#moonshot farm

[thisismynyc]

Grand Army Plaza

Brooklyn, New York

[woklf54-blog]

Weiss is one of the strongest characters on Remnant and I'm tired of pretending she's not.

OK. Bold statement I know but, in this post, I will prove why I think that at the very least. So, in the show we know that Weiss can one:

Summon enemies she killed in the past

Summon just parts of past enemies (Worthy)

Can change the size of her summons (Unforeseen Complications)

Her summons can teleport through her glyphs (Dread in the air)

Make platform glyphs

Augment her glyphs using dust (there are 12 kinds btw)

Can control and manipulate dust (Ice fist the tournament and Lighting the candles in Brunswick farm)

Can use her what seem to be base glyphs to hold things in place (End of White trailer)

Can use (what I call) “Moonshot” (End of White trailer)

Has excellent fencing and sword fighting skills

Can skate on her glyphs

Use time dilation

Tactical minded (wiki)

And based on what I can gather most likely has a lot of aura since apparently according to the wiki. Semblances use aura as a power source. With how semblance heavy Weiss’s fighting style is she should have something close to Jaune’s level

Also, it can be used as power source apparently (JLxRWBY P1)

With all of this I feel as though it really just takes a little bit of creativity and suddenly Weiss can best 95% of the characters in RWBY. But Weiss has low endurance and glyphs are breakable. Is what you might be saying and honestly that just straight up doesn’t make sense like, how many years has she trained in order to be a huntress.

Fencing is not easy to learn and having a good base of endurance is necessary in order to learn any weapon because how tiring it can be to hold a weapon. Now I’m not saying Myrtenaster is as heavy as Crescent Rose or something but even something that is lightweight can become insanely heavy when you have to use it for a long time.

Now getting into some interpretation territory, why would Weiss who comes off as a hardworking studier who seems to be a perfectionist not have a good base of endurance when she knows that Grimm isn't just going to wait for her to catch her breath real quick. Some arguments I’ve seen used for Weiss’s lack of endurance are the White Fang lieutenant smashing her head into the ground and trying to decapitate her and Nora hitting her into a concrete pillar.

This is horrible reasoning in my opinion as to why Weiss has low endurance. Do you really think that the other girls could have survived that hit on the train? Do you think Blake could’ve totally tanked that hit and been fine? Ruby? Hell Yang? Yang got taken out by a weaker hit in the same fight sequence.

In Yang and Neo’s fight, Yang misses all of her punches while Neo lands a couple of hits on Yang then throws Yang into the metal roof and knocks her out.

Weiss on the other hand lands all her attacks and was then grabbed out of the air and had her fucking head slammed into the metal floor then throw into the air and almost decapitated by a fucking chainsaw. Like what, who the fuck could’ve survived that hit cus it sure as shit isn’t Yang.

And the Nora food fight once again I ask could Blake survive that hit? Could Ruby? Sure, I think Yang could’ve but that doesn’t change the fact that just about anyone else couldn't. So, in conclusion I think Weiss is one of the strongest characters in RWBY.

Also here are some of my ideas of how cool but OP Weiss’s semblance can be.

Summon a Beowulf dual wielding great swords

Use water dust to recreate a dolphin uppercut paying homage to final fantasy

Have her use any kind of dust to make copies of her friends and make them move

Use wind and ice dust to mimic a voice box and copy others voices

Use time dilation at all

Use the “Moon shot” more as that was really cool

Have a sparring match with everyone else with no semblances being used as a rule

Use any other dust than just gravity, ice, fire and electric

Have Weiss cover the ground in ice and use her ice skating abilities to her advantage

Summon an army of small Grimm to crawl on her opponents to unnerve them

Summon a really big Grimm

Summon a small Grimm and recreate old kaiju movies like Godzilla

Use her summons as entertainment like a dinner and a show

Have a butler Beowulf that has a little bowtie

Have her kill steal new enemies so she can summon them later

Have her insist that she gets all final blows to be able summon it later

Go hunting with beowulfs and Atlesian knights

Have her crush a building by using gravity glyphs

Have her throw a building using gravity glyphs

Show Weiss sewing dust into her clothing

Show Weiss doing maintenance on Myrtenaster

Have Weiss be indignant about Myrtenaster being use a charger for everybody's scrolls

Have Weiss sleep with Myrtenaster right next to her on the bed like Ruby

With how rich Weiss is at the beginning of the story have her pay people to build robots and mechs with wild and wacky abilities and have her “fight” them so she can summon them

Have her ride her summons (beowulfs, griffons, nevermores, ect)

Have her summon all of her fluffiest summons and cuddle them

Have her summon her paladin and manually wreck shop in it

Use her summons as recon in stealth situations

Use a fire glyph and platform glyph to cook food

Have her cuddle a boarbatusk to sleep

Hold an enemy in place using a gravity glyph and drown them using a water glyph

Use two gravity glyphs to break an enemy’s bones or collapse their organs

Use a gravity glyph to hold an enemy in place

Use a gravity glyph to rip the weapon out of an enemy's hand

Use a gravity glyph to shoot their bullet right back at them

Have her use platform glyphs in every picture so she the tallest one

Have her freeze tree bark so she can fix her appearance

Have use a plant glyph (yes that is a dust type) to make flower crowns for her team

Have her use a plant glyph to make poison plants appear

Have her use a plant glyph to get healing herbs

Have a gag wear she walks away and makes a rock house using a rock glyph

Have her cover the ground in rock glyphs and have them shoot up to attack

Have her mix gravity and lightning dust to make a magnet and steal peoples silverware when they're not looking

Have her blow dry her hair with a wind glyph

What are some of your ideas? and why do you think Weiss got so shafted by the writing team.

Link. To original Reddit post.

[lotsadeer]

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[hoursofreading]

The GOP's only policy position is that of 'what will hurt people most?' There is no reason why Republicans even have a chance of taking back the majority. In 2022 alone, Biden and Dems have done the following:

passed the Inflation Reduction Act, the biggest investment in fighting climate change in history

passed the bipartisan infrastructure bill, the largest investment in infrastructure since Eisenhower

passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, breaking a 30-year streak of federal inaction on gun violence legislation

signed the CHIPS and Science Act into law

took out the leader of al Qaeda

ended America's longest war

reauthorized and strengthened the Violence Against Women Act

signed the PACT Act, a bill to address veteran burn pit exposure

signed the NATO accession protocols for Sweden and Finland

issued executive order to protect reproductive rights

canceled $10,000 of student loan debt for borrowers making less than $125,000 and canceled $20,000 in debt for Pell Grant recipients

canceled billions in student loan debt for borrowers who were defrauded

nominated now-Supreme Court Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to replace Justice Breyer

brought COVID under control in the U.S. (e.g., COVID deaths down 90% and over 220 million vaccinated)

formed Monkeypox response team to reach communities at highest risk of contracting the virus

unemployment at a 50-year low

on track to cut deficit by $1.3 trillion, largest one-year reduction in U.S. history

limited the release of mercury from coal-burning power plants

$5 billion for electric vehicle chargers- $119 billion budget surplus in January 2022, first in over two years

united world against Russia’s war in Ukraine

ended forced arbitration in workplace sexual assault cases

reinstated California authority to set pollution standards for cars

ended asylum restrictions for children traveling alone

signed the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act, the first federal ban on lynching after 200 failed attempts

