Podcasts about phinney center

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Seattle: The physics of dynamism (and AI alignment), published by Alex Flint on January 19, 2022 on The AI Alignment Forum. I will be giving a talk on the physics of dynamism with relevance to AI alignment (abstract below). I am hoping to get feedback on a new thread of research and am also eager to meet folks in Seattle. Afterward the talk there will be some time to hang out with the group. Location is room 5, Phinney Center (see address below) ——— What does it mean to be intellectually alive? What is it that distinguishes a creative and vibrant company/lab/community from one that has been taken of by “suits”? In this talk I will attempt a formalization of dynamism in terms of physical systems that unboundedly avoid stasis. I will then ask what kind of AI system would exhibit dynamism in this sense. Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.

Many of us share thrilling childhood memories of reading books that made the world feel more vast, mysterious, and magical. To pass along to our children that sense of wonder (and rekindle it for us too!) we joined Dylan Thuras, co-founder of the collaborative global exploration project Atlas Obscura, who brought us an illustrated guide to 100 of the world’s most breathtaking landmarks—both natural and manmade. Thuras unveiled a guidebook to inspire a love of exploration in our kids, taking us on a journey through 47 countries and every continent on earth. From ice caves to bioluminescence, from the wild waterfalls of Zambia’s Devil’s Swimming Pool or Antarctica’s Blood Falls to the sacred skeletons of Indonesia’s Trunyan Tree cemetery or India’s Skeleton Lake, Dylan invited us to glimpse a collection of the world’s most mesmerizing and mysterious wonders. Dylan Thuras is the co-founder and creative director of the collaborative global exploration project Atlas Obscura, and a co-author of the Atlas Obscura book. He is also the co-host of Atlas Obscura’s YouTube series “100 Wonders.” Recorded live at Phinney Center by Town Hall Seattle on Saturday, October 20, 2018. 

As new movements throw fresh awareness on the ills of gender inequality in American life, how can we ensure we raise children with healthy, positive, shame-free, and egalitarian attitudes about bodies, gender, sex, and love? To shed some light on this discussion, author Bonnie J. Rough took Town Hall’s stage in conversation with sexuality and parenting expert Amy Lang and columnist Nicole Brodeur. With wisdom from her book Beyond Birds & Bees: Bringing Home a New Message About Sex, Love, and Equality, Rough shared the story of her journey to the Netherlands as a new mother and the experiences she encountered that transformed her approach to educating her children about our human bodies. Rough brings the conversation of the birds and the bees into the 21st century. Join Rough, Lang, and Brodeur for a discussion on the ways we can support children’s sex-ed, development, and overall well-being across an evolving culture of gender and sexuality. Bonnie J. Rough is an award-winning author who writes on topics such as parenting, education, and gender equality, and is the author of Beyond Birds & Bees: Bringing Home a New Message to Our Kids About Sex, Love, and Equality The Girls, Alone: Six Days in Estonia, Carrier: Untangling the Danger in My DNA. She has spoken to audiences across the U.S. and abroad on subjects ranging from science and sexuality to parenting and the writer’s life. Her work has appeared in several anthologies including The Best American Science and Nature Writing and numerous periodicals ranging from The New York Times to Brain, Child. Amy Lang is a sexuality and parenting expert with over 25 years of experience who has worked with parents and professionals from Alaska to Australia. She is a regular guest on multiple media outlets and has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Salon.com, CNN, The Atlantic and the Seattle Times, and she is the author of Birds & Bees & YOUR Kids and Dating Smarts.  Nicole Brodeur is a features columnist for The Seattle Times. She interviews media personalities, big thinkers, visiting artists, colorful characters and doers of all kinds.  Recorded live at Phinney Center by Town Hall Seattle on Tuesday, September 11, 2018.

Anya Kamenetz is the lead digital education correspondent for NPR. She has worked as a staff writer for Fast Company magazine, and has contributed to the New York Times, Washington Post, New York Magazine, Slate, and O, the Oprah Magazine. Anya has won multiple awards for her reporting on education, technology, and innovation. She is the author of three books on education and technology: Generation Debt, DIY U, and The Test. Her latest book is The Art of Screen Time: How Your Family Can Balance Digital Media & Real Life. Anya was in the Northwest to speak at Phinney Center, presented by Town Hall Seattle and Phinney Neighborhood Association as part of the Civics series.

