🔐 Philly 2600 Meetup
2023-12-01 18:00 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
This will be the last Philly 2600 meetup at the old Iffy Books location, 319 N. 11th St. #2I. Should be a good one!
> The Philly 2600 meeting is a monthly gathering of local hackers, phreaks, nerds, geeks, activists, tinkerers, developers, infosec professionals, and other interesting people.

Next week we’re moving Iffy Books to a storefront at 404 S. 20th St. We were originally planning to have this meetup in the new space, but our move date got pushed back. Sorry for any confusion!

📙 Philly Zine Fest
2023-12-02 10:00 - 17:00 | Mitten Hall at Temple Univesity, 1913 N Broad St., Philadelphia, PA, 19122, United States
Philly Zine Fest is on Saturday, December 2nd from 10–5 p.m. at Temple’s Mitten Hall (1913 N. Broad Street). See you there!
Organized by The Soapbox. Sponsored by Temple University Libraries, with additional support provided by The Center for Humanities at Temple.

⭐️ PHL Fediverse Meetup
2023-12-03 13:00 - 15:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
On Sunday, December 3rd at 1 p.m. we’re hosting a meetup for folks who use federated services like Mastodon, Lemmy, and Pixelfed, as well as anyone who’s curious about learning more. Hope to see you there!

🔥 Camp heater assembly & distro organization [canceled]
2023-12-03 18:30 - 20:30 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
We had to cancel this event due to unforeseen circumstances. Sorry for the inconvenience!

⚙️ Neo-Luddite Reading Group: ‘The Human Use of Human Beings’ by Norbert Wiener
2023-12-05 18:30 - 20:30 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
Our current book for the Neo-Luddite Reading Group is The Human Use of Human Beings by Norbert Wiener (1950, revised 1954). On Tuesday, December 5th we’re meeting to discuss chapter 8 through the end of the book.
Meetup link
After this book we’ll read Race After Technology by Ruha Benjamin (could maybe pair it with chapters from Artificial Whiteness, unless we just feel like reading it in its entirety in the future.

🎊 First Day at 404 S. 20th Street!
2023-12-06 12:00 - 19:00 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
Iffy Books is moving to a storefront! Very exciting! Starting on Wednesday, December 6th we’ll be at 404 S. 20th St., half a block from Rittenhouse Hardware. For the rest of December we’ll be open Wednesday–Sunday, 12–7 p.m.
See y’all in the new space!

🔔 BSidesPhilly 2023
2023-12-08 12:00 - 18:00 | Netrality Data Center, 401 N Broad St, Philadelphia, PA, 19108, United States
We’ll be at BSidesPhilly 2023 on Friday, December 8th! Stay tuned for more details.
➡️ Call for Speakers

📡 In-Person Meshtastic Meetup
2023-12-09 13:00 - 15:00 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
On Saturday, December 9th from 1–3 p.m. we’re hosting an informal meetup at Iffy Books for Meshtastic users. Stay tuned for details!
Meshtastic: An open source, off-grid, decentralized, mesh network built to run on affordable, low-power devices

🧸 Toy Quieting Workshop
2023-12-10 13:00 - 15:00 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
Does your kid have a toy that’s so loud it’s driving you up the wall? Are you just curious about electronics and sound? Join us Sunday, December 10th from 1–3 p.m. for a hands-on workshop on how to quiet or silence kids’ electronic toys. Bring an electronic toy to modify and we’ll walk you through the steps.
Register:

🪡 Hands-On Darning Workshop
2023-12-10 15:30 - 17:30 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
On Sunday, December 10th at 3:30 p.m. we’re hosting a darning workshop and mending session. Total beginners welcome!
Here’s our darning how-to zine.
Register:

✏️ The Writing Room
2023-12-13 17:00 - 19:30, 2023-12-20 17:00 - 19:30, 2023-12-27 17:00 - 19:30, 2024-01-03 17:00 - 19:30, 2024-01-18 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.

🐧 [Postponed] Lo-fi image compression with ImageMagick
2023-12-13 18:00 - 19:30 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
We’re postponing this workshop. Stay tuned for updates!
On Wednesday, 12/13 at 6 p.m. we’re hosting a workshop on how to make glitchy, distressed images using the command-line program ImageMagick. We’ll be using Ubuntu Linux for the workshop, but it’s also available for macOS and Windows. We’ll provide computers.
If you’ve never used the command line before, that’s OK! This workshop series is intended for total beginners.

