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

🚂 Model Internet Club
2025-05-18 10:30 - 12:30, 2025-04-20 10:30 - 12:30 (America/New_York) | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
The Model Internet Club is back! Join us every third Sunday from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. for an informal meetup focused on building small-scale computer networks.
No registration needed for this event! If we run out of space we can expand into our back yard area.

🎹 Pico MP3 Sampler Workshop
2025-05-16 15:00 - 17:00 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
Create your own digital audio sampler using a Pi Pico clone board! This project requires some soldering. It’s recommended for folks who have soldered once or twice before, but beginners are welcome too. For the programming portion, you can bring a laptop or use one of our lab computers.
You’ll need to buy a kit for $16.95 to complete this project. We’re suggesting a $10–30 donation for the workshop.
Here’s what’s included in the kit:
• RP2040/Pi Pico board
• wood block w/ pilot holes
• 3.5mm stereo jack w/ screw terminals
• 2×4 push button keypad
• 2 push button switches
• 10 screws
• tiny screwdriver
• 20 header pins
• 4.7 uF capacitor
• 9 port to port jumper wires
• 2 port to stripped jumper wires
• 1″ stripped wire
• 3″ tie wire
• 8 plastic spacer rings
• micro USB cable w/ data
No registration needed for this one!

📚 Capital Reading Group
2025-05-15 19:00 - 21:00 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
Join us on the first and third Thursday of every month at 7 p.m. for a reading group on Capital by Karl Marx. We’ll post the sections we’re covering before each meeting.
We’ll be reading Paul Reitter’s recent translation (Princeton University Press, 2024).

⚙️ Neo-Luddite Reading Group: 'Why We Fear AI' by Hagen Blix & Ingeborg Glimmer
2025-05-14 18:30 - 20:30 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
➡️ Virtual Meetup Link
Discord: Email neoluddite@victorgom.es for an invite!
Full schedule: victorgom.es/neoluddite
If you’re joining for the first time, I’d suggest you read this before anything else for brief context: What the Luddites Really Fought Against by Richard Conniff.The only expectation is that you read the chapter(s) of the book that’s listed for that meeting. You’re still welcome to participate if you haven’t done the readings as long as you are mindful. For each chapter, I’ve also noted some optional readings for context, so I’d suggest checking those out rather than reading ahead in the book. And remember, if you ever find yourself struggling with any of the readings or concepts, reach out! Either directly to me over email or to the entire group over discord.

“Blix and Glimmer take the reader on a deeply engaging, funny, and provocative tour through our deepest anxieties and darkest fantasies of an AI-dominated future. Why We Fear AI offers profound insight into how AI and capitalism today work in mutually reinforcing lockstep to deskill and devalue humans, and what it will take to wake up from our worst AI nightmares and build a better world.”
—Shannon Vallor, author of The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking
Fears about AI tell us more about capitalism today than the technology of the future.
Will AI come and take all our jobs? Will it dominate humanity, hack the foundations of our civilization, or even wipe humans off the face of the planet? All kinds of people seem to think so. From professors to billionaires, from artists to fraudsters, from journalists to the pope, AI nightmares have gripped the popular imagination.
Why We Fear AI boldly asserts these fears are actually about capitalism, reimagined as a kind of autonomous intelligent agent.
Industry insiders Hagen Blix and Ingeborg Glimmer dive into the dark, twisted world of AI to demystify the many nightmares we have about it. They combine expertise in cognitive science and machine learning with political and economic analyses to cut through the hype and technobabble to show how fears about AI reflect different economic realities—from venture capitalists, to engineers, to artists, to warehouse workers. Truly understanding the potential impacts of AI means confronting capitalism and class, power and exploitation, in concrete terms. Only then can we fight the real threats to our lives, livelihoods, and the planet, instead of tilting at nightmare windmills.
Blix and Glimmer argue that AI nightmares reveal the terrifying underbelly of our current society, of capitalism and its violent ways of organizing our world in its image. If we simply let capitalism and tech billionaires run wild, we can expect the worst: automated bureaucracies that protect the powerful and punish the poor; an ever-expanding surveillance apparatus; the cheapening of skills, downward pressures on wages, the expansion of insecure gig-work, and crushing inequality. But that outcome is not inevitable, however much capitalists may dream of it. Why We Fear AI points the way to a different and brighter future, one in which our labor, knowledge, and technologies serve the people rather than capital.

