I spoke to Eric Alston again! Eric is a professor at University of Colorado and recently completed a fellowship with the Summer of Protocols studying the governance of killswitches. His report is titled "Killswitch Protocols: Or On Engineering Recursive System Death" and co-authored with Seth Killian and Garrette David.

During the interview we discussed the history of killswitches, the many ways they can be governed and the implications of the governance system they lie in like in blockchain governance. But killswitches are not just about complex technical systems but also social ones, and so we also take a look at killswitches in complex social systems like labor strikes as an example and how they are governed.

You can also find the interview in video form on YouTube here.

If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) or Mastodon (@[email protected]) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.

Support the show

ICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking.

The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.

For this episode I spoke to Simone Robutti. Simone works as an organization designer, adversarial researcher, and teacher. Formerly a software developer, he has been part of different chapters of Tech Workers Coalition since 2018.

During the interview we discussed how to start a labor union at your tech company, innovative ways to go on strike, and how tech ideology as psyoped you to thinking labor struggle can't work in tech. We also touched on how technical tools for assisting workers should be used and the role of tech sovereignty in these situations.

You can also find the interview in video form on YouTube here.

If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) or Mastodon (@[email protected]) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.

Support the show

ICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking.

The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.

For this episode I spoke to Ahmed Gatnash, the Executive director of Kawaakibi Foundation. He is also a Strategy Advisor at the Albert Einstein Institution, and is the co-author of Middle East Crisis Factory, a primer on systemic crises and a vision for a positive future for the MENA region.

During the discussion we spoke about the context of the political economic situation where Islam rose, the economic policies that were put into practice during this time, and how the policies looked at today could be seen as a mix of libertarian and socialist. One of the most interesting institutions of this period was the Waqf, an income producing asset that is removed from individual ownership for perpetuity so that the income is dedicated to a public good.

You can also find the interview in video form on YouTube here.

If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) or Mastodon (@[email protected]) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.

Support the show

ICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking.

The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.

For this episode I spoke to Suji Yan, CEO and founder of Mask Network. Mask's main product is an open-sourced browser extension that wraps around several web2 and web3 social media networks. Rather than starting a new social media platform, the extension brings the benefits of both kinds of social media.

During the discussion we spoke about Suji's journey from journalist to founder, non-financial uses of crypto, and how Mask is allocating capital to support a decentralized web.

You can also find the interview in video form on YouTube here.

If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) or Mastodon (@[email protected]) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.

Support the show

ICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking.

The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.

Note that this interview was done in Spanish, you can find the youtube video with english subtitles if you need here.

This episode is part of a subseries where I've partnered with my comrade Giulio Quarta from the Crypto Commons Association and their initiative called the Commons Economy Roadmap (CER) where we will be interviewing some of the projects listed as part of the CER. In this interview we spoke to Neri Ortiz and Lucía Ruiz who both live in Mexico. Neri is a coffee farmer and Lucia works at the financial cooperative that services his community. They’ve both been working together with EthicHub, a project that has been providing loans to coffee farmers in Latin America at much better rates than you would otherwise get locally thanks to crypto.

During the discussion we talk about the economic situation of coffee farmers in Mexico and the exploitative loan agreements they are often forced into, how EthicHub has helped their situation, and what they've learned so far.

You can find a transcription of the interview on the CER website here.

The CER is a knowledge base and promotion protocol to highlight and empower what we consider to be among the most relevant 20 projects in the current economic juncture: companies and ecosystems that are building open infrastructures to regenerate society, to support the struggle of citizens, farmers, activists, scientists, tech experts and entrepreneurs on the ground at the dawn of global collapse.

The Crypto Commons Association is also a project within Breadchain, an organization I co-founded for building blockchain apps from a left-wing political POV.

If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) or Mastodon (@[email protected]) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.

Support the show

ICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking.

The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.

For this episode I spoke to Nick Susi, Executive Director of Strategy at dotdotdash who recently wrote a really interesting article on his Substack titled magic, online!. The article goes into the history of magical thinking that accompanied many of the past's technological achievements like phones that let you talk to the dead or fairies that appeared in some of the first photographs and how today we again see magical thinking accompany AI's proliferation.

During the interview we talk about how magical thinking acts as a coping mechanism for uncertain times, AI doomers vs hypemen, and why content creators are illusionists.

You can also find the interview in video form on YouTube here.

If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) or Mastodon (@[email protected]) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.

Support the show

ICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking.

The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.

This episode is part of a subseries where I've partnered with my comrade Giulio Quarta from the Crypto Commons Association and their initiative called the Commons Economy Roadmap (CER) where we will be interviewing some of the projects listed as part of the CER. In this interview we spoke to Andrea Leiter, co-founder of Sovereign Nature Initiative (SNI). SNI uses blockchain to turn real-world ecological data into dynamic digital assets, such as NFTs, that fund conservation efforts directly through their Decentralised Ecological Economics Protocol (DEEP). This approach aims to break free from the donation model and carbon credits, offering a fresh way to support environmental stewardship.

During the interview we discuss how DEEP works, how this transcends the pitfalls of the carbon credit market common in ReFi, and the socio-economic implications of it. The conversation also tackles the ethical challenges of integrating financial systems with ecological goals, underscoring the potential of blockchain to drive meaningful, sustainable change in the fight to preserve our planet.

You can find a transcription of the interview on the CER website here.

The CER is a knowledge base and promotion protocol to highlight and empower what we consider to be among the most relevant 20 projects in the current economic juncture: companies and ecosystems that are building open infrastructures to regenerate society, to support the struggle of citizens, farmers, activists, scientists, tech experts and entrepreneurs on the ground at the dawn of global collapse.

The Crypto Commons Association is also a project within Breadchain, an organization I co-founded for building blockchain apps from a left-wing political POV.

If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) or Mastodon (@[email protected]) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.

Support the show

ICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking.

The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.

For this episode I spoke to Graham Jones, the author of Red Enlightenment, published through Repeater Books like Blockchain Radicals. Red Enlightenment argues not only for a deepened understanding of religious matters, but calls for the secular left to develop its own spiritual perspectives. It proposes a materialist spirituality built from socialist and scientific sources, finding points of contact with the global history of philosophy and religion.

In the interview we recontextualize the common trope of socialists being anti-religion, how the tech world often overlaps with spiritual communities, and the need for an answer to people's spiritual needs.

If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) or Mastodon (@[email protected]) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.

Support the show

ICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking.

The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.

For this episode I spoke to Dr. Hannes Gerhardt, a Professor of Geography at the University of West Georgia. His research spans a range of topics within political geography and geoeconomics. We spoke about his new book FROM CAPITAL TO COMMONS: Exploring the Promise of a World Beyond Capitalism. During the interview we spoke about his concept of compeerism as an alternative political economy, where distrbuted ledgers play in this, and how capitalism limits our current technological landscape. 

If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) or Mastodon (@[email protected]) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.

Support the show

ICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking.

The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.

This episode is the start of a subseries where I've partnered with my comrade Giulio Quarta from the Crypto Commons Association and their initiative called the Commons Economy Roadmap (CER) where we will be interviewing some of the projects listed as part of the CER. In this first interview we've spoken to Christopher Goes, co-founder of Anoma, a framework for an ecosystem of blockchain based protocols launched in 2021 that introduces an "intent-centric architecture" for decentralized systems, defining themselves as a “third generation protocol” and a distributed operating system. 

During the interview we discuss what intents actually are, the potential socio-political implications of the technology, and how Anoma intends to help us rethink money and value. We also took a bit of a dive into a paper from C4SS titled "The Problem of Scale in Anarchism and the case for Cybernetic Communism" and how Anoma and intents relate.

You can find a transcription of the interview on the CER website here.

The CER is a knowledge base and promotion protocol to highlight and empower what we consider to be among the most relevant 20 projects in the current economic juncture: companies and ecosystems that are building open infrastructures to regenerate society, to support the struggle of citizens, farmers, activists, scientists, tech experts and entrepreneurs on the ground at the dawn of global collapse.

The Crypto Commons Association is also a project within Breadchain, an organization I co-founded for building blockchain apps from a left-wing political POV.

If you liked the podcast be sure to give it a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you find content like this important consider donating to my Patreon starting at just $3 per month. It takes quite a lot of my time and resources so any amount helps. Follow me on Twitter (@TBSocialist) or Mastodon (@[email protected]) and join the r/CryptoLeftists subreddit and Discord to join the discussion.

Support the show

ICYMI I've written a book about, no surprise, blockchains through a left political framework! The title is Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It and is being published through Repeater Books, the publishing house started by Mark Fisher who’s work influenced me a lot in my thinking.

The book is officially published and you use this linktree to find where you can purchase the book based on your region / country.