⚡️ Beginner Soldering Workshop
2023-12-14 18:00 - 20:00 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
On Thursday, December 14th at 6:00 p.m. we’re running a soldering workshop for beginners! Anyone can attend for free, but you’ll need to buy a circuit board with components for $6 to complete the project. Here’s what’s included in the kit:

1 x Weevil-shaped PCB
2 x LEDs
1 x 47k Ohm resistor
1 x miniature photocell
1 x 2N3904 transistor
2 x 220 Ohm resistors
1 x CR2032 coin cell battery
1 x 20mm coin cell battery holder

Register:

🎥 subMedia Presents the Two Decades of subVersion Riot Porn Jamboree
2023-12-15 19:00 - 21:00 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
The Two Decades of subVersion Riot Porn Jamboree
Join the subMedia crew this December as we celebrate two decades cranking out anarchist propaganda. That’s right, subMedia has finally made it through its angsty teenager years. Before you know it, we’ll be setting riot porn to soft jazz! So before that happens and to mark this auspicious milestone, we’re throwing a series of screening events in select cities. A riot porn jamboree, if you will – culminating in a livestream screening party, where current and former crew members will be on hand to introduce some of our favourite videos, shoot the shit, and answer all your most burning questions.
So grab some popcorn, a crowbar and a gasmask to celebrate the way only subMedia can… with a two hour cavalcade of riot porn, direct from our projector to your eyeballs.
::TOUR DATES::
Dec 2 – Bloomington
Dec 14 – Baltimore
Dec 14 – Belo Horizonte
Dec 15 – Porto Alegre
Dec 15 – Philly
Dec 15 – Montreal
Dec 16 – NYC
Dec 18 – Hamilton
Dec 19 – Toronto
Dec 21 – Online Livestream

🚂 Model Internet Club
2023-12-16 13:00 - 17:00 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
The Model Internet Club meets again on Saturday, December 16th, 1–5 p.m. Newcomers are welcome.
The network is up and running! We now have a DHCP server, a DNS server with custom domain names, and handful of websites running as virtual hosts in Apache. There’s a local bulletin board in the works, and we’re considering our options for connecting wi-fi access points.
We’re looking for websites to run on our local network! If you have an idea, email iffybooks@iffybooks.net or join us on December 16th.
Here’s a photo of our current setup:

💾🌾 Iffy Books Permacomputing Meetup
2023-12-17 13:00 - 15:00 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
Our next permacomputing meetup is on Sunday, December 17th at 1:00 PM EST. You can join us in person at Iffy Books (404 S. 20th St., PHL) or via Jitsi Meet.
➡️ Meetup Link
From Permacomputing.net: Permacomputing is a more sustainable approach to computer and network technology inspired by permaculture. Permacomputing is both a concept and a community of practice oriented around issues of resilience and regenerativity in digital technology. In a time where computing epitomizes industrial waste, permacomputing encourages a more sustainable approach, maximizing hardware lifespans, minimizing energy use and focussing on the use of already available computational resources. We do this because humans are part of nature and technology is an extension of humans, and we acknowledge that technology has been used to harm nature. We want to find out how we can practice good relations with the Earth by learning from ecological systems to leverage and re-center existing technologies and practices. We are also interested in investigating what a permacomputing way of life could be, and what sort of transformative computational culture and aesthetics it could bring forward. If you want to know more, please start reading about what is permacomputing in essence, and then dive into its principles.
Permacomputing Aesthetics: Potential and Limits of Design Constraints in Computational Culture by Mansoux, Howell, Barok, and Heikkilä (2023)

🧸 Toy Quieting Workshop
2023-12-17 15:30 - 17:30 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
Does your kid have a toy that’s so loud it’s driving you up the wall? Are you just curious about electronics and sound? Join us Sunday, December 17th from 3:30–5:30 p.m. for a hands-on workshop on how to quiet or silence kids’ electronic toys. Bring an electronic toy to modify and we’ll walk you through the steps.
Register:

🌇 Game Night: Solarpunk Futures
2023-12-22 18:00 - 20:00 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
On Friday, December 22nd at 6:00 p.m. we’ll play a round of the tabletop storytelling game Solarpunk Futures.
Solarpunk Futures is a storytelling game where players imagine the pathways to a desirable world from the perspective of a utopian future. Players use a deck of cards to remember Ancestors and work together using Tools and Values to overcome a set of real-world Challenges. Through dialogue and collaborative worldbuilding, collective and visionary narratives emerge of a new society, along with plausible scenarios for how to get there.
Solarpunk Futures is a project by Solarpunk Surf Club, led by members Nick Lyell & Max Puchalsky
Illustration by Solarpunk Surf Club, licensed under CC BY NC SA 4.0
Register:

🌻 Open 10–2 on Sunday, 12/24
2023-12-24 10:00 - 14:00 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
We’ll be open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Sunday, December 24th! Our new address is 404 S. 20th. St, PHL.

