Lorri Hopping ✍🏼 🕹️ 🔜 SONA (Pittsburgh)

Making plans to enjoy SONA Festival at Carnegie Mellon (Pittsburgh), which looks bigger, deeper, broader than the inaugural event last year. Friends/colleagues @dreamingmethods @121productions are back + many new artists. April 2-4. #VR #AR #XR sonafestival.com/experiences-20…

@jdakotapowell Hi, the VR piece is all Judi and Andy, The Pit. :) I'm just tagging along to take advantage of them being stateside + say hey to a few others I know attending. (I went last year, driveable for me.) YES, let's all connect! (Meeting with Andy Fri to figure out logistics.)

@HoppingFun Judi and I were going to go out for a cuppa... how about we get everyone together and go out for dinner? Really looking forward to your piece in the fest!

SONA scheduled me to do the joint keynote, so stepping back into the fray after a long hiatus from speaking on panels, etc. In 2016, an NYU student asked me: how do you tell a story in #VR? Well it was a grey area then and still is today. Plenty of room to innovate.

@jdakotapowell Marie Curie, we have passion for science in common. timewavestudio.com/m-curie-vr

@jdakotapowell HELLO and please say HELLO again IRL. :) I'll be hanging out with friends and current collaborators Judi and Andy and catching up with Drew, Erin and others I've met via G4C and transmedia circles. (Have we met at NYU game center?) TimeWave Studio, cool. timewavestudio.com

FREE registration to SONA (April 2-4, Pittsburgh) is now OPEN. Sign up for entry, awards gala, and VR slots. #vr sonafestival.com/registration

Let me get this straight. The federal government held a legal auction for the right to build offshore wind farms. A company won those auctions fair and square, paying nearly a billion dollars into the U.S. Treasury. The projects went through years of review. Courts repeatedly upheld their legality. Everything was above board. Then the Trump administration tried five separate times to kill other wind projects in federal court and lost every single time. Judges reviewed the administration’s supposed “national security” justification and weren’t persuaded.  So now they’ve landed on a new plan: pay the company nearly ONE BILLION DOLLARS of your tax money to just walk away. Because, and I am not making this up, the president thinks offshore wind turbines are ugly and claims without evidence that they “drive whales crazy.”  He’s been nursing this petty grudge since 2012, when he tried to block a wind farm visible from his golf course in Scotland. Fourteen years later, American taxpayers are footing the bill for it. This is stupid policy. It’s fiscally reckless, strategically blind, and driven entirely by a personal vendetta rather than any coherent vision for American energy or competitiveness. Meanwhile, China is racing ahead, building offshore wind at a staggering pace and positioning itself to dominate the global clean energy economy for decades to come. None of this is America First. nytimes.com/2026/03/17/cli…

ICE seizes DACA recipient on way to visit premature baby in NICU. Trump admin is not renewing "Dreamers" who were given legal status as children to stay in U.S. -- says they can now be detained and deported. @lbarronlopez ms.now/news/ice-detai…

Here is what’s really going on with regard to the funding stalemate in Congress. ICE agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens on the streets of Minneapolis. Democrats then said: before we write you another check, agree to the same rules every police department in America already follows. Judicial warrants before entering homes. Visible ID. Body cameras. No raids at schools and hospitals. We immediately pushed for votes to fund TSA, the Coast Guard, and FEMA. Republicans blocked it. We tried to fund FEMA alone. Republicans blocked that too. Their position was to fund ICE with no strings attached, or shut the whole thing down. So DHS shut down. Then yesterday, the White House sent a letter admitting we were right. But they still won’t agree to judicial warrants or to take the masks off, which means agents can still break down your door without a judge’s approval and you still can’t see their faces when they do it. We’ve been ready to fund your airport security since day one, not to mention Coast Guard, FEMA and the rest. Republicans chose to protect ICE from accountability instead. #FundDHSFreezeICE

Anne Applebaum nails it:

Still need to book lodging near Carnegie Mellon, two nights, if anyone has a lead on something affordable ahead of a holiday?