About THE AUTHORS
Hagen Blix is a New York City-based cognitive scientist whose research spans language, artificial intelligence, and political economy.
Ingeborg Glimmer is a tech worker and industry researcher in Germany working on machine learning.
PRAISE

“In this highly thoughtful book, Blix and Glimmer delve deeply into the histories of AI, capitalism and neoliberal bureaucracy. The result is disturbing and unsettling, a provocative launchpad for resisting the apparent truths of AI that businesses and governments are so keen to impose on us.” —Nick Couldry, coauthor of Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Fight Back

Excerpt
Are AIs soon going to be all-powerful? Is the Terminator here, is the Matrix coming? Should we be ready to nuke the data centers in humanity’s last stand against rogue AIs? Perhaps the questions are simply ludicrous to some, but to others they have real urgency. Certainly, the fears they raise resonate with many people. It is up to all of us what we make of this, to understand the power of such stories. We must come up with our own interpretations that make sense out of our own experiences of capitalism and the ways in which it shapes technology. If we let those who profit from the status quo tell us what the stories are about, and shape the narrative, we risk tilting at windmills or even strengthening the very powers that already exploit us, that already profit from oppression, and that have already set us on a path towards climate catastrophe. With or without AI, those powers are already spelling doom. If we’re concerned with the battle for the future, we must be ready to fight, not imaginary future AI overlords, but the capitalist structure that already produces the things we fear.

✏️ The Writing Room
2025-05-13 17:00 - 19:30, 2025-05-06 17:00 - 19:30, 2025-04-29 17:00 - 19:30, 2025-04-22 17:00 - 19:30 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
Come co-work with other writers in three 40-minute units of silent writing. Writers and projects of any type welcome. 10-minute breaks and accountability check-ins between units. BYO coffee, water, computer chargers, notepads, etc.

🎹 Pico MP3 Sampler Workshop
2025-05-10 10:00 - 12:00 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
Create your own digital audio sampler using a Pi Pico clone board! This project requires some soldering. It’s recommended for folks who have soldered once or twice before, but beginners are welcome too. For the programming portion, you can bring a laptop or use one of our lab computers.
You’ll need to buy a kit for $16.95 to complete this project. We’re suggesting a $10–25 donation for the workshop.
➡️ Instructions & example code
Here’s what’s included in the kit:
• RP2040/Pi Pico board
• wood block w/ pilot holes
• 3.5mm stereo jack w/ screw terminals
• 2×4 push button keypad
• 2 push button switches
• 10 screws
• tiny screwdriver
• 20 header pins
• 4.7 uF capacitor
• 9 port to port jumper wires
• 2 port to stripped jumper wires
• 1″ stripped wire
• 3″ tie wire
• 8 plastic spacer rings
• micro USB cable w/ data
Register
Registration for this event is now closed. We'll offer it again soon!

🎹 Pico MP3 Sampler Workshop
2025-05-09 15:00 - 17:00 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
Create your own digital audio sampler using a Pi Pico clone board! This project requires some soldering. It’s recommended for folks who have soldered once or twice before, but beginners are welcome too. For the programming portion, you can bring a laptop or use one of our lab computers.
You’ll need to buy a kit for $16.95 to complete this project. We’re suggesting a $10–30 donation for the workshop.
Here’s what’s included in the kit:
• RP2040/Pi Pico board
• wood block w/ pilot holes
• 3.5mm stereo jack w/ screw terminals
• 2×4 push button keypad
• 2 push button switches
• 10 screws
• tiny screwdriver
• 20 header pins
• 4.7 uF capacitor
• 9 port to port jumper wires
• 2 port to stripped jumper wires
• 1″ stripped wire
• 3″ tie wire
• 8 plastic spacer rings
• micro USB cable w/ data
Register
Registration for this event is now closed. We'll offer it again soon!

📡 Meshtastic 101
2025-05-08 12:00 - 13:30 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
Join us for an introduction to Meshtastic, an application that lets you send private text messages over the air using pocket-sized LoRa radio transceivers. We’ll show you how to flash the latest Meshtastic firmware to the device, customize the settings, and start chatting with your friends.
Here’s a link to our zine on LoRa + Meshtastic.
Register:
Registration for this event is now closed. We'll offer it again soon!

💻 Make Your First Website
2025-05-07 18:00 - 20:00 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
Make a home page like it’s 1999! Join us at Iffy Books for a new workshop called Make Your First Website, led by Ragman a.k.a. Richard Green. You’ll learn the basics of HTML and create a static site on the free hosting service Neocities. No experience necessary!
You can bring a laptop or use one of our lab computers. We’re suggesting a $10–$25 donation for this workshop, no one turned away for lack of funds.
Register:
Registration for this event is now closed. We'll offer it again soon!

