Good tidings—

Recent talk about the shape of our scene, like questions from journalists about movement goals, growing coalition meetings, and a catch-up with a classmate who works at Palantir have given me much to think about. Different emphases yield different ways of navigating this moment—but what lives at the core of our constellation here? Here's a start, maybe: seeking sustenance to ACT with faith in the world, and rearranging ourselves so we can give that to each other. What do you think? Can we possibly translate those irrefutable feelings swirling among us when we're together?

Early June is jam-packed, and then the Summer of Ludd festival begins. (An SoL-specific email is coming soon.) Until June 28, try a SoRA seminar, meditation, or a gallery opening—or this main event: a party to push back on AI billionaire greed in the NY-12 race and beyond.

Thanks to Kyle, we have a fun new homepage for the newsletter at nycofftech.com.

NYC Off Tech shall always be free and full of love—but so much of this work is free, too. So, many friends have convinced me to ask, just once in a while, for any little help buying a coffee.

And, oh—reply directly to this email if you want to come table in the park! We'll be at Wash. Sq. on Thursdays from 2–4 p.m. this month and in many other places, too. Talking to strangers is what this is all about, right?

Your friend—

—Nick

a creature was born yesterday

★ ★ ★

June Events, so far

All Month | SoRA In-Person Summer Seminars

SoRA’s summer seminars start with on June 2 with TOXIC UX led by an industry insider. Kyle Barnes’ class on THE PARTY starts June 11, followed by PUPPETS, RAGE BAIT, prankster activism, and more. Full list here.

All Month | Summer of Ludd Prep Events

SoL is a week of free, public, and participatory programming to get people off big tech and into public space. In the lead up to the weeklong festival, help plan activities, build props for main Events, & learn more about Luddite organizing. Email theofficialsummerofludd@proton.me for more. Festival schedule coming soon—

• Fri., June 5 | ‘Event Event’ Facilitation Workshop @ 6 p.m., Tompkins Sq. Park “Event Is the Medium” trainings, Luddite ethos, and finalizing events.

• Sundays & Wednesdays | Public Art Builds @ 2–7 p.m., Tompkins Sq. Park & Brooklyn Drop by to make puppets, theater props, & more. No experience required. Email for exact details.

• Thurs., June 11 | Hat Making & Teach-in @ 6:30 p.m., 15 Rutherford Pl., Manhattan Make gnome hats while learning. “BREAD AND PUPPET”—learn about the longtime political puppet troupe.

• Sat., June 13 | Hat Making & Teach-in @ 6 p.m., 15 Rutherford Pl. Make gnome hats while learning. “DOGMA OR DIE”—how ideology structures our lives.

• Tues., June 23 | SoL PRESS CONFERENCE @ 6:30 p.m., Tompkins Sq. Park All journalists, documentarians, and independent writers are invited to this conference with Gowanus, the Luddite Media Spokespuppet. Email mediapuppet@proton.me with questions.

Tues., June 2 | 'Your Attention Please' New York Premiere @ 6 p.m., BRIC

This film shares some moments from the budding resistance against Big Tech—from parent movements & phone-free school legislation to protests & community efforts like the Offline Club.

Info & tickets here.

Tues., June 2 | Proteus Club Launch @ 6 p.m., Amelia’s

The Proteus Club is officially "launching" its community within Tavern for all those interested in offline creativity and community.

​The Proteus Club provides a unique phone-free creative workshop, alternative technologies to experiment with, and writing prompts to work on as a group. At this launch party, we will come together in Amelia's to have a good time, and to imagine what a future beyond the lease of our devices might look like.

Info & RSVP here. Note—reply to this email to give us a heads up if you’re on the waitlist.

Tues., June 2, 9, & 16 | Attention Activism 101 @ 7 p.m., online

Attention is the touchstone problem of our age. Over the last twenty years, an unprecedented concentration of technical and financial power has successfully monetized human attention. The harms of this new system — in effect, the "fracking" of our most intimate selves — are familiar to all. Less widely understood is the nature of the movement that has emerged to fight back against this historic injustice: ATTENTION ACTIVISM.

