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

☀️ Solar Music Synth Workshop
2025-10-24 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
Join us and build a tiny solar-powered square wave generator on a breadboard. No soldering required! The workshop is free to attend, but you’ll need to purchase a kit for $12.50 to complete the project.
Here’s a link to the how-to zine we’ll use.
And here’s a diagram of the oscillator circuit we’ll build:

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⚡️ Beginner Soldering: Flashing LED Circuit
2025-10-24 13:00 - 14:00, 2025-11-07 13:00 - 14:00, 2025-11-14 13:00 - 14:00, 2025-11-21 13:00 - 14:00 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
In this workshop you’ll learn the basics of soldering by building a tiny oscillator circuit with two transistors and two LED lights. No previous experience needed!
Register:
Registration for this event is now closed. Sorry.
Here's a link to future workshops in this series!

🎤 Tabling at PPM Fest
2025-10-25 12:00 - 17:00 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
On Saturday, 10/25 we’ll be tabling at the People Power Media Fest, presented by PhillyCAM.
Stay tuned for details!

✏️ The Writing Room
2025-10-28 17:00 - 19:30, 2025-11-04 17:00 - 19:30, 2025-11-11 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.

🪐 Speculative Futures Reading Group: 'The Tainted Cup' by Robert Jackson Bennett
2025-10-29 19:00 - 20:30 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
For our October 29th meeting we’ll discuss The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett. (We originally planned to read Planetes Book 1 by Makoto Yukimura this month, but we moved it to November 26th.)

🎧 Get the audiobook on Libro.fm

In Daretana’s greatest mansion, a high imperial officer lies dead–killed, to all appearances, when a tree erupted from his body. Even here at the Empire’s borders, where contagions abound and the blood of the leviathans works strange magical changes, it’s a death both terrifying and impossible.

Assigned to investigate is Ana Dolabra, a detective whose reputation for brilliance is matched only by her eccentricities. Rumor has it that she wears a blindfold at all times, and that she can solve impossible cases without even stepping outside the walls of her home.

At her side is her new assistant, Dinios Kol, magically altered in ways that make him the perfect aide to Ana’s brilliance. Din is at turns scandalized, perplexed, and utterly infuriated by his new superior–but as the case unfolds and he watches Ana’s mind leap from one startling deduction to the next, he must admit that she is, indeed, the Empire’s greatest detective.

As the two close in on a mastermind and uncover a scheme that threatens the Empire itself, Din realizes he’s barely begun to assemble the puzzle that is Ana Dolabra–and wonders how long he’ll be able to keep his own secrets safe from her piercing intellect.

By an “endlessly inventive” ( Vulture) author with a “wicked sense of humor” (NPR), The Tainted Cup mixes the charms of detective fiction with brilliant world-building to deliver a fiendishly clever mystery that’s at once instantly recognizable and thrillingly new.

Robert Jackson Bennett is the author of the Founders Trilogy and the Divine Cities Trilogy, which were both Hugo Award finalists in the Best Series category. The first book in the Divine Cities Trilogy, City of Stairs, was also a finalist for the World Fantasy and Locus awards, and the second, City of Blades, was a finalist for the World Fantasy, Locus, and British Fantasy awards. His previous novels, which include American Elsewhere and The Company Man, have received the Edgar Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the Philip K. Dick Citation of Excellence. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his family.

🍂 Philly Zine Fest
2025-11-01 11:00 - 17:00 | Mitten Hall at Temple Univesity, 1913 N Broad St., Philadelphia, PA, 19122, United States
Join us for another Philly zine fest! Saturday November 1st, 2025 at Temple University’s Mitten Hall from 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.! Organized by Philly Soapbox.

🏠 IndieWeb Homebrew Website Club
2025-11-02 18:00 - 20:00 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
Homebrew Website Club is a growing world-wide network of meetups for everyone who wants to take back their web experience from social media silos, and own their online identities & content, or just want support with blogging!

💾☀️ Permacomputing + Solarpunk Meetup
2025-11-05 18:30 - 20:00 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
The Permacomputing + Solarpunk meetup is the first Wednesday every other month at Iffy Books! You can join us in person (404 S. 20th St., PHL) or remotely via Jitsi Meet.
➡️ Virtual 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)

🤔 FAFIO Meetup: DIY Steganography
2025-11-06 18:30 - 20:30 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
FAFIO is a new meetup for folks who want to learn new tech skills but aren’t sure where to start. Let’s fuck around and figure it out!
This session the focus will be on steganography, a way to conceal secret messages in digital photos. You’ll need a computer if you want to try it. More info here: Steganography for Everyone
Feel free to come and work on something else!

💻 Philly 2600 Meetup
2025-11-07 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.

🧺 Model Internet Club: Picnic at Rittenhouse!
2025-11-08 10:30 - 12:30 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
On Saturday, November 8th the Model Internet Club will meet outdoors for the first time! We’ll be at Rittenhouse Square from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Our plan is to set up a battery-powered wi-fi network that anyone in the area can connect to and browse our tiny collection of websites. You’re welcome to browse the network on a phone, or bring a computer and host your own site!

📝 One-Time Pad Encryption Workshop
2025-11-09 10:30 - 11:30 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
Join us for a workshop on one-time pad encryption! We’ll walk you through a technique for sending truly private messages without a computer, using 6-sided dice to generate random numbers. We’ll use an encoder/decoder sheet that fits on a single sheet of paper and can be recreated from memory.
You can find the workshop materials here: Double Dice One-Time Pad Workshop
Register:
Registration for this event is now closed. Sorry.
Here's a link to future workshops in this series!

