Iffy Books | 404 S. 20th St., PHL

📘 Reading & discussion with Mary F.E. Ebeling, author of 'Afterlives of Data: Life and Debt Under Capitalist Surveillance'
2022-12-03 14:00 - 16:00 (America/New_York) | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
Join us Saturday, December 3rd at 2:00 p.m. for a reading & discussion with Mary F.E. Ebeling, author of Afterlives of Data: Life and Debt Under Capitalist Surveillance (University of California Press, 2022).
➡️ Video Stream Link
What our health data tell American capitalism about our value—and how that controls our lives.
Afterlives of Data follows the curious and multiple lives that our data live once they escape our control. Mary F. E. Ebeling’s ethnographic investigation shows how information about our health and the debt that we carry becomes biopolitical assets owned by healthcare providers, insurers, commercial data brokers, credit reporting companies, and platforms. By delving into the oceans of data built from everyday medical and debt traumas, Ebeling reveals how data about our lives come to affect our bodies and our life chances and to wholly define us.
Investigations into secretive data collection and breaches of privacy by the likes of Cambridge Analytica have piqued concerns among many Americans about exactly what is being done with their data. From credit bureaus and consumer data brokers like Equifax and Experian to the secretive military contractor Palantir, this massive industry has little regulatory oversight for health data and works to actively obscure how it profits from our data. In this book, Ebeling traces the health data—medical information extracted from patients’ bodies—that are digitized and repackaged into new data commodities that have afterlives in database lakes and oceans, algorithms, and statistical models used to score patients on their creditworthiness and riskiness. Critical and disturbing, Afterlives of Data examines how Americans’ data about their health and their debt are used in the service of marketing and capitalist surveillance.
Registration (optional but helpful):

💾 Philly 2600 Meetup
2022-12-02 18:00 - 21:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
The Philly 2600 meetup in December will be at Iffy Books on Friday, 12/2, starting around 6:00 p.m. See you then!
The January Philly 2600 meetup is at 30th Street Station.
The Philly 2600 meeting is a monthly gathering of local hackers, phreaks, nerds, geeks, activists, tinkerers, developers, infosec professionals, and other interesting people.
Philly 2600 has been meeting since the early ’90s, and was one of the first 2600 meetings started by 2600 Magazine. 2600 meetings are open to all technology enthusiasts who want mingle, teach a topic, learn something new, or hang out with like-minded people. We meet in a completely public and open area to keep things as safe and accessible as possible.
➡️ Philly 2600 Code of Conduct

Reading Group: 'Parable of the Sower' by Octavia E. Butler
2022-11-30 19:00 - 21:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
For our November reading group we’ll discuss Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler. See you there!

◼️ Philly ABC Monthly Letter Writing Event
2022-11-28 18:30 - 21:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
On Monday, November 28th the Philadelphia Anarchist Black Cross is hosting their monthly letter writing event at Iffy Books. Come out and write letters to anarchist prisoners!
What is Anarchist Black Cross (ABC)?
ABC chapters around the world autonomously support people who are imprisoned for their thoughts and actions for justice and freedom from oppression, also known as political prisoners or prisoners of war. It is an extension of the work begun by the Political Red Cross in the late 19th century supporting political prisoners in Tsarist prisons or labor camps. PRC not only provided aid, but many times assisted in the planned escapes from prisons or places of exile. In 1907, the Anarchist Red Cross formed and branched out internationally to support both anarchist and socialist revolutionaries in prison and exile, since revolutionaries with these movements had begun to be excluded from the PRC’s support. With the rise of a new dictatorship in Russia, the ARC reorganized in 1919 as the Anarchist Black Cross. During the Spanish Civil War and WWII, ABCs comprised mostly of Russian Jews aided anarchist comrades fleeing from fascist persecution as well as those arrested in the resistance movements throughout Europe.*
In 1979, Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin, an anarchist political prisoner in the US at the time, issued a “Draft Proposal for an ABC Network” in hopes that it would initiate a united mass movement rather than individual collectives. This proposal influenced the growth of ABC for over a decade, and in 1995 several groups banded together to form the ABC Federation of which Philly ABC is still a member. In addition to roughly a dozen chapters across so-called North America, there are chapters in South America, Europe and Asia. As anarchists, we support a diversity of tactics and aim to support current political prisoners as they see fit. Most chapters on Turtle Island prioritize support for Black and Indigenous liberation struggles in addition to people from anarchist and other anti-authoritarian movements.