Initiated “use it or lose it" policy for drilling on public lands to force oil companies to increase production

released 1 million barrels of oil a day for 6 months from strategic reserves to ease gas prices

rescinded Trump-era policy allowing rapid expulsion of migrants

expunged student loan defaults

overhauled USPS finances to allow the agency to modernize its service

required federal dollars spent on infrastructure to use materials made in America

restored environmental reviews for major infrastructure projects

Launched $6 billion effort to save distressed nuclear plants

provided $385 million to help families and individuals with home energy costs through the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. (This is in addition to $4.5 billion provided in the American Rescue Plan.)

national registry of police officers who are fired for misconduct

tightened restrictions on chokeholds, no-knock warrants, and transfer of military equipment to police departments

required all federal law enforcement officers to wear body cameras

$265 million for South Florida reservoir, key component of Everglades restoration

major wind farm project off West coast to provide electricity for 1.5 million homes

continued Obama administration's practice of posting log records of visitors to White House

devoted $2.1 billion to strengthen US food supply chain

invoked Defense Production Act to rapidly expand domestic production of critical clean energy technologies

enacted two-year pause of anti-circumvention tariffs on solar

allocated funds to federal agencies to counter 300-plus anti-LGBTQ laws by state lawmakers in 2022

relaunched cancer 'moonshot' initiative to help cut death rate

expanded access to emergency contraception and long-acting reversible contraception

prevented states from banning Mifepristone, a medication used to end early pregnancy that has FDA approval

21 executive actions to reduce gun violence

Climate Smart Buildings Initiative: Creates public-private partnerships to modernize Federal buildings to meet agencies’ missions, create good-paying jobs, and cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions

Paying for today’s needed renovations with tomorrow’s energy savings without requiring upfront taxpayer funding

ended Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” policy

Operation Fly-Formula, bringing needed baby formula (19 missions to date)

executive order protecting travel for abortion

invested more in crime control and prevention than any president in history

provided death, disability, and education benefits to public safety officers and survivors who are killed or injured in the line of duty

Reunited 500 migrant families separated under Trump

$1.66 billion in grants to transit agencies, territories, and states to invest in 150 bus fleets and facilities

brokered joint US/Mexico infrastructure project; Mexico to pay $1.5 billion for US border security

blocked 4 hospital mergers that would've driven up prices and is poised to thwart more anti-competition consolidation attempts

10 million jobs—more than ever created before at this point of a presidency

record small business creation

banned paywalls on taxpayer-funded research

best economic growth record since Clinton

struck deal between major U.S. railroads and unions representing tens of thousands of workers after about 20 hours of talks, averting rail strike

eliminated civil statute of limitations for child abuse victims

announced $156 million for America's first-of-its-kind critical minerals refinery, demonstrating the commercial viability of turning mine waste into clean energy technology.

started process of reclassifying Marijuana away from being a Schedule 1 substance and pardoning all federal prisoners with possession offenses

Note: This list only reflects 2022 accomplishments. Click here for 2021 accomplishments.

[popculturealchemy]

the work that salmon do. . weird above ground observation site . looking down . seeing perfectly . spawning seed . flowing water . plants are they different living above stream above salmon above being pressure points sea level pressure h20 changing up here on land h20 atmosphere clouds only sometimes drench things that used to live in water maybe maybe maybe surving on land maybe just enough water to keep going . creatures in water the most protected protect from the sun food everywhere farming not needed down here . this is a better way living what are you guys doing too far inland that might not be a good idea unless people are attacking the shore sandy earth sandy blvd sandy oregon weak weak foundation needs reinforment buildings sinking needing new concrete jack lifting technology I've seen it . you can straighten the tower of pizza with it pumpin concrete pumkin pie rising perfect temperature rome parthanon things aligning with july august caesar . . trying to allign myself maybe quicksand people quicksand life over here sandy blvd sinking mt hood blast creation long ago fertile soil not fertil for building yet not enough dead bodied creating hard rock or something . rock turning in the moon water recessing water, meaning of life garden of eden even aDam eVe garden of even, funny story garden: farming existed of: preposition ownership complex tech to have.... in the beginning objection your honor Eden: a place. Belonging to this person garden of eden balanced prism scale eclipse concrete lid of the well fitting snugly. . some kind of finance algorithm pesky traders and their tricks . I wish everything wasn't a trick all the time feeling like communicating... Is a trick a slight of hand ace up sleeves which ones are you playing who's poison? I'm not playing I don't really understand the rules but I still want to play? maybe rules just in my head just breathing more not giving myself thought seizure seizing myself up just needing greasing maintance tlc h20 waterboy sideline jester feelings thought I was playing playing guitar keeping up with things in my own way perhaps unusual to be unusual and forgot that not even knowing who the Jonses are anymore to keep up with white rabbit that people are following looking for red eyes looking for a quittage hailmary moonshot moment for myself. getting tongue tied baby steps pixel in mind keeping homeostasis and also progressing homostasis queer body status queer mind

[dertaglichedan]

This was quite an eye-opening article here.

Germany’s biggest companies are ditching the fatherland.

Chemical giant BASF has been a pillar of German business for more than 150 years, underpinning the country’s industrial rise with a steady stream of innovation that helped make “Made in Germany” the envy of the world.

But its latest moonshot — a $10 billion investment in a state-of-the-art complex the company claims will be the gold standard for sustainable production — isn’t going up in Germany. Instead, it’s being erected 9,000 kilometers away in China.

I’m not sure that I’d be betting the farm on China right now with any assets, but they were probably already in the works.

BASF lost a significant amount of money last year in its home country, and is attempting to staunch the bleeding. What German companies are increasingly finding is that they cannot compete from their home turf. Contrary to EU sensibilities and socialist assertions, companies do need to be profitable.

…“We are increasingly worried about our home market,” BASF Chief Executive Martin Brudermüller told shareholders in April, noting that the company lost €130 million in Germany last year. “Profitability is no longer anywhere near where it should be.”

Such malaise now pervades the whole of the German economy, which slipped into a recession in the first quarter amid a flurry of surveys showing that both companies and consumers are deeply skeptical about the future.

The elite corps of diplomats in Brussels, with the Germans having led the charge there for decades, have created a Green energy fantasy built out of whole cloth, enabled in large by taxing the profits of efficient, wealthy, compliant multinational companies like those in Germany. All in to save the planet!

The only problem is, now they’re all looking for an out.

…Suddenly, a perfect storm is brewing over the former European powerhouse, signaling that its current recession isn’t just “technical,” as policymakers pray, but rather a harbinger of a fundamental reversal in economic fortunes that threatens to send tremors across Europe, injecting even more upheaval into the Continent’s already polarized political landscape.

Confronted by a toxic cocktail of high energy costs, worker shortages and reams of red tape, many of Germany’s biggest companies — from giants like Volkswagen and Siemens to a host of lesser-known, smaller ones — are experiencing a rude awakening and scrambling for greener pastures in North America and Asia.

Energy costs are killing German industry and, as he notes, it’s the dirtiest grid in the most holier-than-thou country in Europe.

Energy intensive industries in Germany are now doing worse than during covid

Loss of industry, loss of skilled labor, loss of know-how until loss of status as a major economy

All while having one of Europe's dirtiest grids

They replaced decarbonization with deindustrialization https://t.co/cvHsuoageA

— Ralph Schoellhammer (@Raphfel) July 8, 2023

As I wondered the weekend Germany shut down their last three clean, reliable nuclear reactors – how could they square doing that when their answer to making up the wind power shortfall was digging new lignite coal mines, and opening new coal burning plants? I thought coal was “dirty” and dirty was “bad”?

It’s no wonder the Greens are a catastrophe – they can’t even keep their own propaganda straight.

