Michelle Chihara

Sometimes children's books carry real weight, like *Our World Is A Family*, which has never been more relevant. Glad I snuck Heated Rivalry into the headline of my piece... Check it out. But most importantly, buy the book for a kid in your city www.latimes.com/entertainmen...

tfff.earth/brazilian-go... For those who care about Climate Change we have a friend in Lula!

“We should be asking, how much computation do we really need? How many resources are actually justifiable to put into this project? What are we actually getting out of it?” Read my interview with @mollytaft.com in @wired.com about some of my big takeaways from HYPERSCALE!

🚨 TODAY’S THE DAY 📚 After years of work, my new book HYPERSCALE is finally on bookshelves! It chronicles the data center boom just as the backlash is reaching a fever pitch. Get your copy today: hyperscalebook.com

Create moral economies! Public money is possible

Inside the humanities we’re slowly losing our minds as we shout this til we’re hoarse—of course education in the name of ROI is an ideological project! Of course, treating knowledge as a content strategy results in bullshit! Still bracing to read this eloquent call to close the business schools

It’s #BannedBooksWeek, which means it’s the perfect time to dispel common myths and misconceptions about the prevalence and impacts of book bans across the United States. Here are five common myths about book banning that everyone should know the truth about 🧵

Remember when journalists were like this is gonna kill newsrooms and it’s going to suck to run a democracy without newsrooms? Yeah, this is gonna be even worse

Beyond Loans: The Public Grant-Making Bank

At a certain level of obscene wealth, you’re just structurally Team Billionaire

Many thanks and much gratitude to editor @alirizataskale.bsky.social and to the co-authors of and contributors to the forum: Michelle Chihara (@thisblue.bsky.social), Alec Howlett and Erdogan Sima

important piece of how journalism works right here www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/never-apol...

Total exploitation of everything people do for love, passion, art, intellect: "The private sector has long seen colleges and universities as a resource from which it can extract what it needs (job-specific training, research, data) for free or at a steep discount." post45.org/2026/08/side...

Crickets when 4000 academic jobs a year are being lost in the UK and entire campuses are being shut down because of lack of funding and the secondary effects of Brexit but plenty of ink to hound a man to an early death. Despicable behaviour from the British press.

This Guardian caption is real

"Everything you have was built by workers and you fight to keep from unionizing while you receive govt welfare."

This is also why we need populist progressives and leftists to prioritize racial justice AND economic justice. When people like Platner come along, the message is you can only have one but not both. Whereas they only really are effective together.

Hey, I have these postcards of my book's cover (by Vera Villanueva for Yale UP). I'd love to mail you one. Will you send me a screenshot of 1) your pre-order OR 2) your (free!!) request that your library purchase the book? And of course an address to mail it to.

The Wilderness Alliance obit honoring the memory of my excellent friend, writer, father, advocate and all-around wonderful human David Page winterwildlands.org/in-memory-of...

Fiscal Chronotopes: #ZcavengerHunt, the Zetro Card, and the New Finance Franchise

‘Andy Burnham aims to help people who just want somewhere warm to live and a way of getting to work. This is Manchesterism: public intervention that makes the essentials of life cheaper and more reliable.’ @will-davies.bsky.social, online now from the next issue. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

"[T]he world receives not Robert Smith but Olivia Rodrigo’s Robert Smith, authored by the singular genius of Olivia Rodrigo."

In this 1st episode, we introduce what we at MotL call “the Loop”—a generative fiscal framework that utilizes a city-owned public bank to internalize municipal debt, capture interest revenues that would otherwise leak to private creditors, and reinvest that wealth back into local infrastructure.

Periodic reminder that Teapot Dome, the worst scandal in American history prior to Watergate, involved $9 million changing hands. That’s adjusted for inflation. This story by itself is 55500% bigger than Teapot Dome. That’s not a typo.

"What makes universities particularly valuable as a ‘space for exceptions’ is the same thing that makes people hate them." newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...

🔊 Coming soon! 🔊 ✨ In the Loop: Revolutionizing Public Finance ✨ A new podcast series from the Money on the Left Collective, hosted by @publicporpoise.bsky.social, @greenbackbetter.bsky.social & @videotroph.bsky.social. Watch this space 👀

UC Berkeley Law creates new AI policy that bans AI for "conceptualizing, outlining, drafting, revising, translating, or editing any work submitted for credit" or exams because "thinking remains the sine qua non of good lawyering (and of a quality legal education)." That's what I'm talking about.

None of this is good news

Residents in Fayette County, Georgia noticed their water pressure was unusually low. Turns out that a data center 20 miles away had been drawing 30 million gallons of water in secret through connections the county didn't know existed. Is it any wonder why so many are opposed to data centers?

The "Yale report" argues that "improving the world today," and fostering "an ethical, interdependent and diverse community” should not be part of Yale's mission. It couldn't be more wrong. Gift link to a NYT op-ed by Wesleyan president Michael Roth, a righteous dude. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/22/o...

‘The surviving population of Gaza has been reduced to a condition of bare existence, subject to unrelenting hunger and thirst under the ever present hum of killer drones and bomber jets.’ Eyal Weizman on the demolition of Gaza. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

🇧🇷 URGENTE: Brasil proíbe empresas de mercado de previsão, como Kalshi e Polymarket, de operar no país. Resolução do Conselho Monetário Nacional, assinada pelo presidente do Banco Central, Gabriel Galípolo, entra em vigor no dia 4 de maio e proíbe apostas sobre política, esportes e entretenimento.

“The humanities are dead. Long live the humanities.” utotherescue.blogspot.com/2026/04/line...

The executive director of World Press Photo said this image shows the inconsolable grief of children losing their father in a place built for justice. It is a stark and necessary record of family separation following the U.S. reform policies. n.pr/4d0E5EA

Here’s our Guardian article (published April 2025) that set us on the path to this book.

As Brian J. Chen and Jai Vipra observe, trusting tech companies to protect us from our leaders only benefits the growing oligopoly.

“This continuous-improvement cycle transforms real-world disappointment into automated course updates, freeing faculty time for research (about AI), service (related to AI), and existential despair (you can guess the topic).”

A group of new accounts on the prediction market Polymarket made highly specific, well-timed bets on whether the U.S. and Iran would reach a ceasefire on April 7, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits for these new customers.

We are seven months away from the most consequential midterm election in US history. Meanwhile, we are fighting a war. These are the structural conditions for a coup attempt in which a president tries to nullify elections and take permanent power as a dictator. snyder.substack.com/p/the-next-c...