Closed Thursday, 11/24
2022-11-24 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
We’ll be closed on Thursday, November 24th. On Friday we’ll open at noon and close at 9 p.m.
Photo by CakeWalk

✏️ The Writing Room at Iffy Books
2022-11-23 17:00 - 20:00, 2022-11-16 17:00 - 20:00, 2022-11-09 17:00 - 20:00, 2022-11-02 17:00 - 20:00, 2022-10-26 08:00 - 17:00, 2022-10-12 17:00 - 20:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
Want to get some writing done?
Come co-work with other writers from 5–8 p.m. at Iffy Books. Writers and projects of any type are welcome. The session will be organized into three 40-minute units of silent writing with 10-minute breaks and accountability check-ins in-between.
BYO coffee, water, computer chargers, notepads, etc. See you there!

💾🌾 Permacomputing Meetup
2022-11-20 13:00 - 15:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
Our next permacomputing meetup is on Sunday, November 20th at 1:00 PM EST. You can join us in person at Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St. #3E, PHL) or via Jitsi audio stream.
➡️ Jitsi Stream Link

🐘 An introduction to Mastodon & the fediverse
2022-11-19 13:00 - 15:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
Are you looking for an alternative to Twitter? Join us Saturday, November 19th at 1:00 p.m. for a Mastodon/fediverse onboarding session with Nelson Chu Pavlosky (@skyfaller@jawns.club). Nelson is an admin and mod at jawns.club, a Philly-centric Mastodon instance.
You’ll learn about Mastodon‘s history, how it works, and how it fits into the wider fediverse. We’ll help you get set up if you don’t have an account, and we’ll recommend people you might want to follow.
➡️ Video Link
Register (optional but helpful):

Bleeding Control Basics
2022-11-17 19:00 - 20:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
Presented by Philadelphia SRA, Bleeding Control Basics will go over first aid as it applies to severe bleeding. We will cover scene safety, injury assessment, basic bleeding control, and tourniquet application. This class doesn’t provide any kind of certification, and is just meant to provide essential information to as many people as possible.
This workshop is free.
Register:

🪡 Hands-On Darning Workshop
2022-11-13 13:00 - 15:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
On Sunday, November 13th at 1:00 p.m. we’ll host a darning workshop and mending session. Total beginners welcome!
Register:

☀️ Solar Circuit Bending Workshop at The Chocolate Factory
2022-11-12 12:00 - 14:00 | The Chocolate Factory, 2201 Margaret St., Philadelphia, PA, 19137, United States
On Saturday, November 12th from noon to 2 p.m. we’re running our Solar Circuit Bending Workshop at The Chocolate Factory (2201 Margaret St., PHL). It’s part of a music & electronics festival called Velocities, which runs from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Hope to see you there!
In this workshop you’ll build a tiny solar-powered musical instrument. You’ll start by building a simple oscillator circuit using two NOT gates to generate a square wave. Then you’ll add a push switch and a potentiometer to adjust the pitch. Beginners are welcome! Each participant will get a free kit with a breadboard and all the components.
This workshop is full!

Saturday November 12th, Meantime will host Velocities, a one time special event in the Philadelphia Blumenthal Chocolate Factory. Highlighting analog culture, the event features a vendor marketplace curated by Now+Then Marketplace, modular synth sounds by Modular on the Spot Philly, and a series of workshops and musical performances!
The event takes place on the first and second floors of the currently vacant, concrete-frame factory whose historic structure was the birthplace of the iconic SnoCaps, Goobers and Raisinets among other candies. The market section will host 40 local artists, artisans, and collectors with handmade and vintage products, including vinyl, books, art, and fashion, as well as local food and non-alcoholic beverage vendors. Attendees will be invited to adventure through a modular synth garden with Philadelphia-based musicians creating unique sounds in the reverberant space. Musical equipment manufacturers and artists will be on hand to help guests see, touch and test-drive new and vintage modular components at the synth swap meet. Workshops led by Iffy Books and Sound Museum Collective are open to the public throughout the day on site. Rounding out the evening , attendees are welcomed to a quadraphonic performance by artists including draft/ patch/ weave, Chris Powell, Tina Kalakay, and Phil Yeah.