In this course, we will survey the intellectual and practical foundations of the nascent ATTENTION ACTIVISM movement. We'll draw on texts by Anna Tsing, Natasha Dow Schull, Shoshanna Zuboff, Tim Wu, and Jonathan Crary among others. What do the extractive incursions of the Attention Economy mean for shared life in the twenty-first century — and how are communities of activists already working to resist them?

A few spots remain! Sign up here.

Tues., June 2, 9, 16, & 23 | NYC Mesh Open Mesh Night @ 8 p.m., 53 Bridge St.

NYC Mesh is building an infrastructure commons that is accessible to all New Yorkers. We are a neutral network that does not block or discriminate content or throttle data. We do not collect personal data.

We’re committed to bridging the Digital Divide by connecting under served communities in New York. We stand in opposition to the telecom oligopoly in New York of Verizon, Optimum, and Spectrum ...

Drop in, and learn more.

Wed., June 3 | Attention Lab STUDY @ 12:30 p.m., DUMBO

The School of Radical Attention's flagship "Attention Labs" are experiential, participatory workshops dedicated to the joint exploration of human attention. Through group attention practices and guided discussions, we create and test tools to rebuild the art of sustained attention, which has been under attack by persuasive technologies.

This lab's focus is STUDY: a glimpse at the power of collective inquiry.

Sign up for any lab here.

Thurs., June 4 | Beyond “Dark Flow”—Boshi’s & SoRA Collab Opening @ 6:30 p.m., DUMBO

Join us to celebrate the opening of our first summer show, Beyond Dark Flow: an exhibition that explores games as digital and physical spaces of collective attention, centering on the current landscape of independent gaming communities. For the opening night only, attendees are invited to play—and even co-create—an expanded set of online and physical games from participating artists.

Design collective Aging in Play will showcase play boxes, modular parts made from everyday materials that attendees can rearrange to create their own games; artist collective Boshi’s Place offers additional game stations created by their independent developers modeling alternative modes of attention through text, ambient environments, and nonlinear narratives; and researcher and educator Catherine L. Hansen invites us to modify an interactive fiction she developed with University Tokyo students which allows players to “burrow” into an object of choice with close, sustained attention.

Free! RSVP here.

Sat., June 6 | Zines for Cybersecurity @ 1 p.m., TransPecos

Hosted by the CyPurr Collective, this workshop is an introduction to personal digital privacy and information security practices! We will cover threat modeling, encryption & getting around the city, and how we make choices with data. Material will be provided for us to make personalized digital privacy zines, taking the information we find useful to craft our own pocket-guides. This workshop is open to anyone, no pre-existing skills or technologies are required.

Sat., June 6 | Fractal Convalescence Gallery @ 7:30 p.m., Studio Dem

Art to rebalance the geometry of the eye, our relationship to technological paradoxes—come see this stuff of metaphysics.

The gallery includes all sorts of artists reckoning with questions common to this community—check it out—

Mon., June 8 | Covering the Environment When the Data Disappears @ 6:30 p.m., Crystal Lake Brooklyn

News and Brews is a phone-free night where a working journalist reads their best story out loud, gets interviewed about how they actually reported it, and takes your questions over a drink. No screens, no scrolling, no feed. Just the story behind the story.

Speaker: Marlowe Starling (National Geographic, The New York Times, The Guardian, CNN)

​The story: "Inside the Effort to Save Hundreds of Environmental Datasets Purged Under Trump" (Forbes)

SPECIAL DISCOUNT WITH THIS LINK.

Mon., June 8 | Month Offline Gallery Exhibition @ 7:30 p.m., telos.haus

PICTURE THIS: You put ur smartphone in a box for 30 days. How would u spend ur Month Offline?