Registration (free) is now open! April 2-4 in Pittsburgh at Carnegie Mellon, SONA offers VR experiences from an international selection of creators. #vr #xr I signed up. sonafestival.com/experiences-20…

Making plans to enjoy SONA Festival at Carnegie Mellon (Pittsburgh), which looks bigger, deeper, broader than the inaugural event last year. Friends/colleagues @dreamingmethods @121productions are back + many new artists. April 2-4. #VR #AR #XR sonafestival.com/experiences-20…

after a "swollen tongue" Afghan special forces soldier who sided with U.S. Army Special Forces Evacuated with his family in 2021 during ​US withdrawal Primary provider for family: six kids, including an 18-month-old infant

Jackie (@jacquelineUWS) and I have been observing the Central Park coyotes for a long time. We first saw Juliet several years ago and sporadically spotted her again around the park while she was single. When we saw her with her new beau Romeo in January 2024, our instinct was to keep the existence of a mated pair of coyotes in the middle of Manhattan a secret. We didn’t know how people would react to the news. We and our friends increasingly had luck finding them and learning their habits that year. They were a great comfort to us after Flaco died—we went to look for them and saw them after speaking at his memorial. And I always kept an eye out for them when I was heading home through the park after working with Jackie on our book until late into the night. We were happy just to see them. It initially seemed too difficult to photograph them, though we eventually figured that out. (It’s still quite difficult!) Over time, we became concerned about their welfare. We saw them chased regularly by off-leash dogs. We read negative portrayals of them in news articles that were rife with coyote prejudices. We heard of people calling the cops to make unwarranted complaints about them. We were concerned about people who were jumping fences, trespassing into construction sites and trampling through the woods to look for them. And we learned they were hunting for rats on the perimeter of the park, too close for comfort to the rodenticide bait stations that are so ubiquitous there. So we decided to write about them. We wanted people to know that there are coyotes here and they shouldn’t be feared. We wanted people to practice peaceful coexistence by leashing dogs around them. And we wanted to advocate for a more wildlife-friendly city. We were blown away by how positively people responded. A year later, much work remains. But countless more New Yorkers are now rooting for Romeo and Juliet, and we’re grateful for it. We can all work together to improve the welfare of New York City’s wildlife.

Central Park coyotes Romeo and Juliet sharing a kiss this winter. Happy Coyote Awareness Week! This is a good time to reflect on our efforts in the past year to educate people about these beautiful animals in the heart of NYC and to advocate for them. Cont’d #nature #wildlife

Call for speakers: Serious Play (March 31 deadline) 📍 Duke U, North Carolina 📅 August 5–7, 2026 "We’re looking for experiences in game-based learning and simulation: ✨ Successes ✨ Struggles ✨ Obstacles ✨ Lessons learned" ⏳ Submit your proposal seriousplayconf.com/call-for-speak…

Elon Musk has revealed the algorithm behind X — and it may explain why the internet feels angrier than ever. By publishing the source code for X, Elon Musk has revealed the mathematical engine driving our political divide | ✍️@frasernelson

NEW: House Oversight Committee wants to interview Epstein prison guard who worked the night Epstein died. Interview request comes after @miamiherald exclusively reported that she was overheard by inmate talking about covering up his killing. Here is a free link to our story: miamiherald.com/news/local/cri…

Haitian immigrant last seen in ICE custody—found dead on the street 3 days later. Agents drove her 1 hour away from home for processing—then released without notifying her family. Her body was found near a bus stop. Police say she had "significant mental health episode" that landed her in county jail. But ICE picked her up after judge dismissed all charges and drove her 1 hour away to Pittsburgh. "Told her brother charges were dismissed on Thursday. She doesn't come out on Friday. He gets a call on Monday that she's dead," lawyer explained. "It seems perfectly reasonable if you're going to take someone all the way up here and that far out of their element—you could just as easily have driven them back." Daphy Michel, only 31 years old, was living and working in Penny under Temporary Protected Status as a Haitian refugee.

If we could just raise sea levels by 150 meters we get a backup Strait of Hormuz

The Bronx Zoo is currently caring for a stowaway red fox that was discovered in February aboard a ship arriving at the Port of New York and New Jersey from Southampton, England. (1/5)

Detailed thread about the kidnapping of Ukrainian children, which began BEFORE the invasion. As in 1970s Argentina, the kids end up scattering across rich/powerful families with new names and IDs. A key difference: DNA testing exists today. There will be a reckoning.