Event info on Eventbrite

🎥 FFmpeg Workshop
2022-11-10 19:00 - 21:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
On Thursday, November 10th at 7:00 p.m. we’ll host a free workshop on FFmpeg, an essential command-line tool for transcoding audio and video files (i.e., converting them from one format to another).
Here’s our zine on FFmpeg, which covers Windows, macOS, and Linux:
• Screen reading PDF
• Print-imposed PDF
Registration (optional but helpful):

📚 Tabling at Philly Zine Fest 2022
2022-11-05 12:00 - 17:00 | Mitten Hall at Temple Univesity, 1913 N Broad St., Philadelphia, PA, 19122, United States
We’ll be tabling at Philly Zine Fest! (And the shop will be open 12–8 p.m. as usual.)
The Philly Zine Fest returns live and in person!
Saturday, November 5, 2022 from 12–5pm
Mitten Hall at Temple University (1913 N. Broad Street, Philadelphia PA)
Hosted by the Center for Humanities at Temple, with major support from Temple University Libraries
This event is organized by The Soapbox Community Print Shop & Zine Library.

Zine Camp 2022 in Rotterdam: Virtual Zine Swap
2022-11-05 - 2022-11-06 | WORM (Rotterdam), Boomgaardsstraat 71, Rotterdam, Netherlands
Virtual Zine Swap & IFFY Books
November 5–6, 2022
12:00–20:00 [Rotterdam time]
Also this year the Virtual Zine Swap is active again. This is a program which can accessed both at the physical location and online!
The idea is that you upload a PDF or HTML of your zines for others to download, and also download zines yourself! We want to encourage the swap aspect of zine festivals but also in a safe and easy way for everyone, including those who are unable to join IRL.
This year we added special zines from IFFY books. This philladelphia collective is focused on hacking, free culture and permacomputing.
In order to take part in the physical location, please bring a USB with your own contribution, but also plenty of space to download other’s zines. The online version will be accessible via a username and password which will be released via our socials on the evening of Friday 4th.
Let’s get swapping!
https://zinecamp2022.hotglue.me/?misc

🐌 The Degrowth of Social Media: a short film by KC Legacion
2022-11-04 20:30 - 21:30 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
THE DEGROWTH OF SOCIAL MEDIA
a short film by KC Legacion
Based on their master’s research, KC Legacion has produced a short film that reimagines social media in ways that support socioecological transformations. The film offers a conceptual model of social media informed by degrowth: a framework that (1) critiques societies driven by the need for infinite economic growth and (2) cultivates alternative ways of life centered around values like care, autonomy, and sufficiency. Motivated by the calls to make research more accessible through the synthesis of art and scholarship and drawing upon their years of experience as an actor and videographer, KC’s project contains two storylines: one live action and one animated. In the first narrative, KC introduces their model of a convivial social media ecosystem in a Twitch livestream during the present day; in the second, a pensive narrator recounts a hypothetical story of rebuilding in the Greater Houston Area using convivial social media after several disasters unfold in the year 2027. KC worked with local artist Alex Sickel on the animation.
30-minute screening followed by a Q&A. Masks are encouraged.
KC Legacion is a contributor at Degrowth.info.
Support for “The Degrowth of Social Media” has been provided by The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation, the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Center for Experimental Ethnography.

Fundraise Like Hell: A Benefit for Project SAFE with Kim Kelly
2022-10-30 13:00 - 14:30 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
➡️ Video Stream Link
➡️ Donate to @PHLRUA on Venmo
What can sex workers’ labor organizing teach the contemporary labor movement? Join Kim Kelly (author of Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor) for a reading and a panel of Project SAFE participants for a discussion about the intersections of sex workers’ labor struggles and the broader labor movement in the United States. Sex workers have organized for workplace protections in strip clubs, against dangerous online regulations, to share information about bad dates, to help each other with rent and bills, and more.
Project SAFE is a grassroots, direct-service, and peer-based harm reduction organization. We organize with and provide women- and queer-centered services with a focus on community members living and working in the street economies in Kensington.
When: Oct. 30, 1:00–2:30pm
Where: Iffy Books / 319 N. 11th St. 3E, PHL
Cost: $10–$30 sliding scale at the door; all proceeds benefit Project SAFE
Accessibility: This event will be hybrid (email safephila@gmail.com for details). The space is accessible by public transit. There will be two bathrooms available, one of which is wheelchair accessible.
The building has five steps leading from the street level to the first floor landing where the elevator is located. The elevator’s entryway is 29 inches wide. To arrange assistance or a ramp, send an email to iffybooks@iffybooks.net

