Michelle Chihara
@thisblue.bsky.social
Los Angeles since 2003. Media Studies, Critical Finance; power ballads; history of this wild city Find me at michellechihara.com
Friends who teach: A minute ago folks were having luck spotting LLM-generation by putting hidden text in the prompt. Is this still working for anyone? I'm trying not to spend my time on fighting the bots. But a quick investigation suggests that this strategy no longer works. Anyone tried recently?
tfff.earth/brazilian-go... For those who care about Climate Change we have a friend in Lula!
Brazilian Government Announces US$1 Billion Contribution to the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF)
At a United Nations event in New York this Tuesday (September 23), President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced that Brazil will invest US$1 billion in the sovereign tranche of the fund.
tfff.earth
“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!
What the US Movement Against Data Centers Can Learn From Abroad
Paris Marx, author of Hyperscale, has been tracking global data center development for years. The US has a lot to learn from what’s happened everywhere from Ireland to New Zealand.
wired.com
🚨 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
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
Kevin Reuning@reuning.bsky.social · 2w agoThe really depressing part of this is that the business school has become the model for the rest of the university www.nytimes.com/2026/10/18/o...
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 🧵
PEN America@penamerica.bsky.social · 4w agoNEW: PEN America today reported nearly 12,000 book bans in public schools nationwide during the 2025-2026 school year—the largest number in a single year. New state censorship laws accounted for much of the increase, coupled with the use of AI to remove books en masse: pen.org/press-releas...
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
Kathryn VanArendonk@kvanaren.bsky.social · last mo.this is not paywalls, fyi - this chart looks roughly the same for sites that have had paywalls since long before 2022. this is all former SEO traffic that has now vanished in exchange for ai search summaries
Beyond Loans: The Public Grant-Making Bank
Beyond Loans: The Public Grant-Making Bank
By the Money on the Left Editorial Collective Public banking has been gaining traction for years, driven by a growing recognition that our current financial system often fails to serve the public g…
moneyontheleft.org
At a certain level of obscene wealth, you’re just structurally Team Billionaire
Josh K-sky@joshksky.bsky.social · last mo.very cool website that I've been helping promote. Please look inside! Two top takeaways: 1. 99 people & orgs spend more on politics than the bottom 99.5 PERCENT of Californians 2. Oligarchs (as defined here) do not "stay in their lane" -- everybody chips in to the Chamber of Commerce & beyond
AAUP has a new tool and how-to webinar coming for FOIAing third party contracts! the people who do the teaching and research should be in charge of procurement of the tech used in teaching and research make the terrible terms of these contracts public! www.aaup.org/event/foias-...
FOIAs for Better Shared Governance Around Technology
The second session in our fall series of webinars on AI issues in higher education provides examples of how to conduct public records requests to gather and analyze information pertaining to an instit...
aaup.org
Emmett Macfarlane 🇨🇦@emmettmacfarlane.com · 2mo agoI wonder how many third-party platforms and software systems my university is paying for, and at what (enormous) cost, many of which previously worked fine on internal systems. I bet it's easily north of 100. New this year: a third party platform to manage 'course reserves' for the libraries.
Maybe we shouldn't let robber barons dictate the budget priorities of universities.
Philadelphia Inquirer@inquirer.com · 2mo agoChristopher M. Barnett's company, ABA Centers of America, is under federal investigation over allegations of money laundering, wire fraud and other offenses.
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
Mikkel Krause Frantzen@mikkelkfrantzen.bsky.social · 2mo agoA book forum on my book "The birth of the financial thriller" (@edinburghup.bsky.social) has been just been published in @distinktionjournal.bsky.social ! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... Free eprint link here: www.tandfonline.com/eprint/99YPP...
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...
Side Hustle: College Sports and the Future of Academic Labor –
Joseph Darda
post45.org
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.
Kyla created a good occasion to tidy up the webpage for the episode she links. There have been a lot of eureka moments in the process of making AV, but, when I was listening to Kyla & @thisblue.bsky.social talk about their working conditions all I could think was "THIS👇, people need to hear THIS."
The Shush (& The Chair) with Michelle Chihara & Kyla Wazana Tompkins
Bad Representations of Academe Continue Apace. What can we learn from them?
theamericanvandal.com
Kyla Wazana Tompkins@kwazana.bsky.social · 3mo agoMore petulant sucky baby tabloid writing and I finally, and for the only time, discuss the Chronicle of Higher Education kylawazanatompkins.substack.com/p/more-sucky...
"Everything you have was built by workers and you fight to keep from unionizing while you receive govt welfare."
"You Are a Parasite": Elon Musk Humiliated for Criticizing Zohran Mamdani
Grassroots political organizer Jay Ponti had a scorching takedown for the richest man in the world, Elon Musk.
trib.al
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...
In Memory of David Page, Executive Director of Winter Wildlands Alliance
It is with profound sadness that we share the sudden and unexpected passing of our Executive Director, David Page. David's legacy will live on in the winter landscapes he loved, the public lands he wo...
winterwildlands.org
Fiscal Chronotopes: #ZcavengerHunt, the Zetro Card, and the New Finance Franchise
Fiscal Chronotopes: #ZcavengerHunt, the Zetro Card, and the New Finance Franchise
By Will Beaman This essay is lightly adapted from a talk delivered at the 2026 American Comparative Literature Association conference. It contributes to a growing body of endogenous money theorizat…
moneyontheleft.org
‘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...
William Davies · Burnham’s Political Economy
Whatever rash remarks he may have made about the bond markets or spending commitments, Andy Burnham understands...
lrb.co.uk
Once again, books fuckin’ rule. Start your day with this story. “The book’s power comes from a simple but stark truth, one that lies beneath the policy recommendations and legal terms: Sometimes, ‘there are places in the world where it stops being safe for people to live.’” - @thisblue.bsky.social
The children's book that beat 'Heated Rivalry' on the charts is officially getting a reprint
A viral TikTok recommendation sent the 2022 picture book 'Our World Is a Family' straight to the New York Times bestseller list. Now it's being reprinted June 19.
latimes.com
"[T]he world receives not Robert Smith but Olivia Rodrigo’s Robert Smith, authored by the singular genius of Olivia Rodrigo."
Why Music Critics Have Olivia Rodrigo’s New Album Backwards
Why the Robert Smith feature on "what's wrong with me" isn’t just a guest spot. An essay on how Olivia Rodrigo subverts the typical anxiety of influence.
moneyontheleft.org
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...
The children's book that beat 'Heated Rivalry' on the charts is officially getting a reprint
A viral TikTok recommendation sent the 2022 picture book 'Our World Is a Family' straight to the New York Times bestseller list. Now it's being reprinted June 19.
latimes.com
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.
In the Loop: Revolutionizing Public Finance, Ep. 1
The Money on the Left Collective is proud to launch its new podcast series, In the Loop: Revolutionizing Public Finance, hosted by Scott Ferguson, Tyler Suksawat, and Will Beaman. In this debu…
moneyontheleft.org
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.
Herb Scribner@herbscribner.bsky.social · 5mo agoBallroom donors won $50B in contracts after giving to Trump project, watchdog group finds www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...