🎤 Audio Recording Basics
2023-12-27 15:00 - 17:00 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
On Wednesday, December 27th from 3–5 p.m. we’re running a workshop on the basics of recording audio. We’ll discuss mic technique, audio hardware, recording conditions, and software options. Everyone will get a chance to make a recording with Audacity and start editing with Reaper.
Register:

☀️ [Postponed to Jan 27] Direct Solar Power Working Group
2023-12-30 13:00 - 15:00 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
We’ve postponed this event until Saturday, January 27th. Sorry for the inconvenience!
Join us from 1–3 p.m. on Saturday, December 30th for the first meeting of the Direct Solar Power Working Group. (We can change the name if people don’t like it.) Our plan is to discuss & experiment with methods for using solar energy without batteries.
We’re starting this group in response to the article Direct Solar Power: Off-Grid Without Batteries by Kris De Decker (August 2023), which focuses on using small solar panels to run computers, fridges, and heating elements for cooking. We’ll also discuss using solar thermal collectors for cooking and heating.
For our first meeting we’ll have a few 6-Watt solar panels to run tests with. Our goal is to find out what people are interested in and work our way up to bigger projects.

🧸 Toy Quieting Workshop
2024-01-07 13:00 - 15:00 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
Does your kid have a toy that’s so loud it’s driving you up a wall? Are you just curious about electronics and sound? Join us Sunday, January 7th from 1–3 p.m. for a hands-on workshop on how to quiet or silence kids’ electronic toys. Bring an electronic toy to modify and we’ll walk you through the steps.
Register:

📚 Philly Socialists Reading Group
2024-01-07 16:00 - 17:30 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
This will be our first meeting of the new Philly Socialists Reading Group. Before jumping into our first book, Hinterland: America’s New Landscape of Class and Conflict by Phil A. Neel, we are meeting to discuss how we will approach this book together and why struggles over space are important for us to study as a group anti-capitalist organizers.
This group is open to anyone committed to collective learning and liberation whether they are a member of Philly Socialists or not. We aim to tackle challenging theoretical texts together. Rather than finding ‘the correct reading’ of a text, the goal of group is to collectively find tools from texts for creating a better world.

Philly Socialists is a political organization committed to creating a just and sustainable future for ourselves and our planet. As socialists, we believe in freedom, democracy, and the right to basic human dignity. Capitalism denies us all these. Only revolutionary change that ends capitalism will win us the future we deserve. And only a massive, organized force can get us there. If you are interested in finding out more, please find us at our website https://www.phillysocialists.org/ or email us admin@phillysocialists.org

⚡️ Beginner Soldering Workshop
2024-01-11 18:00 - 20:00 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
On Thursday, January 11th at 6:00 p.m. we’re running a soldering workshop for beginners! Anyone can attend for free, but you’ll need to buy a circuit board with components for $6 to complete the project. Here’s what’s included in the kit:

1 x Weevil-shaped PCB
2 x LEDs
1 x 47k Ohm resistor
1 x miniature photocell
1 x 2N3904 transistor
2 x 220 Ohm resistors
1 x CR2032 coin cell battery
1 x 20mm coin cell battery holder

Register

💾🌾 Iffy Books Permacomputing Meetup
2024-01-14 13:00 - 15:00 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
Our next permacomputing meetup is on Sunday, January 14th at 1:00 PM EST. You can join us in person at Iffy Books (404 S. 20th St., PHL) or via Jitsi Meet.
➡️ Meetup Link
From Permacomputing.net: Permacomputing is a more sustainable approach to computer and network technology inspired by permaculture. Permacomputing is both a concept and a community of practice oriented around issues of resilience and regenerativity in digital technology. In a time where computing epitomizes industrial waste, permacomputing encourages a more sustainable approach, maximizing hardware lifespans, minimizing energy use and focussing on the use of already available computational resources. We do this because humans are part of nature and technology is an extension of humans, and we acknowledge that technology has been used to harm nature. We want to find out how we can practice good relations with the Earth by learning from ecological systems to leverage and re-center existing technologies and practices. We are also interested in investigating what a permacomputing way of life could be, and what sort of transformative computational culture and aesthetics it could bring forward. If you want to know more, please start reading about what is permacomputing in essence, and then dive into its principles.
Permacomputing Aesthetics: Potential and Limits of Design Constraints in Computational Culture by Mansoux, Howell, Barok, and Heikkilä (2023)

⚙️ Neo-Luddite Reading Group: ‘Race After Technology' by Ruha Benjamin
2024-01-16 18:30 - 20:30 | Iffy Books (319 N. 11th St.), 319 N. 11th St. #2I, Philadelphia, PA, 19107, United States
Our current book for the Neo-Luddite Reading Group is Race After Technology (2019) by Ruha Benjamin. We’ll meet Tuesday, January 16th at 6:30 p.m. to discuss the introduction through chapter 2.
Meetup link
➡️ Official schedule