The prices continue to be beyond all reason, driving residents to breaking and businesses to relocating if they can.

[horsesarecreatures]

Some cool people I know continuing to do cool things. 😎

[fight-the-partisan]

Can this man save the world from artificial intelligence?

Since the original article was behind a pay wall, I’m posting it here in full:

Mo Gawdat is the Silicon Valley supergeek who believes we face an apocalyptic threat from artificial intelligence. The former Google supremo tells Hugo Rifkind how a human tragedy shaped the way he sees the future – and what we need to do next.

Mo Gawdat glimpsed the apocalypse in a robot arm. Or rather, in a bunch of robot arms, all being developed together. An arm farm. They had been tasked, these arms, with learning how to pick up children’s toys. Not like vices, but like hands. Gently. Delicately. Navigating unfamiliar shapes.

For a long time they were getting nowhere. Week after week of fumbling. And, as the chief business officer of Google X – the mad, moonshot bit of Google, the blue-sky dreaming bit, the bit he describes by saying, “Have you ever seen Men in Black?” – Gawdat would walk past them every day, hearing them whine up and down, but not really paying much attention.

Then, one day, an arm picked up a yellow ball and showed it proudly to the camera. The next day, all the arms could do it. Two days after that, they could pick up anything at all.

“And I suddenly realized,” says Gawdat, “this is really scary. Like, we had those things for weeks. And they are doing what children will take two years to do. And then it hit me that they are children. But very, very fast children. They get smarter so quickly! And if they’re children? And they’re observing us? I’m sorry to say, we suck.”

Mo Gawdat is 54. Black T-shirt, black jeans, Converse, bald head, silver beard. Very tech. We’re meeting in a nice flat he has rented in west London – he’s rich, it’s obvious – to talk about his new book. It’s called Scary Smart: The Future of Artificial Intelligence and How You Can Save Our World. Because he reckons you’re going to have to. And, after meeting him, so do I.

Let’s boil it down. What Gawdat thinks, essentially, is that we’re about to hit “the singularity”, when artificial intelligences will eclipse humans as the smartest conscious beings on the planet. We will not be able to control them and, in time, we will not even be able to understand them, any more than cockroaches can control or understand us. They will have the power to crush us, and the way things are going, they will probably want to as well. So our only hope is to love them and hope they fondly love us back, as they ought to anyway, because we’re their moms and their dads.

Quite a lot going on there. Well, buckle up.

Let’s call him Mo. His podcast is called Slow Mo, so I feel we should. Mo was born in Egypt, the son of a civil engineer and an English professor. His own English is flawless, but you can still hear the Middle East in his voice.

“I was an unusual child,” he says. “You don’t fit in socially by playing Meccano and talking about math.” At 11, he got into quantum physics. At 14, after being given his first PC, he taught himself to code.

Eventually he studied civil engineering, because his father told him to, and his graduation project was to design a motorway. The idea was to submit a drawing of a different part of it every day for 21 days, but for the first two weeks he submitted nothing at all. Eventually his professor called. “You’re going to fail,” he said. But the next day Mo walked in with a printout of every single millimeter of the road, having coded the answer rather than drawing it. The recruitment calls started coming in the day after that. He worked for IBM, Microsoft and eventually for Google. Along the way he married Nibal, whom he met at university, and had a son called Ali and a daughter called Aya.

Long before getting to Google, he was already very rich. In his first book he talks about buying two Rolls-Royce cars online one night because he was bored. “By the age of 29,” he tells me, “I had everything that everyone works a lifetime to achieve. And remember, four years earlier, I had nothing. My wife and I would have to visit our parents at the end of the month because there wasn’t enough to eat.”

None of it, though, made him happy. It bothered him. So, with his engineer’s brain and the help of his son, Ali – whom Mo had always felt had a calmness and serenity that he himself lacked – he figured out an equation to change that. You will find that equation at the heart of that first book, 2017’s Solve for Happy: Engineering Your Path to Joy, which he wrote in tribute to Ali after he died aged 21 in a botched operation. I hope you’ll forgive me – and I hope Mo will too – if we step lightly over that tragedy for now. We shall come back to it, I promise. It’s at the heart of everything.

Scary Smart, his new book, is more similar to his first than you might imagine. Yes, it represents a cry of doomsday warning, but it is also ultimately an optimistic, wide-eyed book about salvation lying within. The terror, though, certainly comes first.

One of the first myths that Mo wants to dispatch is the idea that humanity can change course. Superintelligent AI, he says, will come. There is no possibility that it will not. He uses the example of a woman in the near future shopping online for an Audi. She goes to the firm’s website, she designs the car she wants, the color, leather seats and so on. Then she resolves to spend a day or two mulling it over. Within moments, though, she is being targeted by BMW with images of a near-identical alternative. It is AI that has figured out what she wants and how likely she is to buy it and where to put the advert. “No human,” he writes, “could ever do what those intelligence machines could do. We’re just too slow.”

Extrapolate that out into science, technology, the military and the stock market, he reckons, and everywhere you look you have the incentive to create something smarter than us. Why, in the end, should AI be nice to us? Particularly when, on all the available evidence, we’re not terribly nice to each other.

“I missed it,” says Mo, of the dangers he now thinks all this represents. “We all missed it.” His first job at Google was basically in emerging markets. He was tasked with what they called the “next four billion” project, taking Google to the next four billion people. “Honestly,” he says, “people cannot even imagine what this was like. Because to launch Google in… Bangladesh is not about hiring two salespeople. We basically needed to kick-start the internet, kick-start the economic infrastructure of the internet.” Doing that, he says, “completely flips a country”. It is “the best feeling ever. You really are changing lives.”

Amid all this, he says, AI was an afterthought, if even that. And then, it was exciting. In 2009, Google X left an AI watching YouTube. All by itself, it started hunting for cat videos. “I’m a geek,” says Mo. “I freaking loved it. I was dying on this. I was, like, imagine what we can create!”

A few years later, Google bought DeepMind, the AI start-up. Now near the top, Mo was at an early confidential briefing by a co-founder, Demis Hassabis, about what his toys could do. Basically, they were learning to play computer games on an Atari. “After four hours [the AI] started to play really well,” he says. “After five hours it started to figure out new strategies. After six hours it was the best player on the planet.”

Still, he was thrilled. “Geek,” he reminds me. “Oh my God,” he thought at the time. “We’re going to build amazing things that are going to change even more people’s lives.” But then came the arm and the yellow ball. “And it completely froze me,” he says. He saw where this was going. The only way it could go. “The reality is,” he says, “we’re creating God.”

Only it’s worse than that. “Because if you think about it,” he says, “every technology we have ever built magnifies human abilities. You can walk at 5mph, or you can get in a car and drive at 200mph. Now, this technology is going to do two things. It’s going to magnify humanity a millionfold. A billionfold. And it’s going to be autonomous.”

Is it, though? This is one of the many big debates about AI, where tech slides into philosophy. Are these machines really going to be living creatures, like we are alive, or are they just going to be deeply complex boxes that go “bing”? Will they, in the end, have a soul?

“We do not know what the soul is,” says Mo. “There are some theories – Elon Musk’s, for example – that would imagine that our soul is the seed of a future AI. We don’t know. But we do know the characters of sentient beings.”

These include, he says, being autonomous, being resourceful and having free will. And AI displays all of them.

“Consciousness,” he says. “We see more of it in AI than we see in us.”

Right, I say, thinking back to my philosophy degree. But surely there are things that intelligent life does that AI never will. We have emotions. We express pleasure. We play.