🐧 E-Z Command-Line Encryption with OpenSSL
2025-11-09 11:30 - 12:30 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
At this workshop you’ll learn to create passphrase-protected files using OpenSSL, a command-line program that’s probably already installed on your computer. With this technique you can send encrypted files via email/Dropbox, then share the passphrase with the recipient on a secure channel (e.g., Signal). Useful for avoiding surveillance & data mining!
Save message:
echo "My secret message ❤️" > example.txt

Encode:
openssl aes-256-cbc -a -in example.txt -out message.enc.txt

Decode:
openssl aes-256-cbc -d -a -in message.enc.txt -out plain-text.txt
Register
Registration for this event is now closed. Sorry.
Here's a link to future workshops in this series!

Photo CC-BY-SA Mark Dickson

🚧 Make Your First Website
2025-11-12 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!
Please bring a laptop if you have one. We’re suggesting a $5–$20 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!

⚙️ Neo-Luddite Reading Group
2025-11-13 18:30 - 20:30 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
➡️ Virtual Meetup Link
“In an age in which the inexhaustible power of scientific technology makes all things possible, it remains to be seen where we will draw the line, where we will be able to say, here are possibilities that wisdom suggest we avoid.”
First published to great acclaim in 1988, Langdon Winner’s groundbreaking exploration of the political, social, and philosophical implications of technology is timelier than ever. He demonstrates that choices about the kinds of technical systems we build and use are actually choices about who we want to be and what kind of world we want to create—technical decisions are political decisions, and they involve profound choices about power, liberty, order, and justice. A seminal text in the history and philosophy of science, this new edition includes a new chapter, preface, and postscript by the author. (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.

❌ Home Ad Blocking with Pi-hole
2025-11-15 11:00 - 12:00 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
On Saturday, November 15th at 11:00 a.m. we’re hosting a presentation on network-wide ad blocking with Pi-hole and AdGuard Home led by Dave Slinger.
No registration needed for this one!

📡 Meshtastic 101
2025-11-16 10:30 - 12:00 | 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:
Registration for this event is now closed. We'll offer it again soon!

👁️ Intelligence History Reading Group: 'Triple Cross' by Peter Lance
2025-11-19 19:00 - 20:30 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
This is the story of the most dangerous triple-agent in US history. Peter Lance, author of the highly acclaimed “1000 Years for Revenge and Cover Up”, returns to uncover the story of Ali Mohamed, a trusted security advisor of Osama bin Laden who hoodwinked the United States for more than a decade. As Lance reveals for this first time, this one man served in a series of high-security position within the United States security establishment, as a Special Forces advisor, FBI informant, and CIA operative, while simultaneously helping orchestrate the al Qaeda campaign of terror that led to 9/11. In October 2000, after tricking three U.S. intelligence agencies for almost two decades, Ali Mohamed appeared in handcuffs and a blue prison jumpsuit in a Federal District courtroom on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, where he pleaded guilty five times. His crimes included brokering terror summits, financing an attack on two Black Hawk helicopters, training jihadis in improvised bomb building and the creation of secret cells. And yet, for decades Mohamed had lived the life of a Silicon Valley computer executive. How did this evildoer move in and out of and around the U.S.? is just one of the questions answered. From the Able Danger scandal of the Clinton Administration to today’s CIA Leakgate, Mohamed appears at nearly every crucial turn of America’s terror probes. An important final piece to the 9/11 investigation, “Triple Cross” penetrates Mohamed’s secret past and the dark reaches of Al Qaeda to reveal the danger that still threatens America and its internal security.

🐍 Python Install Session
2025-11-22 10:30 - 11:30, 2025-11-23 10:30 - 11:30 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
If you haven’t already installed Python on your computer, join us for an installation session!

🐍 Python Script-Along: Download Podcasts to an MP3 Player
2025-11-22 11:30 - 12:30, 2025-11-23 11:30 - 12:30 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
One of the reasons it’s hard to leave home without a cell phone is that it’s nice to listen to podcasts while you’re walking around. In this workshop you’ll learn to write a Python script that downloads the latest episodes of your favorite shows to an MP3 player (or a folder on your desktop if you prefer).
If you’re able to install Python 3 and the beautifulsoup4 package ahead of time, you can show up at 11:30 a.m. Otherwise you should join us at 10:30 a.m. for an hour-long Python installation session. No additional registration required!
Bring a laptop (any OS) and an MP3 player or USB drive if you have one. We’ll have MP3 players and microSD cards for sale but they aren’t required to complete the project.
Register
Registration for this event is now closed. Sorry.
Here's a link to future workshops in this series!

🚧 Make Your First Website
2025-11-26 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!
Please bring a laptop if you have one. We’re suggesting a $5–$20 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!
This workshop is now full. We'll offer it again soon!

🪐 Speculative Futures Reading Group
2025-11-26 19:00 - 20:30 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
The Speculative Futures Reading Group meets on the last Wednesday of every month at 7 p.m.!

🍴 Closed November 27th
2025-11-27 | Iffy Books, 404 S. 20th St., Philadelphia, 19146, United States
We’ll be closed on Thursday, November 27th. But we’ll be here on Friday!