OUT with the scrolling, anxiety and notifications & IN with the strolling, reflection, and inspirations.

TO DO: Come see what ur fellow NYers did w/ their newfound phone-free time, featuring a gallery exhibition, participant fireside chat, raffle, & more. Light food & drinks provided. BYO Encouraged!

TO DON'T: Be on ur phone! Put it in a pouch upon arrival or leave it at home!

WHO ME? Next cohort starts in July. Join now @ https://offline.community/

Wed., June 10 & 24 | Burner Phone Writing Group @ 7:30 p.m., Lalin's

This group meets every other week, sometimes in workshop style. Come work on a submission for the Burner Phone zine—which is entirely offline—or just hang out and free write.

Email bushwickburnerphone@gmail.com for more info.

Sat., June 13 | Attention Lab SANCTUARY @ 12:30 p.m., DUMBO

The School of Radical Attention's flagship "Attention Labs" are experiential, participatory workshops dedicated to the joint exploration of human attention. Through group attention practices and guided discussions, we create and test tools to rebuild the art of sustained attention, which has been under attack by persuasive technologies.

This lab's focus is SANCTUARY: creating social space free from the influence of Big Tech.

Sign up for any lab here.

Sat., June 13 | ChatGTFO @ 2 p.m., 875 Third Ave., Manhattan (Lower Level)

Human-made prep against an ai takeover, FEATURING

• automatic job rejections,
• ai slop photobooth,
• deepfake election lies,
• psychosis speedrun world cup

plus more games, organizing opportunities, and NY-12 primary resources to own our future.

Co-hosted by Young People’s Alliance, QuitGPT, and a coalition of other organizers, this event is FREE and OPEN TO ALL. The fair serves as the kickoff to a larger collective effort to check the power of OpenAI, Palantir, & billionaire greed.

RSVP here, or just show up! It's in a public space!

Thurs., June 18 | Design It for Us Monthly @ 5:30 p.m., Online

Design It for Us (DIFU) is a community of young people (26 and under) from around the world fighting to hold Big Tech accountable and improve our digital ecosystems.

Members are encouraged to attend monthly calls to learn more about state and federal tech policy, join campaigns, and directly advocate for legislative change.

Join here.

Thurs., June 18 | NYPL Offline Book Club: THE MACHINE STOPS @ 6:30 p.m., SNFL Room 405

Stop scrolling and put down your phone… SNFL’s Offline Book Club is a space for in-person conversation about the role technology plays in our world. Each month highlights a different book on the topic of technology’s impact on our individual lives as well as society as a whole, followed by an open discussion to share recent experiences and observations.

The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster, first published in 1909, is a dystopian sci-fi novella that imagines a world where humans live underground and are dependent on an oppressive and omnipresent Machine for survival. Public domain and freely available online.

Space is limited. Walk-ins welcome, but priority will be given to those who [register] (https://www.nypl.org/events/programs/2026/06/18/offline-book-club-machine-stops) in advance.

Tues., June 23 | Attention Lab COALITION @ 6:30 p.m., DUMBO

The School of Radical Attention's flagship "Attention Labs" are experiential, participatory workshops dedicated to the joint exploration of human attention. Through group attention practices and guided discussions, we create and test tools to rebuild the art of sustained attention, which has been under attack by persuasive technologies.

This lab's focus is COALITION: the collective potential for attention activism.

Fri., June 26 | Airplane Mode Vol. 6 @ 6:30 p.m., The Bench

Sign up for any lab here.

The premise is simple: Dinner, then 24 hours with no phone.

Are you up for it?

RSVP here. Mention "NYC Off Tech" in how you heard about this.

Sat., June 27 | Turn the Q Train Quiet @ 11 a.m., 96 St. Station

Join author Nicole Kelner and Rizzoli New York as we create a quiet environment on the Brooklyn-Bound Q Train for the second time! No phones, just analog activities—

RSVP here for a complimentary copy of Nicole’s new book!

