Greetings—

I come bearing some quick updates from the field.

Last night's Month Offline Expo was a big success—a celebration of what becomes possible when you step away from the smartphone norm. If you're at all curious about trying different hardware, this program is well worth checking out. The deadline to sign up for the March cohort is Monday night (2/23).

This Friday (2/20), organizers from across our community are partying in Brooklyn. Join us for LET'S GET OFF TOGETHER from 9 pm to 2 am. It'll serve foremost as a celebration of the lives we're building away from bad platforms. If you want a double feature, consider breaking up with Spotify at JADE then coming up to telos.haus to connect with people from all over the budding movement.

And here are a few other resources and opportunities—

• Caitlin Begg from Authentic Social just launched a new research study called Stuck in the Screen. It's a 5-minute anonymous survey designed to analyze technology’s effect on everyday communication and relationships, with an eye towards sharpening activists' efforts. Oh, and you might win $10 for participating.
• The Luddite Club documentary is looking for more help & some donations (tax-deductible). Stay tuned for some bigs announcements, including a March salon screening!
• The Summer of Ludd is shaping up to be a huge collaborative effort. There's an opportunity for everyone to be involved (and for more tax-deductible donations ...). Curious about wtf is going on there? Email theofficialsummerofludd@proton.me.
• The Strother Center for the Examined Life is a week-long, low-tech retreat in the Catskills. Every summer, people gather to study timeless books, share meaningful conversation, and cultivate presence in a distracted world. Applications for 2026 are due Sunday, 2/22 at midnight.

Read on for what's left in February, including some new events, and get a quick peek into March.

With mid-February LOVE—

—Nick

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February Events

Tues., Feb 17 | Teaching Creative Tech in the Age of AI @ 7 p.m., Index Chinatown

Any educator will tell you that it’s been a weird time to be in the classroom since LLMs came about—but teachers of creative technology have had a particularly disorienting experience. On the one hand, we embrace new tools and our ability to critique and experiment with them. On the other, these same tools are radically altering what it means to learn, to teach or even be in the classroom at all. What does it mean to teach creative tech when the tech we’re engaging with is reshaping creativity in real time?

We invite educators, students and practitioners at all stages to collectively consider questions we’ve all likely confronted: should we allow generative AI in our curricula? If so, how might we articulate its ideal use?

RSVP and more info here.

Wed., Feb. 18, 25, Mar. 1 | SoRA Attention Activism 201 "ORGANIZING," Wednesdays @ 7 p.m., online

ATTENTION ACTIVISM is the collective movement to push back against the commodification of human attention—what we call "human fracking"—and create, space by community space, a world where we can flourish. In this course, we will explore practical strategies for ATTENTION ACTIVISM, drawing on texts by bell hooks, Paulo Freire, and Deva Woodly. We'll also focus on developing the organizing, facilitation, and movement-building skills required to build groups for ATTENTION ACTIVISM. The bulk of the course will be dedicated to supporting participants toward an organizing project in their own communities.

Completion of our Attention Activism 101 seminar is required for participation in our 201 training. Participants who complete Attention Activism 201 will be eligible for inclusion in our national organizing coalition.

Brand-new course! Sign up at https://www.schoolofattention.org/enroll/.

Thurs., Feb. 19 | Design It for Us: Monthly Coalition Call @ 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., Feb 19 | Giorno Poetry Systems Live Programming Resumes @ 7 p.m., 222 Bowery

Matt Connors listens, shares, gives homage to pianist Jessica Williams in a historic space.

GPS is a nonprofit through which artists support artists—a place for poetry, song, and organizing to mix. Look out for more aligned programming, and consider dropping by on Tuesdays from 4 to 7.

Fri., Feb. 20 | Break Up with Spotify @ 7 p.m., JADE

​the case against streaming has been made by many ...

did you cancel the subscription tho? be the change you want to see. own your music library and revive the lost art of sapphic yearning via hyper-specific curated playlist.

​you'll leave with all your playlists and liked songs as mp3s, a new CD collection, and you'll get put onto some new music.

we're providing all the materials you'll need to offload your Spotify library and rip/burn some CDs, but you might want to bring: 💻 your computer & spotify data as a CSV (instructions will be sent to ticketholders. use a functioning email to RSVP.) 💿 your CD collection (or use your library card to check some out) 💾 a hard drive/thumb drive if you have hella music to offload

​when we're done, we'll do a show and tell on aux and CD swap because the best kind of music discovery has no algorithms involved.

TICKETS HERE.

Fri., Feb. 20 | LET'S GET OFF TOGETHER @ 9 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, DJ sets—and space will be made for anyone ready to delete a dating app, get off social media (together), or plot the overthrow of the tech oligopoly.

​Come co-create this sanctuary away from the smartphone-based life and towards gatherings that are in person, participatory, and full of agency. And maybe harness the energy of Valentine’s Day to find an offline love? (note: this is not a sexy party lol)

​FREE PARTY! Drinks will be sold, and we'll have a $10–15 suggested donation at the door :)

Sun., Feb. 22 | VESSELS: Cotton King and A.I. God with Taeyoon Choi @ 5 p.m., DUMBO

On February 22, visual artist and educator Taeyoon Choi presents Cotton King and A.I. God, a lecture performance unpacking the hidden ties between the cotton industry and A.I. Taeyoon guides us through his research with a custom interactive tool and music, making accessible connections between vast temporal and spatial distances while conveying the complexity of relationships between big tech and invisible labor. We will move through the attentional paths created by his alternative historical map, navigating the shadows of technologies which may at first glance appear ahistorical.

This performance debuted at Seoul National University in November 2025, and a related site-specific work is featured in the exhibition Technology of Relations at MASS MoCA, on view from February 21.

RSVP here.

Sun., Feb. 22 | Appstinence In-Person @ TBD

Drop in to discuss the fine art of getting off social media.

Email henry_m@appstinence.org for details.

Tues., Feb. 24 | 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 of attention activism.

Sign up for any lab here.

Thurs., Feb. 26 | Games, Art, & Agency @ 7 p.m., Upper West Side

We talk a lot about agency in this technocritical space—what do we mean by it? This is an experiential study session to explore the concept in more detail.

Inspired by Games: Agency as Art by C. Thi Nguyen, we'll use play to ponder different forms of agency. Games offer us temporary means and temporary ends—and they shape our agency accordingly.

For this session, we'll move through a video game slowly and discuss our observations about the relationship between design and behavior.

Hosted by organizer and social worker Colin Yaccarino. Sign up here.

Sun., March 1 | An Evening of Music Presented by Andy and August @ 7 p.m., TJ Byrnes

A monthly performance led by tech resistance activist August Lamm and artist Andy Henley.

The night begins with original music and moves into an open jazz jam. Join for a phone-free evening to start your week.

No ticket required!

★ ★ ★

Weekly resources

Every Sun. | CIRCLE TIME (Parallel Play) @ 4 p.m., Bushwick

You always want to ask people what they’re working on at the cafe? NOW YOU CAN! This is Circle Time. Sundays, BYOPP (bring your own passion project) and prepare to share.

Format: Intros → Focus Time → Optional show & tell

Hosted by Rebecca Lipsitch, who curates connection through public-space events and play with groups like How Do We Play and Street Lab.

Email rebecca.lipsitch@gmail.com for address and more info!

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 Tues. | Event Facilitator Workshops @ 5 p.m., 222 Bowery (Giorno Poetry Systems)

Do you have a phone-free event in mind but don’t know where to host it? Would you like to do more hands-on organizing in the tech resistance community? Are you craving more presence, participation, and agency at your events?

Join for these FREE, weekly sessions, where organizers from the "Off Tech" scene discuss facilitation, share concrete resources, and workshop your events through completion.

Email ppamphlet@proton.me for more.

Every Wed. | Technocritical Writers Room @ 9 a.m., Jefferson Market Library

Logan Lane of the Luddite Club and Damian Thomas of Unplatform are launching a writers room for technocritical writers to talk about different approaches with the intention of writing in as many literary languages as we can.

Email loganlane1@proton.me to join.

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

Screen-free night of creativity from 7 to 9 p.m. We turn off our phones, work on something creative together, then talk about the experience.

Capped at 10 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. and Sun. | Appstinence Office Hours, online

Drop in for FREE personal guidance on reclaiming your life from persuasive platforms. Get the low-down on de-platforming and using alternative devices; discover how to fill newly won free time (yay!), and learn ways to talk about all this with your friends and family.

Thursdays at 7 p.m. & Sundays at 1 p.m. EST: http://www.appstinence.org/appstinenceacademy.

To get on the list, email henry_m@appstinence.org.