Potluck and Propaganda

Greetings fellow propaganders! Apologies for the short notice, but by now you should know the drill. On the 2nd Tuesday of March we once again open our doors and invite you to join for P&P #17. The feature movie this month is Milk which tells the story of San Francisco's politician Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected for public office in California, who in 1978 was murdered along with Mayor George Moscone by disgruntled city supervisor Dan White. Here is the Trailer:



The obvious potluck theme this month would have been Milk of course, but we decided to take it a bit further and instead have a fondue dinner! Melted cheese and melted chocolate are also made of milk so I think it counts. Thanks Angela for the wonderful idea!



We do ask for your help however - if you have a fondue cooking set that we can borrow please let us know (even if you can’t make it to the evening). We'll probably need a few of them to feed everybody with both cheese and chocolate style fondue. Also, it would be great if you can post what you intend to bring on the event wall. We could use some salads and light side dishes to complement the main course and fruits/berries to dip in chocolate at the end. If you want to make one of the fondue dishes yourself then that's good too!

Tentative schedule for the evening:
07:30 - 08:30 Gathering and fondue setup.
08:30 - 09:30 Community potluck fondue dinner.
09:30 - 11:40 Feature presentation: Milk (129 minutes).

Hope to see you!

Potluck and Propaganda is aimed to present information and encourage critical thinking. Let go of your belief systems (BS) and investigate different reality tunnels. The opinions expressed in the movies shown do not necessarily reflect the ones of P&P or its participants.

Happy New Year and hope you are enjoying the holiday season! Don’t forget to keep some energy on reserve for the New Year’s mega weekend - OMG it’s going to be a memorable one for sure... I am once again delighted to invite you to join us on the 2nd Tuesday of the month, for a night of friends, food, entertainment and conversation. What better way to kick start 2010?

This month's feature film is "Jarhead". Directed by Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Road to Perdition) this movie is based on U.S. Marine Anthony Swofford's 2003 Gulf War memoir of the same name. Having seen very little actual combat during the war (like most of the half million troops stationed there), Swofford's story tends to focus on topics that are not often discussed in war movies. Trailer:



The potluck theme this month is winter. Bring your favorite soup, stew, pie, or alternatively something that's in compliance with your New Year resolution (whatever it is).

Tentative schedule for the evening:
07:30 - 08:30 Gathering.
08:30 - 09:30 Community potluck dinner. Theme: Winter.
09:30 - 11:30 Feature presentation: Jarhead (125 minutes)

Hope to see you and launch the year in style together!

Potluck and Propaganda is aimed to present information and encourage critical thinking. Let go of your belief systems (BS) and investigate different reality tunnels. The opinions expressed in the movies shown do not necessarily reflect the ones of P&P or its organizers.

Happy Halloween-recovery day everybody! Hope you had fun last night. I'd like to once again invite you to come over, on the 2nd Tuesday of the month, for an evening of friends, food, entertainment and conversation. This month we'll be watching a movie about a group called The Yes Men who you might remember from Leon's presentations at the "open decks" gathering in August. These activists define themselves as: "Impersonating big-time criminals in order to publicly humiliate them. Targets are leaders and big corporations who put profits ahead of everything else". The movie is an entertaining documentary about their true story. Trailer:



The film is 82 minutes long so we'll probably have time for some YouTubes or whatever you care to share before or after the movie (contact me). Before the movie I'll also be making an announcement regarding next month's P&P Holidays special! Wuuuuu...

The potluck theme this month is Pizza and Italian food. I'll be getting a few trays of pizza and would welcome any additional pasta dishes, salads or anything that goes well with Italian food.

Tentative schedule for the evening:
07:30 - 08:30 Gathering.
08:30 - 09:30 Community potluck dinner. Theme: Pizza and Italian food.
09:30 - 10:00 Open decks (?) and special announcements.
10:00 - 11:30 Feature presentation: The Yes Men (82 minutes)

Hope to see you!

Potluck and Propaganda is aimed to present information and encourage critical thinking. Let go of your belief systems (BS) and investigate different reality tunnels. The opinions expressed in the movies shown do not necessarily reflect the ones of P&P or its organizers.

Hey friends,
Please join us for another P&P and another birthday party! That's right. I'm gonna be exactly 36 years and 36 hours old and would love it if you could swing by and join the festivities! No physical gifts please, the only one I want for this birthday is the gift of your lovely company (and maybe a little food dish to share...).