🐧 Linux Lab: How to Transfer a Large File
2025-05-04 10:30 - 12:30 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
The first Sunday morning of every month we’ll host a drop-in event for Linux beginners. No registration needed. Stay tuned for details!
Photo CC-BY-SA Mark Dickson

💻 Philly 2600 Meetup
2025-05-02 18:00 - 20:00 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
> The Philly 2600 meeting is a monthly gathering of local hackers, phreaks, nerds, geeks, activists, tinkerers, developers, infosec professionals, and other interesting people.

🎹 Pico MP3 Sampler Workshop
2025-05-02 15:00 - 17:00 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
Create your own digital audio sampler using a Pi Pico clone board! This project requires some soldering. It’s recommended for folks who have soldered once or twice before, but beginners are welcome too. For the programming portion, you can bring a laptop or use one of our lab computers. Here’s a link to the workshop materials.
You’ll need to buy a kit for $16.95 to complete this project. We’re suggesting a $10–30 donation for the workshop.
Here’s what’s included in the kit:
• RP2040/Pi Pico board
• wood block w/ pilot holes
• 3.5mm stereo jack w/ screw terminals
• 2×4 push button keypad
• 2 push button switches
• 10 screws
• tiny screwdriver
• 20 header pins
• 4.7 uF capacitor
• 9 port to port jumper wires
• 2 port to stripped jumper wires
• 1″ stripped wire
• 3″ tie wire
• 8 plastic spacer rings
• micro USB cable w/ data
Register
Registration for this event is now closed. We'll offer it again soon!

📚 Capital Reading Group
2025-05-01 19:00 - 21:00 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
Join us on the first and third Thursday of every month at 7 p.m. for a reading group on Capital by Karl Marx.
Readings for May 1st:
• The Working Day
• The Rate and Amount of Surplus-Value
We’re reading Paul Reitter’s recent translation (Princeton University Press, 2024).

🪐 Speculative Futures Reading Group: 'The Year of the Flood' by Margaret Atwood
2025-04-30 19:00 - 20:30
The Speculative Futures Reading Group meets on the last Wednesday of every month at 7 p.m.
> Our April book is Margaret Atwood’s Year of the Flood and in May we’ll read Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi, which defies genre but is about exploring a labyrinth. For June, we have to pick a Le Guin — there are recent lovely editions of both The Lathe of Heaven and Five Ways to Forgiveness, either of which are excellent choices for us.

🌊 Wave Craft: Music Box Spectrogram
2025-04-27 10:00 - 11:30 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
Stay tuned for details!

🎹 Pico MP3 Sampler Workshop
2025-04-26 10:00 - 12:00 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
Create your own digital audio sampler using a Pi Pico clone board! This project requires some soldering. It’s recommended for folks who have soldered once or twice before, but beginners are welcome too. For the programming portion, you can bring a laptop or use one of our lab computers.
You’ll need to buy a kit for $15.95 to complete this project. Here’s what it includes:
• RP2040/Pi Pico board
• wood block w/ pilot holes
• 3.5mm stereo jack
w/ screw terminals
• 2×4 push button keypad
• 2 push button switches
• 14 screws
• tiny screwdriver
• 20 header pins
• 9 port to port jumper wires
• 2 port to stripped jumper wires
• 8 plastic spacer rings
• micro USB cable w/ data
Register
Registration for this event is now closed. We'll offer it again soon!

📡 Meshtastic 101
2025-04-25 15:00 - 17:00 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
Join us for an introduction to Meshtastic, an application that lets you send private text messages over the air using pocket-sized LoRa radio transceivers. We’ll show you how to flash the latest Meshtastic firmware to the device, customize the settings, and start chatting with your friends.
Here’s a link to our zine on LoRa + Meshtastic.
No registration needed for this one!

🎵 Cassette Mixtape Session
2025-04-25 11:00 - 12:00 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
Bring a playlist on your phone/computer and we’ll help you record it to an audio cassette tape. We have plenty of tapes to share!
Register:
coming soon!

🗯️ Overflowing Poetry: Mark Francis Johnson, Ryan Skrabalak, Jen Soong & Ted Rees
2025-04-24 19:00 - 21:00 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
Doors at 7, reading at 7:30!