Sun., June 28 | Summer of Ludd OPENING CEREMONY @ 5 p.m., Tompkins Sq. Park

IT BEGINS on a Sunday evening with a big, public ceremony—a live theatre show, group rituals, music, & more. Get your schedule books, & see what to expect for the rest of the week.

Tues., June 30 | Luddite Conference on Participatory Futures @ 10 a.m., The New School

What is the relationship between Silicon Valley and the Pentagon? What are the social and political consequences of new AI technologies? And what can we do in response?

Please join us for a day of learning how Big Tech brought us to this existentially threatening moment, and how we can reclaim personal and collective agency for a participatory future.

Speakers will include William Hartung (author of Trillion Dollar War Machine), Koohan Paik-Mander (co-founder of the Tech-Critics Network), and Juan Sebastian Pinto (Colorado People's Caucus on AI).

FREE, but all guests must register.

Fri., July 3 | LET'S GET OFF TOGETHER @ 10 p.m., telos.haus

LET’S GET OFF TOGETHER is a celebration of social life as it’s meant to be: free from the grip of greedy tech platforms. That means more than just saying “please don’t use your phone on the dance floor” (although there will most certainly not be any phones on this dance floor)—

We’re talking presence, real attention to one another, to music, to community. Organized by artists, activists, and friends from the NYC offline community, this gathering weaves together immersive art, facilitated experiences, ritual, magic, & DJ sets—

KOOKS VS. COGS! MORE MAGICK! AMERICA TURNS 250 AT MIDNIGHT!

Sign up to stay in the know, if you aren't already on the list.

Sat., July 4 | SHITPHONE @ 2 p.m., Tompkins Sq. Park

The Gnomes are back—parade downtown on America’s birthday. This is a main event of the Summer of Ludd.

★ ★ ★

Weekly Gatherings

Every Sun. | Luddite Club @ 2 p.m., Central Library

The Brooklyn Luddite Club returns, at its original meeting place. All are welcome.

Email loganlane1@proton.me for more.

Every Sun. | Community Meditation @ 6 p.m., Various Locations in BK

Phil Nguyen draws from Opening Awareness and other practices in these weekly meditation sessions. Come for one, or join every week to exercise your mind and expand your capacity to CARE.

Sign up here!

First and Third Sun. | Date with Détournement @ 9 p.m., Various Locations

Join public art projects that push back against alienating tech.

First and third Sundays.

sighren.ludd@proton.me if you want in.

Every Wed. | Technocritical Writers Room @ 10 a.m. / 7 p.m., Hybrid

Writers from across the community engage in generative sessions to share stories, visualize futures, and push critiques of digital technology towards new action.

10 a.m. at Jefferson Market Library, and 7 p.m. on a Jitsi call.

Facilitated by artist and organizer Amalia Mayorga. Email rosemayorga@proton.me for more.

Every Wed. | Phone-Free Adelphi @ 7 p.m., Fort Greene

Screen-free night of creativity from 7 to 10 p.m. We turn off our phones, work on something creative (or just read or meditate), then reflect on the experience.

Capped at 15 people. Please only come if you can stay the whole evening!

Stay up to date and RSVP for any week using this form. Email danmaxfox@gmail.com with questions.

Every Thurs. | Quiet Reading @ 7 p.m., Crown Heights

Join for an hour of quiet reading & then some chatting. Bring any book for yourself!

Facilitated by Connor Griffin, an educator and organizer working in this community. Email griffin75006@proton.me for the location.

Every Fri. | Crafternoon @ 1:30 p.m., Stavros Library (SNFL) First Floor Corner Space

Two hours of freeform crafting and conversation every week at the midtown Manhattan library. Bring your own project. We have tools and materials for sewing, painting, fiber, and paper arts, and are always happy to assist you in finding books related to your creative interests. Walk-ins welcome. More info here.