hard step is still in front of us. So the eerie silence overhead might actually be the best sign we could ask for. **Questions to wrestle with:** * Is it better to be alone? Would you rather we find alien life and learn we are not special, or find nothing and quietly improve our odds of surviving? * Where do you bet the filter sits, behind us or ahead of us, and why? * If it is ahead of us, what is it? Nuclear war, climate collapse, AI, something we cannot even picture yet? And can we do anything about a filter we cannot see coming? * Two principles pull opposite ways here. The principle of mediocrity (the Copernican principle, Sagan's "no privileged place in the universe") says we are ordinary, so what happened on Earth probably happened everywhere, which makes the silence scream louder. The anthropic principle says of course we find ourselves somewhere life was possible, since we could not observe anything else, so our being here may say almost nothing about how common life is. Which lens do you trust, and does the silence still demand an answer once you account for observer selection? * And if we did confirm life out there and had to accept we are not special, what would that do to belief in a higher power, and would shedding (or keeping) that belief help or hurt our odds of pulling together as one species? * Does any of this change how you live, or how humanity should be spending its time and money right now? As always the prompt is optional. Come for the conversation, stay for the drinks, and bring your own questions.

NFT's are here to stay folks! This is a group for like minded people interested in understanding, leveraging, using, creating for, profiting from, trading too i suppose, NFT's.. everything around them, complexity, fear and exploits, best practices and more. **PLUS** This group will talk AI ART tools, techniques, artists, video, audio, prototypes and more in the AI assisted production space- ART specifically, but we can get into any aspect of some of the cooler things happening in AI in general.

Christians in Tech is a community at the intersection of faith and technology. Our meetups are designed to spark meaningful conversations, promote knowledge sharing, and encourage growth—both in your career and your spiritual walk with God. Whether you're an experienced professional or just starting your tech journey, CIT welcomes you. Our Website [https://linktr.ee/citcbus](https://linktr.ee/citcbus) Sponsors and Partners * Improving (Venue Sponsor) * Bethel World Prayer Center (Fiscal Sponsor) * Fruits & Roots (Coffee Partner)

We're going to GameArena! We'll be in-person at the GameArena Gateway for our monthly COGG Prototype and Play event. Come to play and showcase your games! We're back in the upper levels of the catwalk area. It'll be packed with lots of camaraderie playing your game(s) and other's games on the 2nd floor. Light snacks and water provided but you can buy food and drinks at the bar (alcoholic drink ID required). [www.game-arena.co](http://www.game-arena.co/) **Attendees:** Don't have a game to show? Not a problem! All are welcomed and invited from all ages and backgrounds. The more we can have to play test our games is all the better! **Developers:** Do you have a game that you would like to get critical feedback on? Would you like an excuse to work on a game with other talented artists, programmers, musicians, designers, and writers? Digital, table-top, non-experienced developers, and the like are welcomed! We'll provide signage for your game to help others learn more about your work. Wifi, outlets, tables, and seats (though standing tables also) are available. Come to the Prototype and Play workshop to collaborate and meet local game developers for an evening of epic and raw game play fun! Play works-in-progress, show off your own game, work with others to add polish to a game, or even lend your talents to other fellow developers. For this event, light snacks from the bar and water will be provided! Though you can purchase you own if you like at the bar: [https://www.game-arena.co/menu](https://www.game-arena.co/menu) Can use South Garage at the Gateway with a $5 voucher on your way out. 75 E 11th Ave, Columbus, OH 43201 [https://maps.app.goo.gl/UwgveUYG37Jy7RtS9](https://maps.app.goo.gl/UwgveUYG37Jy7RtS9) If you have any questions or comments, as always, feel free to reach out to us at [info@thecogg.com!](http://info@thecogg.com!/)

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. Please RSVP via [Microsoft Build //localhost:columbus | Microsoft Reactor](https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/reactor/events/27247/).

* Who Can Attend \* The Central Ohio .Net Developers Group meetings are free and open to the public! All developers; professional, student, and hobbyist are welcome and encouraged to attend. * When we meet \* The Central Ohio .Net Developers Group meets on the 4th Thursday of every month. * Where we meet \* Please check our Meetup group link below for the latest location details! * Join our Meetup Group \* https://www.meetup.com/Central-Ohio-NET-Developers-Group-CONDG/

**Improving Office in Franklinton** Physical location: Improving Office 330 Rush Alley Suite #150 Columbus, OH 43215 Schedule: 6:00 p.m.: Socialize, eat, and drink. Improving will be providing pizza and beverages. 6:30 to 8:00 pm. Main meeting and presentation(s). Topic: This month Chris Pazsint will be talking about Agentic Coding. How does one use CLI Based Agents, and Agentic IDEs such as Cursor, Kiro, Antigravity? How to include agentic coding plugins for IDEs you already love such as Visual Studio Code. We meet on the last Monday of each Month. Presentations are given by members and friends of this group. If you would like to do a presentation (small or large) on a python topic, please contact Central OH Python at centralohpython@gmail.com