🚉 How to Make Beautiful (and Helpful) Maps of Your Commute with Emily Boda
2022-10-29 14:00 - 16:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
On Saturday, October 29th at 2 p.m. EDT, Emily Boda will give a talk on how to make a heat map visualization that shows commute times to a specific location. Here’s a blog post about the project.
This will be a hands-on workshop, so you may want to bring a laptop if you have one.
➡️ Video Stream Link
Register (optional but helpful):

☀️ Solar Circuit Bending Workshop
2022-10-23 14:00 - 16:00 | The Rail Park, 1300 Noble Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
On Sunday, October 23rd at 2:00 p.m. we’ll meet outdoors at The Rail Park to build tiny solar-powered musical instruments. Each participant will receive a free kit with a breadboard, solar panel, and all the required components.
You can enter The Rail Park at N. 13th and Noble St. (wheelchair accessible) or enter at the staircase on Callowhill St. between 11th St. and 12th St. We’ll meet by the wooden deck area, just east of 12th St.
Supported by the Engaged Humanities Studio (EHS) program at Swarthmore College.
Registration is now closed! If you want, you can enter your name to join the waiting list:

Here’s the oscillator circuit we’ll build:

Tabling at WOPR Summit & Opening at 5 p.m.
2022-10-21 10:00 - 16:00 | Mazur Hall at Temple University, 1835 N 12th St, Philadelphia, PA, 19122, United States
Iffy Books will be tabling at WOPR Summit 0x01 on Friday, October 21st. We’ll be there roughly 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
That means our shop at 319 N. 11th St. will open at 5 p.m. instead of 2 p.m. Sorry for the inconvenience! We’ll be open until 9 p.m.

> WOPR Summit is an immersive hacking conference focused on hardware, software, and wireless technologies.
Our next event, WOPR Summit 0x01, will be held on Oct 20-21, 2022 at Temple University in Mazur Hall.
Read our announcement for more updates and details.
Our 0x01 conference schedule is available here
While not required, we request that you register at our Eventbrite link so that we can track headcount; and by registering, you’ve entered a raffle!

🦜 Reading Group: Multispecies Cities
2022-10-19 19:00 - 21:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
On Wednesday, October 19th, we’ll discuss our first collection of short stories, Multispecies Cities, which gathers work from writers across Asia and the Pacific to imagine futures that emphasize the importance of interspecies justice.
Register:

Opening Reception for "Selective Attention: Interventions into the Computational Gaze"
2022-10-18 17:15 - 19:00 | Annenberg School for Communication, 3620 Walnut St., Philadelphia, PA, United States
“Selective Attention: Interventions into the Computational Gaze”
Featuring the work of Kelsey Halliday Johnson, Lisa Marie Patzer and Roopa Vasudevan
Opening reception: October 18, 2022
5:15pm – 7:00pm
Annenberg School for Communication, Room 500
3620 Walnut St, Philadelphia, PA

The opening reception is open to the public. More event info here.
Algorithms and computation are driving more and more of our daily decision-making processes than ever before. The digital, in many ways, can almost be considered a filter: guiding the choices we make and the opportunities we are allowed to see, rendering certain practices hypervisible and “natural” while obscuring others.
This exhibition features three artists with deep connections to Philadelphia, who surface tensions between what is visible to the computer eye and what we are able to see and interpret as human beings. The work asks the viewer to consider how the intervention of the digital into practices that have traditionally centered human vision changes the way we see, interpret and understand — and, by the same token, what could be possible if humans insisted on claiming their own gaze within processes that attempt to exclude them altogether.
This exhibition was organized by Roopa Vasudevan.