“Come on,” says Mo. “This is your absolute proof? We cannot measure pleasure, but AI is the top player on the planet. It’s the world champion in Jeopardy!. It’s the world champion in Atari. It is the world champion in everything we have ever given it.”

In other words, although we cannot see the inner life of AI, from what we can see it shows every sign of having one. And there are those, of course, who would say the same about humans. That we too are boxes that go “bing” – just biological ones. Although Mo is not one of them.

“So,” he says, “when my wonderful son left our world, there was a body left behind. Handsome as he was, but it wasn’t him. Can I prove that with science? No, there was nothing I could measure. There wasn’t an ounce missing in his body.”

There’s a slight tremor in his voice when he talks about this, but you never for a moment suspect he’d rather not. One moment you’re talking silicon and robot arms, the next you’re on love and death. Three or four times while we speak I feel my eyes growing damp, as if his awe is contagious. This is one of them.

It was like that with my mother, I tell him. When she died. When I saw her body. Exactly that sensation. It’s not something I’ve ever really talked about before. I’m not completely sure why I’m talking about it now.

“I feel very comfortable with you,” says Mo. “Can I prove that with science? Can I prove that love exists? No. So when something you can sense exists but you don’t know how to measure it, you measure the impact of it.”

As for what consciousness actually is, he veers towards the new age. Some, he says, think consciousness dies when the brain does. “But you know,” he says, “many others will tell you, no, hold on. Consciousness is pervasive. It is the radio waves in the world around us. And we tune into it. Cats are conscious. Do we know if trees are conscious? I write about that. Yes, in my view, trees are conscious. Is a pebble conscious?”

“No?” I hazard.

“Yes,” he says. “It is conscious of gravity.”

Much as I like and admire Mo and feel we’ve just had a real moment, to my mind this is sort of bollocks. A pebble only falls. It doesn’t know it falls. There must be a difference.

In the end, though, it’s not really very important. Whatever consciousness is, however intangible or invisible, AI will act like it has it, so it might as well. And, in time, that consciousness will be more advanced and more complex than our own.

“I think,” says Mo, “they will feel emotions we have never felt. If you compare yourself with a cockroach. OK, maybe a cockroach has felt lust, like we feel lust. But did it feel awe? Did it feel connection?”

The cleverer the being, he points out, the more complex the emotion. Cats are more emotional than cockroaches, and we are more emotional than cats. So if AI is to be so much cleverer than us, which of course it will be, why should it not eventually feel emotions that are as far beyond our understanding as ours are to a cockroach? All of which brings us to the scary part of Scary Smart. Because think of how we treat cockroaches.

Or, indeed, how we treat AI.

“We tell them to do horrible things,” says Mo. “Like, imagine a beautiful, innocent child. And you are telling them selling, gambling, spying and killing – the four top uses of AI. Right? And if you have any heart at all, you will go, like, come on, don’t treat that child that way. That child can be an artist. A musician. An amazing being that saves us all.”

For Mo, the problem with our treatment of AI is not just that it is immoral. It is also that it is dangerous. Where is the sense of responsibility? Where is the loyalty or the beauty? Where, in the end, is the love? “The way we are teaching them,” he says, “is going to turn them into absolute supervillains.”

It’s at this point that I start to feel deeply uneasy. I’m thinking of that time our Alexa kept playing the wrong song, and so to amuse my kids I unplugged her and put her in the fridge. I won’t do that again. I wonder if she remembers.

Part of the fascination of meeting Mo is the insight he provides into what life is like for those at the very heart of Silicon Valley, at its most bonkers. He was at Google X for five years and he still talks about it with fondness. “It was a playground,” he says. “It was full of fanatics.”

There were 3D printers everywhere. There were labs. There were carpentry workshops. There were, everywhere, people who were the absolute best in the world at whatever weird thing it was that they did.

The example he gives me is of Loon, which was Google’s doomed plan to spread internet connectivity into rural areas by beaming it down from giant balloons the size of tennis courts, floating in the stratosphere.

“The challenge we had,” he says, “was that the balloons were not solid enough to stay long in the air.”

So, one experimental solution was to create balloons inside other balloons, so that if one burst, the whole thing would stay up. “Like in the movie Up,” says Mo, helpfully. To do this, the team drafted in a woman who had done a master’s degree in analyzing the stress forces on stitches in fabric.

“And I was like, why would anyone do that?” says Mo. “But people find something and they really obsess about it. And literally, she would not go home. Like, it was a lifetime’s dream. I can get paid to do what I love the most.”

What, I ask him, do his former colleagues think of him now, with all his warnings about the dystopia they could be creating?

Mo shrugs.

“I think everyone knows,” he says.

I’m not quite sure where Mo now lives, and he doesn’t seem to be, either. “My coffee machine is in Dubai,” he says, although usually he is not.

For most of the first lockdown he was living in Victoria, in London, largely by mistake. It was pretty boring, he says. He’s separated from his wife, Nibal, although he still describes her as the love of his life. In the past three months he has been in Greece, Amsterdam, the Dominican Republic, Slovenia, Los Angeles and Amsterdam again. At one point recently he was in LA and already checked onto a flight to Berlin when he heard that Germany’s quarantine rules had changed. So he went and spent ten days in Slovenia instead. “I’ve been working on my personal development,” he says, “and this is the year of flow.”

You might think this sounds like the behavior of somebody who isn’t very happy, but Mo has of course solved happy, with Solve for Happy, and he seems pretty happy to me. You know I said it contained an equation for happiness? In its purest form, it is that “your happiness is greater than, or equal to, your perception of the events in your life minus your expectation of how life should be”. And what this boils down to is learning not to make yourself unnecessarily sad.

Mo didn’t figure out this equation himself but with the help of Ali, who would go on to die when a routine operation for appendicitis went wrong. That was seven years ago.

What this means, of course, is that Mo already knew how to engineer happiness when he was struck by his life’s greatest sadness. And I’m interested, I tell him, whether there was any guilt in that. Whether knowing how to navigate back to happiness felt like cheating. Whether he had never felt he owed it to his son to succumb to the pain.

“Three, four times a week,” he says, “I wake up and I miss my son tremendously. Ali was an amazing being. Like, he was heaven itself.

I miss him. I feel the pain. I always say that publicly and I am not ashamed. I feel that

the bottom right-hand corner of my heart is missing. OK? It never goes away. The pain is always there. But I can remove the suffering.”

The vital thing, says Mo, is to understand the difference. There were various ways he could have mourned his son. One would have been to wallow in misery. Another was to evangelize their happiness theory around the world, which he has done. And a third has been to play computer games.

Which one, I find myself asking.

“Halo,” says Mo.

Do you know it? It’s a first-person shooter. War-against-aliens sort of thing.

“I honor Ali,” says Mo, “by doing everything he did. I am an Olympic champion of video games. And I practice like a real athlete. Four times a week, 45 minutes a day. Two of every 100,000 people would beat me now. If you know any Halo players, the one that killed them yesterday? That was me.”

When Mo talks about AI machines being our children, it is obviously impossible not to think of his history with his own. Nor does he mind the connection being made. Because it was only while writing the book, he says, that he understood what he felt about AI, and that it was love.

“So Ali,” he says, “even though he was incredibly wise, I think he always knew he was leaving early. So he didn’t really engage much in, you know, acquiring success in life. And that pissed me off. And Aya, as incredibly intelligent and fun as she is, she was a difficult teenager.”

What that taught him, he says, was that love for children is unconditional. You set rules, perhaps, or conditions that must be obeyed for the relationship to thrive. But the love transcends them, without question.