“Remember to imagine and craft the worlds you cannot live without, just as you dismantle the ones you cannot live within.” -R. BenjaminContact:
neoluddite@victorgom.es
Twitter
Bluesky
Substack3rd Tuesday each month 6:30-8:30 @ Iffy BooksDiscord: Email neoluddite@victorgom.es for an invite!
The issues and harms surrounding emergin technologies are especially concerning given the lack of regulation in the tech industry generally, and the tendency of productivity-increasing technology to further concentrate power in the hands of the few. This reading group will explore these risks and engage with how they work in the hopes of better organizing to protect the rights of workers and individuals. The goal is to have a better understanding of the costs (data, carbon, human labor) and risks (misinformation, unpredictability, bias) of making these machines, as well as limitations in what they can learn about the world primarily through text.
We’re currently reading Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code by Ruha Benjamin and will decide what to read next at our first session of the year.
So far, we’ve read “Resisting AI: An Anti-fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence” by Dan McQuillian and The Human Use of Human Beings by Norbert Wiener. The following archived pages include more Information on those sessions: Resist AI and The Human Use of Human Beings. If you’d like to learn more about me, you can visit victorgom.es for a bio.

Schedule
If you’re joining for the first time, I’d suggest you read this before anything else for some historical 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.
The author kindly provides a free reading guide on her website, so I’d reccomend checking it out for the relevant chapters prior to each meeting to get you thinking. 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.

Meeting 1 (Jan. 16th):📖 Race After Technology

Preface & Introduction

🎥 Are We Automating Racism? by Vox
🎙️ Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000: Let’s Do the Time Warp! by Emily Bender & Alex Hanna

1. Engineered Inequity

🗞️ In Retrospect: The unseen Black faces of AI algorithms by Abeba Birhane
📜 The Whiteness of AI by Stephen Cave & Kanta Dihal

2. Default Discrimination

📜 The Surveillance AI Pipeline by Pratyusha Ria Kalluri
🎙️ Timnit Gebru Looks at Corporate AI and Sees a Lot of Bad Science by Reimagining the Internet

Meeting 2 (February. 20th):📖 Race After Technology

3. Coded Exposure

📜 Large language models propagate race-based medicine by Jesutofunmi A. Omiye, Jenna C. Lester, Simon Spichak, Veronica Rotemberg & Roxana Daneshjou
🎥 Signing Black in America by The TALKING BLACK in AMERICA Project

4. Technological Benevolence

📜 Power to the People? Opportunities and Challenges for Participatory AI by Birhane, A., Isaac, W., Prabhakaran, V., DC-az, M., Elish, M., Gabriel, I., Mohamed, S.
🗞️ How Inclusive New AI Model Latimer Can Fight Bias by Kalina Bryant

5. Retooling Solidarity, Reimagining Justice

📜 Reclaiming AI as a theoretical tool for cognitive science by Iris van Rooij, Olivia Guest, Federico G Adolfi, Ronald de Haan, Antonina Kolokolova, and Patricia Rich
🎙️ Confronting Our Reality: Racial Representation and Systemic Transformation with Dr. Timnit Gebru by The Radical AI Podcast

Additional resources

Outreach Resources & Guides

📜 Digital Defense Playbook: Community Power Tools for Reclaiming Data by Our Data Bodies
📜 A People’s Guide to AI by Mimi Onuoha and Mother Cyborg (Diana Nucera)
📜 Algorithmic Accountability: A Primer by Data & Society

Potential Future Reads

📖 Blood in the Machine: The Origins of Rebellion Against Big Tech by Brian Merchant
📖 Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor by Virginia Eubanks
📖 Questioning Technology: Tool, Toy or Tyrant by John Zerzan & Alice Carnes
📖 Technofix: Why Technology Won’t Save Us or the Environment by Michael Huesemann & Joyce Huesemann
📖 Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor by Kim Kelly
📖 The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation by Cory Doctorw

Links to more links

Critical Lenses on AI by Iris van Rooij
A Luddite Library by LibrarianShipwreck
Resources by Ruha Benjamin

More on Luddites

I’m a Luddite. You should be one too by Jathan Sadowski
Is It O.K. To Be A Luddite? by Thomas Pynchon
Byron Was One of the Few Prominent Defenders of the Luddites by Kat Eschner
Ned Ludd & Queen Mab: machine-breaking, romanticism, and the several commons of 1811-12 by Peter Linebaugh

Poems

Song for The Luddites by Lord Byron
A Luddite Lullaby by Don Bogen
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace by Richard Brautigan
I Am the People, the Mob by Carl Sandburg
They Say This Isn’t a Poem by Kenneth Rexroth
Under Which Lyre by W.H. Auden
When I Heard The Learn’d Astronomer by Walt Whitman