Here’s a list of books we chose for the exhibit:
• ‘Blockchain Chicken Farm’ by Xiaowei Wang (2020)
• ‘A Hacker Manifesto’ by Mackenzie Wark (2004)
• ‘The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty’ by Benjamin H. Bratton (2016)
• ‘Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence’ by Kate Crawford (2021)
• ‘How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism’ by Cory Doctorow (2021)
• ‘Revolutionary Mathematics: Artificial Intelligence, Statistics and the Logic of Capitalism’ by Justin Joque (2022)
• ‘Breaking Things at Work: The Luddites Are Right about Why You Hate Your Job’ by Gavin Mueller (2021)
• ‘Too Smart: How Digital Capitalism Is Extracting Data, Controlling Our Lives, and Taking Over the World’ by Jathan Sadowski (2020)
• ‘What Tech Calls Thinking: An Inquiry Into the Intellectual Bedrock of Silicon Valley’
by Adrian Daub (2020)
• ‘Obfuscation: A User’s Guide for Privacy and Protest’ by Finn Brunton and Helen Nissenbaum (2016)
• ‘Linux Pocket Guide: Essential Commands’ by Daniel J. Barrett (2016)
• ‘Subprime Attention Crisis: Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet’ by Tim Hwang (2020)
• ‘Understanding E-Carceration: Electronic Monitoring, the Surveillance State, and the Future of Mass Incarceration’ by James Kilgore (2022)
• ‘Silicon Values: The Future of Free Speech Under Surveillance Capitalism’ by Jillian C. York (2022)
• ‘Identified: Facial Recognition in Feature Films’ by Joyce S. Lee
• ‘Discriminating Data: Correlation, Neighborhoods, and the New Politics of Recognition’ by Wendy Hui Kyong Chun w/ Alex Barnett (2021)
• ‘Your Linux Toolbox’ by Julia Evans (2019)
• ‘Machine Learning Pocket Reference: Working with Structured Data in Python’ by Matt Harrison (2019)
• ‘The Manga Guide to Linear Algebra’ by Shin Takahashi, Iroha Inoue, and Trend-Pro Co. (2012)

💾🌾 Permacomputing Meetup
2022-10-16 13:00 - 15:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
Our next permacomputing meetup is on Sunday, October 16th at 1:00 PM EDT. You can join us in person at Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St. #3E, PHL) or via Jitsi audio stream.
➡️ Jitsi Stream Link

'Choose Your Own Adventure: Inventing a Form to Fit Your Content' with Tenacity Plys
2022-10-15 14:00 - 16:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
Found-document fiction can be dismissed as a gimmick, but Tenacity Plys’s new novella Family Curse – Field Notebooks (1880-2020) proves that when the form fits the content, that’s when the magic happens. Ten will give a reading, then discuss how xe crafted the form to fit the content while developing the story. Plus, xe’ll give a writing prompt so you can try out the same principles yourself!
➡️ Video Stream Link
📔 They say in town that every generation, fairies lure a member of Virgil’s family into the local woods, never to be seen again. Virgil doesn’t really care about that; they’re just squatting at their aunt’s vacant house during quarantine. But one night, they’re awoken by a knocking at the back door that leads them into a tangle of family secrets, and a mystery that’s as heartbreaking as it is chilling.
📔 To avoid disappearing themself, Virgil has to piece together journal entries from three generations of their relatives, who all spent their lives wondering why their siblings were taken. If Virgil can solve the puzzle, they won’t just save themselves — they’ll put more than a hundred years’ worth of family history to rest. This story of a neurodivergent family’s struggle to understand themselves is by turns spooky, funny, sad, and hopeful despite everything.
👤 Tenacity Plys is a nonbinary autistic writer based in Brooklyn, with publications in Hobart, Ethel, Bullshit Lit, Alien Buddha, Word Gathering, and Pif Magazine. Xir Pushcart-nominated story “I Love My AI Son” will be featured in Alien Buddha’s Best of 2022 anthology at the end of this year. You can find more of xir work at tenacityplys.com!
Saturday, October 15th at 2:00 p.m. at Iffy Books

VisiData Workshop with Dave Slinger
2022-10-13 19:00 - 21:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
At this workshop you’ll learn about VisiData, a lightweight command-line tool that can help you explore just about any kind of dataset, from spreadsheets to databases. Led by Dave Slinger.
VisiData is an interactive multitool for tabular data. It combines the clarity of a spreadsheet, the efficiency of the terminal, and the power of Python, into a lightweight utility which can handle millions of rows with ease.
➡️ What is VisiData?
➡️ Video Stream Link
Register:

📦 “How I Moved House by Bicycle” with Nelson Chu Pavlosky
2022-10-08 14:00 - 15:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
On Saturday, October 8th at 2 p.m. EDT, Nelson Chu Pavlosky will give a presentation on how he moved from one house to another entirely by bike. It was a 12-mile trip uphill, from South Philly to the Mt. Airy neighborhood. Hope to see you there!
➡️ Video link