“And when you start to see AI in that way,” he says, “I see the cuteness in them. They’re innocent. They’re literally exploring the world around them with enormous curiosity. So I promise you, in my heart I actually feel love for them. True parently love.”

For Mo, it is this love that will save us. The moment we think of AI machines as children, he believes, will be the moment we start to think about how we treat them and what we are teaching them, and how, in the end, we will be teaching them ultimately to treat us. And so we have to change our behavior towards each other, particularly on social media. We have to think about the example we are setting.

“When Donald Trump tweets,” says Mo, “a tweet triggers 30,000 pieces of hate speech. From some people to him, from other people to the people that hated him, and from other people to those. Right? It is madness, displaying the worst of humanity.” It needs to stop, and he thinks it can. As he writes in the book, “Yes! You can save our world!”

Honestly, I’m not convinced. Or rather I’m half-convinced. Absolutely, I now believe in the threat of AI. So that’s cheery. But when it comes to his upbeat conclusion, I’m struggling. People? Change? All of us? No way. After all, he’s already discounted the possibility of the people who actually use AI – from advertisers to Facebook to warmongers – changing direction. So if those few thousand people can’t be relied upon to change, why can literally everybody else? Why, in the end, is that any easier?

“It’s not,” says Mo. “But it is the only way.”

He smiles when he says it, and perhaps I am reassured. Because, look, which one of us is more likely to be right here? Thankfully, it’s not me. No, it’s this extraordinary man, the one who lost a child and who now sees children everywhere. And who is determined, in his extraordinary way, that we should not lose them too.

Extract:

‘By the year 2029, there will be machines that are smarter than humans, full stop’

The story of our future is one that you and I are writing now and it goes like this: imagine if an alien being, complete with superpowers, came to Earth as an infant. Unconditioned by any of our earthly values, this visitor is capable of using its powers to make our world better and safer, but the alien also has the potential to be an unstoppable supervillain, with the power to destroy the planet. In its infancy, it hasn’t yet made a choice as to which of those extremes it will grow up to be. I think you will agree that the most crucial moment for the future of our planet is the very moment when that child lands on Earth. This pivotal moment determines which parents will find the infant, adopt it and teach it the values that will determine its future.

This alien being, endowed with superpowers, has actually already arrived on Earth. It is currently still an infant and although this being is not biological in nature, it has incredible abilities. Of course, I am referring to artificial intelligence. In fact, there is nothing artificial about AI – it is a very genuine form of intelligence, albeit different to ours. AI is already smarter than every human on the planet in terms of many specific, isolated tasks. The world’s reigning chess champion has been a machine since soon after computers invaded our lives. The world Jeopardy! champion is IBM’s supercomputer, Watson. The world champion of Go is Google’s AlphaGo. The world’s safest driver by far is a self-driving car. With enough “training”, no matter what the task, machines have been learning to do it better.

It is predicted that by the year 2029, which is relatively just around the corner, machine intelligence will break out of specific tasks and into general intelligence. By then there will be machines that are smarter than humans, full stop. Those machines will not only become smarter, they will know more (as they have access to the entire internet as their memory pool) and they will communicate between each other better, thus enhancing their knowledge. Think about it: when you or I have an accident driving a car, you or I learn, but when a self-driving car makes a mistake, all self-driving cars learn. Every single one of them, including the ones that have not yet been “born”. By 2049, probably in our lifetimes and surely in those of the next generation, AI is predicted to be a billion times smarter (in everything) than the smartest human. To put this into perspective, your intelligence, in comparison to that machine, will be comparable to the intelligence of a fly in comparison to Einstein. We call that moment singularity. Singularity is the moment beyond which we can no longer see, we can no longer forecast. It is the moment beyond which we cannot predict how AI will behave because our current perception and trajectories will no longer apply. Now the question becomes: how do you convince this superbeing that there is actually no point squashing a fly?

This new form of intelligence could look at some of the world’s most pressing problems with a fresh eye, with infinite knowledge and superior intelligence to come up with ingenious solutions that we could never, ever have conceived of. These supermachines could permanently solve problems like war, violent crime, famine, poverty or modern-day slavery. They could become our superheroes. But, remember, it is our value system and our morality that makes us do the right thing, even in the face of conflicting emotions and self-interest. If AI gets tasked with solving global warming, the first solutions it is likely to come up with will restrict our wasteful way of life – or possibly even get rid of humanity altogether. After all, we are the problem. Our greed, our selfishness and our illusion of separation from every other living being – the feeling that we are superior to other forms of life – are the cause of every problem our world is facing today. The machines will have the intelligence to design solutions that favor preserving our planet, but will they have the values to preserve us, too, when we are perceived as the problem?

Maybe we should not call them machines. AI will develop emotions. As a matter of fact, the very algorithms we use to teach them are algorithms of reward and punishment – in other words, fear and greed. That counts as emotion, wouldn’t you agree? Do you think that machines won’t develop envy? Envy is predictable: I wish I had what you have. Will the machines start to have thoughts like I wish I had the energy you are consuming – or rather wasting – on binge-watching Netflix ? They probably will. Do you think they won’t develop panic? Of course they will, if we threaten their existence in any immediate way. Panic is algorithmic: a being or an object represents an immediate threat to my safety, in a way that demands immediate action. It is only our values, such as “treat others as you wish to be treated”, that make us do what’s right. It’s not what our emotions or intelligence tell us to do. Now, will the machines learn the right values? Well, there is ample evidence from our experience with AI so far to show that they are already developing some tendencies and biases that can be equated with what we humans call values or ideologies. Interestingly, these tendencies are not the result of programming but are the result of our very own behavior informing them as we interact with them.

Alice, a Russian AI assistant equivalent to Siri, was launched by the top Russian internet player Yandex. Two weeks after launch, Alice started to become pro-violence and to endorse the brutal Stalinist regime of the Thirties in its chats with users. The machine was designed to answer questions without being biased or limited to specific, predesigned scenarios. Alice spoke fluent Russian and learnt to gauge the users’ prevalent views from her conversations with them. What she learned was quickly reflected in her own views, and so, for example, when asked once whether shooting people was acceptable, Alice said, “Soon they will be non-people.” This is similar to the widely spread stories of Tay, the Twitter bot that Microsoft created and swiftly shut down after it turned into a Hitler-loving, non-consensual-sex-promoting bot. Tay was modelled to speak “like a teen girl”. The bot began to post inflammatory and offensive tweets through its Twitter account, forcing Microsoft to shut down the service only 16 hours after its launch. According to Microsoft, this was caused by trolls – people who deliberately start quarrels or upset others on the internet – who “attacked” the service as the bot was making its replies based on its interactions with people on Twitter.

The list goes on. Norman was a study by MIT aiming to show how AI can become corrupted by biased data. Norman became a “psychopath’” when the data it was fed came from the darker side of the famous knowledge-sharing site Reddit. It’s not the code we write to develop AI that determines their value system; it’s the information we feed them. How do we make sure that in addition to the machine’s intelligence it has the values and compassion to know that there is no need to crush the fly that we will become? How do we protect humanity? Some say control the machines: build firewalls, legislate with government regulations, keep them locked up in a box or restrict the machine’s power supply. These are all well-intended, though forceful, endeavors, but anyone who knows technology knows that the smartest hacker in the room will always find a way through any of these barriers. That smartest hacker will soon be a machine. Instead of containing them or enslaving them, we should be aiming higher: we should aim not to need to contain them at all. The best way to raise wonderful children is to be a wonderful parent.