❤️ Soldering Practice: LED Heart Board
2025-04-24 12:00 - 13:30 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
Come out and get some soldering practice! This time we’re making a heart-shaped board with 22 LEDs, using an oscillator circuit to dim and brighten them at the speed you choose.
This project is ideal for folks who have soldered at least once before. Beginners are welcome to join us, but it may take you more than one session to finish. Working with a friend is encouraged!
The kit you’ll need to complete this project costs $5.50. We’re suggesting a $10–$25 donation for the class, no one turned away for lack of funds.
No registration needed for this one!

📻 Soldering Practice: FM Radio Transmitter
2025-04-23 18:00 - 20:00 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
Come out and get some soldering practice! This time we’re assembling a short-range FM transmitter kit with a built-in mic and a 1/8″ audio input jack.
This project is recommended for folks who have soldered at least once or twice before. If you’re brand new to soldering, we recommend taking a beginner class first.
Register:
Registration for this event is now closed. We'll offer it again soon!

• Transmission Distance: 5-50m
• Transmission Frequency: 88-108MHz
• Audio Input: -15dB (max)
• Operating Voltage: DC 2.7V-3.3V
• Operating Current: 5-15mA

⚡️ Beginner Soldering: USB Data Blocker
2025-04-23 16:30 - 17:30 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
Charging your phone in a public place can be stressful. What if someone is collecting your metadata for marketing purposes? What if they’re copying your files or installing malware? A USB data blocker can help! It’s a little adapter with the data terminals left disconnected, so you can charge your phone anywhere without fear.
This is a relatively quick soldering project, perfect for total beginners. We’ll have soldering irons and supplies to share.
Register:
Registration for this event is now closed. We'll offer it again soon!

⚡️ Beginner Soldering: USB Data Blocker
2025-04-23 16:30 - 17:30 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
Charging your phone in a public place can be stressful. What if someone is collecting your metadata for marketing purposes? What if they’re copying your files or installing malware? A USB data blocker can help! It’s a little adapter with the data terminals left disconnected, so you can charge your phone anywhere without fear.
This is a relatively quick soldering project, perfect for total beginners. We’ll have soldering irons and supplies to share.
Register:
coming soon!

⏰ Buzz & Beep: Make a Custom Alarm with an ESP32-C3
2025-04-19 10:00 - 11:30 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
Build and program an alarm that makes sound and vibrates! No soldering required! We’ll be using Micropython.
To complete this project you’ll need to buy a kit for $12.95. Here’s what it includes:
• ESP32-C3 Super Mini microcontroller
• Mini breadboard (170 tie points)
• Vibration motor (3.4mm)
• Active buzzer module
• Momentary push button switch x2
• Port-to-plug jumper wire x2
• Plug-to-plug jumper wire x5
Requires a USB-C cable with data (sold separately)
Register:
Registration for this event is now closed. We'll offer it again soon!

🔓 TOOOL Lock Picking Meetup
2025-04-18 18:00 - 20:00 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
Join us from 6–8 p.m. for a meetup run by the Philadelphia Chapter of the Open Organization of Lockpickers.
> Come join us for our monthly open pick night at Iffy Books! Whether you’re a novice who just stumbled upon LockpickingLawyer, a seasoned safecracker, or somewhere in between, come join us for a evening of fun as we pop some locks.

💥 Digital Synth Workshop
2025-04-18 14:00 - 16:00 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
Design your own digital synthesizer in a wooden box using a Pi Pico clone board! We’ll have soldering irons, hot glue, and all the other supplies you’ll need. It’s an open-ended project, so you may have to finish at home or come back for a future session.
This project is recommended for folks who have soldered at least once or twice before. If you’re brand new to soldering, we recommend taking a beginner class first.
Register
Registration for this event is now closed. We'll offer it again soon!

You’ll need to buy a kit for $35.95 to complete this project. Here’s what it includes:
• RP2040 development board (a.k.a. Pi Pico)
• 64 rainbow wires (for buttons & knobs)
• red and black wires (for power & audio)
• mono screw-terminal audio jack
• rotary encoder w/ knob
• potentiometer w/ knob
• dipole on/off switch
• 2×4 push button keypad
• 2-prong push button switch x8
• through-hole push button switch x2
• 2.2 uF non-polarized capacitor (225)
• 4.7 uF non-polarized capacitor (475)
• 10 uF non-polarized capacitor (106)
• LED light x5
• 5 100 Ohm resistor x5
• tiny screwdriver
• push pin
• M2 screws (self-tapping, 10mm) x8
• plastic spacer x16
• 3x AA battery clip
• micro USB cable with data
• wooden box