Known for the warmth, humor, clarity, and depth of his teachings, Zen teacher Peter Levitt is also the author of fourteen books of poetry and prose. Legendary poet Robert Creeley wrote that Peter Levitt’s poetry “sounds the honor of our common dance.” Town Hall is thrilled to welcome Peter to the stage for an evening sharing his recent works of poetry that explores our connection to the natural world and sing the sacred in the everyday. After the readings, he was joined in conversation with poet Shin Yu Pai, Town Hall’s Inside/Out Neighborhood Resident representing Phinney/Greenwood. Sit in with Peter and Shin Yu for an intimate discussion of the complexities of human relationships and the notion of coming home to ourselves—to who and what we naturally and truly are. Peter Levitt began his Zen practice in the late sixties in San Francisco, and he received lay entrustment from Zoketsu Norman Fischer, which authorized him to teach in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki-Roshi. He is the founder and guiding teacher of the Salt Spring Zen Circle on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia. Peter edited Thich Nhat Hanh’s classic, The Heart of Understanding, and he served as Associate and Translation Editor of Treasury of the True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dogen’s Shobo Genzo, edited by Kazuaki Tanahashi. His ten poetry books include Within Within, One Hundred Butterflies, and Bright Root, Dark Root. In addition, he published Fingerpainting on the Moon: Writing and Creativity as a Path to Freedom. His publishing career includes fiction, journalism and literary translations from Chinese, Japanese and Spanish. In 1989, Peter received the prestigious Lannan Foundation Award in Poetry. Shin Yu Pai is Town Hall Seattle’s 2018 Inside/Out Resident representing the Phinney Greenwood neighborhoods. Shin Yu is a poet, cross-media artist, and curator for the collaborative global exploration project Atlas Obscura. Her poetic origins inform an artistic style that has grown beyond the written word—manifesting in photography, installation and public art, cross-disciplinary collaborations, and sound. She encourages us to reflect upon the essential questions of our own lives, and to explore how we see that interrogation expressed or mirrored around us. Recorded live at Phinney Center by Town Hall Seattle on Thursday, March 22, 2018. 

In turbulent times, we need a unique perspective to find the opportunities in adversity and to respond to challenges with action. Mother/daughter team Stephanie Marston and Ama Marston join us to illuminate this perspective with wisdom from their book Type R: Transformative Resilience for Thriving in a Turbulent World. They share details on a critical quality they call Transformative Resilience: the ability to “move away from a tendency to catastrophize” and pursue success despite facing upheaval, crisis, and change. They shared the individual and collective triumphs of people coping with the stress of daily life and the challenges and disruptions that rattle all our lives at some point. And they drew upon research that spans the personal and the professional, the local and the global. Reaching across psychology, neuroscience, business, and politics, the Marston's demonstrate how we can use challenges to innovate, create new strengths, and grow. Recorded live at Phinney Center by Town Hall Seattle on Sunday, January 21, 2018.

The Seattle Sounders 2016 MLS ‘worst-to-first’ run was as thrilling as it was improbable. When they lifted the Cup last December, their achievement represented a major success for a community fostering soccer culture within the city for more than 40 years. Few are more familiar with the development of the Seattle soccer scene than former Seattle mayor Greg Nickels. Both a fan in their NASL days and a key player in bringing MLS to the Emerald City decades later, Nickels joined Steven Agen—lead author of Resurgence: How Sounders FC Roared Back to Win MLS Cup—for a discussion on Sounders’ impact on Seattle and the construction of CenturyLink Field. Together they reflected on the club’s 2016 title-winning campaign, reviewing reports from key figures within the Seattle sports journalism world including Art Thiel, Matt Pentz, Ari Liljenwall, Andrew Harvey, “Mr. Sounder” Zach Scott, and Nickels himself. Nickels and Agen examined the former Mayor’s individual efforts to bring a soccer-ready stadium to Seattle as well as what their recent title means to the city. Recorded live at Phinney Center by Town Hall Seattle Tuesday, November 28, 2017.

As residents of the Pacific Northwest, we are all familiar with stories of Seattle’s vulnerability to seismic activity. And we certainly recall the haunting 2015 New Yorker article asserting that our region is long-overdue for “the big one.” To help contextualize these fears and delve into the science beneath the threat of earthquakes, Town Hall presents Dr. John Vidale—seismologist at UW’s College of the Environment and leader for several years of UW’s M9 Project. Dr. Vidale’s works lends insight on the likelihood of such a tremor, and offers a prognosis on the impact a giant coastal quake could have on Seattle’s downtown. Vidale lends his rarefied expertise to assuage some of our fears while espousing the continued need for disaster-preparedness, as well as revealing his thoughts on implementing early warning technologies in the Pacific Northwest to grant us precious time to react before the shaking starts. Recorded live at Phinney Center by Town Hall Seattle Wednesday, November 29, 2017.