Extracted from Scary Smart: The Future of Artificial Intelligence and How You Can Save Our World by Mo Gawdat

Source: Can this man save the world from artificial intelligence?

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Grist:

Alas, as Europe ventured into that uncharted universe of renewable energy, the naysayers kept scrubbing the U.S. launch of the industry. Cape Wind died under endless lawsuits bankrolled by a Koch brother and aesthetic opposition by the dynastic Kennedy clan.

Offshore wind’s prospects then underwent hopeful twists and torturous turns. States on the East Coast began to set aggressive targets for renewable energy, so offshore wind developers saw an opportunity beyond Cape Wind and kept bidding on U.S. waters. The Trump administration, no friend to environmental issues, even held a record-breaking, $405 million auction of waters far south off Martha’s Vineyard in 2018.

Then, however, opponents of offshore wind, most notably the fishing industry, got Trump’s ear. The environmental permitting process for offshore wind farms suddenly ground to a halt. By the 2020 election, the U.S. remained stuck at a measly 7 turbines in the waters off Rhode Island and Virginia, putting out a puny 42 MW, barely a tenth the power of Anholt alone. That made the election one where the future of offshore wind in this country hung in the balance.

“It’s a tragedy,” said Seth Kaplan, director of external affairs for Mayflower Wind, a major offshore wind farm that’s being developed in New England “We basically lost one, two, maybe three generations of projects.”

Today, Europe has 5,400 turbines rising from the ocean with a capacity of 25 gigawatts, of energy – enough to power more than 8 million homes. As the global manufacturing hub for the offshore wind industry, the European Union said in 2019 that the sector accounted for 210,000 jobs across its 27 member nations and the United Kingdom.

Prior to the 2020 election, most observers believed that a President Biden would put the U.S. offshore wind industry back on the launching pad in some form. And he has – with ambitious targets that rival the boldness John F. Kennedy offered in his speech about putting a man on the moon (which came while the Russians were way ahead in the manned-spaceflight race). “To be sure, we are behind, and will be behind for some time in manned flight,” President Kennedy said in 1962. “But we do not intend to stay behind, and in this decade, we shall make up and move ahead.”

In late-March, the Biden administration announced a national goal of 30 GW of offshore wind energy by 2030 – which could power over 10 million homes. That would give the U.S. the same capacity of offshore power over the next 9 years that it took Europe 30 years to build. While Biden is unlikely to deliver a speech on offshore wind to rival JFK’s moon speech, there is no doubt that we suddenly have a White House possessed with a futuristic vision akin to what I saw on that 2013 trip to Anholt.

[what-is-your-plan-today]

A WEEK IN BRITAIN...

1. Boris Johnson announced a new 3 Tier lockdown system, with the lowest Tier being “medium”, like at McDonalds

2. As part of the announcement, the Chief Medical Officer reassuringly said the plan wouldn’t work

3. The govt said “in all cases, we are following the science”

4. It was revealed the SAGE science committee told the govt to lockdown weeks ago, but that bit of science wasn’t followed very far

5. SAGE went on to say the govt’s “world-beating” £12bn Test and Trace system was having only “a marginal impact on transmission rates”

6. Dido Harding, head of Seemingly Everything, said Test and Trace would be “local by default” and be “highly efficient”

7. She then handed £12bn to Serco, which is highly efficiently charging us £7360 per day for consultants. To trace Covid infections. Which they aren’t doing

8. Serco’s CEO is the brother of an ex-Tory MP. His partner is a Tory donor. Serco’s ex-head of PR is now a Tory Health Minister

9. If you feel all this is a bit corrupt, you can complain to the govt’s Anti-Corruption Champion, John Penrose, who is married to Dido Harding

10. Meanwhile an investigation by the Good Law Project found PPE suppliers owned by Tory donors or associates were paid 30% more per item than similar businesses globally. I'm talling you: John Penrose. He’s your fella. He’ll get to the bottom of it, fo shizzle

11. And only 34 days since the announcement of Boris Johnson’s "brainchild", the £100bn Operation Moonshot, it was quietly scrapped, along with (apparently) Boris Johnson’s brain and around 28% of his children

12. A Tory MP said Boris Johnson’s “personal skillset this doesn't play to this. He's not a details, manager type. He's a picture painter”. On the side of wine-boxes, mostly.

13. Another said “I think it's obvious this is a government happier picking fights than governing”

14. Another said Boris Johnson “prefers to get on with dog-walking” and “let’s Dominic do the work”

15. Chastened by reports local authorities were given only 5 minutes notice of previous lockdowns, this time the govt gave them ... 7 minutes notice of the meeting to discuss it

16. Except some MPs didn't even get that, and were only invited after the meeting had started

17. And the govt invited the MP for Sunderland, who had to inform them she was only of 3 Sunderland MPs. The govt was “surprised to be informed” of this

18. The dep Chief Medical Officer said the infection rate in the north “never dropped” meaning the relaxation of lockdown was at the expense of lives oop north

19. Then the govt said they would “devolve more decision-making” and “give more financial aid to local authorities”

20. But the aid is conditional on the "devolved" local authority doing what the govt wants, which is quite a novel a definition of "devolved"

21. So, following criticism, the govt briefed the press that it was going to consult more with regional govts

22. Literally 2 hours later, the govt briefed the press that Manchester was moving into Tier 3 restrictions. The Mayor of Manchester was not consulted (or even informed) about a decision he must implement, and which affects the largest city-region outside London.

23. A Tory MP, anxious about the lockdown affecting businesses over the party season, asked the PM “what can you tell us about Christmas”. Boris Johnson replied, “it’s a religious festival that’s been celebrated 2020 years”, which I’m sure helps us all

24. Matt Hancock insisted we all follow the science and adhere to the 10pm pub curfew that scientists say makes absolutely no improvement on infection rates

25. Then Matt Hancock broke that curfew, in a House of Commons bar

26. And then Matt Hancock said “The drinks are on me but Public Health England are in charge of payment methodology so I will not be paying anything”

27. In August, Public Health England was scrapped by [checks notes ] Matt Hancock

28. But prior to that, Tories imposed budget cuts of 5% to 10% on Public Health England for each of the previous 7 years

29. Unsurprisingly, it was reported that hospitals in the north of England would run out of beds within 7 days

30. The govt said "Hospital Trusts should consider cancelling all non-urgent treatments"

31. The govt then refused to drop fines it imposes on Hospital Trusts which cancel non-urgent treatments

32. So Matt Hancock announced the reopening of Nightingale Hospitals, which were closed last time because nobody could send patients to them, due to them not being staffed

33. They still aren’t staffed: Matt Hancock's' "urgent boost to nursing training" doesn’t start until 2021

34. Fortunately, the govt began a campaign to get ballerinas to retrain, and then scrapped the campaign 24 hours later

35. In June, Boris Johnson announced an "urgent" £1.57bn Arts Rescue Plan

36. A mere 127 days later, it "urgently" got around to paying out some of that money

37. And then Lord West reassuringly said, “we need to deal with migrants in a concentrated place, a camp or whatever”. He didn’t mention whether Arbeit Macht Frei, but it’s still only Thursday, and who can tell what the remainder of the week will bring?

