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

✏️ The Writing Room
2024-07-30 17:00 - 19:30, 2024-08-06 17:00 - 19:30, 2024-08-20 17:00 - 19:30, 2024-08-27 17:00 - 19:30, 2024-09-03 17:00 - 19:30, 2024-09-10 17:00 - 19:30 (America/New_York) | 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.

🪐 Speculative Futures Reading Group: 'Annihilation' by Jeff VanderMeer
2024-07-31 19:00 - 20:30 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
On Wednesday, July 31st at 7 p.m. we’ll meet to discuss Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer. See you then!

💻 Philly 2600 Meetup
2024-08-02 18:00 - 20:00, 2024-09-06 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.

📚 Philly Socialists Reading Group: 'Neither Vertical nor Horizontal: A Theory of Political Organization' by Rodrigo Nunes
2024-08-04 16:00 - 17:30, 2024-08-18 16:00 - 17:30, 2024-09-08 16:00 - 17:30 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
We’re reading Neither Vertical nor Horizontal: A Theory of Political Organization by Rodrigo Nunes.

How do we organize in a world after both Occupy and the Sanders campaign?
A decade ago, a wave of mass mobilisations described as “horizontal” and “leaderless” swept the planet, holding the promise of real democracy and justice for the 99%. Many saw its subsequent ebb as proof of the need to go back to what was once called “the question of organisation”. For something so often described as essential, however, political organisation remains a surprisingly under-theorised field. In this book, Rodrigo Nunes proposes to remedy that lack by starting again from scratch. Redefining the terms of the problem, he rejects the confusion between organisation and any of the forms it can take, such as the party, and argues that organisation must be understood as always supposing a diverse ecology of different initiatives and organisational forms. Drawing from a wide array of sources and traditions that include cybernetics, poststructuralism, network theory and Marxism, Nunes develops a grammar that eschews easy oppositions between “verticalism” and “horizontalism”, centralisation and dispersion, and offers a fresh approach to enduring issues like spontaneity, leadership, democracy, strategy, populism, revolution, and the relationship between movements and parties.

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 reading website or email us admin@phillysocialists.org

⚡️ Beginner Soldering Workshop
2024-08-08 18:00 - 19:30, 2024-09-12 18:00 - 19:30 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
On the second Thursday of every month we run 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:

📡 Meshtastic 101
2024-08-09 14:00 - 16:00, 2024-08-23 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.
Register:

📙 Adam Greenfield in conversation with Glenn Wallis, celebrating the release of 'Lifehouse: Taking Care of Ourselves in a World on Fire'
2024-08-13 18:30 - 20:30 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
Join us on Tuesday, August 13th at 6:30 p.m. for an event with Adam Greenfield, author of Lifehouse: Taking Care of Ourselves in a World on Fire (Verso, 2024). He’ll be joined in conversation by Glenn Wallis, author of An Anarchist’s Manifesto (Warbler Press, 2020). Hope to see you there!
> LIFEHOUSE: TAKING CARE OF OURSELVES IN A WORLD ON FIRE
> AN URGENT AND PRACTICAL GUIDE TO COMMUNITY RESILIENCE IN THE FACE OF CLIMATE CATASTROPHE
A Lifehouse is an institution at the heart of each neighborhood that responds to the terrifying reality of climate collapse in our own communities.
In this book Adam Greenfield, author of Radical Technologies, recovers lessons from the Black Panther survival programs, the astonishingly effective Occupy Sandy disaster-relief effort and the solidarity networks of crisis-era Greece, as well as municipalist Spain and autonomous Rojava, to show how practices of mutual care and local power can help shelter us from a future that often feels like it has no place for us or the values we cherish.

⚙️ Neo-Luddite Reading Group: 'Blood in the Machine' by Brian Merchant
2024-08-14 18:30 - 20:30, 2024-08-29 18:30 - 20:30 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
We moved our next meeting to Thursday, August 29th. See you then!
2nd and 4th Wednesday each month 6:30-8:30 @ Iffy Books
➡️ Virtual Meetup Link
Discord: Email neoluddite@victorgom.es for an invite!
The issues and harms surrounding emerging 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 Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech by Brian Merchant. Archived pages of our previous books include: Resisting AI, The Human Use of Human Beings, Race After Technology.
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 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.
Meeting 1 (7/10): 📖 Blood in the Machine

Preface & Introduction

🗞️ Is It O.K. To Be A Luddite? by Thomas Pynchon
🗞️ A Luddite Library by LibrarianShipwreck

1. The Great Comet

🎵 Jersusalem (from Milton) by William Blake (source of the oft-repeated, “dark satanic mills”)
📜 Data Capitalism: Redefining the Logics of Surveillance and Privacy by Sarah West

Meeting 2 (7/24): 📖 Blood in the Machine

2. The Metropolis of Discontent

🎥 Metropolis by Fritz Lang, of course
🗞️ It’s the Billionaires’ Internet, and We’re Just Posting on It by Ed Ongweso Jr.