The feature film for the evening will be "The Garden". This highly acclaimed Oscar-nominated documentary follows the true story of low-income families struggling to protect a 14-acre urban farm in the middle of Los Angeles from bureaucratic real estate developers. Who will win? Here is the trailer to give you a taste:



Yes, I know. Not exactly the most cheerful topic for a birthday themed evening but it's my party and I'll cry if I want to... This documentary is only 80 minutes long so we'll have time for open decks either before or after the movie. Let me know if you want to present/share anything.

The potluck theme this time will be Mediterranean Food, so bring your favorite Israeli, Turkish, Greek, Italian, or Middle-eastern dishes. One request though: if you're planning to bring Hummus please let me know first because I have a feeling this is the first thing that will pop into many people’s heads and we don't want too much of one thing.

Tentative schedule for the evening:
07:30 - 08:30 Gathering.
08:30 - 09:30 Community potluck birthday dinner. Theme: Mediterranean food.
09:30 - 10:00 Open decks (?)
10:00 - 11:30 Feature presentation: The Garden (80 minutes)

The main reason I choose to live in California is the friendly and inspiring people around (this means you) so I really hope you can make it.

Potluck and Propaganda is aimed to present information and encourage critical thinking. Let go of your belief systems (BS) and investigate different reality tunnels. The opinions expressed in the movies shown do not necessarily reflect the ones of P&P or its organizers.

Wow, last night’s gathering was so much fun! When I first thought about throwing these events this is exactly what I had in mind - everybody contributing and participating in the program. Thank you all for coming and sharing these wonderful videos. Special thanks to Alisa and Sarai who stayed behind and helped clean the mess. We are definitely going to do another "open decks" event in the near future so if you encounter anything especially cool remember to bookmark it.

Here are some of the videos we saw, more or less in the order we watched them. Drop me a line if I forgot anything and I’ll add it to the list. See you next time!

The Fucking Moon





Drinking Out of Cups





TED Talk by Elizabeth Gilbert: A new way to think about creativity


Link to this talk on the TED website here.



Grandma vs. Mercedes





Spirit World 2 (part 1)





Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale


The full discussion "Notes & Neurons" from the World Science Festival 2009 in high quality can be found here.


The 30-Second Bunnies Theater Library





Intro to Participatory Economics





Schwa





Bill Moyers Discusses The Washington Post's Pay-to-play Scandal





The Truth About Codex Alimentarius





The Yes Men





Validation





Bill O'Reilly Lies About Amsterdam





Qigong Master Boils Water With His Hands





Amazing Chinese Man With Extreme Healing Powers Of Chi





Malay Eagle Owl





Svetlana - Pilot Episode





White Box





EepyBird's Sticky Note Experiment





Balancing Point

An interesting and recommended collection of stories you won't find in mainstream media can be found here.

Thanks Teleomorph!

Thanks again to those who made it last night despite the rain, late hour and the challenging movie. I can’t tell you how much I enjoy these gatherings so thanks for being a part of it!

All the material we played is available for free on the web. We started the evening with a preview of a talk by Richard Hoagland called "The Hyperdimensional Election of Barack Obama and 2012". It is almost 3 hours long but full of very interesting concepts and ideas. Part 1:


Part 2:



The evening’s feature film was "Who Killed John O’Neill" which was indeed difficult to watch as expected. Still, I enjoyed some of the new theories presented there that I didn’t hear before and are definitely worth a closer look. (100 min)




We finished the evening by sharing some of our favorite conspiracy theories websites. Two of them are Conspiracy Reality TV and Out There Radio Podcast. You can find them and other excellent sites on the "Recommended Links" area on the sidebar.

Oh yeh, we also talked about lucid dreaming and Lucidipedia during dinner.

Hope to see you and many others at the next installation of P&P. I'll post the official announcement in a few days.

Thanks to all who came to SeraPhi this weekend. It was truly a joy to share ideas and get informed together. All the material we played is available for free on the web. Here are the movies in the order they were shown:

We started the evening with a talk titled "Open Source Democracy" by Douglas Rushkoff (55 min), author of a book by the same name.





We then accidentally played a piece by Keith Olbermann called "8 years in 8 minute" (9 min).





We continued with the clip that we originally wanted to show, "Great Moments In Presidential Speeches Compilation" (5 min).





The feature movie for the evening was "The Pharmacratic Inquisition" by Jan Irvin & Andrew Rutajit of gnosticmedia.com (111 min). Here is part 1 of 12:



YouTube playlist with all 12 parts: here.



We finished the evening with the awesome TED talk "My Stroke of Insight" by Jill Bolte Taylor (20 min).




Hope to see many of you at the next P&P!