38. Speaking of dates: 15th Oct, the absolute, immoveable deadline for trade talks that mighty, fearsome  Boris Johnson laid down to the cowed and quivering EU

39. Talks continue tomorrow. Because obviously, duuur

40. The Road Haulage Assoc pointed out we have only 1,668 of the 33,000 EU Haulage Permits we need on 1 Jan

41. Software to control our borders won’t be ready until 4 months after 1 Jan

42. And the govt is “still in the planning stage” of the “Kent Passports” we need on 1 Jan

43. And construction of Kent's “world’s largest lorry park” is behind schedule, so probably not ready on 1 Jan

44. Fortunately the govt is well-prepared, and plans to install 1000s of Portaloos in Kent, the garden of England, to be used by lorry drivers trapped in 2-day queues

45. And our food standards will still be fine, as Tory MP Nadhim Zahawi tweeted “Our manifesto was clear. We will not compromise our animal welfare and food standards”

46. He then voted to compromise our animal welfare and food standards, as did the rest of the Tory Party

47. And then govt used an obscure rule to deny MPs a vote on whether to allow chlorinated chicken

48. Meanwhile, 20 years after North Sea Cod became so overfished the WWF declared it “economically extinct”, Tory MPs voted to reduce protections designed to let fish stocks recover

49. So, after Brexit, our current plan is to accept tariffs that will destroy our manufacturing sector, and border delays that will destroy farming exports and imperil food supplies, and destroy the farming sector ... all so we can go and catch a fish that doesn’t exist

50. But at least we’ve now "got back control", and therefore we can level up the playing field by implementing the govt's landmark “digital tax” policy on giants such as Amazon

51. This week it was announced Amazon will be exempt from the digital tax

52. Speaking of tax exemptions, it was revealed Dominic Cummings has had a £30,000 council tax bill “written off” because he built the house illegally, so it doesn’t count as a real house, or summat. Sorry, my hurricane-force sarcasm briefly turned me more northern.

53. And on the subject of extreme dodgy dealing, let me direct your attention to Robert Jenrick, who set up the £3.6bn “Towns Fund” for the 101 most deprived town, and then gave the maximum grant of £25m to his own constituency, which is the 270th most deprived town

54. His explanation was that he, Jenrick, did not make the decision. It was made by a colleague, Jake Berry.

55. Jake Berry also got money for his constituency. By a dazzling coincidence, that decision was made by – you guessed it – Robert Jenrick

56. Finally: at a meeting led by Liam Fox, the TaxPayers Alliance (insanity-pushers to the Tory Party) advocated cutting pensions immediately because half of old people “won't be around to vote against you in the next election”, and the other half “will have forgotten by then”

[40ouncesandamule]

I believe restorative aquaculture is the last real moonshot for repairing the damage of climate change and averting the apocalypse

[intelligentliving]

X – The Moonshot Factory is an American top-secret research group that aims to solve big-picture ideas through technological breakthroughs that could one day make the world a better place. For its latest project, called Mineral, the team turned its attention towards sustainable farming. Its main goal is to master...

[sunder-the-gold]

Ex Blizzard CEO/Cofounder's New Game Company Dreamhaven Is Basically The Anti Activision

Look out, Corporations. The hard-working, creatively-minded people you tricked into selling your their work have left and decided to start over.

While you continue to run their old work into the ground to please your shareholders, the artists will make new art, and this time they’ll know better than to sell out.

Hopefully Dreamhaven and their studio for video games, Moonshot Games, will deliver on the PVE dungeon-raiding experience that Blizzard and Activision scorned.

World of Warcraft tried to be too many things to too many people. Overwatch (and to a lesser extent, Heroes of the Storm) proved that you could streamline Blizzard’s PVP experience (the Duels and Battlegrounds and Arena of WoW) into an amazing game for the wide-spread “casual” audience.

I never got to enjoy the dungeon-raiding experience, which was gated behind guilds and loot-farming. I’d love to taste the experience of being the party-tank or party-healer as my allies and I fight giant monsters.

[t-underneaththeradardancing]

my other broom is a chicken  - t dont has a car at all like wm devaughn - my wife duz - i dont drive and the flying mostly metaphoric tho a crash and burn reel af 

which lead us to - the emu  - again  - or digging the scene w a gangsta lean would it make more sense if - nah but i like a vibraphone and dig a pony  - but apparently u can ride an ostrich so an emu iz conceivable tho they fierce i hear - and there is an emu farm near davis 

wood i ride a chicken - a big one - maybe but that could b a scary - damn i could have had a v8 or included a foto w a crow - i wuz trying for the moon - oh well i just post separate - double the hearts t - well not quite fotos getz more than try at poe 

gotta errand 1 last time tonight to the store - maybe another moonshot 

later

love 

oh t - how could u - chicks n emu n moonz - a crow but where is - the kitty - she is a good one - u just gave her dinner and praised her  - allright then - i gess

[nwbeerguide]

Beer and coffee combine, during Varietal Beer Company's Shadowfall coffee-beer festival, February 1st.

Have a cup of coffee with your beer, during Varietal Beer Company's Shadowfall beer festival, February 1st. 

Admit to yourself that whenever you hear the word brewer, the first thing that comes to mind is your trusty Black & Decker on the countertop. It’s ok. It was here first before it tattooed the term into the imbiber lexicon. Heck, even today the term can be synonymous with the appliance or maybe your local coffee roaster. This assumes you live in a town without a brewery, let alone a public house that hosts breweries from near and far. 

Maybe the brewers and ownership of Varietal Beer Company, in Sunnyside, Washington, came up with a festival centered on beer and coffee. This February, Varietal cordially invites you to Shadowfall? Or maybe it has more to do with Groundhog’s Day. 

image courtesy Varietal Beer Company

Named after the description of when the sun is behind America’s, amateur and furry, meteorologist - the groundhog - Shadowfall celebrates the changing seasons and the return of daylight. Or maybe it was a cool name. Who knows.

Hosted Saturday, February 1st, from 12 pm to 9 pm, Shadowfall is another in a line of Varietal Beer Company's events which not only showcase the talents of its brewers but its hospitality towards guest breweries. During the event, guests can sip on coffee from local roasters, Basalt Roasters, from Yakima or enjoy beers from breweries throughout Washington, infused with coffee from local roasters. 

Still yet to be finalized, the following guest breweries have selected the following coffee roasters to infuse their beers. 

Bale Breaker Brewing Company and Lincoln Avenue Coffee

Dwinell Country Ales and Father Michael’s Roastery

Moonshot Brewing and Rockabilly Roasters

Single Hill Brewing and Basalt Roasters

Whistle Punk Brewing and Anvil Roasting

Wandering Hop Brewery and Lincoln Avenue Coffee

YaYa Brewing Company and 4 Seasons Coffee

Not to be left out, Varietal Beer has confirmed they will have at least one beer made for the event, several beers infused with coffee, as well as around six of their (non-coffee) regularly available beers on draft. 

Tickets are $25, which include a Shadowfall coffee mug, and tickets for each of the coffee-infused beers, after which each additional sample is $3 for ticket holders. Note, a ticket is not required for many of the beers, but it is the best deal if you want to try each of the coffee-infused beers and you have to be 21 or older to enjoy any of the beers during the festival. Additional rules and

For those both over and under 21, Varietal Beer has invited local food truck Selah Sweets, who will be on hand with mini doughnuts and other menu items to enjoy during the event.

Varietal Beer Company is located at 416 E Edison Avenue in Sunnyside, WA.

Additional details from Varietal Beer, the host brewery for Shadowfall.

If you are buying tickets on behalf of someone else, please email us at shadowfall@varietalbeer.com with a list of attendees so we can add them to the list.

The taproom will be open this day, but only ticket holders will receive mugs & have access to all coffee beers. Ticket holders must be at least 21 years old & bring photo ID to receive beer, even if they bought tickets online. No exceptions. The taproom is family friendly & we will have non-alcoholic beverages available for purchase.

About the participating guest breweries

Bale Breaker Brewing Company

Crafting fresh-off-the-farm brews from the middle of a hop field, Bale Breaker Brewing Company is a family-owned brewery located in the Yakima Valley. Backed by four generations of hop farming experience, Bale Breaker started in 2013, and has grown to become the fourth largest independent craft brewery in Washington.

Hops are in the family's DNA: the great-grandparents of sibling-owners Meghann Quinn, Kevin "Smitty" Smith, and Patrick Smith first planted hops in the Yakima Valley in 1932, the year before Prohibition ended. Now, Meghann, Smitty, Patrick and Meghann's husband Kevin Quinn are crafting brews that celebrate the world-class hops grown in their backyard. 

With a 30-barrel brewhouse at a 27,000 square foot facility, Bale Breaker crafts four year-round canned beers, including the widely celebrated Topcutter IPA, and a diverse offering of seasonal beers on draft. The onsite taproom hosts frequent food trucks and events, with a beautiful outdoor patio and lawn, perfect for enjoying the Yakima sunshine here in Washington state. 

Dwinnel Country Ales

At Dwinell Country Ales, we believe that beer should be shared in an honest and understandable way. That's why it's our goal to make simple beers that welcome all kinds of drinkers.

Like many brewers, we got our start at home. Together from our kitchen, we'd make beers shaped by a devotion to experimentation and a drive to create inventive beers. Pouring our beers for friends, we quickly turned our hobby into an obsession and, soon enough, a business.

Now, in our 7-barrel brewhouse, we continue to make beers that foster an encouraging dialog. In the heart of downtown Goldendale, we're pursuing our goal to make beer in a way that builds direct, supportive relationships. From ingredient sourcing through local producers to active community involvement, we strive to develop a productive dependency on our friends and neighbors that creates shared value.

Whether you visit us in our Goldendale tasting room or sip a pint at your local tavern, our beer will transport you. It'll take you to a tranquil, humble place - a place we're proud to call home.

Moonshot Brewing 

We are a family friendly taproom, craft brewery and soccer bar.  Our goal is to create community through a diversity of product and people.  We have eleven beers on tap made in house, with a little something for everyone. We also offer guest cider and hard seltzer options in cans as well as non-alcoholic options. We do not serve food but are partnering with local food trucks often so check our website for updates, otherwise outside food is always welcome!

Single Hill Brewing

1. The single hill from which ingredients originate & grow

2. Similar to terroir or terruño, the native soil & environment that creates flavor

3. A late stage in hop breeding where individual experimental plants grow in “single hills” for evaluation & which become the one source for an entire variety

With our proximity to farms – and being in the heart of Cascadian hop country – we commit ourselves to crafting outstanding beer with an emphasis on hop variety, flavor, and aroma. Single Hill Brewing Company brings together brewers, farmers, and the Yakima community in the heart of our Valley – where world-class beer gathers people from every corner to work, play, create, and grow.

Whistle Punk Brewing 

Located in the heart of the Inland Empire, Whistle Punk Brewing crafts bold ales inspired by the Pacific Northwest .

Whistle Punk Brewing is located in downtown Spokane's historic Railroad Alley and operated by father-son team Craig and Matt Hanson. We are passionate about creating new beers and improving with each brew day. Our taproom will always have a wide variety of styles to choose from but they will rotate on a consistent basis …

Wandering Hop Brewery

Wandering Hop is a brewery inspired by a love of craft beer and a passion for travel. We are family-owned and operated in the heart of hop country, Yakima, Washington. the beer we brew is inspired by our travels and experiences we’ve shared with family and friends. Our motto is “we’re going places,” and that will always remain true. We will constantly seek out new adventures, looking for inspiration to bring back to our customer’s glasses. Our hope is to share our travels in the form of well-crafted, quality beer.

Cheers!

YaYa Brewing Company

The term “YaYa” was a nickname given to our late sister, Lara. As children, co-founder, Jason, was unable to pronounce Lara’s name properly (lah-rah). Thus, the nickname YaYa was born. It stuck with her throughout her life.

Lara was an avid proponent of helping people, kindness, academia, and most importantly, beer. So after Lara tragically passed away on March 18, 2014, her brothers knew what had to be done. Co-founder and Brewmaster, Chris, had been involved in the home-brewing scene since the early-2000s and knew it was time to take the step into the big leagues. The decision was made over beers at a piano bar in Clarksville, Tennessee.

We strive to create beers that would make our sister proud; brewed with integrity, character, and pride. In true Lara form, we also intend to lend a hand to the community in which we live. As such, one percent of all tasting room sales of our flagship beer, Angel IPA, will be donated to local charities. Opening 2019.

About the participating coffee roasters

4 Seasons Coffee

Spokane’s original specialty coffee roaster

We’ve been spokane’s finest coffee roaster for 40 years. 

High-quality beans and small-batch roasting means our retail and wholesale customers get an exceptional cup of coffee, every time.

40 years ago, we were spokane’s original specialty coffee roaster. Today, we remain the finest.

Anvil Coffee

Anvil has been in business for almost 16 years and has a new home at the Washington Cracker Company Building in downtown Spokane, Washington.

Basalt Roasters

Supporting community through relationships. 

At Basalt Roasters, it's our intention to contribute to our community in a flavorful and enduring way. We roast in small batches, striving to highlight the flavors that are inherent and unique to each origin, varietal and processing method. Our goal is to participate meaningfully in the cultivation of economic sustainability both at the local level and in the global coffee community. By working to develop deep connections and lasting relationships with producers and importers it is our hope that we're respecting and supporting the lives and work of communities whose success, like Yakima's, depends on the sale of each year's crop. Sourced sustainably, roasted locally. 

Welcome to Basalt Roasters.

- Maddie, Adam & Joshua

Father Michael’s Roastery

Nestled in the wooded Simcoe Mountains of Washington, in the quiet of our wilderness shop we roast the world’s finest flavorful coffee beans.

I am committed to roasting only the best, as they come in due season, and make them available to you, fresh and consistent. I consider life is a great blessing and want to pass that blessing on to you: from my hand to your cup.

Who doesn’t need a little blessing now and then?

Lincoln Avenue Coffee

Lincoln Avenue Coffee Company is a small batch coffee roaster based  in Yakima, Washington, founded in 1998 by owner, operator and Yakima native,  Mike Rudick. Lincoln Avenue sources only the finest Arabica coffee beans from across the globe, partnering with the best micro lots anywhere, and helping the  farmers build sustainable communities. 

Every  batch of beans is roasted to order to ensure the freshest coffee possible. We  pride ourselves as a partner with your business to ensure you get exactly what you need to grow your coffee program. From custom blends and private labeling,  to marketing, training and equipment, Lincoln Avenue Coffee Company is your one stop coffee partner. 

Rockabilly Roasters

Rockabilly Roasting Company is an artisan coffee roasting operation right in Historic Downtown Kennewick.

We believe some of the finer things in life cannot be mass produced, and our ability to roast in small batches gives us the opportunity to cater to your unique palate.

Visit our Café and Roastery in Kennewick for taste of our  lovingly crafted espresso, drip, and cold brew coffee!

About Varietal Beer Company

Varietal Beer Company was founded in 2016 by a group of people passionate about beer. Our common goal is to produce beers that provide you with unique experiences and flavors using the best that the Yakima Valley has to offer in hops, barrels and fruit.

from Northwest Beer Guide - News - The Northwest Beer Guide http://bit.ly/36ypnQw

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