3. Breaking Frames, Breaking Bones

🎵 Song for The Luddites by Lord Byron
📜 Ned Ludd & Queen Mab: machine-breaking, romanticism, and the several commons of 1811-12 by Peter Linebaugh

Meeting 3 (8/14): 📖 Blood in the Machine

4. More Value than Work or Gold

🗞️ The AI industry has a battle-tested plan to keep using our content without paying for it by Brian Merchant
🗞️ Revisiting Mumford’s “megamachine” by LibrarianShipwreck

Meeting 4 (8/29): 📖 Blood in the Machine

5. The Modern Prometheus

📜 Elon Musk Is Convinced He’s the Future. We Need to Look Beyond Him by Paris Marx
🎙️ AI Hype Machine w/ Meredith Whittaker, Ed Ongweso Jr., and Sarah West by The Dig

6. The Owners of the New Machine Age

🎙️ More Human After All ft. Brian Merchant by TRASHFUTURE
🗞️ Transport Apps Promised to Eliminate Friction. But at What Cost? by Paris Marx

Author event with Brian Merchant: Wednesday, September 11th (doors at 6 p.m., virtual discussion at 6:30)
Full schedule at victorgom.es/neoluddite
Sign up for the Neo-Luddite Reading Group email list:

🔓 TOOOL Lock Picking Meetup
2024-08-16 18:00 - 20:00 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
The third Friday of every month from 6–8 p.m. we host 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.

🏠 Host a Website at Home
2024-08-21 14:00 - 17:00 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
▶ How-to zine on GitHub
Join us on Wednesday, August 21st at 2:00 p.m. for the workshop Host a Website at Home. You’ll learn to run an Apache web server on a single-board computer, letting you host a website from your home internet connection. Then you’ll register a domain name (or create a subdomain for a domain you already own) and set up Dynamic DNS, letting folks access your site even if your home IP address changes.
We’ll have home server kits available for $49, which include an Orange Pi Zero 2W single-board computer and all the hardware you’ll need. If you prefer, you can bring your own single-board computer (e.g., a Raspberry Pi) with Ubuntu Server installed. If you have questions, email iffybooks@iffybooks.net.
Here’s what’s in the kit:
• Orange Pi Zero 2W single-board computer w/1 GB of RAM
• 32 GB microSD card
• microSD card reader
• 2 A USB power supply
• USB-C power cable
• Mini HDMI to HDMI adapter
• USB-C to 2x USB-A adapter
• USB-A to Ethernet adapter
• Ethernet cable
Register

🎶 Electronic Music Machines: Intro to Modular Synthesizers with Dr. Matt
2024-08-21 18:00 - 20:00 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
Once a niche interest of avant-garde electronic musicians, the practice of modular synthesis has flourished in the hands of a vibrant international community of artists, hobbyists, and weirdos. Electronic Music Machines is a workshop specifically geared towards the modular-curious and anyone with a desire to make electronic music and craves an intuitive, exploratory approach. We will cover many of the basics of modular synthesis while working with actual Eurorack hardware and the free virtual patching environment VCV Rack. No experience necessary! For questions, please contact instructor Dr. Matt O’Hare at me@mattohare.com.
Register:

⚡️ Intermediate Soldering Session
2024-08-22 18:00 - 19:30
We host an intermediate soldering class on the fourth Thursday of every month. We’ll have soldering irons and solder to share for free, as well as DIY electronics kits for sale. Or bring your own project!
Register:

🐛 Philadelphia Bookstore Crawl + Cassette Mixtape Session
2024-08-24 10:00 - 19:00 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
Saturday, August 24th is the Philly Bookstore Crawl! At Iffy Books we’re running an open cassette mixtape session all day, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Stop by any time and record a playlist from your phone or laptop to an audio cassette for free. Books in our climate & degrowth section will be 20% off, and t-shirts and tote bags will be 40% off. See y’all on Saturday at 20th & Pine!

💾🌾 Iffy Books Permacomputing Meetup
2024-08-25 13:00 - 15:00 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
The Iffy Books Permacomputing Meetup is every fourth Sunday at 1:00 PM ET. 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)

🪐 Speculative Futures Reading Group: 'All Systems Red' by Martha Wells
2024-08-28 19:00 - 20:30 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
On Wednesday, August 28th at 7 p.m. we’ll meet at Iffy Books to discuss All Systems Red by Martha Wells. See you there!
In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety.
But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern.
On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid ― a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.” Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is.
But when a neighboring mission goes dark, it’s up to the scientists and their Murderbot to get to the truth.

💻 Iffy Books Bootleg Hacker Conference
2024-08-31 10:00 - 18:00 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
On Saturday, August 31st we’re hosting a bootleg hacker conference at Iffy Books from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.! We’ll spend the whole day watching recorded talks from this summer’s hacker conferences (HOPE, DEF CON, etc.) and having impromptu discussions. We’re also running a de-branding clinic, helping folks remove unwanted logos from their conference swag.

