Hi, there! Sorry for my delayed reply. I think the closest thing to what you are describing is the history of capitalism podcast, Who Makes Cents? I haven't listened to much of it, but some friends have enjoyed it.
whomakescentspodcast.com
So wild that the first Maintainers conference was a decade ago!!
The other day I looked back at the class I taught called Peoples & Things that eventually led to the podcast to see when I first conceived of it. ALSO A DECADE AGO. fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
TIME FLIES.
This ep of People’s & Things with @leev.bsky.social and @bialski.bsky.social interviewing @susansegfault.bsky.social about @torproject.org completely nerd sniped me and was very enjoyable!
micro.chadkohalyk.com/2026/04/09/p...
I love that. Fits the overall pattern that these tools are pretty good at some thing and very crappy at others. Probably take years for those patterns to become clear and, of course, they'll keep shifting too. NEAT!
VIBERCRIME!!!
Hahahaha. This is neat. Also, the fact that cybercriminals find these tools useful suggests that they might . . . I don't know . . . . be useful?!?! Yes, for crime and for more than crime.
Context: Currently sitting in a hotel near San Francisco airport about to head to a tantric retreat for the next nine days. I practice classical Śaiva tantra rather than tantric (Tibetan) Buddhism but have learned a ton from the latter, including via podcasts.
www.tantrailluminated.org
Sorry. Too much of an in joke. That's the pet name my tantric therapist and I have for Avalokiteśvara, whose mantra you spelled out above. He's also the heart of this book, which is one of my faves. www.amazon.com/Opening-Hear...
I'm a big Avi fan too.
Don't agree. But this would take an ENTIRE CONVERSATION which we should do over Zoom or in person. And in the meantime, I am headed to a meditation retreat, so I say to you, NAMASTE.
How about you?
I'm agnostic. I'm interested in how people are finding it useful and mostly focus on the sociology of adoption. And I don't buy the hate. There are certainly negative aspects of the technology, as there are with all technologies, but it doesn't seem especially bad to me.
LMAOOOOOOOO.
Not even a little bit surprising given what we already know about how these tools are being used in industry right now, but deliciously ironic given the anti-AI attitudes of some Bluesky subcultures. Should their non-use of AI also entail non-use of Bluesky?
Paula Bialski and I had such a fun time talking with Ben. I loved his approach to the Tor community, and it was also lovely discovering our many research community overlaps. As I say in the ep, I felt like the spirit of @biella.bsky.social was in the virtual room with us the whole time.
This week's Peoples & Things features me and my buddy and guest host Paula Bialski talking with Ben Collier, Senior Lecturer i at the University of Edinburgh, about his fascinating book, _Tor: From the Dark Web to the Future of Privacy_.
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/p...
Me too! I'm really excited about it. Give your team my best.
Also, new podcast launching this summer. This would be a great candidate for it, should have your team on. Will be in touch!
This is one of the studies I'm most excited about right now. Wish I could watch the launch, but I'll be traveling. But YOU should check it out.
Mentioned Lana's study as a great example of taking other humans seriously in this piece.
peoples-things.ghost.io/why-do-peopl...
Thanks! Going to have them on the new podcast this summer. Love those kids.
Very glad to share this piece in @modamhist.bsky.social! I am glad they let me squeeze 7 figures into the article. You can see one of them here:
That's basically it. Thanks for noticing.
I liked it a lot.
I think we have to put such findings in the context of industrial pollution more broadly, and then question why we are paying so much attention to one form right now than others.
Thanks!
I like it.
I try to send junior scholars fan mail, too. I'm on a panel at the Business History Conference tomorrow: Casey Eilbert, a postdoc at Hopkins. Casey's diss and forthcoming book are a history of the concept of "bureaucracy" and its critics in 20th century USA.
I’m in Kansas City for #ASEH2026. I co-edit a history of technology book series for Johns Hopkins University Press. We are always looking for titles that intersect with environmental history. If you have a project, let me know and let’s talk 🙂 #envhist
Oh, and I wasn't thinking of you when I wrote "scam" in that piece, though I see how "con" is a sibling. I was thinking of someone on LinkedIn who drives me up the wall.
Also, I'm not a crazy person responding to you in the middle of the night; I arrived in London this AM to find your responses.
Nancy Fraser's remembrance of Habermas is really great. At once respectful and critical.
Fraser is really important to me for her feminist critique of the system-lifeworld dichotomy that is found in nearly all cultural pessimist technology criticism.
www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ma...
You have a point!
I think it more bugs me when it's folks from the humanities and social sciences doing it.
My line about wait and see focuses on knowledge of what is going on with this technology, including how useful it really is. No one knows.
I am encountering folks who think that there have been some "demonstrated harms" around GenAI, and that isn't clearly true to me.
Sure. I'm not sure what you think I'm conflating, though
It already is becoming an enterprise wide tool. Loads of places across several industries.