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Chokepoint Capitalism
Why does an independent artist still depend on a single intermediary? In this episode of Bitlemmas, we review Chokepoint Capitalism by Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow and look at how buyer power leaves creators with no real way out.
Watson, B Sovereign, and Jose walk through the book's core ideas: why symbolic resistance is not a structural exit, what monopsony is, how chickenization makes people who look independent dependent in practice, and which examples show that collective exit changes t
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27
Sept. 28, 2026
Chokepoint Capitalism
Why does an independent artist still depend on a single intermediary? In this episode of Bitlemmas, we review Chokepoint Capitalism by Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow and look at how buyer power leaves creators with no real way out. Watson, B Sovereign, and Jose walk through the book's core ideas: why symbolic resistance is not a structural exit, what monopsony is, how chickenization makes people who look independent dependent in practice, and which examples show that collective exit changes t
26
Sept. 20, 2026
The NOSTR Protocol | Book Review
Nostr is often pitched as "Twitter without a company," but that mental model breaks down fast. In this episode, Watson and B Sovereign do a full protocol review of The Nostr Protocol in a Single Page, the compact reference ebook by Jeff Gardner, and unpack what Nostr actually is: a signed event language carried by independently operated relays. We separate the myths from the mechanics: identity as a key pair instead of a platform account, why relays can censor but can never counterfeit a signat
26
Sept. 16, 2026
Self-Sovereign Identity | Book Review
Your driver's license already does selective disclosure badly. Self-Sovereign Identity shows what it looks like done right. In episode 25 of the Bitlemmas book review series, Watson, b sovereign, and Jose dig into Self-Sovereign Identity by Alex Preukschat and Drummond Reed, a guide to decentralized digital identity and verifiable credentials, often shortened to SSI. The book's starting point: most of what gets called digital identity online is really just an identifier controlled inside someone
24
Aug. 26, 2026
Community and Privacy | Book Review
Privacy isn't the enemy of community, it's the foundation. Most of us assume privacy and community are opposing forces. But in this episode, Watson, B. Sovereign, and Jose challenge that misconception by exploring Sergei Chermayeff and Christopher Alexander's seminal work, Community and Privacy. Discover how thoughtful architectural boundaries—locks, buffers, and graduated thresholds from public to private—don't isolate communities; they make them thrive. We translate these principles into
24
Aug. 10, 2026
Guild Socialism Restated | Book Review
Can a workplace really be democratic while a boss still signs everyone's paychecks? This episode digs into G.D.H. Cole's Guild Socialism Restated — a 1920s blueprint for industrial democracy that's aged into a surprisingly modern playbook for governance design. Cole's core move: authority should be scoped, not seized. Producers govern their own work, consumers get real safeguards over price and quality, and coordination between them stays a service, not a command. We walk through his four count
23
Aug. 4, 2026
Patterns of Distributed Systems | Book Review
BitLemmas Episode 22 - Patterns of Distributed Systems Breaking down how real systems like leader election, quorums, replication, and consensus actually work under the hood. Hosts Watson and B. Sovereign walk through why adding servers doesn't remove limits, it just moves the hard part into coordination, and connect it directly to Bitcoin's own block size war debate over throughput versus decentralization. This episode covers: The four counterintuitive truths of distributed systems: more serve
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