10:00 Librarians Are Radicalizing Their Communities About Why the Internet Is Broken – Bettinger, Esmail, Macrina, Springer, Wilson (HOPE XV)
10:50 The XZ Backdoor Story- The Undercover Operation That Set the Internet on Fire (DC23)
11:30 Circumventing Prison Tech Censorship – Jeremy Hammond, Cooper Quintin (HOPE XV)
12:20 Love, Hackers, and Robots: A Reflection of My First Year in the Biohacking Community – Karen Ng (HOPE XV)
12:50 EOL… RLY? Ending The Epidemic of Bricked and Abandoned Stuff – Bumstead, Cherne, Roberts, Gutterman (HOPE XV)
1:40 Group Mesh Messaging for Large-Scale Protests – Tushar Jois (HOPE XV)
2:30 DJ-BSD- DJing and music production in FreeBSD – Charlie Li (BSDCan 2024)
3:10 The Fundamentals of Veilid: cDc Breaks the Internet, and You Can Too! – Katelyn “medus4” Bowden, Paul “The_Gibson” Miller (HOPE XV)
3:50 Mobile Mesh RF Network Exploitation- Getting the Tea from goTenna – Erwin Karincic (Dollarhyde), Clayton Smith (argilo), Woody (DC32)
4:20 Hacks, Leaks, and Revelations: The Art of Analyzing Hacked and Leaked Data – Micah Lee (HOPE XV)
5:10 They’re Still Using Balloons… – Disseminating Information Into North Korea in 2024 – Amon Poston (HOPE XV)
6:00 Jeremy Hammond – Electronic Civil Disobedience (DC12, 2004)

Start times may drift slightly, but we’ll try to stick to the schedule!

🍄‍🟫 Tabling at Fungadelphia Festival
2024-09-07 11:00 - 15:00 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
Philadelphia’s first annual Fungadelphia Festival is coming to the Schuylkill Center this September! 🎉 It’ll be a family-friendly, fungi fun filled day with lectures, workshops, vendors, food, crafts, and more.
WHEN: Sat., Sep. 7, 11 – 3
WHERE: Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, 8480 Hagy’s Mill Road, Philadelphia, PA

⚙️ Virtual discussion with Brian Merchant, author of 'Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech'
2024-09-11 18:30 - 20:30 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
On Wednesday, September 11th at 6:30 p.m., Brian Merchant will join us remotely to discuss his book Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech. You can attend in person at Iffy Books (404 S. 20th St., PHL) or join the stream here.

➡️ Virtual Meetup Link
Discord: Email neoluddite@victorgom.es for an invite!
The issues and harms surrounding emerging 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 Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech by Brian Merchant.Archived pages of our previous books include: Resisting AI, The Human Use of Human Beings, Race After Technology.
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 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.
Meeting 1 (7/10): 📖 Blood in the Machine

Preface & Introduction

🗞️ Is It O.K. To Be A Luddite? by Thomas Pynchon
🗞️ A Luddite Library by LibrarianShipwreck

1. The Great Comet

🎵 Jersusalem (from Milton) by William Blake (source of the oft-repeated, “dark satanic mills”)
📜 Data Capitalism: Redefining the Logics of Surveillance and Privacy by Sarah West

Meeting 2 (7/24): 📖 Blood in the Machine

2. The Metropolis of Discontent

🎥 Metropolis by Fritz Lang, of course
🗞️ It’s the Billionaires’ Internet, and We’re Just Posting on It by Ed Ongweso Jr.

3. Breaking Frames, Breaking Bones

🎵 Song for The Luddites by Lord Byron
📜 Ned Ludd & Queen Mab: machine-breaking, romanticism, and the several commons of 1811-12 by Peter Linebaugh

Meeting 3 (8/14): 📖 Blood in the Machine

4. More Value than Work or Gold

🗞️ The AI industry has a battle-tested plan to keep using our content without paying for it by Brian Merchant
🗞️ Revisiting Mumford’s “megamachine” by LibrarianShipwreck

Meeting 4 (8/28): 📖 Blood in the Machine

5. The Modern Prometheus

📜 Elon Musk Is Convinced He’s the Future. We Need to Look Beyond Him by Paris Marx
🎙️ AI Hype Machine w/ Meredith Whittaker, Ed Ongweso Jr., and Sarah West by The Dig

6. The Owners of the New Machine Age

🎙️ More Human After All ft. Brian Merchant by TRASHFUTURE
🗞️ Transport Apps Promised to Eliminate Friction. But at What Cost? by Paris Marx

Author event with Brian Merchant: Wednesday, September 11th (doors at 6 p.m., virtual discussion at 6:30)
Full schedule at victorgom.es/neoluddite

📡 Meshtastic 101
2024-09-13 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.
Please bring a laptop if you have one (Windows/macOS/Linux). If you don’t have a laptop, send an email and we’ll set up a computer for you.
Register:
